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.     

Community Engagement: Participation on Whose Terms?

Community engagement and citizen participation have long been important themes in liberal democratic theory, although managerial versions of liberal democracy have typically been dominant. In the past two decades, however, many countries have seen a shift away from a managerial or top-down approach, towards a revitalised emphasis on building institutional bridges between governmental leaders and citizenry, often termed ‘community engagement’. This paper outlines some of the main explanations for this shift, including international trends in governance and political economy; the availability of improved communications technologies; the need to share responsibility for resolving complex issues; and the local politics of managing social, economic and environmental projects. Some critical perspectives are also raised, suggesting a degree of scepticism about the intentions of government and implying serious limits on the potential influence of the citizenry and community groups. Important distinctions are drawn between policy arenas, in relation to the different dynamics and opportunities in different policy fields. The importance of building effective capacity for citizens and all non-government organisations (NGOs) to participate is emphasised. Typologies of community engagement are outlined, and linked to ideas about social capital.     

Disaster Management in the United States: Examining Key Political and Policy Challenges

The failures associated with the Hurricane Katrina response call attention to the challenges of, and the need to better understand disaster management practices in the United States. This article reviews several recent contributions to the field of disaster research and considers four key issues: the concept of disaster vulnerability, how individuals respond to hazard risks, challenges associated with effective hazard mitigation, and the idea of policy learning in the area of disasters. Beyond a review of these aspects of disaster management, future directions in disaster research is discussed.     

Evaluating socio-economic change in the Andes using oribatid mite abundances as indicators of domestic animal densities

Tracking social and economic change in Andean societies prior to the invasion of the Spanish has always been a difficult task, especially given that these cultures failed to develop any form of written record. Here we present a new method of reconstructing socio-economic shifts in a rural setting from the analysis of the frequency of oribatid mite remains present in a sedimentary lake sequence. Oribatid mites are soil-dwelling microarthropod detritivores, some of which inhabit areas of grassland pasture. One of the primary controls governing their abundance in such habitats is the level of animal dung present. We propose that past fluctuations in mite remains can be related to the density of domestic animals using the area of pasture and, by extension, may provide a proxy for broad-scale social and economic change through time. To test this hypothesis, we analysed a high-resolution (∼6 years) mite record from a sequence of well-dated sediments from Marcacocha, a climatically sensitive lake site located close to an important Inca trading route across the Andes. The timing and magnitude of mite fluctuations at Marcacocha since the 1530s show remarkable correspondence with a series of major, well-documented socio-economic shifts in the region relating to political and climatic pressures. This provided the confidence to extend the record back a further 700 years and reconstruct changes in domestic herbivore densities for a period of time that lacks historical documentation and thereby infer changes in human occupation of the basin. In particular, high mite abundances appear to correspond clearly with the rapid rise and fall of the Inca Empire (c. AD 1400–1532). We argue that small lake basins such as Marcacocha may be particularly suitable for obtaining continuous oribatid mite records and providing the possibility of reconstructing large herbivore abundances in the Andes and elsewhere.     

Mummies, maize, and manure: multi-tissue stable isotope analysis of late prehistoric human remains from the Ayacucho Valley, Perú

This paper reports the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of bone collagen, muscle and skin from several late prehistoric–early colonial (AD 1490–1640) mummies from Perú's Ayacucho Valley. The mean of the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of bone collagen are −11.5 ± 1.4 and 11.1 ± 0.7‰, respectively. The mean of the δ¹³C values for Vinchos skin is −11.8 ± 1.2‰ and the mean of δ¹⁵N values is 13.2 ± 0.5‰. The samples of muscle tissue have a δ¹³C mean of −11.9 ± 0.9‰ and a δ¹⁵N mean of 12.7 ± 0.3‰. The data from bone collagen indicate maize was the basis of the region's subsistence economy. A significant correlation between δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of bone collagen (R² = 0.75) is consistent with the preferential fertilization of maize with composted manure. Both skin and muscle samples are consistently enriched in δ¹⁵N relative to paired samples of bone (2.1 ± 0.5 and 1.6 ± 0.7‰, respectively), possibly as a result of short term physiological stress or differential decomposition.     

Privatisation and new public management: Asset sales and Commissions of Audit in Queensland, 1990–2013

Governments since the 1980s have reshaped the public sector by selling public businesses and other assets, and by introducing competition in the supply of taxpayer-funded services. Explanations for these new directions have focused on political ideologies about the proper role of government, and economic arguments about business efficiency, while noting an international trend towards diffusion of these policy ideas. However, the methods for achieving significant policy shifts have often been overlooked. This study examines the case of Queensland, highlighting a wider range of reform factors, including bureaucratic advice and commission of audit recommendations.

1980年代以来各国政府通过出售公共产业和其他资产,通过在纳税人出资的服务业引入竞争而改造了公共部门。对这类新方向的解释都集中在政府职能以及企业效率的政治意识形态一面,以及造成这类政策思想扩散的国际潮流。不过,他们都忽视了造成如此重大政策转变的方法。本文考察了昆士兰的案例,讨论了更广泛的改革因素,包括官僚咨询以及审计委员建议等等。