Book reviews

Australian politics

David Corbett, Australian Public Sector Management (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992) pp.280. $24.95 ISBN 1 86373 312 4.

Chris James, Chris Jones and Andrew Norton (eds.), A Defence of Economic Rationalism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.194. $19.95 ISBN 186 3735348.

James Jupp and Marie Kabala (eds), The Politics of Australian Immigration (Carlton, Vic: Bureau of Immigration Research, 1993) pp.302. $n.p. ISBN 9 780644 272933.

H.P. Lee and George Winterton (eds), Australian Constitutional Perspectives (Sydney: The Law Book Company, 1992) pp.347. $55.00 ISBN 0 455 21085 3.

Ian McAllister, Political Behaviour: Citizens, Parties and Elites in Australia (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1993) pp.308. $24.99 ISBN 0 582 86987 0.

Stephen Mills, The Hawke Years: The Story from Inside (Penguin, 1993) pp.330. $19.95 ISBN 0 670 84563 9.

P. Molr and H. Eijkman (eds), Policing Australia: Old Issues; New Perspectives (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1992) pp.391. $34.95 ISBN 0 7329 0390 4.

Jocelyn Pixley, Citizenship and Employment: Investigating Post‐Industrial Options (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp.339. $29.95 ISBN 0 521 44615 5.

S. Nicholas Samuel and Desh B. Gupta, Issues in Applied Economics: An Australian Text (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1993) pp.247. $26.95 ISBN 0 7329 2019 1.

M. Sawer and M. Simms (eds), A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia, 2nd edition (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.345. $22.95 ISBN 1 86373 169 5.

Comparative and international politics

Tsuneo Akaha and Frank Langdon (eds), Japan in the Posthegemonic World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993) pp.295. $US17.95 ISBN 1 55587 385 5.

Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Level: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (London: Little, Brown, 1993) pp.498. $40.00 ISBN 0 316 90523 2.

John Coates, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948–54 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992) pp.223. $US45.00 ISBN 0 8133 1436 4

Rafe de Crespigny, China This Century (Hong Kong, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) pp.353. $19.95 ISBN 0 19 585164 1.

Geoffrey K. Fry, Reforming the Civil Service: The Fulton Committee on the British Home Civil Service, 1977–1968 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) pp.296. £45.00 ISBN 0 7486 0412 X.

Leslie Holmes, The End of Communist Power. Anti‐corruption campaigns and legitimation crisis (Cambridge: Polity, 1993) pp.358. $13.95 ISBN 0 7456 0580 X.

Joel Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (London: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp.1056. $59.95 ISBN 0 19 505934 4.

Brij V. Lal, Broken Waves: A History of the Fiji Islands in the Twentieth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992) pp.404. $US38.00 ISBN 0 8248 1418 5.

Malcolm McKinnon, Independence and Foreign Policy: New Zealand in the World Since 1935 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993) pp.329. $29.95 ISBN 1 86940 070 4.

Marina Ottaway, South Africa: The Struggle for a New Order (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1993).pp.250. $US34.95 ISBN 0 1857 6716 1.

Bob Tucker and Bruce Scott (eds), South Africa: Prospects for a Successful Transition (Kenwyn, South Africa: Juta & Co, 1992). pp.314. $n.p. ISBN 0 7021 2920 8.

Richard B. Spence and Linda L. Nelson (eds), Scholar, Patriot, Mentor: Historical Essays in Honor of Dimitrije Djordjevic (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1992) pp.422. $US51.00 ISBN 0 8803 217 4.

Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) pp.275. $US37.50 ISBN 0 674 07615 X.

Katherine Tate, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) pp.221. $32.50 ISBN 0 674 32538 9.

Howard Williams, Moorhead Wright and Tony Evans, A Reader in International Relations and Political Theory (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993) pp. 334. $39.95 ISBN 0 335 15667 3.

Political theory and methodology

F.G. Bailey, The Kingdom of Individuals: An Essay on Self‐Respect and Social Obligation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) pp.231. $US15–35 ISBN 0 8014 8078 7.

Alan Carling, Social Division (London: Verso, 1991) pp.442. $45.00 ISBN 0 86091 506 9.

James W. Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) pp.242 $29.00 ISBN 0 8018 4511 4.

Eva Etzioni‐Halevy, The Elite Connection: Problems and Potential of Western Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1993) pp.239. $39.95 ISBN 0 7456 1068 4.

