Book reviews

The Regions and the European Community: The Regional Response to the Single Market in the Underdeveloped Areas. R. Leonardi (Ed.). London, Frank Cass, 1993, 274 pp, £27.50 hb, ISBN 0 7146 3460 3.

Technology Policy: Towards an Integration of Social and Ecological Concerns. George Aichholzer and Gerd Schienstock (Eds). Berlin and New York, De Gruyter, 1994, 418 pp, DM188.0, US$94.95, £59.35 hb, ISBN 3 11 13677 5.

Postmodern Cities and Spaces. Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson (Eds). Oxford, Blackwell, 1994, VIII + 269 pp, £45.00 hb, ISBN 0 631 19403 7, £13.99 pb, ISBN 0 631 19404 5.

Gender, Planning and the Policy Process. Jo Little. Oxford, Pergamon, 1994, ix + 210 pp, £58.00 hb, ISBN 0 080404 812, ISBN 0 080404 807.

Women and Planning—Creating Gendered Realities. Clara H. Greed. London, Routledge, 1994, vii + 248 pp, £12.99 pb, ISBN 0 415077 810.

Perspectives Towards Sustainable Environmental Development. C. C. Williams and G. Haughton (Eds). Aldershot, Ashgate, 1994, xi + 200 pp, £35.00 hb, ISBN 1 85628 874 9.

Regional Networks, Border Regions and European Integration. Ricardo Cappellin and Peter W. Batey (Eds). London, Pion, 1995, 246 pp, £22.50/US$35.00 hb, ISBN 0 850 8 6124.

Design Review: Challenging Urban Aesthetic Control. Brenda Case Scheer and Wolfgang F. E. Preiser (Eds). New York and London, Chapman & Hall, 1994, vii‐219 pp, US$36.95 pb, ISBN 0 412 99161 6.     

GENDER DIVISIONS IN URBAN SPACE: BEYOND THE RIGIDITY OF DUALIST CLASSIFICATIONS

The paper discusses the absence of gender from the analysis and understanding of urban development as a result of dichotomies, implicit or explicit, in much of urban research: private space vs public space, home life vs politics, domestic labor vs paid employment, reproduction vs production. It is argued that urban analysis and theorizing have focused almost exclusively on the latter part of such dichotomies, the one associated with men and masculinity. This is an emphasis on and valuation of the adult male's activities and experiences of urban development and a corresponding devaluation of the activities and experiences of women — thereby reproducing gender hierarchies and ways of thinking about them. To consider these questions, a historically and geographically specific context of urban development is presented: the municipality of Helioupolis in the Greater Athens area (Greece). This study helps explain how the boundaries of divisions and dichotomies are transcended in women's everyday lives; how women (and men) are not exclusively identified with either part of dichotomies; but also how dichotomies are often intensified — sometimes by perceptions and practices of women themselves.     

Between nation and land in Zionist teaching of Jewish history, 1920–1954

The article discusses the representation of Jewish history in the Zionist school system of the Yishuv and the early State of Israel (1920–1954). In the Yishuv period the history curriculum was centered on “shifting Jewish centers” in the spirit of historian Simon Dubnow, an approach that also integrated Jewish and non-Jewish history. From the 1930s, Ben Zion Dinur and the Teachers' Council of the Keren Kayemet le-Yisrael (Jewish National Fund) attempted to make the Land of Israel the central axis uniting Jewish history, a focus that downplayed non-Jewish history. Because of the opposition to this approach within the education system, this change, which Dinur regarded as essential for the integration of the new immigrants from the Muslim countries into Israeli society, was implemented only after he was appointed minister of education in the early 1950s.     

Re-evaluating the Yom Kippur ‘Intelligence Failure’: The Cultural Lens in Crisis

Henry Kissinger famously explained the ‘intelligence failure’ of Yom Kippur in cultural terms, asserting that Western analysts were unable to understand Arab rationality in ‘starting an unwinnable war to restore self-respect.’ This article fundamentally challenges this conventional understanding of the 1973 surprise attack. Drawing on recently declassified material and interviews with veteran diplomats and intelligence professionals it will show that both the British and American intelligence communities had an excellent sense of Egyptian President Sadat's intentions in waging war against Israel. Rather the evidence suggests that misconceptions about Egyptian military capability were more important. These misconceptions derived from particular ideas about Arab culture and Soviet–Egyptian relations following the expulsion of Soviet advisors in 1972. The article thereby illuminates wider questions about how we define ‘failure’ in intelligence and the role of cultural ideas in international history.     

Review of Out-of-Plane Seismic Assessment Techniques Applied To Existing Masonry Buildings

ABSTRACT

Observations after strong earthquakes show that out-of-plane failure of unreinforced masonry elements probably constitutes the most serious life-safety hazard for this type of construction. Existing unreinforced masonry buildings tend to be more vulnerable than new buildings, not only because they have been designed to little or no seismic loading requirements, but also because connections among load-bearing walls and with horizontal structures are not always adequate. Consequently, several types of mechanisms can be activated due to separation from the rest of the construction. Even when connections are effective, out-of-plane failure can be induced by excessive vertical and/or horizontal slenderness of walls (length/thickness ratio). The awareness of such vulnerability has encouraged research in the field, which is summarized in this article. An outline of past research on force-based and displacement-based assessment is given and their translation into international codes is summarized. Strong and weak points of codified assessment procedures are presented through a comparison with parametric nonlinear dynamic analyses of three recurring out-of-plane mechanisms. The assessment strategies are marked by substantial scatter, which can be reduced through an energy-based assessment.     

Dating and Interpreting Desert Structures: The Enclosures of The Judean Desert,Southern Levant,Re‐Evaluated

Enclosures, single large curvilinear structures, constitute ubiquitous relics of past human societies in marginal environments. Many enclosures suffer from severe scarcity of related artefactual and ecofactual remains, allowing only tentative assessments of their date and function. A case in point comes from the Judean Desert, Southern Levant, where several dozen enclosures were surveyed and described as Chalcolithic cult sites. Using new research strategies, incorporating critical evaluation of previous surveys, test excavations and optically stimulated luminescence dating, we were able to date enclosures to a much broader time span than previously suggested, and reject their proposed ritualistic function.     

Feminist geographies in Greece: a personal trajectory between ‘local’ and ‘international’

Abstract

Feminist debates in the context of an active women's/feminist movement found their way into the Greek academy in the second half of the 1970s, initially in history. Urban studies and geography were ‘late-comers’ in these debates which took place in different disciplinary environments where geography courses were taught. The article presents a personal account in and through the development of feminist approaches in urban geography, drawing from my teaching and research experience since 1982 in a department of urban and regional planning. This experience has been accumulated as a hard exercise in navigating through the denial and reluctant consent of various levels of administration, students’ changing acceptance, some women’s valuable active support, in the university and beyond, and other colleagues’ opposition or indifference. In this process, recent and longer-term developments have contributed to form a (continuously negotiated and contested) space for feminism, for tolerance, diversity and difference, in which a ‘we’ has been tortuously formed which speaks across worlds, participates in a plurality of communities, communicates in more than one languages and in a plurality of voices between ‘local’ and ‘international’.