Book reviews

CHINA

DORE J. LEVY. Ideal and Actual in “The Story of the Stone”. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 213 pp. US$49.00/£33.95, hardcover; US$19.00/£13.50, paper.

GREGOR BENTON (ed and trans). Chen Duxiu's Last Articles and Letters, 1937–1942. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1998. 163 pp. Foreword by Wang Fanxi, editor's introduction, appendices, glossary, index. £40.00, hardcover.

EILEEN CHANG. The Rice‐Sprout Song. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 182 pp. Foreword by David Der‐wei Wang. US$15.95, paper.

EILEEN CHANG. The Rouge of the North. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 185 pp. Foreword by David Der‐wei Wang. US$15.95, paper.

MCLAREN, ANNE E. Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantefables. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998. viii, 340 pp. US$103.75, hardcover.

EDWARD S. STEINFELD. Forging Reform in China: the Fate of State‐Owned Industry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 300 pp. Tables, figures, preface, notes, bibliography, index. A$80.00, hardcover; £12.95, paper.

PETER CONN. Pearl S. Buck: a Cultural Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 467 pp. A$28.95, paper.

FLEMMING CHRISTIANSEN and ZHANG JUNZUO (eds). Village INC. Chinese Rural Society in the 1990s. Surrey: Curzon, 1998. 277 pp. Illustrations, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. £35.00, hardcover.

HAROLD M. TANNER. Strike Hard! Anti‐Crime Campaigns and Chinese Criminal Justice 1979–1989. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1999. 253 pp. US$28.00, hardcover; US$17.00, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

LONNY E. CARLILE and MARK C. TILTON (eds). Is Japan Really Changing Its Ways?: regulatory Reform and the Japanese Economy. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998. 232 pp. US$39.95, hardcover.

PETER KATZENSTEIN and TAKASHI SHIRAISHI (eds). Network Power: Japan and Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. 399 pp. US$62.50, hardcover; US$23.95, paper.

BERNARD FAURE. The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. 338 pp. US$18.95, paper.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTERAL ASIA

VIJAY MISHRA. Devotional Poetics and the Indian Sublime. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. 268 pp. US$21.95, paper.

OLIVER MENDELSOHN and MARIKA VICZIANY. The Untouchables: subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 289 pp. Glossary, preface, bibliography, index. A$36.95, paper.

DONALD S. LOPEZ, Jr. Prisoners of Shangri‐La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 238 pp. Notes, index. US$25.00, hardcover.

MELVYN C. GOLDSTEIN and MATTHEW T. KAPSTEIN (eds), with a foreword by Orville Schell. Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet, Religious Revival and Cultural Identity.

Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. x, 207 pp. 37 b/w photographs, notes, bibliography, index. US$40.00, hardcover; US$15.95, paper; £30.00, hardcover; £11.95, paper.

PETER RICHARDUS (ed), with an historical foreword by Alex McKay. Tibetan Lives: three Himalayan Autobiographies. Surrey: Curzon, 1998. xxviii, 223 pp. 2 maps, frontispiece, 33 b/w plates, select bibliography, index. £40.00, hardcover.

RAMAKRISHNA PULIGANDLA. Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy. Delhi: D. K. Print‐world, 1997 (revised edition), xix, 362 pp. Preface to second edition, preface to first edition, bibliography, glossary, index. Rs. 450, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

PAUL HUTCHCROFT. Booty Capitalism: the Politics of Banking in the Philippines. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998. 278 pp. US$39.95, hardcover.

PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER. Tales from Djakarta: caricatures of Circumstances and their Human Beings. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1999. 145 pp. Foreword, introduction, glossary. US$15.00, paper.

GENERAL ASIA

YAYORI MATSUI. Women in the New Asia: from Pain to Power. Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1999. x, 194 pp. Index. A$29.95, paper.     

Reading Caliban and the Witch politically

Abstract

What I’d like to do here is to offer some cursory reflections on Silvia Federici’s contribution to anti-capitalist thought and practice. I do this through my engagement with her work on the Great Witch-Hunt.     

