Book reviews

T. B. Millar, The Commonwealth and The United Nations, Sydney University Press, Sydney 1967, pp. 237 + xv, $5.50.

A. C. Palfreeman, The Administration of the White Australia Policy. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne 1967, pp. 184 + ix, $6.00.

Robert Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: Vietnam, Andre Deutsch, London 1966, pp. 404 + xii, $5.45.

Elias Duek‐Cohen, ed., Utzon and the Sydney Opera House, Morgan, Sydney 1967, pp. 128, paperback, $1.20.

G. C. Bolton, Dick Boyer, An Australian Humanist, A.N.U. Press. Canberra 1967, pp. 295 + viii, $5.40.

Richard Rose, Influencing Voters: A Study of Campaign Rationality, Faber & Faber, London 1967, pp. 288, $7.35.

Ian Turner, Sydney's Burning, Heinemann, London 1967, pp. 245 + xv, $6.75.     

And now the end is near: enlivening and politizising the geographies of dying,death and mourning

A new body of scholarship on death and loss has emerged as a sub-field within social and cultural geography. This work has done much to draw geographers’ attention to questions of death, dying and remembrance and likewise to bring a spatial perspective to interdisciplinary death studies. Whilst deathscapes have been framed within geographical work as incorporating material, embodied and virtual spaces, to date Anglo-American and European studies have tended to focus on the literal and representational spaces of the end of life, sites of bodily remains and memorialization. With a number of important exceptions, embodied and dynamic experiences of dying, death and survival have been absent within the geographies of death. This special section aims to broaden the scope, and to resist simple dichotomies of life and death, and to be especially attentive to the embodied and visceral experiences, practices and processes of dying, death and survival. In this introduction, we explore themes of dying/s, death/s and survival/s across varied international, national and cultural contexts, as discussed in the contributing papers and raised by the politics of recent events. This collection offers an expanded and enlivened approach to research, documenting facing death/s, journeys at the end of life, living through, on and with life-limiting illnesses, living with loss and the interconnected spatialities that these experiences and practices evoke for individuals and wider social groups. They open up new spaces of P/politics and emotions, challenging limited political and medicalized frames. The papers also raise methodological questions and present a challenging agenda for future research. This special section grew out of sessions we organized for the 2012 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference at the University of Edinburgh.     

Student experiences of multidisciplinarity in the undergraduate geography curriculum

This paper explores the student experience of multidisciplinarity within the undergraduate Geography curriculum. It considers the drivers that have underpinned this development before considering the findings of research into student experiences in two universities in the south of England. The results suggest that most students view this development positively and recognize a number of advantages that it brings, citing expanded opportunities for learning, working with people from other disciplines, expansion of perspectives and perceived benefits to employability. However, for a minority this development is more problematic. The research points here to issues with specialist knowledge and disciplinary pedagogies, social issues within the classroom and class organization and some reservations regarding groupwork. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations.     

Out of the dark but not out of the cage: women's empowerment and gender relations in the Dangme West district of Ghana

In Ghana, strategies to address poverty among rural women have often been linked to women's empowerment programmes with credit as a core component of these. Yet, many programmes focus on the economic benefit to women without necessarily looking at the impact on gender relations at the household level and its implications on women. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the Dangme West district of Ghana, this article shows how poverty reduction programmes with credit components can reduce women's vulnerability to poverty and empower them. But much more needs to be done to complement these efforts. The study shows that women beneficiaries as against women non-beneficiaries have significantly improved their socio-economic status through access to financial and non-financial resources. This has in certain instances improved gender relations at the household level, with women being recognized as earners of income and contributors to household budget. However, some women still regard their spouses as ‘heads’ and require their consent in decisions even in issues that have to do with their own personal lives. Moreover, the improved economic status of women has resulted in a ‘power conflict’, creating confrontation between spouses. The article recommends that, as part of their programmes, assisting organizations and institutions must address ‘power relations’, the basis of gender subordination at the household level, otherwise socio-cultural norms and practices, underpinned by patriarchal structures, will remain ‘cages’ for rural women.     

The Traditional Boats of Vietnam,an Overview

This paper addresses the material boat culture of Vietnam both in its current context and more specifically through an assessment of how the boats of Vietnam have been studied in the past. It presents a comprehensive summary of past publications describing the construction, use and variety of boats in the region, from the earliest volumes to modern research projects, including the work of the US military. It highlights the rich diversity of construction approaches and boat‐types that are still built and used, and demonstrates the need for further field research to record the fast‐disappearing traditional boats of Vietnam. © 2010 The Authors     

Go East,Young Cadre: Experiments in Inter‐Provincial Training of Party and State Managers in China

This article situates China's local policy experimentation in the broader context of policy experiments in decentralized political systems, through a case study which represents a local state response to China's transition to a market economy. With growing regional and urban–rural inequalities evident after the initial reform period (1978–1994), local party leaders of inland provinces devised strategies for addressing these inequalities and encouraging public–private sector mobility among party officials. County and township‐level leaders pursued local policy experiments in which they selected and sent officials to find private‐sector work in China's booming coastal cities. Initiated in the 1990s and peaking in the 2000s, these policy experiments and inter‐provincial transfers demonstrate the discretion that local officials possess to conduct programmatic/policy experiments in a unitary political system and show how officials resort to extra‐institutional strategies in order to bridge perceived knowledge gaps. The ultimate demise of these programmes illuminates the challenges to extra‐institutional policy innovations in transitioning states.     

Re-examining the chemical evaluation of diagenesis in human bone apatite

Isotopic analysis of human bone is becoming an increasingly important tool for the archaeologist in divining past life-ways. The isotopic ratios within bone are often assumed to be preserved as in life, but diagenetic change can alter the ratios, invalidating the results of isotopic analysis. Diagenesis can be evaluated in a number of ways, but most often spectroscopic techniques are utilised as the most efficient and easiest to understand methods for the archaeologist. Many isotopic studies do not report the possibility of diagenetic change, and if it is reported it has often been quantified using a single method of chemical analysis, FTIR spectroscopy. This study set out to test the value of FTIR analysis using human remains from the prehistoric site of Ban Non Wat, Northeast Thailand, and to compare the results with the non-destructive technique of FT-Raman spectroscopy. The study shows that FTIR spectroscopic analysis gives far less detail on the condition of bone than Raman spectroscopy, which does not merely indicate recrystallisation has occurred, but also shows clearly whether or not collagen is present, allows identification of ionic substitions which have occurred and identification of secondary minerals which have formed. Raman spectroscopy, combined with LA-ICP-MS analysis also revealed that soil composition and groundwater flow are the conditions which most affect diagenesis at Ban Non Wat.