Book reviews

The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction. By Melvin Richter (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), vii + 204 pp., £ 35 cloth.

The Life of Adam Smith. By Ian Simpson Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995) xxviii + 495 pp. £25.00 cloth.

Martin Heidegger and the Holocaust. Edited by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1996) xiv + 271 pp. $60.00 cloth.

The Making of Portuguese Democracy. By Kenneth Maxwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 250 pp. £14.95/$19.95 paper.

Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815. By Ken Alder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xvi + 476 pp. $59.50/£45 cloth.

The Wars of Eduard Shevardnaze. By Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl and Melvin A. Goodman (Unversity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 1997), xxiii + 331 pp. $29.95/£26.95 cloth.

The Legacy of the French Revolution. Edited by Ralph C. Hancock and L. Gary Lambert (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), viii + 299 pp. $19.95 paper.

Suffering and the Remedy of Art. By Harold Schweizer (State University of New York Press, 1997), xii +211 pp. $17.95 paper.

Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre‐Revolutionary Baden. By Dagmar Herzog (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), x + 252 pp. $49.50/£42.50 cloth, $16.95/£13.95 paper.

In Search of Dreamtime: The Quest for the Origin of Religion. By Tomoko Masuzawa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 223 pp. $15.95 paper.

Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England. By Richard Adair (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), ix + 273 pp. £40 cloth.

Correlation and Regression Analysis: A Historian's Guide. By Thomas J. Archdeacon (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), xxi + 352 pp. $44.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Unified Theories of Cognition. By Allen Newell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), xiii + 549 pp. $19.95 paper.

Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution. By Peter Dear (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), xii + 290 pp. $60.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The case of Philip Melanchthon. By Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xv + 246 pp. $59.95/£35.00 cloth.

Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics. By Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, and Thomas E. Uebel (Cambrdige: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xii + 288 pp. $59.95/£35.00 cloth.

Aramis or The Love of Technology. By Bruno Latour. Translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), x + 314 pp. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Galileo on the World Systems: A New Abridged Translation and Guide. Translated and edited by Maurice A. Finocchiaro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), xi + 435 pp. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Europe's Economy Looks East: Implications for Germany and the European Union. Edited by Stanley W. Black (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xvi + 363 pp. £45.00/$ 64.95 cloth.

The Transformation of Capitalist Society. By Zellig S. Harris (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), xiii + 245 pp. £19.50 paper.

Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. By William Ian Miller (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997), xii + 407 pp. $17.95 paper.

From Virgil to Vietnam: The Founding Legend of Western Civilization. By Richard Waswo (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1997), xvi + 356 pp. n.p.g. cloth.

Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Edited by Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), xv + 291 pp. $16.95 paper.

Nature and the Idea of a Man‐Made World: An Investigation into the Evolutionary Roots of Form and Order in the Built Environment. By Norman Crowe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995 hardback, 1997 paper), 270 pp. $17.50 paper.

The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism and Degeneracy at the Fin de Siècle. By Kelly Hurley (Cambridge University Press, 1996), xii + 203 pp. £30.00 $49.95 cloth.

Russia's Constitutional Revolution: Legal Consciousness and the Transition to Democracy 1985–1996. By Robert B. Ahdieh (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), viii + 255 pp. £26.95 $30.00 cloth, £13.50 $14.95 paper.

Hunters and Collectors: the Antiquarian Imagination in Australia. By Tom Griffiths (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xiv + 416 pp. £45.00/$64.95 cloth.

Persecution, Extermination, Literature. By Sem Dresden, trans. by Henry G. Schogt (University of Toronto Press 1995), viii + 237 pp. N. America $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper, Europe $54 cloth, $2.55 paper.

Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. By Paul Rabinow (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996), vxii + 190 pp. $49.50 £40.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. By Charles S. Maier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xx + 441 pp. $29.95 cloth.

History: What & Why?: Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Perspectives. By Beverley Southgate (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), xii + 167 pp. £11.99 paper.

Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France. By Jeffrey Mehlman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xi + 262 pp. $59.95 cloth.

Launching Europe: An Ethnography of European Cooperation in Space Science. By Stacia E. Zabusky (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), xii + 257 pp. $17.95 paper/$49.50 cloth.