Book reviews

General

Peter Elphick. The Far Eastern File: The Intelligence War in the Far East, 1930–1945. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997. xvii, 510 pp. Introduction, author's note, maps, photographs, index. £20.00, hardcover.

Northeast Asia

Nancy Abelmann. Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. US$40.00, hardcover; US$18.00, paper.

Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner, editors. Resistance and Reform in Tibet. London: Hurst and Company, 1994. £32.00, hardcover; £12.95, paper.

Ronald D. Schwartz. Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising. London: Hurst and Company, 1994. £37.50, hardcover; £12.95, paper.

Mick Broderick. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. Japanese Studies Series. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996. x, 255 pp. US$93.50, £55.00, hardcover.

Susan Brownell. Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. 393 pp. Bibliography, index. US$49.95, hardcover; US$18.95, paper.

Lincoln Li. Student Nationalism in China, 1924–1949. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. ix, 209 pp. Acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, plates, index. US$19.95, paper.

Colin Mackerras. China's Minority Cultures: Identities and Integration Since 1912. Melbourne: Longman, 1995. x, 252 pp. Contents, preface, maps, photographs, references, index. A$42.00, hardcover.

David Zweig. Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. xvii, 365 pp. Contents, preface, tables and figures, index. US$62.95, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

South Asia

John Hutnyk. The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of Representation. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1996. x, 223 pp. Preface, bibliography, index. US$65.00, hardcover; US$22.50, paper.

Frederic C. Thomas. Calcutta Poor: Elegies on a City above Pretense. An East Gate Book. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. ix, 166 pp. Preface, plates, notes, bibliography, index. US$29.95, hardcover.

David William Martin. The Changing Face of Calcutta. New Delhi: Vikas, 1997. xxvii, 232 pp. Rs.450, hardcover.

Thomas R. Trautmann. Aryans and British India. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1997. ix‐xiv, 260 pp. Illustrations, maps, references, index. US$35, £24.95, hardcover.

David Gordon White. The Alchemical Body. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. xviii, 596 pp. Preface, abbreviations, notes, bibliography, index. US$49.95, hardcover.

Joanna Williams. The Two Headed Deer: Illustrations of the Ramayana in Orissa. California Studies in the History of Art, No. 34. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xix, 210 pp. 289 plates. US$65.00, hardcover.

Liz Wilson. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. xviii, 258 pp. Foreword, bibliography, illustrations.

Stanley Wolpert. Nehru, A Tryst With Destiny. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii, 546 pp. Preface, illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, index. A$49.00, hardcover.

Southeast Asia

Justin Corfield, editor. Rama III and the Siamese Expedition to Kedah in 1939: The Dispatches of Luang Udomsombat. Trans. Cyril Skinner. Monash Papers on Southeast Asia No. 30. Melbourne: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1993. Editor's introduction, translator's introduction, map, plate, appendices, index. 338 pp. A$24.95, paper.

Duong Thu Huong. Novel Without a Name. Translated from the Vietnamese by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson. London: Picador, 1995. 289 pp. A$16.95, paper.

Dean Forbes. Asian Metropolis: Urbanisation and the Southeast Asian City. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. xxii, 120 pp. Foreword, contents, maps, plates, index. A$19.95, paper.

Antoon Geels. Subud and the Javanese Mystical Tradition. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 76. Preface, author's note, abstract. 262 pp. £30.00, hardcover.

Bryan Hunsaker, Theodore Mayer, Barbara Griffiths and Robert Daley. Loggers, Monks, Students and Entrepreneurs: Four Essays on Thailand. Introduction by Clark Neher. DeKalb, Illinois: Southeast Asia Publications, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1996. Occasional Paper No. 18. vi, 143 pp. Introduction, bibliographies, index. US$12.00, paper.

Ian Mabbett and David Chandler. The Khmers. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995. x, 289 pp. Preface, introduction, plates, maps, appendices, bibliography, index. £35.00, hardcover; £13.50, paper.

Leo Suryadinata, editor. Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians. Sydney and Singapore: Allen and Unwin, and ISEAS, 1997. A$35.00, paper.     

