Hidden Child Workers: Young Carers in Zimbabwe

Drawing on an interview‐based case study of young people caring for dependent adult members of their households in Harare, this paper connects the experiences of young carers in Zimbabwe to global forces—namely the HIV/AIDS pandemic and economic liberalisation. It is argued, firstly, that care‐giving by young people is a largely hidden and unappreciated aspect of national economies which is growing as an outcome of conservative macroeconomic policies and the HIV/AIDS explosion. Secondly, that young people have a right to recognition of their work as work. Thirdly, while acknowledging that conceptualising childhood is problematic, there needs to be less emphasis on northern myths of childhood as a time of play and innocence and more attention on defending children's rights to work as well as to be supported in their work under appropriate circumstances. The articulation between global processes and the localised experiences of individual children as providers of care within the home contributes to efforts to re‐introduce social reproduction as an important (but often missing) aspect of debates around globalisation. In addition, this article adds to the growing literature on the geographies of childhood while tackling the imbalance within that literature, whereby working young people and those of the global South are relatively neglected. Suggestions are offered in the conclusions for policy recommendations to recognise and support young carers in Africa, while calling for further research.     

Australia's trade policy dilemmas

In recent years, Australia has had a very active agenda for the negotiation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) whose net economic benefits remain at best unclear. There has been a strong defensive element to some of this PTA activity but the Howard government also used PTAs to pursue non-economic objectives, such as the promotion of foreign policy and security interests. This article broadly outlines Australia's PTA policy and the problems and dilemmas that it has generated. More importantly, it looks ahead to consider likely scenarios for trade policy under the Rudd Labor government. Each of these scenarios has different implications for policy strategies and outcomes. This article concludes that while there could be significant pay-offs should Labor choose to pursue its traditional preferences for non-discriminatory trade arrangements, the world has changed considerably since the heydays of the multilateral trade system. A commitment to reinvigorating multilateralism will require strong political leadership, imaginative thinking, and creative diplomacy.     

Book reviews

CHINA

NI ZHEN. Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: the Genesis of China's Fifth Generation, trans. Chris Berry. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 234 pp. US$54.95, hardcover; US$18.95, paper.

CHUNHOU ZHANG and C. EDWIN VAUGHAN. Mao Zedong as Poet and Revolutionary Leader: social and Historical Perspectives. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002. x, 140 pp. US$60.00, hardcover.

SUSAN BLUM and LIONEL JENSEN (eds). China off Center: mapping the Margins of the Middle Kingdom. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. Maps, photographs. 400 pp. US$165.00, hardcover; US$64.95, paper.

JIE TANG and ANTHONYWARD. The Changing Face of Chinese Management. London: Routledge, 2003. Tables, figures, bibliography, index. 234 pp. A$66.00, paper.

FRANK DIKÖTTER. Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895–1949. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 264 pp. US$38.00, hardcover.

JAPAN AND KOREA

BOB JOHNSTONE. We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age. New York: Basic Books, 1999. xxiii, 422 pp. US$27.50, hardcover.

ANDREW C. ROSS. A Vision Betrayed: the Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542–1742. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. xvii, 207 pp. US$30.45, hardcover.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

PREMA CLARKE. Teaching and Learning: the Culture of Pedagogy. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001. 223 pp. Rs 450, hardcover; Rs 250, paper.

ROBERT DELIEGE. The Untouchables of India. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1999. xiii, 229 pp. Tables, bibliography. £42.00, US$65.00, hardcover; £14.99, paper.

BINA GUPTA (ed). The Empirical and the Transcendental: a Fusion of Horizons. Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 284 pp. US$69.00, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

JYOTSNA AGNIHOTRI GUPTA. New Reproductive Technologies, Women's Health and Autonomy: freedom or Dependency ? New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. 704 pp. Rs 775, hardcover.

PRADEEP BARUA. The Army Officer Corps and Military Modernisation in Later Colonial India. Hull: The University of Hull Press, 1999. iii, 234 pp. Illustrations, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. No price given, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

KEES VAN DIJK. A Country in Despair. Indonesia between 1997 and 2000. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2001. viii, 621 pp. Plates, index. 31.80 Euros, paper.

CHEAH BOON KHENG. Malaysia: the Making of a Nation. Singapore: ISEAS, 2002. xviii, 264 pp. No price given, paper.

ROBERT L. WINZELER (ed). Indigenous Peoples and the State: politics, Land, and Ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo. New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies Monograph 46, 1997. xii, 316 pp.

ANDREA WHITTAKER (ed). Women's Health in Mainland Southeast Asia. New York, London and Oxford: The Haworth Medical Press, 2002. 128 pp. No price given, paper.

JAN BREMAN and GUNAWAN WIRADI. Good Times and Bad Times in Rural Java: case Study of Socio‐economic Dynamics in Two Villages towards the End of the Twentieth Century. Leiden: Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐en Volkenkunde No. 195, KITLV Press, 2002. viii, 330 pp. Maps, tables, photos, glossary, index. US$33.00, paper.

WILLIAM CASE. Politics in Southeast Asia: democracy or Less. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002. x, 318 pp. £60.00, hardcover; £17.99, paper.

