Antiquities Under Siege or International Political Economy

Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection after the Iraq War

Author: Lawrence Rothfield

As Saddam Hussein's government fell in April 2003, news accounts detailed the pillage of Iraq's National Museum. The museum's looting grabbed headlines worldwide, and public attention briefly focused on Iraq's threatened cultural heritage. Less dramatic, though far more devastating, was the subsequent epidemic of looting at thousands of archaeological sites around the country. Illegal digging on a massive scale continues to this day, virtually unchecked; Iraq's ten thousand officially recognized sites are being destroyed at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year.

This book contains the first full published account of the disasters that have befallen Iraq's cultural heritage, and it analyzes why the array of laws and international conventions, the advocacy efforts of cultural heritage organizations, and the military planning and implementation of cultural protection operations all failed, and continue to fail, to prevent massive and irreversible loss. Looking forward, the book identifies new planning procedures, policy mechanisms, and implementation strategies capable of succeeding, so the mistakes of Iraq will not be replicated in other regions in crisis whose cultural heritages are at risk. Both archaeologists and policymakers will benefit from this detailed study.

Book review: Principles of Information Systems or Stratagems and Spoils

International Political Economy: An Intellectual History

Author: Benjamin J Cohen

The field of international political economy gained prominence in the early 1970s--when the Arab oil embargo and other crises ended the postwar era of virtually unhindered economic growth in the United States and Europe--and today is an essential part of both political science and economics. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of this important field's development, the contrasting worldviews of its American and British schools, and the different ways scholars have sought to meet the challenges posed by an ever more complex and interdependent world economy.

Benjamin Cohen explains the critical role played by the early "intellectual entrepreneurs," a generation of pioneering scholars determined to bridge the gap between international economics and international politics. Among them were brilliant thinkers like Robert Keohane, Susan Strange, and others whose legacies endure to the present day. Cohen shows how their personalities and the historical contexts in which they worked influenced how the field evolved. He examines the distinctly different insights of the American and British schools and addresses issues that have been central to the field's development, including systemic transformation, system governance, and the place of the sovereign state in formal analysis. The definitive intellectual history of international political economy, this book is the ideal volume for IPE scholars and those interested in learning more about the field.

Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations     ix
Acknowledgments     xi
Abbreviations     xiii
Introduction     1
The American School     16
The British School     44
A Really Big Question     66
The Control Gap     95
The Mystery of the State     118
What Have We Learned?     142
New Bridges?     169
References     179
Index     199