Book reviews

RODERICK STACKELBERG. Idealism Debased: From Völkisch Ideology to National Socialism. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1981. Pp. XIII, 202, 3 plates. $18 (US). Reviewed by Lawrence D. Stokes

JEROME CH'EN. China and the West: Society and Culture 1815–1937. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Pp. 488. $25.90 (Can.) Reviewed by David P. Barrett

FREDERICK W. MARKS ill. Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. Pp. xiv, 247. $15.00 (US). Reviewed by Raymond A. Esthus

CRAIG L. SYMONDS. Navalists and Antinavalists: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785–1827. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980. Pp. 252. $17.50 (US). Reviewed by Reginald C. Stuart

BERNARD RANSOM, Connolly's Marxism, London: Pluto, 1980. Pp. 126. Reviewed by Desmond Bowen

THOMAS A. BAILEY and PAUL B. RYAN, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared War. London: Collier Macmillan, 1979. Pp. 302. £7.45. Reviewed by Ronald W. Pruessen

M.A. HICKS, False, Fleeting, Perjur'd Clarence; George, Duke of Clarence, 1449–1478. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, and Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Humanities Press, 1980. Pp. 270. $22.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert Tittler

MURIEL ATKIN, Russia and Iran, 1780–1828. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980. Pp. xii, 216. $20 (US). Reviewed by M.E. Yapp

J.K. FEDOROWICZ. England's Baltic Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century: A Study in Anglo-Polish Commerical Diplomacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Pp. XIII, 334. $35 (US). Reviewed by David S. Macmillan

MICHAEL CROWDER. Colonial West Africa: Collected Essays. London: Frank Cass, 1978. Pp. 341. $28.50 (US). Reviewed by John Flint

PETER GRAF KIELMANSEGG. Deutschland und der erste Weltkrieg. 2. Auflage. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980. Pp. XI, 755. Reviewed by Henry Cord Meyer

PIOTR S. WANDYCZ. The United States and Poland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pp. XVI, 465. $28.50 (US). Reviewed by Stanislaw Bobr-Tylingo

FREDERICK COOPER. From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Colonial Kenya, 1890–7925. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Pp. xi, 328. $25 (US). Reviewed by Mike Mason

DONALD E. QUELLER. Medieval Diplomacy and the Fourth Crusade. London: Variorum Reprints, 1980. Pp. 322. £22. Reviewed by Bernice M. Kacznski

CHRISTINE MOSS HELMS. The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia: Evolution of Political Identity. London: Croom Helm, &; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Pp. 313. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Ray L. Cleveland

CHRISTOPHER H.D. HOWARD, editor. The Diary of Edward Goschen, 1900–1914. London: Royal Historical Society (Camden Fourth Series, Vol. 25), 1980. Pp. xn, 315. £10. Reviewed by Briton C. Busch     

New Zealand parents' understandings of the intergenerational decline in children's independent outdoor play and active travel

Children's independent mobility and physical activity levels are declining in Western countries. In the past 20 years New Zealand children's active travel (walking and cycling) has dropped on average from 130 to 72 minutes per week, and those travelling by car to school have increased from 31% to 58%. This paper describes parents' understandings of why 9–11-year-old primary school children in suburban Auckland are less likely to walk to school and play unsupervised outdoors than they were as children. Data gathered in focus groups show understandings range from proximate neighbourhood explanations to downstream impacts of a neoliberal policy context.     

‘It was a bit like the passover’: recollections of family mealtimes during twentieth century Irish childhoods

The article presents an in-depth qualitative analysis of experiences of childhood mealtimes amongst three cohorts of Irish people in different historical periods during the twentieth century. By analysing family mealtimes during respondents' childhoods, the article sheds light on change and continuity to family practices throughout twentieth century Ireland. The analysis shows that patterns of family eating respond to changes in the economy and employment patterns, technological innovation, as well as to shifting family arrangements and structures. But the popular idea that the family meal is in terminal decline is disputed: tendencies towards fragmentation of family mealtimes often meet counter-tendencies. These accounts are important as they problematize normative assumptions about the pivotal role shared family meals play in supporting family life.     

Russian Investment in the Commonwealth of Independent States

The paper by three RAND Corporation specialists analyzes the extent, rationale, and role of Russian investment in other member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Based on a unique, comprehensive survey, it evaluates differences between Russian and Western investors—in particular, the effects of Russian business practices in promoting or retarding reforms directed at expanding market activities, improving governance, and reducing corruption. The authors also assess the extent of Russian government involvement in investment decisions and explore whether that government has an operational agenda for encouraging investment in other countries of the CIS. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F21, F23, O18. 4 figures, 4 tables, 37 references, 2 appendices.     

历史与人的意志支配的实践

针对人类历史是不以人的意志为转移的合乎规律的客观发展过程的传统见解,本文提出正是人的意志支配下的对象性实践活动创造和改变了实际历史进程.历史发展的"合力论"不能成立.观察了各种理论派别对人类历史的基本理解,揭示辩证唯心主义、实证主义、人文主义解释学、传统历史唯物主义殊途同归,都将人类历史归结为精神的发展.只有马克思的"新唯物主义"的实践哲学揭示了实际历史过程的实践本质,启迪历史学朝着科学认知的实践的方向发展.     

