Regional Development Agencies and Local Economic Development: Scale and Competitiveness in High-technology Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

Regional Development Agencies have been given the fundamental aim of improving their regions' economic performance and competitiveness. Supporting innovation is a cornerstone of this policy. This paper explores the limitations of region-based strategies arguing that this neglects the importance of policy intervention at the local level, using case studies of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire.     

Book reviews

? General

Thelma Chang. "I Can Never Forget”, Men of the 100th/442nd. Arizona: Sigi Productions, University of Arizona Press, 1991. 207 pp. Photographs, bibliography, index. US$34.95, hardcover.

James J. Fox and Clifford Sather, editors. Origins, Ancestry and Alliance: Explorations in Austronesian Ethnography. Canberra: Department of Anthropology, Comparative Austronesian Project, 1996. viii, 336 pp. Introduction, contents, acknowledgments, figures, tables, maps, references, index. Npg, paper.

John Mackenzie. Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. xii, 232 pp. 8 pp. of plates. US$24.95, paper.

Richard Robison, editor. Pathways to Asia: The Politics of Engagement. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1996. 270 pp. A$24.95, paper.

Eileen H. Tamura. Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identify: The Nissei Generation in Hawaii. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. xx, 326 pp. US19.95, paper.

Nancy Viviani. The Indochinese in Australia, 1975–1995: From Burnt Boats to Barbecues. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. xvi, 208 pp. Tables and figures, abbreviations, appendix, bibliography, index. A$24.95, paper.

? Northeast Asia

James Cahill. The Lyric Journey: Poetic Painting in China and Japan. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1996. x, 251 pp. Preface, glossary, bibliography, index. US$45.00, hardcover.

William H. Coaldrake. Architecture and Authority in Japan. London: Routledge, 1996. xxi, 337 pp. Preface, list of figures, acknowledgments, glossary, chronological table, notes, index. US$135.00, hardcover; US$44.95, paper.

Norman Eder. Poisoned Prosperity: Development, Modernization, and the Environment in South Korea. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. xiv, 192 pp. Two maps, bibliography, index. US$21.95, paper.

JaHyun Kim Haboush, translator. The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth‐Century Korea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xii, 372 pp. Illustrations, glossary, index. Npg, paper.

Donald Keene. The Blue‐Eyed Tarôkaja: A Donald Keene Anthology. Edited by J. Thomas Rimer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. ix, 290 pp. Contents, editor's preface, index. US$24.50, paper.

Rikki Kersten. Democracy in Postwar Japan: Maruyama Masao and the Search for Autonomy. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. xiv, 289 pp. Series editor's preface, acknowledgments, index. US$74.95, hardcover.

Hiroshi Komai (Jens Wilkinson, tr.). Migrant Workers in Japan. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1995. xviii, 305 pp. List of tables and figures, preface to English edition, preface, introduction, policy proposal, references, index. US$76.50, hardcover.

Fumie Kumagai with Donna Keyser. Unmasking Japan Today: The Impact of Traditional Values on Modern Japanese Society. Westport and London: Praeger, 1996. 192 pp. Preface, bibliography, index. US$39.95, hardcover.

Robert M. Marsh. The Great Transformation: Social Change in Taipei, Taiwan since the 1960s. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. An East Gate Book. 418 pp. Maps, glossary, appendix, bibliography, photographs, index. US$62.95, hardcover; US$27.95, paper.

Joe Moore, editor. The Other Japan: Conflict, Compromise, and Resistance since 1945. New Edition. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997, for the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. xvi, 406 pp. Introduction, index. US$24.95, paper.

Leith Morton. An Anthology of Contemporary Japanese Poetry. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1993. xxv, 458 pp. Preface, introduction, biographies of the poets, bibliographic notes, selected English‐language bibliography. US$75.00, hardcover.

Ikko Shimizu. The Dark Side of Japanese Business: Three “Industry Novels” — Silver Sanctuary, The Ibis Cage, Keiretsu. Translated and edited by Tamae K. Prindle. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. 277 pp. US$50.00, hardcover; US$17.95, paper.

Yoshio Sugimoto. An Introduction to Japanese Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 285 pp. US$90.00, hardcover; US$29.95, paper.

Shih‐shan Henry Tsai. The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. 290 pp. Introduction, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. US$18.95, paper.

? South Asia

Ludwig W. Adamec. Dictionary of Afghan Wars, Revolutions, and Insurgencies. Metuchen, NJ, and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1996. xvii, 364 pp. US$48.00, hardcover.

