Landscapes without the car: a counterfactual historical geography of twentieth-century Britain

Despite increased concern about environmental damage and resource depletion, the private motor car, and associated automobility, are taken-for-granted aspects of twenty-first-century life. This paper makes the counterfactual assumption that private ownership of cars was severely restricted at the start of the twentieth century, and uses a range of historical data to examine the ways in which such a scenario might have impacted on transport infrastructure, personal mobility and urban life. It is argued that, even without the wholesale adoption of the motor car as a means of personal transport, patterns of everyday mobility would not have differed significantly from today so long as other forms of transport had remained or expanded to cope with this demand. However, such a scenario would probably have required journeys to be planned in different ways, may have been qualitatively different from travel today, and could have disadvantaged particular groups of the population, including some women. A landscape without cars would probably also have altered the form of cities, with services provided closer to where people live, and levels of air pollution substantially lower. The counterfactual historical analysis is used to argue that, although there is little likelihood of cars being banned in Britain, greater restrictions on private motor vehicles would not necessarily lead to the fundamental changes in everyday mobility that some might predict.     

The UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Program in Australia: constraints and opportunities for localized sustainable development

Since their creation under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program in 1976, biosphere reserves have provided an international framework for linking protected areas with their associated working landscapes. In Australia, twelve biosphere reserves were added to the World Network between 1977 and 1982. That initial flurry of activity has been followed by twenty-five years of limited interest and development in biosphere reserves in this country, although evidence suggests that new energies are being directed to it. After sketching the origins of the biosphere reserve concept and its central tenets, we explore those environmental, cultural and institutional factors that may be promoting renewed interest in the program. We then review the initial implementation and current status of the Australian Biosphere Reserve Program. Factors supporting the limited success that exists in the program in Australia are highlighted, and the new form of biosphere reserve is illustrated with reference to Australia's recent and only urban biosphere reserve, at the Mornington Peninsula, in the state of Victoria. We speculate that prospects for biosphere reserves in Australia are brighter because of the provision for biosphere reserves under the Commonwealth of Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (DEH 1999), the conceptual relevance of the biosphere reserve to bioregional and catchment management more generally and the continued success of existing model biosphere reserves.     

Publications briefly noted

PETER DRYSDALE, ZHANG YUNLING and LIGANG SONG (eds). APEC and Liberalisation of the Chinese Economy.

PAUL BAILEY. China in the Twentieth Century , 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Maps, glossary, bibliography, index. £50.00/US$59.95 hardcover, £13.99/US$26.95, paper.

JAMES L. WATSON (ed). Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. 256 pp. US$21.95, paper.

ALISON MURRAY. Pink Fits: sex, Subcultures and Discourses in the Asia‐Pacific. Clayton, VIC: Monash Asia Institute, 2001. 198 pp. A$29.95, paper.     

Book reviews

Serviços e Desenvolvimento numa Região em Mudança (Services and Development in a Changing Region). Comissão de Coordenação da Região Centro (Ed.), Coimbra, Comissão de Coordmação da Região Centro, 1993, 443 pp, ISBN 972 659 040 0.

Technology Transfer in Europe. David Charles and Jeremy Howells, London, Belhaven Press, 1992, 256 pp., £35.00, ISBN 1 85293 160 4.

Technology and Economic Development. The Dynamics of Local, Regional and National Change. E. J. Malecki, Harlow, Longman Scientific & Technical; New York, John Wiley, 1991, 495 pp., ISBN 0 470 21723 5.

The Rise of Meso Government in Europe. L. J. Sharpe (Ed.), London, Sage Publications, 1993, 327 pp., £45.00, ISBN 0 8039 8776 5.

British Urban Policy and the Urban Development Corporation. Rob Imrie and Huw Thomas (Eds), London, Paul Chapman, 1993, 216 pp., £15.50 pb, ISBN 1 85396 207 4.     

Rumour and politics

This article contends that rumour—the circulation of unverified information —is an important form of political communication which deserves more attention from political scientists. To illustrate this claim a study is made of the part played by rumour in the ‘destabilisation’ of Malcolm Fraser's position as leader of the Liberal Party in August to October 1981. Health is a natural subject of rumour, and rumours about Mr. Fraser's health were used as the basis for speculation about a possible leadership challenge by Mr. Andrew Peacock. The collective character of parliamentary party politics, the artificial nature of media ‘facts’ and the predominance of certain types of news value in the media all encourage such rumours to flourish. The rumours had the effect of destabilising Mr. Fraser's position by creating and then enlarging a climate of uncertainty and anxiety within the Liberal Party and the electorate. Mr. Peacock was thereby enabled to test the strength of his potential support without being obliged to risk an open challenge. The author concludes that the most apt model of rumour to this case is that of ‘milling’, on the analogy of a ‘milling crowd’.     

Book reviews

CHINA

YI‐TSI MEI FEUERWERKER. Ideology, Power, Text: self‐Representation and the Peasant ‘Other’ in Modern Chinese Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 321 pp. $A90.00, hardcover.

PO‐CHING YIP and DON RIMMINGTON. Basic Chinese: a Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge, 1998. vii, 221 pp. £12.99, paper.

MARY ANN FARQUHAR. Children's Literature in China: from Lu Xun to Mao Zedong. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. $US62.50, hardcover.

RAY HUANG. Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History. Discourses, Syntheses, and Comparisons. Armonk, NY; London, England: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. viii, 274 pp. Tables, graphs, notes, index. US$56.95, hardcover; US$22.95, paper.

GLORIA HEYUNG CHUN. Of Orphans and Warriors: inventing Chinese American Culture & Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000. 198 pp. Introduction, notes, bibliography, index. US$59.00, hardcover; US$19.00, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

PURNENDRA JAIN (ed). Australasian Studies of Japan: essays and Annotated Bibliography (1989–1996). Rockhampton, Queensland: Central Queensland University Press, 1998. 341 pp. Introduction, essays, annotated bibliography, index. $A34.95, paper.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

S. R. N. MURTHY. Vedic View of the Earth — aGeological Insight into the Vedas. Reconstructing Indian History and Culture, no. 14. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1997. xxvi, 306 pp. Preface, figures, glossary, bibliography, index. Rs 400, hardcover.

SUBRATA K. MITRA and V. B. SINGH (eds). Democracy and Social Change in India: a Cross‐Sectional Analysis of the National Electorate. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 339 pp. Introduction, tables, figures, appendices, bibliography, index. Rs 425, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

ALBERT LAU. A Moment of Anguish: Singapore in Malaysia and the Politics of Disengagement. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998. viii, 312 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. US$39.00, hardcover; US$25.00, paper (outside ASEAN and Hong Kong).

MICHAEL D. BARR. Lee Kuan Yew: the Beliefs Behind the Man. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph Series no. 85, 2000. £40.00, hardcover.

GENERAL ASIA

HUNG‐MAO TIEN and TUN‐JEN CHENG (eds). The Security Environment in the Asia‐Pacific. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. 368 pp. Tables, index. A$24.95, paper.