Choosing Health? Exploring Children's Eating Practices at Home and at School

Abstract:  This paper considers the influences on children's eating habits in both school and home spaces in the UK. Since 2002 the UK government has been committed to halting the increase in child obesity rates, and has sanctioned particular parental and school based practices as more "healthy" than others. This study examines this through critically questioning, in particular, the classed discourses written into health education advice and advocates a new way of thinking about health education messages. Based on qualitative research with children from one secondary school and with eight families in the North of England the paper reveals that while parents and children make decisions about their lives with reference to dominant discourses about ideal "healthy" family eating practices, their ability to realise these practices is limited in numerous ways. Moreover, the influences on children's eating habits in both home and school spaces are intricately interrelated and children's practices are clearly influenced by the spaces they inhabit. Their decisions involve balancing health education knowledge with a range of other knowledges that are bound up in the socio-spatial relations of their everyday lives. A holistic approach to understanding children's eating habits therefore requires a critical understanding of class background, parental influences and contemporary parenting practices as well as the microgeographical relations found in the school dining room.     

The emerging of "female citizen": The subject identity of modern Chinese women through literary practices

The construction of “citizen-state” relations in the intellectual world of modern China and the establishment of individual citizenship in political discourse have opened up a political and discourse sphere for modern women to strive for new identities, wherein some intellectually advanced women have managed to establish their individual identity as “female citizen” by carrying the debate on the relationship between women and the state with regard to their rights and responsibilities, and on the relationship between gender role and citizenship. Though the idea of “female citizen” was not provided with a political theory of practical significance, the subject identity of women, however, was repeatedly spoken about and strengthened in brand-new literary practices, resulting in a dynamic discourse of “female citizen”; in the meantime, disagreements concerning the concepts of “female rights,” “civil rights,” and “natural rights” have all helped create significant tension inside the related discourse sphere.     

A resampling approach to gender relations: the Rebešovice cemetery

Early Bronze Age society in Central Europe is often depicted as a society dominated by males. It is suggested that archaeological evidence is not always in agreement with this view. This study reports the analysis of mortuary variability at the Early Bronze cemetery Rebešovice in Moravia (Czech Republic) that uses computer-intensive resampling techniques. The results indicate that there are only minor differences in the mortuary treatment of females and males. There is neither a qualitative restriction of body treatment and objects buried with males, nor a quantitative emphasis on burials of males. In fact, burials of females are equipped with a higher number of bronze artifacts. Funerals of females were at least as significant social events as the funerals of males. We argue that the model of a male dominated community that used this cemetery is unwarranted. These findings do not refute the existence of gender-specific activities and roles that may be valued differently, but instead suggest that both females and males had access to resources from which they could draw power.     

‘Just looking’: domestic workers' consumption practices and a latent geography of Beijing

The post-socialist Chinese city has been an important site to explore the formation of modernity in its everyday shape and manifestations. A common way of understanding urban experiences is through the prism of consumption. Rural migrants in the city cannot compare with urban residents in terms of their consumption level, but they are seen to be equally enthusiastic in partaking in consumption, and their identities are also believed to be (re)shaped by consumption practices. Drawing on several years' extensive ethnographic research in Beijing, this article suggests that these scenarios cannot adequately account for the diversity and complexity of rural migrants' experience in the consuming city. In this article, I put forward a methodological argument for considering the lived spatiality of ethnographic subjects in conceiving and considering consumption. Then, through an investigation of how migrant domestic workers use urban spaces, I consider the ‘dialectic of freedom and constraint’ which marks their agency and their individual choices and decisions. Finally, I explore the social production of space by considering migrant domestic workers' ‘subversive’ behaviours within rather than in opposition to the capitalist commercial logic and space. This discussion demonstrates that consumption practices are at the same time spatial practices, and despite the many obstacles and constraints, migrant domestic workers are actively availing themselves of the opportunities that the city has to offer. This creative process is crucial if we are to gain a new and more nuanced understanding of consumption as a social practice. I further argue that it is also a process by which rural migrants hold on to their sense of dignity and self-respect in an environment of exclusion and discrimination.     

The Mixed Potential of Salvage Commoning: Crisis and Commoning Practices in Washington,DC and New York City

This paper considers how and to what ends commoning practices can take shape in direct response to the spectres and/or realities of eroding resources (we focus especially on public resources) within iterations of what we term “salvage commoning”. We show how, in such contexts, commoning practices may potentially alleviate but also potentially (re)produce inequities, exclusions, and resource retractions. To illustrate, we draw upon two examples: parent-teacher organisations in Washington, DC, and block associations in New York City. In both instances, people have cooperatively built new relations, coordinated voluntary labour, and stewarded resources in connection with specific commons (public schools and urban spaces) threatened by disinvestment and crisis. We show how troubling alignments and exclusions can emerge under these conditions, suggesting critical questions about the starkly mixed potential of salvage commoning—especially in the face of ongoing and emerging crises in which such orientations are likely to become increasingly prevalent.