The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force: reshaping China’s approach to strategic deterrence

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is in the midst of a sweeping reform programme to significantly transform its organisation, force posture, command and control structures, and internal politics. Among the many important aspects of this effort is the establishment of the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF). Creation of the PLARF solidified China’s missile forces as a critical element of China’s evolving strategic deterrent posture, portends continued significant investment in PLARF modernisation, and points to a more concerted effort to integrate PLARF capabilities into more effective PLA-wide joint operations—all key developments in the fundamental reshaping of China’s approach to strategic deterrence. These developments will affect U.S. strategic and extended deterrence postures, U.S.-China strategic stability, allied conventional force operations, information dominance and security, critical infrastructure, and other key aspects of national security. This study details the organisational, technological, and doctrinal changes afoot for the PLARF, and analyses how—if successful—they affect U.S. and U.S-allied military strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.     

Men and masculinities

Sullerot, E., Quels Pères? Quels Fils? (Fayard, 1992), 381pp., 130F., ISBN 2 213 02515 0

Badinter, E., XY: De L'Identité Masculine (Odile Jacob, 1992), 314pp., 130F., ISBN 2 738 10179 8     

'It's only as stupid as you are': Children's and adults' negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school

Contemporary discourses about children's use of information and communication technologies (ICT)—which both celebrate children's command of a technology which is seen to be our future, and raise fears that this technology is putting children's emotional well-being at risk—are problematic, resting as they do on essentialist ideas about children, and overt technological determinism. Drawing instead on work within the new social studies of childhood, and the sociology of science and technology, we identify a need for research which examines how children and technology come together in diverse communities of practice. The communities of practice we study are the home- and school-based ICT usage of British school children in the late 1990s. Our research identifies the different ways in which children and adults negotiate children's technical and emotional competence in relation to ICT, and uncovers the varied meanings of childhood and technology which emerge for adults and children in these two socio-spatial environments. These findings not only highlight the spatiality of children's and adults' performances and understandings of ICT competence, but also how these are constituted through the socio-spatial relations which shape the off-line spaces of home and school.     

Travelling down the road to postdisciplinarity? Reflections of a tourism geographer

Like many other forms of scholarship in geography, tourism geography has evolved as a distinct subfield of inquiry within the discipline, although the contributions of tourism geographers are perhaps more readily acknowledged in the multidisciplinary realm of tourism studies. I trace the evolving relationship of tourism geography to both the discipline of geography and to the field of tourism studies. In doing so, I reflect on such influences as the role of institutions, paradigm shifts, technology, and other factors that affect the creation and management of geographic knowledge in the twenty‐first century. The intent of this article is two‐fold: first, to appeal to geographers for greater recognition of the importance of tourism as a quintessential component of geographic study that in today's world warrants integration into core aspects of geographic enquiry; second, to use current debates within both tourism studies and geography to reflect on issues of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and even postdisciplinarity.     

Book reviews

Brian Girvin (ed.). The Transformation of Contemporary Conservatism. London: Sage Publications, 1988. 232pp. $10.95.

Ingrid Detter DeLupis. The Law of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. xx + 411pp. $54.00.

Martin Shaw (ed.). War, State and Society. London: Macmillan, 1984. viii + 266pp. No price given.

Denis de Rougemont (translated by Anthony J.C. Kerr). The Future is Within Us. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983. v + 244pp. No price given.

David Goldsworthy (ed.). Development Studies In Australia: Themes and Issues. Melbourne: Monash University, Development Studies Centre, Monograph No. 1, 1988. 203pp. $10.00.

Martin Walker. The Waking Giant: The Soviet Union Under Gorbachev. London: Abacus Books, 1987. xxvii + 315pp. $16.95.

Andrew Farran. Changing Directions in the Soviet Union?: Perestroika, Glasnost ... and Australia ?with particular reference to the Soviet Far East. Canberra: The Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1988. iv + 24pp. $6.00.

Eberhard Kolb (translated by P.S. Falla). The Weimar Republic. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. xi + 237pp. $27.95.

Ian S. Lustick. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988. xi + 244pp. $11.95

Michael Mandelbaum. Israel and the Occupied Territories: A Personal Report on the Uprising. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988. 20pp. No price given.

Robert A. Scalapino and Masataka Kosaka. Peace, Politics and Economics in Asia. London and Washington: Pergamon‐Brassey's, 1988. xiv + 209pp. No price given.

Hal Hill. Foreign Investment and Industrialisation in Indonesia. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988. xxi + 179pp. No price given.

Chelvadurai Manogaran. Ethnic Conflict and Reconcilitation in Sri Lanka. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987. xiv + 232pp. $US22.00.

C.K. Brown (ed.). Rural Development in Ghana. Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1986. xii + 325pp. No price given.

Helen Fraser. New Caledonia: Anti‐Colonialism in a Pacific Territory. Peace Research Centre Monograph No. 2, Australian National University, 1988. 88pp. $10.00.

Susan K. Purcell (ed.). Mexico in Transition: Implications for U.S. Policy. Essays from Both Sides of the Border. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1988. viii + 156pp. $US9.95.

James Ferguson, Papa Doc. Baby Doc: Haiti and the Duvaliers. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Inc., 1987. xi + 164pp. $39.95.     

"Oh Yes I Can.""Oh No You Can't": Children and Parents' Understandings of Kids' Competence to Negotiate Public Space Safely

Children's safety is an issue high on the public agenda in both the UK and North America. In particular, the "stranger-danger" discourse plays an important part in constructing children as "vulnerable" and "at risk" in public space. This paper begins by exploring how adults define whether their children are competent to negotiate public space unsupervised and how they control and manage their children's use of space. It then goes on to consider children's own understandings of their ability to negotiate public space safely, exploring how they subvert restrictions placed on them by parents and how they define their parents' levels of competence to make decisions about their spatial ranges. In doing so the paper demonstrates the instability and contested meanings of the binary concepts —"adult" and "child."