Securing Modernity: Towards an Ethnography of Power in Contemporary Melanesia

ABSTRACT Contemporary public discourses, which depict Melanesian nation states as weak or as having failed, serve to legitimize the imposition of external, neo‐paternal, regulatory structures on former colonies. Such discourses problematise the numerous local experiments that combine custom, state structures and religion so as to create modern Melanesian ways of governing. Starting with the colonial policy of indirect rule, Melanesia has had a long history of experiments that have sought to tie together different regimes of power in relays, which are meant to remediate, supplement and strengthen state structures. Today, those relays are pathologised as dysfunctional precisely because they can be used to subvert, contest and divert state programs. Current political problems arising from growing ethnic and economic divisions are producing new conflicts, new moral languages for figuring evil, and new tactics and technologies of power. Many of these new experiments seek to reconnect the nation state with the moral authority, pastoral regimes, and individualizing practices of Christianity.     

Gender,sexuality and power in Arab society: Arab feminist criticism of discourse and social order

Adnan, Etel. Sitt Marie Rose. Sausalito, California: Post‐Apollo Press, 1982. 105 pp. $7.50 paper.

El Saadawi. Woman at Point Zero. London: Zed Press, 1983. iv + 106 pp. $6.25 paper.

Sabbah, Fatna A. Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. New York: Pergamon Press. 132 pp. including footnotes and index. $22.50 cloth, $9.95 paper.     

近代早期英国社会的等级性质

近代早期,英国社会发生了剧烈的动荡和变革,社会流动以前所未有的速度发生着,人们的社会位置、相互关系日趋多样化、复杂化.但是,这些变化并未从根本上动摇英国的社会结构.在近代早期的英国社会中,等级观念和等级制度仍然占据主导地位,这一时期的英国社会依然是一个等级色彩十分浓厚的社会.     

The social construction of persons within the school and society

Atkinson, Paul. Language, Structure and Reproduction: An Introduction to the Sociology of Basil Bernstein. New York: Methuen, 1985. No front‐matter 216 pp. including bibliography and index. No price.

LeVine, Robert A., and Merry I. White. Human Conditions: The Cultural Basis of Educational Developments. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. vii + 245 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $19.95 cloth.

Lowenthal, Leo. Literature and the Image of Man. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1986. v + 344 pp. including notes to chapters. $24.95 cloth.

Steedman, Carolyn, Cathy Urwin, and Valerie Walkerdine, eds. Language, Gender and Childhood. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. vi + 265 pp. including bibliography, name and subject indices. $18.95 paper.     

Beyond cooperation: towards an Oceanic community

Oceania, through the Pacific Islands Forum, is re-examining its processes and institutions in an attempt to become more effective as a region. Pacific leaders have adopted a ‘Pacific Plan’ that is designed to detail how the region will improve its governance, develop economically, ensure democratic values and deepen its commitment to human rights. The Plan argues that more and deeper cooperation is necessary to achieve these outcomes. But the region's states already cooperate closely in many spheres and there is no evidence that more cooperation will achieve anything but more cooperation. What is needed is the development of an explicit regional community within which the members (both states and citizens) can achieve their full potential unconstrained by the many structural and cultural barriers that exist with even the closest cooperative arrangements.     

Prudence and principle in international society: reflections on Vincent's approach to human rights

John Vincent's Human rights and International Relations argued for embedding the right to be free from starvation in the international society of states. Principle and prudence were combined in a distinctive English School analysis of the universal human rights culture. Vincent argued that the entitlement to be free from the tyranny of starvation and malnutrition was one principle on which most societies could agree despite their profound ideological differences. Other conceptions of human rights, including western liberal doctrines of individual freedom, had the potential to create major divisions within international society, particularly when linked with a doctrine of humanitarian intervention. More recent approaches to world poverty raise large questions about whether Vincent succeeded in attempting to marry prudence in preserving an international order that remains anchored in state sovereignty with a principled commitment to ending starvation. Important issues also arise about how to build on his reflections on the prospects for a global ‘civilizing process’ that bridges cultural and political differences in the first universal society of states.     

Security in international society: A comment on Alex J. Bellamy and Matt McDonald

Although English School (ES) theorists have played a significant and explicit role in security studies, Bellamy and McDonald claim that this has not been the case. However, they fail to show how they have arrived at their conclusion. Moreover, Bellamy and McDonald conflate solidarism with cosmopolitanism, with the result that they wrongly claim that some theorists are ‘weak’ while others are ‘deep’ solidarists. In addition, their attempt to view human security as a reflection of solidarist trends in the ES is welcome, but their method risks undermining the ES. I propose that an ES perspective on security needs to incorporate elements from three streams of thought: pluralism, solidarism and cosmopolitanism. I contend that security ought to be viewed as people centred and that it should be embedded within international society's norms, rules and institutions.