Elizabeth Gaskell: The Early Years. By John Chapple (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), xviii + 492 pp. £25.00 cloth.

Adam Ferguson: An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Edited by Fania Oz‐Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xxxv + 283 pp. £37.50/$54.95 cloth.

Greek Heroine Cults. By Jennifer Larson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) xv + 235 pp., £33.50 cloth, £16.00 paper.

Florence Nightingale: Letters from the Crimea 1854–1856. Edited by Sue M. Goldie (Oxford: Mandolin, 1997), xx + 326 pp. £9.00 paper.

A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence. By Jeffrey Burton Russell (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), xv + 220 pp. $24.95 cloth.

Heidegger's Silence. By Berel Lang (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), xi + 129 pp. $19.95 cloth.

Simon de Montfort. By J. R. Maddicott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xxiii + 404 pp., 14.95/ $24.95 paper.

Communities of Violence: Persecutions of Minorities in the Middle Ages. By David Nirenberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), viii + 301 pp. $29.95/£23.95, cloth.     

Australian Labor and the Socialist Tradition

Amidst the turmoil of the so‐called ‘death of socialism’, both in Australia and elsewhere, there has been renewed debate about what socialism should be taken to mean. This paper attempts to come to terms with the competing claims about, in particular, socialism within the Australian Labor Party and, in general, how better to understand the meaning of socialism. A comparison and contrast between the first principles of liberalism and socialism helps to illuminate some of the inadequacies of Marxist criticisms of parliamentary Labor. In addition, the argument is made that if we are willing to give greater emphasis to questions of means and ends, socialism can be seen to be part of Labor's historic mission. Far from being a defence of the Hawke administration, however, the case is made that there has been, under Hawke, a fundamental break with the democratic socialist tradition; that the difference is in kind, not degree.     

Tomorrow’s Country: Practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia

First Nations peoples are revitalising diverse cultural fire practices and knowledge. Institutional and societal recognition of these practices is growing. Yet there has been little academic research on these fire practices in south-east Australia, let alone research led by Aboriginal people. We are a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts focused on cultural fire management in the Victorian Loddon Mallee region. Using interviews and workshops, we facilitated knowledge sharing and discussion. In this paper, we describe three practice-oriented principles to develop and maintain collaborations across Aboriginal groups, researchers, and government in the Indigenous-led revitalisation of fire on Country: relationships (creating reciprocity and trust), Country (working with place and people), and power (acknowledging structures and values). Collaborations based on these principles will be unique to each temporal, social, cultural, and geographic context. Considering our findings, we acknowledge the challenges that exist and the opportunities that emerge to constructively hold space to grow genuinely collaborative research that creates change. We suggest that the principles we identify can be applied by anyone wanting to form genuine collaborations around the world as the need for social–ecological justice grows.     

Rural marketing in medieval Nottinghamshire

The data sources available for a study of medieval marketing are extremely limited. However, work in contemporary developing nations illustrates the existence of a detailed structure of periodic marketing. This paper draws cautious parallels between medieval Nottinghamshire and these contemporary patterns. It begins by reconstructing a possible set of markets for the fourteenth century; details of tolls and rents are mentioned in order to indicate the types of produce in circulation and some aspects of the practical functioning of the markets. The spatial and temporal characteristics of these markets are shown not to agree with either the trader or the consumer models of periodic marketing, although there is some evidence to suggest that markets taking place on the same day were generally not located in settlements that were close together. Taxation evidence suggests that a market did not always lead to a relative increase in the importance of a settlement. In addition markets appear to have been established by lords of widely varying social status. By the seventeenth century there had been a large reduction in the number of markets, and they had become essentially urban in character, primarily associated with the few main roads in the county.     

Does the Centre Hold? Testing Palma's Proposition (A Comment)

This Comment tests empirically the important proposition made by Palma in this journal (Development and Change, 2011) that deciles 5 to 9 of the income distribution across developing economies have been able to secure and defend a stable share (around 50 per cent) of the total available income, so that changes in income inequality are now a matter of struggle between the top 10 per cent and the bottom 40 per cent of the population, ranked by income. The author finds that the proposition does not hold: changes in top 10 per cent shares are matched by changes in the shares of both the other cohorts.