Reviews

Australian. Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage, Sydney, Pergamon, 1987, pp.310. $28.50 (cloth), $19.00 (paper).

P. Loveday and D. Wade‐Marshall (eds), Economy and People in the North, Australian National University & North Australia Research Unit, Darwin, 1985, pp. 294. $18.00 (paper).

Barry M. Coldrey, Critical Issues in Peace Studies, Melbourne, Edward Arnold, 1987, pp. 151. $15.95 (paper).

G. Zdenkqwski, C. Ronalds and M. Richardson, The Criminal Injustice System, Volume 2, Pluto Press, Sydney and London, 1987, pp.325. $19.95 (paper).

Drew Hutton (ed.), Green Politics in Australia, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1987, pp. 245. $14.95 (paper).

Philip Ayres, Malcolm Fraser: A Biography, Melbourne, Heinemann, 1987, pp. 518. $39.95 (cloth).

Denis White & David Kemp (eds), Malcolm Fraser on Australia, Melbourne, Hill of Content, 1986, pp. 240. $19.95 (paper).

Comparative and International. Gavan McCormack & Yoshi Sugimoto (eds), Democracy in Contemporary Japan, Sydney, Hale & Iremonger, New York, M.E. Sharpe Inc.; 1986, pp.272, $14.95 (paper).

Richard Robison, Indonesia: the Rise of Capital, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp. 425. $19.95 (paper).

Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp.329. $32.00 (paper).

Ferenc Feher and Agnes Heller, Doomsday or Deterrence? On the Antinuclear Issue, New York, Sharpe, 1986, pp.153. U.S.$12.95 (paper).

Rasul B. Rais, The Indian Ocean and the Superpowers, London, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 215. £25.00 (cloth).

Neil Harding (ed.), The State in Socialist Society, Oxford/London, St Antony's/Macmillan, 1984, pp.316. $18.95 (paper).

Peter Raina (ed.), Poland 1981: Towards Social Renewal, London, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp. 472. $55.00 (cloth).

Rasma Karklins, Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below, Boston, Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp. 256. $54.00 (cloth).

A.E. Holmans, Housing Policy in Britain, London, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 489. £29.95 (cloth).

William H. Flanigan and Nancy H. Zingale, Political Behavior of the American Electorate. Boston, Allyn and Bacon, sixth edition, 1987, pp. 221. $33.95 (paper).

Political Theory and Methodology. Andrew Cox. Paul Furlong and Edward Page, Power in Capitalist Society: Theory, Explanations and Cases, Brighton UK, Wheatsheaf Books, 1985, pp. 235. $29.95 (paper).

Harry Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation, Sydney, Croom Helm, 1987, pp.167. £25.00 (cloth).

John Dunn, The Politics of Socialism: An Essay in Political Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp.103. $13.25 (paper).

John Gyford, The Politics of Local Socialism, London, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp. 124. $16.95 (paper).

Andrew Levine, Arguing For Socialism: Theoretical Considerations, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, pp.241. $39.95 (cloth).

Peter Beilharz, Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism, London and Sydney, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 197. $82.95 (cloth).

William Borman, Gandhi and Non‐Violence, Albany, N.Y., State University of New York Press, 1986, pp. 287. US$39.50 (cloth), US$12.95 (paper).

Women. Judith Evans et al., Feminism and Political Theory, London, Sage, 1986, pp.155. £5.95 (paper).

Colleen Burke, Doherty's Corner, Sydney, Sirius Books, 1987, pp.154. $9.95 (paper).     

