Reviews and book notes

Henderson, Paul, Parliament and Politics in Australia, Heinemann Educational Australia, Melbourne, 1978, pp. 260 + vii. $5.95.

Charles P. Ridley, China's Scientific Policies: Implications for International Cooperation, AEI—Hoover Policy Studies 1976, pp. 92. US$3.00.

Peter Wilenski, The Delivery of Health Services in the: People's Republic of China, International Development Research Centre, published ANU Press 1977, pp. 59. $4.50.

Stephen Andors, China's Industrial Revolution, New York, Pantheon Books; London, Martin Robertson & Co., 1977.

Taketsugu Tsurutani, Political Change in Japan, New York, Longman (aDavid McKay), 1977. £12.50 cloth, $6.95 paper.

P. R. Chippendale and Paula V. Wilkes, Accountability in Education, University of Queensland Press, 1977, pp. 205. $13.50.

G. Duncan (ed.), Critical Essays in Australian Politics, Melbourne, Edward Arnold, 1978, pp. 252. $11.50.

P. J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation, Croom Helm Ltd., August, 1978. $32.95.

Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945, Vol. II, Intellect, Taste and Anxiety, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977.

David Kemp, Society and Electoral Behaviour in Australia, St Lucia, Queensland University Press, 1978.

Colin Tatz, Race Politics in Australia; Aborigines Politics and Law, Armidale, The University of New England Publishing Unit, 1979, pp. vi + 118. $1.75 paper.     

Tangible belonging and national indifference: Being German in interwar Hungary1

Building on arguments from my book Tangible Belonging: Negotiating Germanness in Twentieth-Century Hungary, this article examines the sense of ‘being German’ in Hungarian-German villages in interwar Hungary. The basic argument is that rural dwellers possessed a kind of tangible belonging (a tangible sense of being German, in this case) defined by the immediate world around them and that this tangible belonging was continually in negotiations with other constituencies trying to define Germanness, such as Reich Germans, Hungarian-German leaders, and the Hungarian state as well as other Hungarians. This article also engages with the concept of national indifference, which has become a very common catchphrase in explanations concerning belonging in East Central Europe, especially in borderland regions and on the margins of states.     

Afrikaner Nationalism in Action: F. C. Erasmus and South Africa's Defence Forces 1948–1959

Abstract. F. C. Erasmus became South Africa's defence minister in 1948 after two decades as the leading political organiser for the National Party. Although an architect of the Nationalists' post‐war victory, he was not considered a minister of the first rank. Erasmus initiated a process of ridding the defence force of officers who he believed were associated with the government of the Anglophile Jan Smuts and replacing them with party supporters. As a result, the military often lost experienced and talented officers, many with combat exposure. Erasmus felt that the armed services had been too British in ethos and appearance. He inaugurated tighter regulations on bilingualism, introduced Boer rank titles, launched new uniforms and original medals and decorations, to the acclaim of the Afrikaner Volk. His purpose was to have a defence force which was uniquely ‘South African’.     

Rural Opportunities: Minimalist Policy and Community-Based Experimentation

Rural America's experiences with federal policies provide lessons on both the benefits and liabilities of minimalist policy attention and community-based policy experimentation. Prior to the New Deal federal rural policies promoted incentives to settle vast territories, subsidize private development of internal market structures, and invest in the benefits of higher education. The New Deal redirected rural policies to more narrow foci on the farm economic and environmental crises. These new, more centralized policies were built upon the rapid expansion of the Department of Agriculture into the first modern federal bureaucracy, politically legitimized on the basis of community-based policy experimentation. The seemingly unintended consequence of these emergency efforts to rescue farming was the marginalization of most non-farm policy concerns. The resulting minimalist federal approach to rural America was due to the absence of a unified national constituency for rural concerns. Understanding rural America's inadvertent experimentation in minimalist policy attention and in community-based policy structures can inform current policy initiatives to decentralize federal authority.