Venezuelan peasants,capitalism, and the modern world‐system

Roseberry, William. Coffee and Capitalism in the Venezuelan Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. xv + 256 pp. including bibliography and index. $22.50 cloth.     

Dual‐Use Technology In the Context of the Non‐Proliferation Regime

Many technologies have both vital legitimate uses and potent military applications. An international regulatory regime has been devised for the purpose of monitoring the use of the most dangerous of these technologies, namely chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Multiple examples of the use of chemical and biological weapons against members of the public, and evidence of prohibited state weapons development programs, demonstrate the vital need for a more effective enforcement regime. The authors discuss the concept and threat of dual‐use technology, the existing regulatory regime and its shortcomings, and propose enhancing this regime with powerful international judicial authorities to enable the prosecution of any state, group or individual who attempts to misuse dual‐use technology.     

Meridionalismo,the crisis of liberalism,and the advent of Marxism in post‐risorgimento Naples

For an ideology described by Marx himself as one that was suitable only for advanced societies, backward Naples ironically served as the point of entry for Marxism in Italy. As theorists and activists, the great Neapolitan Marxists—Antonio Labriola, Carlo Cafiero, Arturo Labriola, and Amadeo Bordiga—completely dominated the initial stages of the movement. For an understanding of the severe socio‐economic conditions that did much to make Naples the incubator of radicalism in post‐Risorgimento Italy, the literature of the meridionalisti (southern reformers) remains indispensable. Under attack on both sides of the Atlantic by a new generation of historians who admirably seek to produce a nuanced history of the South by rising above the stereotypes associated with a one‐dimensional image of the “Southern Problem,” the meridionalisti require supplementing today as historians. Nevertheless, the reaction against them has been too extreme. They remain invaluable eye‐witnesses to the conditions and events that formed the historical context of Marxism's momentous appearance in Italy.     

The changing nature of the peri‐urban zone in Africa: Evidence from Dar‐es‐Salaam,Tanzania

Research on the peri‐urban zones of African cities since the mid‐1980s has focused around three main themes, these being peri‐urban agriculture as a survival strategy, debates about the relative efficiencies of peri‐urban agriculture, and the question of production priorities. Drawing on recent evidence from Dar‐es‐Salaam in Tanzania, this paper suggests that a combination of structural adjustment measures and the eased economic crisis in Tanzania has changed conditions, the result of which has been the increasing commodification of land in the peri‐urban zone during the 1990s. This has turned the peri‐urban zone more into a zone of investment and economic opportunity, rather than a zone of survival, with the result that the poorer urban groups are being increasingly excluded. A further complication concerns confusion arising out of current Tanzanian land law, and particularly the tensions between customary and statutory law.     

American education‐the image in the mirror

Solon T. Kimball. Culture and the Educative Process: An Anthropological Perspective. New York: Teachers College Press, 1974. x + 285 pp. $10.00 (cloth).

George D. Spindler, ed. Education and Cultural Process: Toward an Anthropology of Education. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974. xii + 559 pp. Tables, figures, appendixes and indexes. $6.95 (paper).     

Ideology and the by‐passing of the planning system: Case studies of Canary Wharf,London, and the Globe,Stockholm

This article explores the relationship between political ideology and planning in Britain and Sweden, with a particular emphasis on the by‐passing of the planning system. The prevailing ideology in each country over the last 10 years is outlined and the impact on planning identified. The argument is then given greater depth through case studies of two major projects. For Britain, this involves setting out the main features of Thatcherism and the way this has changed the purposes underlying planning and created a diversified planning system. This is followed by a case study of Canary Wharf. For Sweden, the consensus culture and the emphasis on participation and decentralization are discussed. The new planning legislation of 1987 is outlined. These aspects are then contrasted with the fiscal crisis and the development of ‘negotiation planning’. These themes are illustrated in the case study of the Globe in Stockholm.     

Opium smoking,anti‐Chinese attitudes,and the American medical community, 1850–1890

During the 1870s and early 1880s, members of the American medical community sought to exclude the Chinese from immigrating to the United States because these physicians believed that the Chinese opium smoking habit threatened the moral system of the country. Doctors were especially concerned about the supposed effects of opium smoking on sexual behavior, arguing that it both heightened male and female desire and endangered the nation's reproductive capacity. They also feared that opium smoking and Chinese prostitution would encourage miscegenation, and that use of the drug could ultimately harm America's socio‐economic progress. The conclusions of these physicians fed into the anti‐Chinese campaign that resulted in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.     

Recovering social memories from the past: the 1884 novel Ramona and tourist practices in turn‐of‐the‐century southern California

Scholars studying social memory have identified a priority for future work: using the study of documented social memories to understand constructions of the past and social identities in the present. Recovering such lived, individual engagements with social memory is challenging when those engaging the memory are deceased, yet that is what this article attempts to do: Through fine‐grained study of archival traces, I explore the lived practices of tourists in an attempt to understand how the immensely popular 1884 novel Ramona changed the way people thought about southern California's past, creating a new, Ramona‐inspired social memory for the region. In so doing I suggest that those interested in recovering social memories (like these) from the past use such detailed analysis, paying close attention to even the tiniest of details.     

Middle‐east,Midwest

Barbara C. Asward, ed. Arabic‐Speaking Communities in American Cities. New York: A joint publication of the Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc., and the Association of Arab‐American University Graduates, Inc., 1974. vii + 191 pp. Appendix.     

The Riksdag,the state bureaucracy and the administration of hospitals in eighteenth‐century Sweden

Traditionally, the Norwegian modernization process has been presented as a success story that focuses on how social movements and democratized political institutions in the 19th and 20th centuries laid the foundations for a society and culture with an emphasis on social equality. The paper offers an alternative analysis of this process, based not on the issue of material equality and inequality, but on the concepts of normality and deviance. A comparison of the development of the Norwegian national education policy since the middle of the 19th century with the Danish and Swedish experiences involves the exclusion of the dissimilar as a distinct feature of the Norwegian policy. ‘Disability’ was constructed as a category of deviance by public policies and administrative and professional practice. The professions – particularly teachers and doctors – were important actors who offered alternative conceptions of normality and disability. However, the constructions that they selected were those that were in closest dialogue with the particular challenges confronted by the Norwegian modernisation process: first the liberal, then the social democratic construction. Because the national conditions confronting the Scandinavian modernization processes differed from each other, so did the related constructions of disability.     

Missionaries,Evangelical Identity,and the Religious Ecology of Early Nineteenth‐Century South Carolina and the British Caribbean

This article examines a critical question that fraught contemporaries throughout the Atlantic system in the early nineteenth century: could slavery be ameliorated and, thus, by implication, could slaves be ‘improved’? Despite strong eighteenth‐century connections through trade and as provincial outposts of the British Empire, South Carolina and the British Caribbean differed markedly on this issue by the early 1800s. But the reasons for this divergence cannot be adequately explained by the effects of the American Revolution. South Carolina slaveholders believed that slavery could be ameliorated through the adoption of evangelicalism. West Indian proprietors, however, believed that the introduction of evangelical religion among their slaves would only incite them to rebel. Thus, evangelical missionaries were often crucial figures in defining the character of slaveholding societies in South Carolina and the West Indies. These missionaries illustrated South Carolinians' paternalistic, benevolent sense of a permanent slave society, while itinerants in the West Indies described a violent, lawless, and temporary society beyond the pale of British standards of civility and humanitarianism.