ANDREW McWILLIAM. Paths of Origin, Gates of Life: a Study of Place and Precedence in Southwest Timor. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002. xvi, 331 pp. Figures, maps, plates, orthography, glossary, bibliography, index. US$40.00, paper.

PATRICIA M. PELLY. Postcolonial Vietnam: new Histories of the National Past. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 344 pp. US$19.95, paper.

SALLY ANN NESS. Where Asia Smiles: an Ethnography of Philippine Tourism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. xvii, 300 pp. 4 maps, 11 photographs, notes, references, index. US$55.00, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

GENERAL ASIA

JOHN KELLY and MARTHA KAPLAN. Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. vii, 243 pp. US$40.00, hardcover; US$18.00, paper.     

Gender, professionalization, and the child in the Progressive Era: Patty Smith Hill, 1868-1946

This article discusses the career of Patty Smith Hill, a major figure in the American kindergarten movement, in the context of the Progressive Era in American history. Hill, an educator and child-welfare activist, became known both as a reformer of early-childhood education and as an advocate of the inclusion of the kindergarten, originally a private institution, in public-school systems. The article acknowledges this as one of the most significant achievements of the woman-led reform movements of the Progressive Era, but at the same time notes that it involved a substantial transfer of power from the women who had originally developed the kindergarten to the male principals and superintendants who now supervised kindergarten teachers, often without much understanding of their distinctive methods and aims. As a professor at Columbia Teachers College, Hill also exercised an international influence. Hill's career exemplifies broader patterns of women's professionalization during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.     

Finding Our Place: Reconstructing Community through Oral History

Abstract "Finding Our Place: Reconstructing Community throughOral History," analyzes how oral histories not only give newmeaning to places, but play a significant role in locating sitesspecific in the development of the Spanish-language music industry.These oral histories chronicle the emergence and growth of businesses,particularly their role in maintaining the economic and socialinfrastructure of Mexican American communities throughout southTexas. The use of oral history interviews proved the only avenueof documenting Mexican American rural communities, singers,and businesswomen finding that culture means turning our attentionto parks, church halls, cantinas, and dance halls. These placesgather significance when an experience is attached, and embodya sense of communal or shared space. Focusing on women in themusic industry, cantantes [singers] and businesswomen illustratedhow they negotiated travel, interaction with audiences, andexperiences on the stage. Though many of the interviewees expressedtheir distrust of the oral historian initially, stemming frompoor treatment in the music industry, their reluctance gaveway after hours of interviewing by the oral historian. Importantto this study, their narratives pinpointed the existence ofpopular socializing spots in south Texas small towns and surroundingcommunities.     

From dialogue to polylogue: Exploring the Israeli and Palestinian past in the present

Resumen Este artículo trata sobre un proyecto centrado en el pasado contencioso en Israel y Palestina. Frente a un escenario de incesantes conflictos, los participantes árabes y los judíos descubrieron sus compromisos mutuos, con distintos puntos de vista, en las comunidades en las que trabajaron. Partiendo de esta base común los participantes exploraron las áreas en las que coinciden o discrepan. No obstante, el espíritu predominante del proyecto era el de la colaboración. Un ejemplo de ese espíritu fue el éxito del esfuerzo de los participantes del proyecto por proteger un antiguo asentamiento que iba a ser destruido por la construcción de un muro de seguridad, a través del West Bank, por Israel.

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Résumé Cet article traite d'un projet au sujet du passé de discorde entre l'lsra?l et la Palestine. Avec pour arrière-plan un conflit incessant, les participants arabes et juifs ont découvert qu'ils étaient mutuellement impliqués dans les communautés dans lesquelles ils travaillaient. Dans le context de ce point commun, les participants on exploré les zones d'accord et de désaccord. La mentalité prédominante dans ce projet a été une de coopération. Le symbole de cet esprit de coopération a été le succès de l'effort des participants du projet pour sauver un ancien établissement menacé de destruction certaine lors de la construction du mur de sécurité par l'lsra?l à travers la West Bank.

     

Fears for the future: the incommensurability of securitisation and in/securities among southern African youth

Abstract

Over the past two decades, southern Africa has experienced both exceptionally high AIDS prevalence and recurrent food shortages. International institutions have responded to these challenges by framing them as security concerns that demand urgent intervention. Young people are implicated in both crises and drawn into the securitisation discourse as agents (of risk and protection) and as (potential) victims. However, the concepts of security deployed by global institutions and translated into national policy do not reflect the ways in/security is experienced ‘on the ground’ as a subjective and embodied orientation to the future. This paper brings work on youth temporalities to bear on social and cultural geographies of in/security and securitisation. It reports on research that explored insecurities among young people in Lesotho and Malawi. It concludes that, by focusing on ‘threats’ in isolation, and seeking to protect ‘society’ as an abstract aggregate of people, global securitisation discourses fail either to engage with the complex contextualised ways in which marginalised people experience insecurity or to proffer the political responses that are needed if those felt insecurities are to be addressed. However, while securitisation is problematic, in/security is nonetheless an important element in young people’s orientation to the future.