Book reviews

PARTY LEADERSHIP AND REVOLUTIONARY POWER IN CHINA. John Wilson Lewis (ed.) Cambridge University Press, 1970. viii, 422 pp. 25s.

CONFLICT ANALYSIS. Michael Nicholson. English Universities Press, 1971. viii, 168 pp. £1.45 (29s.).

PHILIPPINE NATIONALISM. EXTERNAL CHALLENGE AND FILIPINO RESPONSE, 1565–1946. Usha Mahajani. University of Queensland Press, 1970. xv, 530 pp. $12.00.

THE SIEGE OF THE PEKING LEGATIONS: A DIARY. Lancelot Giles. With introduction: CHINESE ANTI‐FOREIGNISM AND THE BOXER UPRISING. L. R. Marchant (ed.). University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, Western Australia, 1970. xxvii, 212 pp. $9.60.

MICROSTATES AND MICRONESIA: PROBLEMS OF AMERICA'S PACIFIC ISLANDS AND OTHER MINUTE TERRITORIES. Stanley A. de Smith. New York University Press, 1970. 193 pp. $7.50.

NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA: FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1970s. Bruce Brown (ed.). Price Milbum, Wellington, for the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1970. 91 pp. $1.50.

LANG AND SOCIALISM. Robert Cooksey. Australian National University Press, 1970. xiii, 96 pp. $2.50.

THE ARMY IN PAPUA‐NEW GUINEA. Robert J. O'Neill. Australian National University Press, 1970. 31 pp. $1.50.

A HISTORY OF MALAYA. J. Kennedy. Macmillan Student Editions, London, 1970. xi, 364 pp. $3.40.

LENIN'S CHILDHOOD. Isaac Deutscher. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1970. 67 pp. $4.25 hard cover.

SELECTED LETTERS OF HUBERT MURRAY. Francis West (ed.). Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1970. 255 pp. $6.50.     

From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict: the institutional bases for Sri Lanka's separatist war1

Abstract. Beginning in the mid‐1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently argues that institutional decay, which was produced by the dialectic between majority rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 people over the past twenty years. It also analyses the influence informal societal pressures exerted on formal state institutions and how this contributed to institutional decay. Evaluating the relations that ensued between social organisations and the Sri Lankan state shows how institutions can prescribe actions and fashion motives even as it will make clear how the island's varied institutions generated a deadly political dynamic that eventually unleashed the ongoing civil war.     

Fenced In: Intimacy and Mobility in Highlands Papua New Guinea

This paper is organised around the analysis of an ‘event’; a truck trip from Kwima, a Maring speaking settlement in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, to Banz in the Wahgi Valley and an evening spent on the road. The event forms a standpoint from which to assess the impact of the decline of civic space, and faltering legacy of colonial governmentality, in the Jimi since 1980. I describe the emergence of new forms of mobility based around the nexus between local forms of business and trucks. In particular I focus on new and anxious forms of masculine inside relationships, understood as a transformation of a habitus of intimacy, round which such mobility is built. I argue that this transformation should be understood in terms of the dialectical relationship between business as an expansive profit oriented project on the one hand, and its anchoring in clan defined space on the other. At the same time the event provides a vantage point to reflect on the nature of long‐term fieldwork, the methodological significance of the subjectivity of the ethnographer, and the nature of ethnographic error.     

Mesoamerican Stingless Beekeeping

Stingless beekeeping is practiced throughout Mexico and Central America, from northwestern Mexico to the Azuero Peninsula in western Panama. Within this area three distinct beekeeping regions emerge. On the Yucatan Peninsula beekeeping is an essential component in the agricultural and cultural heritage, technically sophisticated and frequently practiced, Beyond the Yucatan Peninsula and corresponding roughly with the" limits of ancient Mesoamerican civilization, stingless beekeeping occurs but it is of lesser significance in aboriginal and mestizo agriculture and culture, unsophisticated in practice and only occasionally encountered. In areas to the north and south of ancient Mesoamenca's cultural boundaries, stingless beekeeping is of little agricultural or cultural importance, simple in its application and rarely practiced. This study concludes that stingless beekeeping in the New World originated among the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula and diffused to other indigenous groups within Mesoamertca, and later in a much diluted form to groups beyond Mesoamerica.     

Proto-Israelite Mythopoeics. A Perspective from Neuroscience on the Book of Joshua

This article contends that the Deuteronomic‐1 legend of the book of Joshua was formed into its mythical cyclical form through a process of oral transmission. As the oral stories told about an original source event were transformed into a community story it began to take on a liturgical form. This article explains the neuropsychological aspects of this natural process and also highlights how the cultural shift in the 12th century B.C.E. preserved the form of the Deuteronomic‐1 legend.