‘Gender hates men’: untangling gender and development discourses in food security fieldwork in urban Malawi

This article examines the social construction and contestation of gender and gender roles in the city of Blantyre in Malawi. In fieldwork on gendered household roles related to food security, interviews with men and women revealed a distinct set of connotations with the word gender, which reflected Malawians’ historical and contemporary engagement with concepts of development, modernity, and human rights. We denote the Malawian concept of gender as gender in order to distinguish the word participants used in interviews from the more widely accepted conventional definition. We then use this distinction to highlight the ways in which ideas of gender equality have been introduced and received in the Malawian context. The urban setting of the research is key to drawing out the association of gender with Westernization, bringing into focus the power dynamics inherent in the project of translating global discourses of gender rights and gender equality into meaningful social change in developing countries. Gender in Malawi denotes a top-down (and outside-in) process of framing Malawi’s goals for gender equality. This creates political constraints both in the form of resistance to gender, because it resonates with a long history of social change imposed by outside forces, and in the form of superficial adherence to gender to appear more urban and modern, especially to a Western researcher. Local understandings of gender as gender undermine efforts to promote gender equality as a means to address Malawi’s intense urban poverty and household food insecurity.     

Nuclear science and the story of a preserved leaf from a copy of the Great Bible

Three pressed leaves of Ulmus glabra (Wych Elm) were found within the pages of a copy of the Great Bible in the Library of the University of Western Australia. The Bible dates from AD 1540 and was originally housed at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire. A radiocarbon age on one of the leaves found it was about as old as the Great Bible itself, and stable C and N isotope and neutron activation analyses were carried out on the same leaf. The δ¹⁵N values were elevated and the content of iron, arsenic, bromine, silver, gold and mercury were relatively high. These analyses are consistent with an environment where water logging is present, as at Ely at the time, and the silver and gold content are probably consistent with the cathedral setting. The mercury was found to be associated with the red ink in the Bible. It is intriguing to ponder why Wych elm leaves were placed in the Bible, especially in the light that a copy of an original edition of the King James version of the Bible from Ely, also in the library in Perth has many dozens of U. glabra leaves also preserved within in its pages.     

Wild and domesticated forms of rice (Oryza sp.) in early agriculture at Qingpu, lower Yangtze, China: evidence from phytoliths

Rice cultivation in parts of the Yangtze valley, eastern China, is thought to date to at least the early Holocene. Using phytolith analysis, sediments from an exposed profile at Qingpu in the lower Yangtze were examined in detail in order to contribute to the growing body of information relating to the history of rice agriculture in the Yangtze delta area. The presence of phytoliths from domesticated rice, Oryza sativa, indicates that rice agriculture was well developed at Qingpu by ca. 2350 BP and may have increased in intensity from ca. 2100 BP. Rice cultivation at Qingpu was comparatively late in relation to other areas in the Yangtze valley, possibly due to the seasonal intrusion of saline waters, while the cultivation of wild rice remained a prominent feature of food production in the area to at least as late as ca. 1800 BP. Results presented here support the existence of a period of overlap, during which both wild and domesticated forms of rice were cultivated, rather than a linear transition from wild to domesticated rice cultivation and the possible influence of environmental factors over farming in an area subjected to frequent flooding.     

Human activity and its impact on the landscape at the Xishanping site in the western Loess Plateau during 4800–4300 cal yr BP based on the fossil charcoal record

The taxonomic identification of fossil charcoal can be a useful archaeobotanical tool, as it can reveal information about prehistoric humans' use of plant resources and other factors. In this study, we quantify the fossil charcoal in a cultural sequence from Xishanping in the western Loess Plateau of China representing 4800–4300 cal yr BP to consider aspects of humans' impact on this landscape. The fossil charcoal assemblages reveal that the relative abundances of Picea, Betula, Acer, Ulmus and Quercus decreased markedly after 4600 cal yr BP. This suggests a marked decline in the mixed coniferous-broadleaved forest after this time. Concurrently, an increasing abundance of Bambusoideae charcoal has been suggested to reflect the expansion of the bamboo forest. The marked changes in the vegetation after 4600 cal yr BP were not obviously influenced by climate; they may be a better reflection of the results of human activity. Furthermore, other genera that provide important resources to humans also increased after 4600 cal yr BP, including Castanea, Cerasus, Padus and Diospyros. It is nearly certain that nuts and berries were an important food resource and that fruit trees were managed by prehistoric humans in the late Neolithic. This work suggests that the scale of prehistoric human impact on the western Loess Plateau landscape during the late Neolithic was much greater than was previously believed.