Book reviews

Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds., ‘Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830–1930,’ http://vvomhist.Binghamton.edu.

Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780‐1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000). Pp.xii + 228. $39.95 (hardback); $19.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 8071 2537 7; 0 8071 2600 4.

Timothy S. Huebner, The Southern Judicial Tradition: Southern Judges and Sectional Distinctiveness, 1790–1890 (Athens: University of Georgia Press), 1999. Pp. xiii 4‐ 263. $45.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 252 0634 0.

Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). Pp.xii + 316. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 6910 0130 8.

Joseph G. Dawson III, Doniphan's Epic March: The 1st Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999). Pp. xii + 325. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 7006 0956.

Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). $45.00 (hardback); $18.95 (paperback). Pp.xii + 311. ISBN 0 8078 2436 4; 0 8078 4741 0.

Paul Goodman, Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). Pp.xxi + 303. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 5202 0794 7.

Mark E. Neely Jr, Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999). Pp.vii + 212. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0 8139 1894 4.

John C. Willis, Forgotten Time: The Yazoo‐Mississippi Delta after the Civil War (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000). Pp. xiv + 239. $55.00 (hardback); $19.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 8139 1971 1; 0 8139 1982 7.     

Book reviews

Barry Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. 183 pp. $34.95 (paper).

David Beetham and Kevin Boyle, Introducing Democracy: 80 Questions and Answers. Cambridge: Polity Press/UNESCO, 1995. xiv + 135 pp. £10.95 (paper).

Jurgen Habermas (interviewed by Michael Haller), The Past as Future, translated and edited by Max Pensky. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. xxvi + 185 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Jacob Bercovitch (ed.), Resolving International Conflicts: The Theory and Practice of Mediation. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996. xiv + 279 pp. $US19.95 (paper).

Georgina Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996. xi + 163 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds), Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, 2nd edn. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1995. viii + 592 pp. npg.

Stuart Woolf (ed.), Nationalism in Europe, 1815 to the Present: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. vi + 215 pp. npg.

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), Post‐Communism: Four Perspectives. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1996. vi + 208 pp. npg.

Stelios Stavridis and Christopher Hill (eds), Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy: Western European Reactions to the Falklands Conflict. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996. x + 202 pp. £34.95 (cloth), £14.95 (paper).

Ramesh Thakur (ed.), The United Nations at Fifty: Retrospect and Prospect. Dunedin: University of Otago Press and the Peace Research Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1996. xvii + 334 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Emma Matanle, The UN Security Council: Prospects for Reform. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs Discussion Paper No. 62, 1995. vi + 70 pp. npg.

Ross Garnaut and Peter Drysdale (eds), Asia Pacific Regionalism: Readings in International Economic Relations. Sydney: Harper Educational Publishers, 1994. xviii + 433 pp. $39.95 (paper).

Russell Trood and Deborah McNamara (eds), The Asia‐Australia Survey 1995–96. Melbourne: Macmillan/Centre for the Study of Australia‐Asia Relations, Griffith University, 1995. xiv + 586 pp. $95.00 (cloth), $42.95 (paper).

Jim Rohwer, Asia Rising. London: Nicholas Brealey, 1996. 382 pp. $34.95 (cloth).

David Shambaugh (ed.), Greater China: The Next Superpower? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ix + 310 pp. $44.95 (cloth).

Anne Blair, Lodge in Vietnam: A Patriot Abroad. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. xv + 200 pp. $US25.00 (cloth).

David Mayers, The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. xiv + 335 pp. $75.00 (cloth).

Christopher Tremewan, The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore. London: Macmillan, 1994. xv + 252 pp. $88.00 (cloth).

John A. Larkin, Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippine Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. xvi + 337 pp. npg.

Hermann Joseph Hiery, The Neglected War: the German South Pacific and the Influence of World War 1. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995. xvii + 387 pp. US$35.OO (cloth).

Anthony Milner (ed.), Australia in Asia: Comparing Cultures. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii + 300 pp. $26.95 (paper).

Lachlan Strahan, Australia's China, Changing Perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xv + 374 pp. $34.95 (paper), $90.00 (cloth).

Graeme Cheeseman and Robert Bruce (eds), Discourses of Danger and Dread Frontiers: Australian Defence and Security Thinking after the Cold War. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin/Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1996. ix + 317 pp. $24.95 (paper).

John Spoehr and Ray Broomhill (eds), Altered States: The Impact of Free Market Policies on the Australian States. Adelaide: Centre for Labour Studies, University of Adelaide/Social Justice Research Foundation, 1995. 226 pp. npg (paper).     