Shaun Hargeaves Heap, Martin Hollis, Bruce Lyons, Robert Sugden and Albert Weale, The Theory of Choice (Blackwell: Oxford, 1992) pp. 398. $49.00 ISBN 0 63118322 1.

Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) pp.269. $US17.95 ISBN 0 8014 8072 8.

Paul Patton (ed.), Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.258. $24.95 ISBN 186373 445 7.     

ICBMs and the Environment: Assessments at a Base in Kazakhstan

A paper by two U.S. scientists explores the environmental/health hazard posed by abandoned missile launch sites and control facilities (dismantled by 1998 as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program) at an ICBM base in north-central Kazakhstan. It summarizes the findings of Environmental Site Assessment Reports based on a program of water and soil sampling at the sites, with a particular focus on testing for the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, various toxic metals, and radiation. The study is important in that it documents levels of contamination (and describes abatement measures) at a former Soviet missile base. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H50, 110, Q20, 7 figures, 10 references.     

Business and British Decolonisation: Sir Ronald Prain,the Mining Industry and the Central African Federation

One of the most intractable challenges to emerge during British decolonisation was the need to reconcile the competing political aspirations of settler and African populations in Central Africa. During the 1950s Britain sought to construct a ‘multiracial’ Central African Federation, financed largely by Northern Rhodesia's copper industry. Of the two major mining groups involved, the Rhodesian Selection Trust, under the chairmanship of Sir Ronald Prain, arguably played an important and unusual role in the Federation's politics and eventual demise. Having supported the Federation at its inception, Prain quickly reassessed the Federal project and concluded that its expected benefits had failed to materialise, and that a new political orientation was necessary for Northern Rhodesia, his companies' host country. Whereas expatriate business interests were often ‘weak’ political actors during decolonisation, Prain, through pragmatic readjustment, evolved a forward-thinking strategy of accommodation to the rise of African nationalism, and to the corresponding eclipse of settler power. Adapting with unusual success to political change, he became actively involved in the political developments which led to Zambian independence in 1964.     

The Courtesan Tale: Female Musicians and Dancers in Mughal Historical Chronicles,c.1556–1748

There are many problems in trying to construct a history of female musicians and dancers in Mughal North India. Such women appear frequently in Mughal writings and apparently played an important role in elite society; there is clearly much we can learn from such sources about gender and class in the empire generally, as well as female performers more specifically. However, what evidence we have is written from the perspective of their male patrons and cast according to long‐standing rhetorical and cultural conventions concerning the fateful roles of music and love in historical events. In this article I examine how Mughal historical chronicles transform named female performers into stereotyped agents of the downfall of noblemen. Using the stories of several historical courtesans, I demonstrate how stock topoi of desire, enslavement, longing, rebellion, danger, fate and above all musical and erotic power, were used to shape all stories of courtesans into tragic cautionary tales. I aim to show that the ‘fictive’ elements of Mughal courtesan tales furthermore reveal important cultural truths about the role and meanings of music in Mughal male society.     

Books Received

This article is an analysis of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges's short text “Kafka and His Precursors.” Although appearing to be an example of literary criticism, Borges's essay is in fact the exploration of a certain logical paradox. It is a paradox that is to be found throughout Borges's work, with the result that “Kafka and His Precursors” can be read as a disguised literary manifesto on the part of Borges. I also explore the consequences of Borges's essay for thinking about questions of cultural transmission. I argue that Borges’ work lives on—like those literary, religious and philosophical traditions he admires—because its most profound subject is the relationship it has with the person who reads it.     

Fair Isle: half a century of change

ABSTRACT

Fair Isle is one of the best known of the Scottish islands having given its name to a shipping forecast region and to an internationally known style of knitting patterns and also because it has a world renowned bird observatory, and is the most remote of the inhabited British islands. Over the last five decades it has experienced major changes in its economic and social fabric, reflecting the influences of both endogenous and exogenous forces. This paper reviews and interprets those changes, utilising two surveys made fifty years apart using the same survey instrument and the same methodology in order to provide a basis for a consistent comparison. The paper discusses the changes that have taken place in agricultural practices, in infrastructure, in the economic base and the successful stabilisation of population numbers, and in tourism to the island, which reflect changes in ownership of the island and the impacts of North Sea development and local government re-organisation.