Sudhir Kakar. The Colors Of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion and Conflict. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. xiii, 217 pp. Notes, index. US$14.95, paper.

Stanley N. Kurtz. All the Mothers are One: Hindu India and the Cultural Reshaping of Psychoanalysis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. xv, 306 pp. Foreword by S.J. Thambiah, illustrations, index. US$49.50, hardcover; US$18.00, paper.

? Southeast Asia

H.S. Barlow. Swettenham. Kuala Lumpur: Southdene Sdn Bhd, 1995. xviii, 783 pp. Foreword, abbreviations, bibliography, plates, index. Npg, hardcover.

Daniel S. Lev and Ruth T. McVey, editors. Making Indonesia: Essays on Modern Indonesia in Honor of George McT. Kahin. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1996. 201 pp. US$18.00, paper.

Peter Rogers. Northeast Thailand from Prehistoric to Modern Times. Bangkok: Duang Kamol, 1966. 259 pp. Npg.

James Niel Sneddon. Indonesian Reference Grammar. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996. xxvii, 387 pp. A$29.95, paper.

N.P. van den Berg. Currency and the Economy of Netherlands India, 1870–1995. (Reprint of The Financial and Economical Condition of Netherlands India since 1870 and the Effect of the Present Currency System with introduction by Pierre van der Eng.) Singapore: Sources for the Economic History of Southeast Asia Data Paper Series No. 5, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996. xxx, 120 pp. Tables. S$29.00/US$24.00, paper.

Pierre van der Eng. Agricultural Growth in Indonesia: Productivity Change and Policy Impact since 1880. Studies in the Economies of East and South‐East Asia. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press; New York: St Martin's Press, 1996. xiii, 375 pp. Abbreviations and acronyms, preface, tables, figures, notes and references, appendices, bibliography, index. US79.95, hardcover.

Michael Vatikiotis. Political Change in Southeast Asia: Trimming the Banyan Tree. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. xiv, 230 pp. Foreword. US$13.99, paper.     

Foremothers: Neera Desai (b. 1925)

Neera Desai (b. 1925), best known as the founder of India's first Women's Studies Research Unit, also wrote the first analytical history of Indian women. In Woman in Modern India, published in 1957, the central concern is women's lack of opportunity and progress from the Vedic period to the 1950s. A college student at the time of the Quit India movement in 1942, Neera belongs to a generation of women who entered the professions in newly independent India and continue to ask the hard questions about gender and power.     

Specialization of ceramic production: A sherd assemblage based analytic perspective

One expectation of emergent complexity is that as ceramic craft specialization increases it is reflected by increasingly homogeneous products due to the modified organization of craft production by specialists. This question has most often been addressed by analysis of sub-sets of larger ceramic assemblages consisting of intact vessels from idiosyncratic contexts. However, excavations often do not yield appropriate whole vessel sub-sets. In order to evaluate the changing context of the organization of ceramic production, we engage a robust methodological approach to the analysis of ceramic sherd assemblages, rather than intact vessels, rooted in cluster analysis but which we rigorously evaluate by other means. We successfully employ this method to assess changes in the organization of ceramic production through a 1000 year sequence leading to the emergence of the Tarascan state, and conclude in this case that no significant reorganization of ceramic production occurred with Tarascan state formation.     

Regulating Body Boundaries and Health during the Second World War: Nationalist Discourse,Media Representations and the Experiences of Canadian Women War Workers

This article examines the intersections of gender, wartime nationalist rhetoric and the production of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies in both the Canadian workplace and the home during the Second World War. Analysing government, industry and media discourses in relation to oral history interviews with thirty‐eight women aircraft workers, we discuss women's distinctive role in shaping the health and morale of the social body during wartime, to ensure the maintenance of family, nation and the Allied war effort. While health in wartime was defined in terms of worker productivity for both men and women, anxiety about women's expanded roles heightened the emphasis on moral respectability as a marker of the ‘healthy’ female body. This was further complicated by the wartime emphasis on women's responsibilities to boost morale as part of their role in maintaining health and productivity for both men and women. Through such examples as workplace regulations and domestic advice, we examine the increased monitoring of women's individual and collective bodies and the intensified demands on female war workers as they crossed between the public and private spheres. We use our oral histories to examine women's embodied memories of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies within a regional context and their responses to government, industry and media discourses.