Ravi Arvind Palat

Ravi Arvind Palat, Ph. D (Sociology), is an academic in the discipline of sociology and author. He is Associate Professor of Sociology who works on historical sociology and contemporary political economy at the State University of New York at Binghamton. A citizen of India, Dr. Palat has permanent residency in both the United States New Zealand.
Early and education
Ravi Arvind Palat, son of Sankaran and Malyni Palat, was educated at the Lawrence School, Lovedale. He obtained a BA in Economics at the Madras Christian College; an MA and an M.Phil. in History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University; and a Ph.D. in Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Career
He has taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; the University of Auckland; Johns Hopkins University; and at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
In historical sociology, he has argued that societies based on wet-rice economies (peninsular India, South China, and Tokugawa Japan) exhibited a distinct trajectory of socio-historical change that did not confer any economic advantages to the accumulation of capital. Instead, it promoted the development of highly-skilled, labor-intensive agriculture and craft production and small-scale trade over long-distances.
In his Capitalist Restructuring and the Pacific Rim he traced the development of the economies of East and Southeast Asia since 1945 and argued that the Asian financial crisis of 1997 was the result of enterprises borrowing heavily for day to day operations, a practice that had stood them in good stead while elite government planning agencies guided national economic strategies. But with as enterprises from these 'miracle economies' developed gilt-edged security ratings, expanded the production and procurement operations across national borders, and the regulatory capacity of state planning agencies declined, the continuation of these policies undermined their business practices and led to overproduction.
He has also published several critical articles on area studies, especially his "Fragmented Visions: Excavating the Future of Asian Studies in a Post-American World," and "Is India a Part of Asia". He is the editor of Pacific-Asia and the Future of the World-System.
Published books
*Pacific-Asia and the Future of the World-System: Contributions in Economics and Economic History (Greenwood Press, 1993) ISBN 0313284016
*Capitalist Restructuring and the Pacific Rim (Taylor & Francis, 2007) ASIN B000OT8DJW

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