This book is the product of an academic effort made by different institutions in the world. It is also one of the most significant steps that UNAM has taken to open spaces for African studies in the institution. It is imperative to study global history from an African perspective, not only because its own history was erased as one of the consequences of European imperialism and colonization during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century.

The reader will find outstanding contributions regarding Africa authored by academics of different countries and institutions, focused on diaspora, mobility, and transnational dynamics, both inside and outside of the continent. On the other hand, anthropological approaches to Africa in this volume intend to study some cases as the Tuareg rebellion or the pentecostalization of social life in African states like Benin. Finally, another topic that has received much scholar attention in recent years and that plays an ever-greater role around theoretical and political issues concerning African Studies besides decolonization and deconstruction is the task of de-gendering the role of women in both African Studies and African political societies. This book tries to prove the need of deepening our understanding of Africa’s political, social, and cultural problems in order to advance scientific knowledge, not only at UNAM but also at other academic institutions across Mexico, Latin America and, the world.

This book contributes to the analysis of pharmaceutical companies with a threefold purpose. On the one hand, it attempts to demonstrate the relevance of the capitalist pharmaceutical company in a competitive and globalized environment. On the other hand, it develops the structure in which this type of company fits in contemporary conditions. Finally, it provides an overview of the finances of Indian pharmaceutical companies in this context. Through five sections, the author clearly reflects the analytical and interpretative framework he uses to reveal the current state of India's five largest pharmaceutical companies. Sosa analyzes the cases of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Lupin Ltd., Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd., Cipla Ltd. and Aurobindo Pharma Ltd. as he considers them as a representative sample of the overall picture of the economic functioning of the pharmaceutical company in this region. In this way, the book is a study not only of a financial nature, but also of a historical and systematic nature that deals with the functioning of pharmaceutical corporations participating in the phenomenon of globalization and financialization.

Japanese society is experiencing certain phenomena that are addressed by the author and that he attributes, taking up the ideas of the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han in his work entitled The Burnout Society, to the exhaustion of Japanese society that has taken root in the accelerated modernization of the country since the economic miracle that Japan experienced in the mid-twentieth century. Phenomena such as child suicide, depression, demographic decline, gradual death due to overwork or karoshi, among others, are some of the aspects taken up by the author, who points out the urgency of addressing the state of exhaustion of the Japanese. Thus, this work allows us to learn about various aspects of Japanese society, Carlos Maya brings us closer to controversial and alarming issues of Japan in an entertaining and easy to understand way to reflect on the following: what is the cost of modernization? It seems that in Japan the cost was the stability and mental health of individuals.

This book has three axes of transversal analysis. The first one addresses the experience of economic development in Japan, which went from a model of sustained high growth to a pattern of lower performance, but with a great internationalization of its productive schemes and capital flows.

The second vector analyses the foreign policy responses that the Japanese government has had to the changes in the commercial and financial architecture in the Asia-Pacific, especially to the rise of China as an economic power but also to the emerging schemes for the search for a comprehensive regional economic liberalization process, which the first step, undoubtedly, is represented by the 12-country negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (better known by its acronym TPP).

The third and last one focuses on taking a balance of the initiative called "Abenomics" presented by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as a mechanism to deal with the long cycle of low growth and attend the emerging challenges of Japanese society. The ten co-authors who participate in the work converge on the idea of reflecting on how Japan has gone through and faced the hasty changes within the contemporary international economy –now more globalized– in the last seven decades that have witnessed the deepest and intense transformations that the world has undergone since the modern era.

In this sense, it is clear that for the Japanese government, both the Abenomics and the TPP possibly represent the most viable responses, but not the only ones to gradually restore economic health and contain the erosion of the social welfare pact to which the Japanese people were able to enjoy in the post-war period. That is the great challenge that the Shinzō Abe government faces at the domestic and international levels.

Since the financial crisis of 2007, a period of restructuring flows and financial intermediaries began. Public credit was opened quickly and without limits to meet the rescue of the banks, but months later it was closed, taking a part of the world to the deep stagnation of our days. Ten years after the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis, no progress was made in solving the biggest problems that triggered it: deregulation and concentration; as well as extreme inequality and its origin.

Under the aegis of Income interest, capital flows, private credit and international financial relations have been reorganized. A phase of regionalization and financial segmentation began amid severe conflicts and political changes. Thus, we have a weak euro zone confronted to the austerity policies; the North-Atlantic English-speaking area in the middle of leaderships changes that slow down and even destroy the spaces of businesses and consortiums expansion, financial and non-financial (but financialized), which were formed and formally structured under the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Association.

