Kathryn Anderson – författare

Weaving Relationships tells the remarkable, little-known story of a movement that transcends barriers of geography, language, culture, and economic disparity. The story begins in the early 1980s, when 200,000 Maya men, women, and children crossed the Guatemalan border into Mexico, fleeing genocide by the Guatemalan army and seeking refuge. A decade later, many of the refugees returned to their homeland along with 140 Canadians, members of ""Project Accompaniment"". The Canadians were there, by their side, to provide companionship and, more significantly, as an act of solidarity. Weaving Relationships describes the historical roots of this solidarity focusing on the Maya in Guatemala. It relates the story of ""Project Accompaniment"" and two of its founders in Canada, the Christian Task Force on Central America and the Maritimes-Guatemala ""Breaking the Silence"" Network. It reveals solidarity's impact on the Canadians and Guatemalans whose lives have been changed by the experience of relationships across borders. It presents solidarity not as a work of charity apart from or ""for"" them but as a bond of mutuality, of friendship and common struggle with those who are marginalized, excluded, and impoverished in this world. This book speaks of a spirituality based on community and justice, and challenges the church to move beyond its preoccupation with its own survival to solidarity with those who are suffering. It is a book about hope in the face of death and despair.

This book uses household survey data from five Central Asian countries to analyse the important consequences of, and elements that constitute, the creation of a market economy. The countries studied - Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - had taken minimal action towards creating a market economy before the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991. From similar initial conditions they have pursued different post-independence economic strategies, making them ideal candidates for comparative analysis.The pivotal question concerns the determination of living standards. Who gained and who lost from the transition to a market economy? Which characteristics are rewarded in a new market economy? How do national policies and other systematic factors affect these outcomes? The authors also address other important issues that have emerged during transition debates: the position of women and the role of small businesses. The book analyses the gender issue in the narrow, but significant, sense of what happened to women in the labour market and the authors also analyze the characteristics of households with non-farm businesses.This book will prove invaluable to academics and researchers of Asian studies and particularly those with an interest in economic development and labour economics within the region.