FOREWORD.

AuthorAlexander, Ryan

Dear Readers: This issue features five excellent articles that, in the tradition of the Journal of Global South Studies, reflect diverse geographical and disciplinary research. Albert Hasudungan surveys how the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations in the Kapuas Hulu region of Indonesia have exacerbated economic inequalities, providing some population sectors with access to diverse market assets while causing land dispossession and poverty for others. Michael B. Bishku explains how Malaysia, though more economically integrated with (and dependent upon) the United States and Asia, has rededicated itself to fostering its long-standing relations with the Middle East and Islamic world. Pramod K. Kantha examines how relations between India and Nepal have deteriorated since the 2015 adoption of a new Nepali constitution, one to which India and the Madhesi, a large constituency of Nepal's population, both objected. Diogo L. Pinheiro shows how sovereign risk ratings, ostensibly an objective measure of market conditions, were in fact used to measure compliance with a neoliberal economic development paradigm. Fernando de la Cruz Prego demonstrates that across two distinct economic development models, the relative importance of foreign aid in Bolivia has depended on the prices of the major commodities it exports.

In addition to our guest authors and editors, I would, as always, like to extend my sincere gratitude to the anonymous peer reviewers who have worked to improve each article, as well as the volunteer associate editors (Fodei Batty for Africa, Srobana Battacharya for Asia, Vaughn Shannon for the Middle East, Luis Sierra for the Americas, Jason Strakes for Eurasia, and Michael Hall for book reviews), and offer equally big thank-yous to the JGSS editorial assistant, Sara Abernathy, and to Lauren Phillips, journals manager at the University of Florida Press. Be sure to read our extensive selection of book reviews in this and future issues.

Our parent organization, the Association of Global South Studies, was established in order to provide an international structure for the humane and scientific study of peoples, problems, and issues in the world's developing countries, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of life in those places. The late Dr. Harold Isaacs, professor emeritus of history at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Georgia, founded the Association of Third World Studies (ATWS), Inc., in 1983. The association...

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