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In this chapter, the author outlines the historical, legal, and jurisdiction regarding incarceration rates of Native Americans. It examines reports and data in areas where problems of racial disparity continue to endure. As the smallest minority population in the United States, it raises questions as to the disparity of Native Americans. Native Americans are unique in their relationship with the federal government, and should be critically examined to distinguish what makes their involvement in the criminal justice system inimical.

The author examines the law enforcement, courts, and corrections data, through various reports; concerning causes of Native American criminality, incarceration rates, health disparities, jurisdictional schemes, human rights, and race. It is argued that federal governmental laws and various bureaucracies exacerbate conditions through overreaching policies which invalidates many of the positive aspects Native People bring to themselves.

Native Americans are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. As the smallest segment of the population, they have a higher incarceration rate per capita. It is without question that chronic underfunding of law enforcement, courts, and corrections in reservation communities continues. In light of Congressional claiming to want to alleviate problems in Indian country, little impact has been realized.

Native American societies are often considered a silent minority. Information pertaining to the many social issues enveloping Native communities often falls on deaf ears and political party leaders who are more interested in a larger constituency fail to lend their assistance in a manner deemed appropriate to truly grasp the larger problems.

This essay explores a radical shift in how the relationship between the power to punish and sovereignty has been conceived in modern American law; specifically focusing on the quiet death of comity as an operative principle in the exercise of criminal jurisdiction. While this essay attends to certain legal issues arising from historical intersections of federal, state and Indian sovereignty in the field of criminal law, this essay is not an attempt to directly evaluate the history of federal policies applied to Indian tribes or tribal lands. Nor is this essay in any strict sense a legal history of federal-tribal relations, or federal penal policy in relation to Indian tribes. Rather, I am concerned here with a series of liminal moments in the American legal tradition in which the power to punish came to be understood ever more one-sidedly, as an atomizing attribute of sovereignty rather than an identifying feature of community within a pluralistic legal framework.

We investigated how an institutional settlement concerning Native Indian gaming (the operation of gambling establishments such as casinos or bingo halls by Native Indian tribes) was preserved over time in spite of three significant challenges. Building on previous literature on settlements and institutional logics, we see settlements as institutional arrangements that manage power dynamics and competing institutional logics. Based on our analyses of the settlement and three challenges in the Native gaming field, we suggest that even seemingly volatile institutional settlements can be maintained when powerful actors balance each other’s ability to modify the settlement and different actors invoke alternative institutional logic(s). We also find that these processes can be facilitated by the embeddedness and formality of the settlement. We contribute to the settlement literature by showing how settlements can be maintained when actors draw on equally strong sources of power and different logics to counter the actions of other actors. Furthermore, we shed light on “how institutions matter” by demonstrating how institutional settlements can facilitate field stability.

The abolition of slavery in the British Empire demanded a complete transformation of the global legal and political order. Focusing on British India, this chapter argues that this restructuring was, in and of itself, a vital racial project that played out on a global stage. Examining these dynamics over the nineteenth century, I trace how this project unfolded from the vantage point of the Bombay Presidency and the western coast of India, tightly integrated into Indian Ocean networks trading goods, ideas, and, of course, peoples. I show how Shidis – African origin groups in South Asia and across the Middle East – were almost the sole subjects of British antislavery interventions in India after abolition. This association was intensified over the nineteenth century as Indian slavery was simultaneously reconfigured to recede from view. This chapter establishes these dynamics empirically by examining a dataset of encounters at borders, ports, and transit hubs, showing how the legal and political regime that emerged after abolition forged novel configurations around “race” and “slavery.” Documenting these “benign” encounters shifts attention to the racializing dimensions of imperial abolition, rather than enslavement. Once “freed,” the administrative and bureaucratic apparatus that monitored and managed Shidis inscribed this identity into the knowledge regime of the colonial state resulting in the long-term racialization of Shidis in South Asia, the effects of which are still present today.

This chapter makes an attempt to provide an outline of the contributions of the Indian democratic socialist tradition to the expansion and radicalization of the canvas of democratic theory and practice in India. While doing so, it also briefly discusses and highlights the historical and cultural context of the emergence of democratic imagination in India.11The democratic socialist tradition in India owes its origin during the Nationalist Movement by way of the establishment of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP). The CSP was a left-wing group, within the Indian National Congress, established to intensify the nationalist movement by turning it unequivocally, anticolonial and anti-imperialist. It also intended to radicalise the agenda of the nationalist struggle by incorporating into it aspirations of a socio-economic transformation of Indian society. After independence, the CSP severed its relation with the Congress and ramified into a number of splintered groups and parties over a period. See, John Patrick Haithcox, Nationalism and Communalism in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968). In addition, the chapter also tries to grapple with certain central issues of democracy and civil society in contemporary India and shows how socialist input into Indian democracy could help in overcoming some of its predicaments. This analysis is done in three sections. The first section discusses the historical and cultural context of the emergence of democracy in India in terms of the nationalist movement and the framing of the Indian Constitution. The second section identifies the central issues that Indian democracy confronts today. Finally, the third section highlights the significance of the Indian democratic socialist discourse both in identifying the problems of Indian democracy as well as in providing amicable solutions to them.

