The Impact of Innovations on Growth and Stagnation Regions in Poland

The goal of this article is to identify the impact of innovations on growth and stagnation regions in Poland. The research procedure consists of two stages. At stage one, Polish administrative units (voivodeships) were arranged on a scale of economically robust and weak regions following data clustering, indicators organized in line with the following aspects of social and economic growth: (1) population and settlement, (2) the economy structure and the labour market, (3) the technical infrastructure and spatial accessibility and (4) the financial situation and level of affluence. Stage two includes identification of the relation between the regional diversification and the distribution of growth and stagnation regions in Poland which is based on canonical correlation.     

Landscapes of Desire: Parks, Colonialism, and Identity in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland

Ireland’s Victorian and Edwardian public parks were landscapes in which normative models of class, gender, and colonial identities were constructed. This paper will explore how the materiality of these landscapes—their drinking fountains, railings, bandstands, and benches—facilitated forms of social practice that underpinned an ideology of improvement, creating regulated spaces of display and consumption in which the natural world and the urban populace could be objectified, domesticated and their moral worth evaluated. Yet, parks have always been sites of transgression so that from their earliest years, vandalism and other forms of subversive behavior created alternative narratives of identity.     

The “Ideological Offensive” in Education: the Portrayal of the United States in Secondary Curricula and Textbooks in Poland during the Stalinist Period (1948–1956)

During the period of the People’s Republic of Poland (1952–1989), schools played a decisive role in transmitting the official ideology of the ruling Communist regime and cultivating young supporters. One of the most important aspects of indoctrination was constructing in students’ hearts and minds a particular image and disposition towards the United States. While existing research has examined the high level of political propaganda in the content of textbooks and curricula during the Communist period in Poland, no one has specifically analysed how these materials depicted the United States during the critical Stalinist years (1948–1956). Analysis of official curricula and textbooks for civics and history courses in secondary schools indicates that over this period, school materials increasingly depicted the United States as ‘predatory,’ ‘imperialist,’ and ‘exploitative.’ This study illustrates how curricular materials aligned with the foreign policy objectives of the Polish United Workers’ Party and the Soviet Union.     

Border Anxiety in Palestine–Israel

In this paper, I deal with representations of Palestinian women and their experiences with Israeli national security. In particular I explore how the political philosophy of Agamben and feminist psychoanalytic ideas of “abjection” could assist in understanding the nature and flexibility of the power relationships between Palestinian women and the Israeli state. I pay specific attention to moments when women carry out suicide attacks or when pregnant women in labour are forced to give birth at the checkpoint. I argue that, from a Western perspective, pregnant and exploding women's leaky bodily boundary embodies Israeli fears about the leakiness of the border between Israel and Palestine, fears which necessitated the construction of a so‐called “security fence” in order to create a hermetic border. As such, I emphasize women's capacity to produce, heighten and dissolve boundaries, bodily and political, thereby advancing a radically different kind of political geography.     

Recent Trends in Theorizing Prehispanic Mesoamerican Economies

Theoretical frames for modeling prehispanic Mesoamerican economies have been informed mostly by political economy or agency approaches. Political economy models examine the ways in which power is constructed and exercised through the manipulation of material transfers, mainly production and distribution. Research along these lines emphasizes regional redistribution, wealth and staple finance, debt and reciprocity, and regional integration through core/periphery relations. Agency models, on the other hand, explore the social aspects of manufacture, circulation, and consumption to infer the processes by which power is negotiated and contested. Work using this framework focuses on the manner by which meaning and value are assigned to, and become fixed in, social valuables, as well as the moral and emotional dimensions of allocation and consumption. Political economy and agency approaches are converging in Mesoamerican research to forge a new, hybrid theoretical construct, “ritual economy,” which strikes a balance between formalist and substantivist views by considering the ways that belief systems articulate with economic systems in the management of meanings and the shaping of interpretations.     

