Book reviews

THE UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD ARENA: AN ESSAY IN RECENT HISTORY. W. W. Rostow. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1960. Pp. xxii + 568. $8.75.

LORD LOTHIAN (PHILIP KERR) : 1882–1940. J. R. M. Butler. London, Macmillan & Co., 1960. Pp. xiii + 385. Australian price 57/9.

THE SOVIET BLOC: UNITY AND CONFLICT. Zbigniew K. Brzezinski. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1960. Pp. xxii + 470. Australian price 85/3.

THE SOVIET DICTATORSHIP. Herbert McClosky and John E. Turner. N.Y., McGraw Hill Book Company Inc., 1960. Pp. xiv + 657. $7.95.

FRANCE, TROUBLED ALLY: DE GAULLE'S HERITAGE AND PROSPECTS. Edgar S. Furniss. For the Council on Foreign Relations. N.Y., Harper and Brothers, 1960. Pp. xiii + 512. $5.75.

THE NEXT FIFTEEN YEARS. Pierre Mendes‐France. Cambridge University Press, 1960. 3/6.

NATIONALISM AND THE RIGHT WING IN JAPAN. Ivan Morris. Under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. London, Oxford University Press, 1960. Pp. xxviii + 476. Australian price 81/3.

ELECTIONS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. T. E. Smith. With an introduction by B. Keith‐Lucas. London, Macmillan, 1960. Pp. xvii + 272.

THE BELGIAN CONGO. Some Recent Changes. Ruth Slade. For Institute of Race Relations. London, Oxford University Press, 1960. Pp. viii + 55. 3 maps. Australian price 8/6.

RACIAL PROBLEMS IN SOVIET MUSLIM ASIA. Geoffrey Wheeler. For Institute of Race Relations. London, Oxford University Press, 1960. Pp. xii + 66. 2 maps. Australian priee 10/‐.

THE DIPLOMACY OF SOUTH‐EAST ASIA, 1945–1958. Russell H. Fifield. N.Y., Harper and Brothers, 1958. Pp. xiii + 584. $7.50.

POLITICAL FORCES IN PAKISTAN, 1947–1959. Keith B. Callard. N.Y., Institute of Pacific Relations, 1959. Pp. 48. $2.00.     

Food Dependency in Sub-Saharan Africa: Simply a Matter of ‘Vulnerability’, or Missed Development Opportunity?

This article seeks to refocus some of the attention devoted in the past several decades to the issue of food security in sub-Saharan Africa to the broader context of food dependency. Using panel data for 44 countries over a period of 51 years (1961–2011), the article tests several hypotheses drawn from Lewis's classical model of development characterized by ‘unlimited supplies of labour’. The model requires either rising agricultural productivity (the closed model) or imports of global market foodstuffs (the open model) to ensure the low food prices and wages required for capital accumulation. Empirical results reject a positive association between food dependency, as represented by five decades of increasing per capita grain imports, and any measurable level of economic modernization with sufficient forward momentum to spur or justify such dependency. Results suggest instead a significant correlation between increasing food dependency and separate panel time periods associated with differing trade and policy regimes. More importantly, empirical results call for a re-evaluation of Lewis's original development model, focusing on the pivotal role of a supported food subsistence sector in creating economic possibilities for development.     

Assessing the Cluster Correspondence between Paired Point Locations

Some complex geographic events are associated with multiple point locations. Such events include, but are not limited to, those describing linkages between and among places. The term multi‐location event is used in the paper to refer to these geographical phenomena. Through formalization of the multi‐location event problem, this paper situates the analysis of multi‐location events within the broad context of point pattern analysis techniques. Two alternative approaches (Vector autocorrelation analysis and cluster correspondence analysis) to the spatial dependence of paired‐location events (i.e., two‐location events) are explored, with a discussion of their appropriateness to general multi‐location event problems. The research proposes a framework of cluster correspondence analysis for the detection of local non‐stationarities in the spatial process generating multi‐location events. A new algorithm for local analysis of cluster correspondence is proposed. It is implemented on a large‐scale dataset of vehicle theft and recovery location pairs in Buffalo, New York.     

La genèse des concepts mathématiques

Counter to the standard viewpoint which tends to dismiss history and intersubjectivity when dealing with mathematical cognition, the article shows that taking them into account is the only way to overcome a certain number of aporias related to mathematical objectivity, especially psychologism and relativism. Resting upon the conceptual framework devised by Ernst Cassirer under the name «symbolic form», the article shows that the fictional and the scientific stance must be located along the same meaning continuum and that it is only the collective elaboration of individual representations which can account for cultural productions.     

La Sociologie de la Musique de Max Weber Après un Siècle

In this article, the author wonders how the research program sketched out by Weber in early 1910 appears to us today, but also how it would appear if we wished to return to it one hundred years later, making the necessary modifications while remaining true to its spirit. To this end, the author envisions each of the three fundamental components of Weber’s program successively (the particular evolution of Western music, Weber’s emphasis on musical “techniques” and the fact that for Weber, the motor of change is rationalisation) and places them in the context of Weber’s work and of our contemporary concerns.     

Histoire littéraire et mémoire nationale 1

The object of this article is to analyze the birth of literary history defined as the awareness of an evolving body of a nation's works and writers. Note is taken of the part played in the process by monarchical power, which saw in its role as guardian of the country's culture a means of asserting legitimacy, and attention is given to the evolution of the status of writers and their idea of their mission.

To illustrate his thesis, the author examines the publication in 1733 of the Histoire littéraire de la France by the Benedictine monks of Saint Maur. He defines its aims and its approach, demonstrates therein the emerging sense of a national culture and discusses the project's political implications. The commercial failure of the Histoire littéraire belies its overall importance, for the movement it effectively began led to the compulsory teaching of literary history in the place of rhetoric, to the establishment of a national pantheon of writers and to confrontations and concerns whose significance far surpassed the mere accumulation of a body of knowledge.