That is why this book asks in the first part: what have been the determining forces in the post-crisis restructuring process, taking account the world geostrategic recomposition. In turn, the second part of this work is dedicated to the analysis, from various dimensions, of the existing contradictions for the reconfiguration of financial and economic spaces in a world weakened by austerity. Analyse especially their intention to achieve new formulas of economic governance in an increasingly global environment, but with the formation of very international financial gains.

Finally, the third part of this book is dedicated to exploiting the very different ways in which all these changes are taking place in Latin American economies, addressing fundamental issues for the regional reality such as the Pacific Alliance, mining corporations, the BRICS, financial systems, microcredits, and finally the growing positioning of financial flows from Asia in Latin America.

The new economic and political reality that is progressively opening towards East Asia and Asia-Pacific, without forgetting the strategic value of Asia Minor and Central Asia, leaves no doubt about the reallocation of assets in central issues such as economic growth, growth per capita, fabrication of manufactures, export of goods, accumulation of world reserves, contribution to world growth, etc. formerly dominated by European countries and the United States, now they are led by East Asia and China.

These changes are generating a new economic reality, as well as a new economic, commercial, political and social miscegenation that is difficult to predict, by involving not only economic goods and services in their transformation but also by including powerful civilizations that share and compete day by day.

For Mexico and Latin America, today absent from this historical phenomenon of economic and political transfer between countries and between regions, the immediate responsibility is generated to transform themselves into actors and not witnesses of this change.

To go to the accumulated experience and move away from the easy resource of the fascination for the other; of the false political consolation of a hegemony change; to demonstrate their coming of age by maturely exercising the defense and promotion of their national and regional positions, transcending the ancestral practice of 500 years of only selling raw materials, to fully enter the only successful economic door of the 21st century, which it is that of the intelligence services.

The economic-political transfer from the Atlantic to the Pacific is an event of the greatest importance, which has a direct impact on the public and private agenda of all the nations of this new global society. In any of its scenes, their effects will continue to be felt directly in the economic, political and social life of the various countries, as is already the case to date.

It is a work composed of eight chapters based on the analysis of historical and ethnographic sources. The authors build an image of society and politics in contemporary India; highlights the fundamental role of culture since culture not only cuts across all fields of public and political life throughout the history of the South Asian region but is also a central element in understanding power relations in that region.

In Chapter 1, Saurabh Dube raises a question and even a proposal for the analysis of studies related to India: What is the relationship between culture and power? Chapters 2 and 3 examine the gender issue. Mrinalini Sinha addresses feminist research and the construction of an imaginary of democracy and a Nation-State closely linked to the concept and role of women in India.

For her part, Ishita Banerjee addresses the way in which democracy, equality and social justice are conceived and delves into the interaction and intersection of this with religion and gender, an intersection that is the central axis of this chapter. The last four sections turn around a common theme: current democracy.

Chapter 4 presents a contemporary analysis of the history of the barbarian in India and its various uses. Sanjay Subrahmanyam shows how recent faits-divers provide an overview of who and how the barbarian is seen in contemporary times, as well as its consequences.

In Chapter 5, Laura Carballido presents an overview of contemporary democracy in India (2011) and, through the presentation of some data, the author shows that the largest democracy in the world is located in India, as well as what this implies at 30 years of their independence Fernanda Vázquez begins chapter six wondering if being the largest democracy in the world implies being a successful and effective democracy? The author explores democracy in India to offer the reader the achievements, tensions, challenges, scope, and limits of this political structure and emphasizes how and to what extent the scope of the democratic system is limited by the social and economic inequality that persists there.

For her part, in Chapter 7 Beatriz Martínez addresses the specific issue of the 2014 electoral process and explains how and why it was marked by Narendra Modi, offers an analysis of the performance of this character, and takes up, among other elements, the accusations by handling the Gujarat riots.

Finally, through an analysis divided into 3 time periods, Mario González provides an overview of the environment in which political alternation has taken place and takes into account that the party system in India must be canalized and guarantee ideological-political pluralism, social and cultural. It is then an important contribution to the understanding of contemporary India from the Social Sciences and Humanities in Mexico.

In the framework of the 400 years since Hasekura arrived in Mexico, the University Seminary of Asian Studies (SUEA), the Institute of Philological Research and the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences through their Center for International Relations, entities of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), undertook the labour of organizing the Japanese Culture Day to commemorate the anniversary of what has traditionally been considered the first Japanese embassy in Mexico: the Hasekura Mission.

This publication is the result of that academic day, this also has the purpose of recovering the memory of the cultural relations between Mexico and Japan. In this way, gives the reader the possibility to get close to know various aspects of Japanese culture in their own field and in their relationship with Mexico. The studies included have a variety of topics that are organized in four sections: 1. Japan as an object of study; 2. The Hasekura Mission: a historical reassessment; 3. The regional economic system and 4. Language and Literature.