Book reviews

Women in the Muslim World. Edited by Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978. 698 pp. $30.00.

Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Reform under the Qajars: 1858–1896. By Shaul Bakhash. London: Ithaca Press (St. Anthony's Middle East Monographs, No. 8), 1978. £7.50.

Iran: The Illusion of power. By Robert Graham. London: Croom Helm, 1978. 228 pp. £7.95.

An Anthology of Modern Persian Poetry. Selected and translated with an introduction by Ahmad Karimi‐Hakkak. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1978 (Bibliotheca Persica: Modern Persian Literature Series, Number 1), xvii + 203 pp. $15.

Entrepreneurs of Iran. By Mohammad Reza Vaghefi. Palo Alto, Calif.: The Altoan Press, 1976. 196pp.     

THE ACTUAL AND PERCEIVED EFFECTS OF FLOODPLAIN LAND-USE REGULATIONS ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY VALUES IN LONDON, ONTARIO

The impacts associated with floodplain management adjustments should be understood. This paper addresses this need by describing the perceived and actual impacts floodplain regulations have had on residential land values in a portion of London, Ontario. The institutional arrangements for floodplain regulation and the actual practice of regulation in the City of London for the period 1978–1989 are described. Actual impacts on land values were determined through use of a geographical matching technique based on data obtained from mls sources and permit data available at the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority office. Perceptual data were acquired from a questionnaire survey of floodplain landowners. Findings indicate that most residents perceived that no impact on land values was associated with floodplain regulations. This view was supported by the analysis of actual home transactions     

Women,Pigs, God and Evolution: Social and Economic Change Among Kubo People of Papua New Guinea

This paper depicts connections and interactions between several apparently disparate themes of change observed in recent years at a village in the interior lowlands of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Changes in patterns of association between men and women can be traced, in the first instance, to altered management practices necessitated by intensified pig production. That intensification, in turn, reflects the growing importance of money in the local economy, a shift which, through its predication on recognising the commensurability of differences, has ramifications far beyond the economics of pig production. An earlier emphasis on equivalence in exchanges has been replaced by a recognition of substitutability, with a consequent reification of categories at the expense of individuality. This trend has been reinforced by the influence of a new Christian cult that, in emphasising the distinction between men and women, has reified gender categories as a basis for structuring social action. The declining association between men and women which emerged as an adaptive response to changing economic realities has thus become incorporated as a structural transformation in Kubo social life.     

Intensification and Social Complexity in the Interior Lowlands of Papua New Guinea: A Comparison of Bedamuni and Kubo

Kubo and Bedamuni are linguistically, culturally, and technologically related societies of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. They occupy similar environments and have access to essentially the same resources. They differ in population density (Kubo 0.4 people/km², Bedamuni 7/km²), subsistence orientation (Kubo are hunter-gatherer-like, Bedamuni are farmers who hunt) and intensification of plant food production (Kubo lower, Bedamuni higher). Relative to Kubo, Bedamuni are shown to exhibit increased differentiation within and between production units, greater integration within and between residential units, and heightened forms of evaluation within and between cultural systems. Each of these general characteristics is illustrated by particulars that refer, for example, to role differentiation, rights of access to land and resources, dispute resolution, mechanisms of inter-community cohesion, and exegesis with respect to subsistence practices and cultural identity. In turn, differences between the two societies in terms of these general characteristics sustain an interpretation that Bedamuni is a socially more complex society than Kubo. The awkward notion of complexity is examined; it is understood to comprise two independent dimensions—the “involvement of parts” (which is itself multidimensional) and the “individuation of form.” The latter dimension has received too little attention in discussion and definitions of complexity.     

From operculum to bead: Production of pearls from opercular bones of Cyprinus carpio in the Romanian Eneolithic

Significant amounts of opercular bones from Cyprinus carpio, used to manufacture circular pearls for adornments, were found from the Romanian Eneolithic, associated with the Gumelnita culture. The origins of this raw material are local: the carp was an important food resource for the communities located close to the River Danube. An experimental program was undertaken to obtain replicas of pearls of C. carpio, to compare with the archaeological pieces, in order to identify an a chain of manufacture resulting in the finished pieces. The study of the adornments represents an inexhaustible source of reflection because, through them we can identify aspects of the human groups' symbolical behaviour, and socio-economical aspects of these communities' evolution. In this case they suggest that the aquatic world, with its resources, had an important position in the spiritual life of these communities.