Investigating Activity Patterns In Prehispanic Plazas: Weak Acid‐Extraction ICP–AES Analysis of Anthrosols at Classic Period El Coyote,Northwestern Honduras

Weak acid‐extraction ICP–AES analysis was performed to obtain multi‐elemental characterizations of anthropogenic sediments from plaza spaces that no longer contain artefacts and adjacent trash deposits at the prehispanic site of El Coyote in northwestern Honduras. Multivariate quantitative assessments of the anthrosol chemical data, along with associated inventories of midden materials, are examined to derive signatures for activity areas and refuse dumps that can be linked across portions of the site. The findings of this study permit the reconstruction of activity patterns in the site's main plaza and in its environs. This has important implications for understanding the relationship among ritual practice, craft production and political economy during the Late and Terminal Classic periods, c. ad 600–1000.     

Book reviews

CHINA

BOB HODGE and KAM LOUIE. The Politics of Chinese Language and Culture: the Art of Reading Dragons. London: Routledge, 1998. A$150.00, hardcover; A$52.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

LEWIS R. LANCASTER and RICHARD K. PAYNE (eds). Religion and Society in Contemporary Korea. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1997. 282 pp. Preface, index. $US20.00, paper.

DOH C. SHIN. Mass Politics and Culture in Democratizing Korea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. A$90.00, hardcover; A$34.95, paper.

GEIR HELGESEN. Democracy and Authority in Korea: the Cultural Dimension in Korean Politics. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998. £40.00, hardcover.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

J. E. LLEWELLYN. The Legacy of Women's Uplift in India. Contemporary Women Leaders in the Arya Samaj. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998. 224 pp. Rs325, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

R. E. ELSON. The End of the Peasantry in Southeast Asia: a Social and Economic History of Peasant Livelihood, 1800‐1990s. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1997. xxvii, 335 pp. Tables, abbreviations, glossary, index. A$49.95, paper.

GENERAL ASIA

JAMES W. MORLEY (ed). Driven by Growth: political Change in the Asia-Pacific Region. Revised Edition. Armonk, New York; London, England: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. 393 pp. Preface, tables, figures, bibliography, index. US$24.95, paper.     

Beads from a mediaeval pilgrim centre: Chemical composition and provenance of glass from Banganarti,Nubia, Sudan

Christian Nubia was a region with intensive transcultural connections that are visible through the understudied overseas glass bead imports found there. This paper presents the results of an analysis of 20 glass beads from Banganarti, a Christian pilgrim site active during the Makuria kingdom (mid-sixth to 14th centuries CE). Compositional analyses using laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) have identified glass belonging to a number of broad compositional groups. Two beads were made of mineral soda-lime glass, dated before the mid-ninth century CE. Numerous beads were made from plant ash-soda-lime glass associated with “Mesopotamian” production dated between the eighth and 10th centuries CE. Lead-soda-silica glass has parallels in the ninth–10th centuries glass found in Africa and Europe. One plant ash-soda-lime bead was of eastern Mediterranean origin dated after the 10th century CE. Results of this study provide new evidence for provenance and chronology of glass beads available in the mediaeval Northeast Africa as well as contribute new data to the research on the pilgrim and/or trade routes of that time.     

Evolution and a free society: Spencer,Kropotkin and popper

Despite the negative connotations often associated with ‘Social Darwinism’, theorists representing a wide range of political opinion have drawn on Darwinian ideas to support their own positions. An examination of the views of Spencer, Kropotkin and Popper, as representatives of the Right, the Left and the Centre, provides an interesting basis for a consideration of the application of Darwin's thesis to social and political life. Although these theorists develop very different visions of the good society, they are all Darwinists, and they all use an evolutionary model to support their visions of a free society. A comparison between their different use and interpretation of Darwinism, and a critical evaluation of their positions, displays the significance of Darwinism as well as identifying some of the major difficulties which arise in the attempt to apply this perspective to a consideration of political issues.