Book reviews

MIDDLE EAST AND FAR EAST, Allan S. Walker, M.D., Ch.M., F.R.A.C.P. Published by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Obtainable at all booksellers, price 35/‐.

UNESCO, HUMANISM AND EDUCATION IN EAST AND WEST — Published in 1953 by the United Nations. 224 pages.

THE ALTERNATIVE (a dynamic approach to our relations with Asia). By John Burton, B.A., B.Ec., Ph.D., Sydney. Morgans Publications, 1954. PP. 116.

TING HSIEN — A North China Rural Community: By Sidney D. Gamble (Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1954). U.S. $6.50.

ZWISCHEN BEFREIUNG UND FREIHEIT. DER SONDERFALL OSTERREICH, by Karl Gruber. Verlag Ullstein. Wien, 1953.

AMERICAN ECONOMIC POLICY TOWARDS THE PHILIPPINES: By Shirley Jenkins — With an introduction by Claude A. Buss. Published under the auspices of the American Institute of Pacific Relations by Stanford University Press, California, 1954. P. 181.

THE ORIGINS OF PRUSSIA: By F. L. Carsten—Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1954. 309 pp., 1 map. (55/6 sterling).     

The Reception of Hayden White

Evaluation of the influence of Hayden White on the theory of history ismade difficult by his preference for the essay form, valued for its experimental character, and by the need to find comparable data. A quantitative study of citations of his work in English and foreign-language journals, 1973–1993, reveals that although historians were prominent among early readers of Metahistory , few historical journals reviewed White'stwo subsequent collections of essays and few historians—except inGermany—cited them. Those historians who did tended still to cite Metahistory and often the parts of it devoted specifically to nineteenth-century historians.
Literary critics, on the other hand, were relatively late to discover White, but during the "narrative turn" of the 1970s and 1980s his work was important for students of the novel and the theater. Recognition of it was especially marked in Spanish-speaking countries and in Germany.
As a result, salient themes of White's later work—the ideological andpolitical import of narrativization, the "historical sublime," and writing in the "middle voice"—have largely gone unremarked by historians and philosophers. Both these groups have tended to be irritated by White's bracketing of questions of historical epistemology; some have accused him of effacing the line between fiction and history, while White's numerous literary readers have generally applauded his tendencies in thisdirection. White however has consistently maintained that there is a difference, although not the one conventionally postulated. His exploration of writing in the "middle voice" brings his work full circle, in that it promises a "modernist" realism appropriate for representing the "sublime" events of our century.     

Structure and Agency in the Holocaust: Daniel J. Goldhagen and His Critics

A striking aspect of the so-called "Goldhagen debate" hasbeen the bifurcated reception Hitler's Willing Executioners hasreceived: the enthusiastic welcome of journalists and the public was as warm as the impatientdismissal of most historians was cool. This article seeks to transcend the current impasse byanalyzing the underlying issues of Holocaust research at stake here. It argues that a "deepstructure" necessarily characterizes the historiography of the Holocaust, comprising atension between its positioning in "univeralism" and"particularism" narratives. While the former conceptualizes the Holocaust as anabstract human tragedy and explains its occurrence in terms of processes common to modernsocieties, the latter casts its analysis in ethnic and national categories: the Holocaust as anexclusively German and Jewish affair. These narratives possess important implications for thebalance of structure and human agency in the explanation of the Holocaust: where theuniversalism narrative emphasizes the role of impersonal structures in mediating human action,the particularism narrative highlights the agency of human actors. Although historical accountsusually combine these narratives, recent research on the Holocaust tends in the universalistdirection, and this bears on the sensitive issue of responsibility for the Holocaust byproblematizing the common-sense notion of the perpetrators' intention and responsibility.Goldhagen is responding to this trend, but by retreating to the particularism narrative andemploying an inadequate definition of intention, he fails to move the debate forward. It is time torethink the concept of intention in relation to events like the Holocaust.     

Essentialism and Historicism in Danto's Philosophy of Art

Arthur C. Danto has long defended essentialism in the philosophy of art, yet he has been interpreted by many as a historicist. This essentialism/historicism conflict in the interpretation of his work reflects the same conflict both within his thought and, more importantly, within modern art itself. Danto's strategy for resolving this conflict involves, among other things, a Bildungsroman of modern art failing to discover its essence, an essentialist definition of art provided by philosophy which is indemnified against history, and a thesis about the end of art once it has been defined. Is this strategy successful, or does it result, as I argue, in a philosophical disenfranchisement of art of precisely the type that Danto himself has criticized?     

The Impact of U.S. Airline Deregulation on Airport Traffic Patterns

This paper surveys changes in the U.S. National Airway System since the 1960s. The most appropriate measures for summarizing air traffic distributions at airports are investigated, with the Gini Index of Concentration being used extensively to analyze U.S. airport traffic patterns over a twenty-four-year period. The properties of the Gini index and other measures are compared and discussed in detail in the context of analyzing air traffic distributions. It is shown how concentration in the traffic patterns at the larger airports was at a high level prior to deregulation, but since 1978, the patterns have gradually become even more concentrated.     

Radiocarbon Chronology of the Siberian Paleolithic

We have compiled 462 C-14 determinations for 120 Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites from Siberia and the Russian Far East. The Mousterian sites are dated to ca. 46,000–28,500 BP. The Middle–Upper Paleolithic transition dates to ca. 43,300–28,500 BP. Although there are a few earlier sites, most of the Upper Paleolithic sites are dated to the time interval between ca. 34,000 BP and 10,000 BP. The earlier Upper Paleolithic stage is characterized by macroblade technology and is radiocarbon-dated to ca. 34,000–20,000 BP. The earliest microblade technology occurs in the late stage of the Upper Paleolithic, dated to ca. 23,000–20,000 BP, but the majority of microblade sites is dated to ca. 20,000–11,000 BP. The Final Paleolithic (Mesolithic) sites date to ca. 12,000–6000 BP. At ca. 13,000–11,000 BP, the earliest Neolithic appeared in both the Russian Far East (Amur River basin) and the Transbaikal. The Paleolithic–Neolithic transition occurred ca. 13,000–6000 BP.     

Southwest Arabia During the Holocene: Recent Archaeological Developments

Recent fieldwork has considerably increased our knowledge of early Holocene settlement in Southwest Arabia. Neolithic settlement occurred within an environmental context of increased monsoonal moisture that continued during the mid-Holocene. A now well-attested Bronze Age exemplified by village- and town-scale settlements occupied by sedentary farmers developed toward the end of the mid-Holocene moist interval. The high plateau of Yemen was an early focus for the development of Bronze Age complex society, the economy of which relied upon terraced rain-fed and runoff agriculture. On the fringes of the Arabian desert, the precursors of the Sabaean literate civilization have been traced back to between 3600 and 2800 B.P., and even earlier, so that a virtually continuous archaeological record can now be described for parts of Yemen. In contrast to the highlands these societies relied upon food production from large-scale irrigation systems dependent upon capricious wadi floods. Bronze Age settlement, while showing some links with the southern Levant, now shows equal or stronger linkages with the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea. Although some regions of Yemen show breaks in occupation, others show continuity into the Sabaean period when a series of major towns grew up in response to the incense trade with the north. It is now clear that these civilizations grew up on the foundations of earlier Bronze Age complex societies.