Purpose – This chapter illustrates how an economic sociology of work exposes the deeply embedded nature of the informal economy and the social and political lives of its growing mass of unprotected workers under globalization. In particular, the premises of economic sociology offer a comprehensive definition of the informal economy that I term, “relational.” In contrast to definitions based on modernization and neoliberal assumptions of isolated economies, relational definitions of the informal economy expose the structures, networks, and political institutions that intertwine informal workers with the formal economy, society, and the state. Operationalizing the relational definition in labor surveys ensures the inclusion of previously invisible informal workers, especially those who operate at the intersection of the informal and formal economy. As well, it ensures the collection of data on the precise ways in which informal workers are socially and politically embedded, including their collective action efforts, the meaning they attach to their labor, and the social networks that determine their life chances.

Methodology – To illustrate this point, I apply a relational definition of informal labor to the case of India, using the National Sample Survey on Employment and Unemployment, as well as findings from interviews with organized informal workers.

Findings – By doing so, I provide an internationally comparative measure of India's informal workforce, illustrate informal workers’ social conditions relative to those of formal workers, highlight the expansion of the informal workforce since the government enacted liberalization reforms, and expose the unique political action strategies Indian informal workers are launching against the state.

Implications/Originality – These findings help us understand Indian informal workers in an internationally comparative context, yielding empirical insights on their social conditions and political organizations for the first time. As well, they call for an important refinement to existing definitions of the informal economy that to date have relied only on Latin American and African experiences.

This chapter outlines current developments in Indian libraries, information services and cultural sector collectively highlighting recent trends and developments as India increasingly takes centre stage in the area of libraries and information literacy development. The chapter also provides a critical analysis of library and information science education in India and highlights the need for government strategies and policies related to public libraries. Some 17 federal states and union territories in the Republic of India have no public library legislation and therefore low literacy rates. India needs public awareness campaigns, civic engagement and community developments including the grass-roots empowerment of public libraries. Financial reforms, modernization and federal funding strategies for public libraries are also required to energize cultural organizations and national libraries. A recent major development is the establishment of a National Commission on Libraries following recommendations by the National Knowledge Commission. However, Indian public libraries do not cater sufficiently for the growing youth population or other strata's of Indian society. The growing Indian higher education sector also necessitates information policies for open access, digital preservation and repositories development.

The distribution dynamics of incomes across Indian states are examined using the entire income distribution. Unlike standard regression approaches, this approach allows us to identify specific distributional characteristics such as polarisation and stratification. The period between 1965 and 1997 exhibits the formation of two convergence clubs: one at 50% and another at 125% of the national average income. Income disparities across the states declined over the sixties and then increased from the seventies to the nineties. Conditioning exercises reveal that the formation of the convergence clubs is associated with the disparate distribution of macro-economic factors such as capital expenditure and fiscal deficits. In particular, capital expenditure, fiscal deficits and education expenditures are found to be associated with the formation of the upper convergence club.

The introduction of the 22 member countries of the 4+10+2+6 model of the Asian economy is the immediate task. Japan, Korea, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar constitute the now-famous 4+10 model. Following the principle of inclusion, Mongolia, Chinese Taipei, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka, as they belong to the regional map of the continent of Asia, are the eight remaining member countries (see Chapter 1). An overview of Asia's 22 member continental economy the AE-22, with its 3.6 billion people (2006) who have made the region of Asia their home in a land area of 20.5 million km² should be welcome. To put these figures in perspective, the AE-22 comprises only 13.7 percent of the world's land area, but is home to over half the world's population. Tables 2.1–2.4, presented below, illustrate the various figures relating to population, land area, GDP, and GDP per capita of the member nations of the AE-22.

San Diego County (California, USA) contains 18 Indian reservations—more than any other county in the United States. Citizens of these reservations, each recognized as a sovereign nation, have information needs that are highly sophisticated. Coming from a civilization that preserved history through oral tradition, they have only recently made the transition to writing things down and collecting books into buildings. In spite of many tragic events that drastically reduced their population, San Diego County's Indians have retained much of their heritage through efforts of tribal elders and non-Indian historians. With federal and local assistance, tribal libraries were constructed on about half of San Diego County's reservations during the 1980s. Over the next few years, reduction of grant funds adversely affected them, resulting in some closures. Thanks to creative efforts made by many individuals at a local university, the state library, professional associations, and most of all by the Indians themselves, a number of San Diego County's tribal libraries are growing and taking on new shapes. Five local tribal librarians were surveyed twice over a 12-month period regarding their respective libraries. Analysis yielded four key factors for success: (1) the presence of a designated librarian; (2) support from the tribal government; (3) plans and a vision for the future; and (4) partnerships and connections with other entities. The research suggests that these factors are applicable toward ensuring success for small, geographically and culturally isolated libraries in any context.