Chapter 16 Bhutan

The Routledge Handbook of Highland Asia is the first comprehensive and critical overview of the ethnographic and anthropological work in Highland Asia over the past half a century. Opening up a grand new space for critical engagement, the handbook presents Highland Asia as a world-region that cuts across the traditional divides inherited from colonial and Cold War area divisions - the Indian Subcontinent/South Asia, Southeast Asia, China/East Asia, and Central Asia. Thirty-two chapters assess the history of research, identify ethnographic trends, and evaluate a range of analytical themes that developed in particular settings of Highland Asia. They cover varied landscapes and communities, from Kyrgyzstan to India, from Bhutan to Vietnam and bring local voices and narratives relating trade and tribute, ritual and resistance, pilgrimage and prophecy, modernity and marginalization, capital and cosmos to the fore. The handbook shows that for millennia, Highland Asians have connected far-flung regions through movements of peoples, goods and ideas, and at all times have been the enactors, repositories, and mediators of world-historical processes. Taken together, the contributors and chapters subvert dominant lowland narratives by privileging primarily highland vantages that reveal Highland Asia as an ecumune and prism that refracts and generates global history, social theory, and human imagination. In the currently unfolding Asian Century, this compels us to reorient and re-envision Highland Asia, in ethnography, in theory, and in the connections between this world-region, made of hills, highlands and mountains, and a planetary context. The handbook reveals both regional commonalities and diversities, generalities and specificities, and a broad orientation to key themes in the region. An indispensable reference work, this handbook fills a significant gap in the literature and will be of interest to academics, researchers and students interested in Highland Asia, Zomia Studies, Anthropology, Comparative Politics, Conceptual History and Sociology, Southeast Asian Studies, Central Asian Studies and South Asian Studies as well as Asian Studies in general.

A collection of essays by international writers on the evolution of ballet.

Focuses on a shift away from traditional clinical preoccupations towards new priorities of supporting the patient.

Travel.

The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.

Avid fly-fisher and eager adventurer Jeff Thornton has settled back into college life with his close friend Trudy Garrison after the rescue of his kidnapped parents from the evil Chinese Colonel Chin. But his peaceful time fishing on the river soon comes to an end when his Tibetan friend Dorje returns to America to entreat Jeff's help in saving the Himalayan country of Bhutan from the schemes of Jeff's old nemesis Colonel Chin. Trudy and her parents agree to join the Bhutanese Adventure to give their trip the appearance of an innocent photojournalism/fly-fishing expedition. But their presence in Bhutan is soon discovered by a spy of Chin's, who tracks them, hoping to lure them into a false sense of security before ensnaring them. The journey to save the Bhutanese will require all of Jeff's and Trudy's strength and courage, not to mention their fly-fishing skills to make their story plausible. But will it be enough? Follow Jeff Thornton on his Bhutanese Adventure, the third novel in Jack L. Parker's adventure travel series.

This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources. The annual global cost of land degradation due to land use and cover change (LUCC) and lower cropland and rangeland productivity is estimated to be about 300 billion USD. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for the largest share (22%) of the total global cost of land degradation. Only about 38% of the cost of land degradation due to LUCC - which accounts for 78% of the US$300 billion loss – is borne by land users and the remaining share (62%) is borne by consumers of ecosystem services off the farm. The results in this volume indicate that reversing land degradation trends makes both economic sense, and has multiple social and environmental benefits. On average, one US dollar investment into restoration of degraded land returns five US dollars. The findings of the country case studies call for increased investments into the rehabilitation and restoration of degraded lands, including through such institutional and policy measures as strengthening community participation for sustainable land management, enhancing government effectiveness and rule of law, improving access to markets and rural services, and securing land tenure. The assessment in this volume has been conducted at a time when there is an elevated interest in private land investments and when global efforts to achieve sustainable development objectives have intensified. In this regard, the results of this volume can contribute significantly to the ongoing policy debate and efforts to design strategies for achieving sustainable development goals and related efforts to address land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.

This book is an open access book. Many scholars have wondered if a non-Western theory of international politics founded on different premises, be it from Asia or from the "Global South," could release international relations from the grip of a Western, "Westphalian" model. This book argues that a Buddhist approach to international relations could provide a genuine alternative. Because of its distinctive philosophical positions and its unique understanding of reality, human nature and political behavior, a Buddhist theory of IR offers a way out of this dilemma, a means for transcending the Westphalian predicament. The author explains this Buddhist IR model, beginning with its philosophical foundations up through its ideas about politics, economics and statecraft. William J. Long is Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University.--

Dr. Ivar Nielsen, the worlds foremost authority in pediatric cancer research, has disappeared in Bhutan. His four closest friendsa trauma surgeon, a billionaire businessman, a med school dropout, and a crazed scientisttravel halfway across the globe to find him. There, they fall into a world that is unknown and unknowable, a land whose mythic beauty hides a lurking terror that threatens not only the soul of a nation but the lives of untold thousands of desperately sick children. As Ivars friends arrive in Bhutan, what they find there is beyond anything they could have imagined. It seems the country holds a secret that is known only to Ivar, and that secret is at the heart of his disappearance. At the most revered site in all the Himalayas, the world of pioneering cancer research and the art of ancient medicine are about to collide with the designs of a vengeful madman. With the lives of the worlds most vulnerable children at stake, events will occur that will change the lives of all involved forever.