‘It’s good but it’s not enough’: the relational geographies of social policy and youth mentoring interventions

Developing a critical analysis of the relational and situated practices of social policy, this paper draws on an evaluation of an early intervention project in Scotland (UK) where volunteer adult mentors supported young people ‘at risk’ of offending or antisocial behaviour. Contributing to ‘enlivened’ accounts of social practice, we explore how practices of mentoring developed through the co-presence of mentor and young person in the often transitory spaces of care which characterized the ‘diversionary activities’ approach in the project. We expand the notion of the relational in social practice beyond the care-recipient dyad to include wider networks of care (families, programme workers, social institutions). The paper explores how such social interventions might both be ‘good’ for the young people involved, and yet recognize critiques that more individualized models of intervention inevitably have limitations which make them ‘not enough’ to deal with structural inequalities and disadvantages. Acknowledging the impacts of neoliberalism, we argue critical attention to diverse situated relational practices points to the excessive nature of engagement in social policy and provides scope for transformative practice where young people’s geographies can be ‘upscaled’ to connect to the realms of social policy and practice.     

Democratic centralism or ‘centres’ of power in the French Communist Party Var Federation? A glimpse of party culture in 1956

Drawing for the first time on personal interviews with over 25 informants and new documentary evidence, this article looks at an under-researched area of enquiry: political spaces and dynamics within Communist Party organisations that existed in parallel and functioned concurrently to the democratic centralist system. Taking as a case study a representative sample of the regional party membership of the French Communist Party Var Federation in 1956, it considers contemporary perspectives, interests, contradictions and tensions in everyday politics at this level which, whilst not representing internecine conflict as such, constituted nevertheless distinct articulations of communist identity and militancy. However, the objective of this article is not simply to measure the extent of adherence to a regulatory system within a political entity, although it inevitably does that. This is a qualitative study that examines in detail and explains in context power relations within a micro-political environment, within a wider political structure, within a world movement, at an important conjuncture in post-war history. In so doing, it sheds new light on the orientation, nature and practices of the Parti Communiste Français as a national party at this time. It also, automatically, addresses questions of human agency.     

The Role and Relevance of Intellectuals vis-à-vis the French and Italian Communist Parties in the Early Post-war Period. A Regional Grassroots Study

Taking as cases in point a French and an Italian communist party federation in the early post-war period, this paper considers the role and relevance of intellectuals vis-à-vis ‘the party’ from the perspectives of ordinary communists in regional contexts. New empirical evidence suggests that beneath surface parallels there were key differences in that respect, which apart from anything else, resulted in some very different responses to the macro political events of 1956. It appears that those differences related to core communist principles; interpretations of communist militancy; the nature and functioning of democratic centralism in the organisations in question; and matters of human agency. This paper examines the nature and extent of those constants and variables, accounts for them in their immediate and wider contexts, and evaluates what all of that can tell us about coherence and cohesion of French and Italian communism, and by extension that of the international communist movement, at that time.     

UNICEF ‘Child Poverty in Perspective’ Report: A View from the UK

In February 2007, UNICEF launched the latest in a series of reports comparing the conditions of young people's lives across the world's more industrialised countries. The report ranked the UK as the lowest of the countries investigated. We give a critical overview of the report, identifying its limitations as well as some of the trends it reveals. We also discuss the poor placing of the UK in relation to current broader political and public debates.     

Spatially varying relationships between municipal operating expenditure and its determinants: The case of South Africa

We apply the geographically weighted regression to investigate spatial variability (nonstationarity) in the relationships between municipal operating expenditure (in total and for a separate component thereof) and the determinants of this expenditure, in South Africa. The empirical findings indicate that some of these relationships are spatially varying for the period under consideration. The global model (i.e., least square regression) cannot take account of the unequal environment in which South African municipalities operate. One implication of our findings is that a “one-size-fits-all” approach in the design of policies targeting municipal finances may not be appropriate for municipalities in South Africa, and indeed in other contexts in which such heterogeneity is found. Instead, policy formulation should explicitly consider relevant differences in local conditions.