Tell el-‘Ajjul palaces I and II: Context and function

ABSTRACT

Traditional views on Middle Bronze Age (MBA) palatial function have been challenged by recent work at Tel Kabri, where the excavators have argued against the common identification of southern Levantine palaces as redistributive centres staffed with literate administrators. These innovative ideas surrounding palace function were first developed by Flinders Petrie during excavations at Tell el-‘Ajjul in 1931–32. Here he uncovered a series of elaborately constructed elite residences that he identified as ‘palaces’. However, when reconsidering Petrie's finds, the results from Ajjul are largely supportive of the Kabri observations. A lack of evidence for key functional attributes of palaces—large-scale storage, administrative paraphernalia and redistributive function - is comparable to that reported at Kabri. A short consideration of similar MBA ‘palaces’ elsewhere in the southern Levant is supportive of the aforementioned trend, and therefore calls into question the traditionally held views on the function of these elaborate architectural complexes. Either the function generally attributed to these structures is incorrect, or administration and rulership in MBA Canaan leaves no unambiguous residues in the archaeological record.     

#WeAreBeneficiaries: Contesting Poverty Stigma Through Social Media

Showcasing stories of welfare beneficiaries in their own words, a recent Aotearoa (New Zealand)-based campaign called “We Are Beneficiaries” used social media to create a space of contestation to the widespread stigmatisation of poverty. While existing literature strongly emphasises the role played by traditional media in constructing and reinforcing stigma, and has more recently begun to explore resistance and contestation, relatively few accounts address efforts, like the We Are Beneficiaries campaign, that seek to destigmatise poverty stigma via social media. Accordingly, this paper argues that social media can serve as a counterpublic space for the destigmatisation of poverty. By discussing how the We Are Beneficiaries campaign refuted stigmatising narratives, critiqued institutions and sought to build solidarity among and with welfare beneficiaries, the paper draws attention to the potential of social media in the development of counterdiscourses as well as new political identities and claims-making.     

A Foot in Each Sphere: Christine Frederick and Early Twentieth-Century Advertising

The American advertiser has taught the American housewife to think constructively of her job.¹
Christine Frederick, 1929
As we enter the twenty-first century, Martha Stewart's web page proclaims her multi-million-dollar company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, to be a "leading creator of original'how to'content and related products for homemakers and other consumers."² Over the last 20 years, Stewart's enterprise, which targets primarily women consumers, has grown from a television show to an empire that includes books, magazines, radio broadcasts, a newspaper column, and Martha Stewart product lines sold in retail stores, through catalogs, and over the Internet.     

A Woman's Place in the Crab Processing Industry of Eastern Carolina

Traditionally, most of the pickers used in the crab processing industry of rural Eastern Carolina have been women from the local area, both black and white, while the managerial staff has comprised white women related through kinship to the white, male crab house owners. In recent years, however, this recruitment strategy has changed. Following the lead of the regional poultry industry, the crab houses are now bringing in Mexican workers under the H2-B visa program. Unlike many of the Mexican migrant workers coming into the USA, the crab labor force is made up of women, about half of whom are married with children. This article provides a case study of the ensuing dual labor structure within the crab processing industry. Utilizing in-depth interviews with the employers and employees of the Luther Lewis and Son crab house, the authors ask: What are the contours of inclusiveness and exclusiveness within and without the crab house?     

Conditional Belonging: Farm Workers and the Cultural Politics of Recognition in Zimbabwe

This article examines Zimbabwean land politics and the study of rural interventions, including agrarian reform, more broadly, using the analytical framework of territorialized ‘modes of belonging’ and their ‘cultural politics of recognition’. Modes of belonging are the routinized discourses, social practices and institutional arrangements through which people make claims for resources and rights, the ways through which they become ‘incorporated’ in particular places. In these spatialized forms of power and authority, particular cultural politics of recognition operate; these are the cultural styles of interaction that become privileged as proper forms of decorum and morality informing dependencies and interdependencies. The author traces a hegemonic mode of belonging identified as ‘domestic government’, put in place on European farms in Zimbabwe's colonial period, and shows how it was shaped by particular political and economic conjunctures in the first twenty years of Independence after 1980. Domestic government provided a conditional belonging for farm workers in terms of claims to limited resources on commercial farms while positioning them in a way that made them marginal citizens in the nation at large. This is the context for the behaviour of land‐giving authorities which have actively discriminated against farm workers during the politicized and violent land redistribution processes that began in 2000. Most former farm workers are now seeking other forms of dependencies, typically more precarious and generating fewer resources and services than they had accessed on commercial farms, with their own particular cultural politics of recognition, often tied to demonstrating support to the ruling political party.     

Foreclosure Risk and Community Health: Does Social Capital Have a Protective Effect?

This study draws upon the social determinants of health framework to model and test the extent to which a community’s social capital is health protective in the face of a substantial economic shock, namely the recent foreclosure crisis. U.S. county–level data are used to analyze potential moderating effects of social capital on health given a community’s foreclosure risk. We rely upon established social capital measures for U.S counties and merge them with county level foreclosure risk scores constructed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While theorists suggest that social capital’s effect on health and other outcomes may be durable over time there have been few empirical tests of this. We interact established social capital indicators measured at two points in time with foreclosure risk to predict overall self-reported health. Our results provide strong support suggesting that high levels of social capital are health protective. Communities with high levels of social capital that are facing high foreclosure risks report significantly better aggregate health outcomes than comparable communities facing the same level of foreclosure risk, but lower levels of social capital.