Mortars in context: An integrated study of mortars and plasters from the so-called Ginnasio in Solunto (Sicily,Italy)

This paper presents a multipronged scientific study of mortars and plasters of the so-called Ginnasio in the Hellenistic–Roman city of Solunto (Sicily, Italy). A selection of 16 well-contextualized samples was collected to represent different functions and building phases of this private house. The results show that a variety of locally available raw materials was used as aggregates and to produce binders. The diversity of raw materials’ sources and production techniques identified in this study reveals the advanced technological knowledge of the builders of Solunto, indicating a complex relationship between the settlement's cityscape and its surrounding landscape.     

Book reviews

CHINA

SUSAN BROWNELL and JEFFREY N. WASSERSTROM (eds). Chinese Femininities/ Chinese Masculinities: a Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 460 pp. US$24.95, paper.

LEO T. S. CHING. Becoming “Japanese”: colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001. xii, 251 pp. Introduction, notes, bibliography, index. US$18.95, paper.

PAMELA KYLE CROSSLEY. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. xiv, 361 pp. US$45.00, hardcover.

STEPHANIE HEMELRYK DONALD, MICHAEL KEANE and YIN HONG (eds). Media in China: consumption, Content and Crisis. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. 240 pp. Tables, figures, notes on contributors, bibliography, index. £55.00, hardcover.

EDMUND S. K. FUNG. In Search of Chinese Democracy: civil Opposition in Nationalist China, 1929–1949. Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 352 pp. A$125.00, hardcover.

FEI FEI LI, ROBERT SABELLA and DAVID LIU (eds). Nanking 1937 : memory and Healing. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. Foreword by Perry Link, index. 278 pp. US$23.95, paper.

DAVID SHAMBAUGH (ed). Is China Unstable? Assessing the Factors. Armonk and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. £35.37, hardcover; £18.95, paper.

YANG LIAN. Yi. Translated from the Chinese by Mabel Lee. Copenhagen, Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2002. 361 pp. US$14.95, paper.

YANG LIAN. Notes of a Blissful Ghost. Translated from the Chinese by Brian Holton. Shatin, Hong Kong: Renditions Paperbacks, 2002. 160 pp. US$14.95, paper.

XUEPING ZHONG, WANG ZHEN and BAI DI (eds). Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001. 208 pp. US$58.00, hardcover; US$22.00, paper.

JAPAN AND KOREA

NOREEN JONES. Number 2 Home: story of Japanese Pioneers in Australia. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2002. 224 pp. A$24.95, paper.

MARK McLELLAND. Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: cultural Myths and Social Realities. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. 268 pp. £17.99, paper.

LINDA S. LEWIS. Laying Claim to the Memory of May: a Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. US$19.95, paper.

HENRY SCOTT‐STOKES and LEE JAI‐EUI (eds). The Kwangju Uprising: eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea's Tiananmen. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. US$37.50, hardcover; US$18.95, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

MARC ASKEW. Bangkok: place, Practice and Representation. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. US$90.00, hardcover; US$26.95, paper.

ANTHONY MILNER. The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. viii, 328 pp. Map, index and select bibliography. A$49.95, paper.

SHIGEHARU TANABE and CHARLES F. KEYES (eds). Cultural Crisis and Social Memory: modernity and Identity in Thailand and Laos. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. xii, 312 pp. Index. £55.00, hardcover.

C. J. W‐L. WEE (ed). Local Cultures and the “New Asia”: the State, Culture and Capitalism in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), 2002. x, 245 pp. US$ 49.90/S$ 73.90, hardcover; US$ 25.90/S$ 39.90, paper.

GENERAL ASIA

TANI BARLOW (ed). New Asian Marxisms. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. 422 pp. US$27.95, paper; US$79.95, hardcover.

T. FUJITANI, GEOFFREY M. WHITE and LISA YONEYAMA (eds). Perilous Memories: the Asia‐Pacific War(s). Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. 462 pp. US$59.95, hardcover; US$19.95, paper.

MARGARET JOLLY and KALPANA RAM (eds). Borders of Being: citizenship, Fertility and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. 326 pp. US$59.50, cloth; US$24.95, paper.

RAJINI SRIKANTH and ESTHER Y. IWANAGA (eds). Bold Words: a Century of Asian‐American Writing. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2001. 442 pp. US$59.00, hardcover; US$25.00, paper.

OUYANG YU. Two Hearts, Two Tongues, and Rain‐Coloured Eyes. Broadway, NSW: Wild Peony Press, 2002. 119 pp. No price given, paper.

ZIJIE PAN. Vostok/This Could Have Happened to You. Broadway, NSW: Wild Peony Press, 2002. 94 pp. No price given, paper.     

If you are not one of them you feel out of place: understanding divisions in a Northern Irish town

This paper examines and reflects on the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices as a method to understand and analyse young people’s everyday movement in Northern Ireland, a divided society emerging from conflict. The paper also seeks to contribute to the extensive body of literature which already exists on young people’s geographies and movements within the Northern Ireland context. We highlight how the use of GPS together with more traditional methods gives us considerable insights of movements of young people in Northern Ireland and sheds light on the communal divisions in one town in Northern Ireland, Coleraine. We argue that the use of a GPS methodology significantly adds to the understanding of young people’s movements and geographies, particularly in a post-conflict context where notions of place and territory have particular significance.     

‘The Laws of his Own Country’: Defamation,Banishment and the Problem of Legal Pluralism in the 1820s Cape Colony

In 1824 the Cape colony was rocked by three criminal libel trials brought by the colonial administration against settlers who had criticised its officials. To further silence their critics, a recently established colonial newspaper was suppressed and an order banishing its editor was issued by executive decree without judicial process. While these actions are well known to historians of South Africa, the important legal and constitutional issues they raised have not been properly recognised. In tracking the controversy that these trials unleashed in London, Cape Town and other colonial localities, this article argues that these events must be situated within a broader crisis of legal pluralism playing out within the British Empire. The confusion between English and Dutch law highlighted by these cases and their aftermath reveals constitutional debates that underscore the deep contingency of conquest law at a highly unstable legal and political moment. The political disputes inspired by these actions demonstrate that conflicts between variants of European law need to be more clearly recognised as instrumental to the strengthened implementation of British imperial legal hierarchies in colonial localities through the 1820s and 1830s.     

Deterring the ‘boat people’: Explaining the Australian government's People Swap response to asylum seekers

This article examines why Australia has taken a tough stance on ‘boat people’, through an analysis of the Malaysian People Swap response. The findings support the view that populism, wedge politics and a culture of control drive Australia's asylum-seeker policy agenda. The article further argues that these political pressures hold numerous negative implications for the tone of Australia's political debate and the quality of policy formulation, as well as for asylum seekers and refugees themselves.

本文通过分析“马来人交换协议”的反响,探讨了为什么澳大利亚对“船民”采取了一种严厉的立场。根据作者的研究,民粹主义、极端政治以及控制的文化推动了澳大利亚的难民政策。作者指出,这些政治压力给澳大利亚政治辩论的定调以及政策制定的质量,对避难者和难民,都带来消极的影响。