Constantine and the Bishop: The Roman Church in the Early Fourth Century

When Constantine first entered Rome after his defeat of Maxentius in October 312, he encountered a rich and complex Christian community and a bishop whose position was precarious. Centuries of growth and a long religious peace had resulted in the development of a large number of locally based communities in Rome with their own centres of worship - the tituli. Constantine needed to convince these communities of his bona fides as a Christian emperor. The bishop of Rome, Miltiades, was the ruler of a relatively newly unified see, recently fractured by persecution and controversy. Miltiades' relative weakness was to Constantine's political advantage, especially since it made him eager to receive the vast ocean of generosity which Constantine began to pour into the Roman Church. The particular and immediate beneficiary of this generosity was the bishop, who gained a vast and lavishly appointed cathedral, and a palace to go with it.     

Book reviews

CHINA

SOW‐THENG LEONG. Migration and Ethnicity in Chinese History: Hakkas, Pengmin, and their Neighbors. Tim Wright, ed., G. William Skinner, Maps and introduction. Illustrations, maps, tables, index, character list. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. xxiii, 236 pp. A$69.95, hardcover.

BONNIE S. McDOUGALL and KAM LOUIE. The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. London: Hurst, 1997; Gosford: Bushbooks, 1998. Acknowledgments, introduction, further reading, glossary, index, vi, 504 pp. A$39.95, paper.

XIAOBO LU and ELIZABETH J. PERRY (eds). Danwei: the Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective . Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. 270 pp. US$72.95, hardcover; US$34.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

SYDNEY GIFFARD. Japan Among the Powers, 1890–1990. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, 1997. xxii, 218 pp. Abbreviations, introduction, author's note, glossary, index. US$35.00, hardcover; US$15.00, paper.

KATHERINE H. S. MOON. Sex Among Allies: military Prostitution in U.S.‐Korea Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. xiii, 240 pp. Preface, acknowledgments, abbreviations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. US$47.50, hardcover; US$16.50, paper.

SOUTH ASIA

JAMAL J. ELLAS (trans and intro). Death Before Dying. The Sufi Poems of Sultan Bahu. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 145 pp. Acknowledgments, introduction, bibliography, index of first lines. US$45.00, hardcover; US$14.95, paper.

AJIT K. NEOGY. Decolonization of French India: liberation Movement and Indo‐French Relations 1947–1954. Pondicherry: French Institute of Pondicherry, 1997. xxviii, 299 pp. Foreword, preface, endnotes, appendixes, bibliography, index, resume. US$37.00, paper.

SURESHCHANDRA SHUKLA and REHKLA KAUL (eds). Education, Development and Underdevelopment. New Delhi: Sage, 1998. US$39.95, hardcover.

EMMA TARLO. Clothing Matters: dress and Identity in India London: Hurst & Company, 1996. xxi, 360 pp. Illustrations. £40.00, hardcover; £19.95, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

KEVIN Y. L. TAN and LAM PENG ER (eds). Managing Political Change in Singapore. London: Routledge, 1997. xii, 228 pp. £45.00, hardcover.

SHARIFAH ZALEHA SYED HASSAN and SVEN CEDERROTH. Managing Marital Disputes in Malaysia: Islamic Mediators and Conflict Resolution in the Syariah Courts. £40.00, hardcover; £15.99, paper.

KEVIN HEWISON (ed). Political Change in Thailand: democracy and Participation. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. xv, 301 pp. US$29.99, paper.

ANN KUMAR. Java and Modern Europe: ambiguous Encounters. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997. viii, 472 pp. US$52.00, hardcover.

MARTIN STUART‐FOX. A History of Laos. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997. A$80.00, hardcover; A$24.95, paper.

MARTIN STUART‐FOX. The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang: rise and Decline. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1998. A$22.50, paper.     

Private rental investment and socio-spatial disadvantage in Sydney,Australia

This article unpacks the connection between a growing cohort of small-scale but purposive property investors and urban socio-spatial restructuring. We analyse private rental housing as a tenure share to demonstrate its spatial correlation with the suburbanisation of socio-economic disadvantage in Sydney, Australia, between 1991 and 2016. Then, we show how investors drive this emerging pattern by reference to the geography of property owners’ stated investment objectives—low capital outlay, rental yields, and capital growth prospects. We contend that the link between their small-scale activities and the city’s changing socio-spatial structure is an overlooked consequence of private rental sector (PRS) housing financialisation. Importantly, our focus on behaviours exhibited by small-scale rental property owners in PRS financialisation transcends existing analyses that have concentrated on corporate entity activity in this space. That focus also contrasts with framings of private rental growth as a residual outcome of developments elsewhere in the housing market. Such work is significant because it demonstrates the impacts of real estate investment on urban form.     

Book reviews

Traditionelle und moderne Formen der Landwirtschaft in Iran: Siedlung, Wirtschaft und Agrarsozialstruktur in nördlichen Khuzistan seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. [Traditional and Modern Forms of Agriculture in Iran: Settlement, Economics, and Agrarian Social Structure in Northern Khuzistan since the End of the Nineteenth Century.] By Eckhart Ehlers. With a contribution by Grace Goodell, “Agricultural Production in a Traditional Village of Northern Khuzistan.” A publication of the Geographical Institute of Marburg University in the series, Marburger geographische Schriften, Vol. 64, 1975. x + 289 pp., 12 charts, DM33.

Unity in the Ghazals of Hafez. By Michael C. Hillmann. Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976. 181 pp.

Afghanistan in the 1970s. Edited by Louis Dupree and Linette Albert. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974.     

Reconceptualizing Resistance in the Historical Archaeology of the British Isles: An Editorial

The present resonates with the harmonics of past events. Our archaeologies, because they deal with the everyday materiality of life, should not neglect to concern themselves with the domination of past people, since many similar forms of oppression persist. Moreover, we should consider the resistance to such domination. Rather than seeing resistance as simply reactive a problem which has generated much criticism—we can reconceptualize it to encompass a more nuanced understanding of the volition and agency of people in inferior positions of power. This lends new strength to the role of archaeologists in representing historical narratives of resistance.     

The DEEPSAL Project: Using the Past for Local Community Futures in Jordan

ABSTRACT

The Deep Past as a Social Asset in the Levant (DEEPSAL) project, conducted in 2015–16 by the Council for British Research in the Levant, examined two communities in southern Jordan, Beidha and Basta, who live near significant Neolithic archaeological sites. The project collected information on the communities’ current socioeconomic conditions, their relationship with local cultural heritage and how that cultural heritage currently benefits or hinders them. The information was used to inform nascent strategies to utilize the sites sustainably as development assets and suggest alternative strategies as necessary. The results showed that a tourism-based strategy is suitable for Beidha but there was a need to focus on basic business skills. For Basta a tourism-based strategy is currently unsuitable, and efforts should rather focus on supporting educational activities. The results of the project are presented here within the context of archaeology’s increasing interest to use archaeological resource to benefit local communities, and outlines lessons for that effort.