Book reviews

Derek McDougall, Harold D. Lasswell and the Study of International Relations. University Press of America, Lanham, USA, 1984, pp.370. $16.50.

John W. Burton, Global Conflict: The Domestic Sources of International Crisis. Wheatsheaf Books, UK, 1984, pp.194. $54.00.

K.J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory. Allen and Unwin, Boston and Sydney, 1985. pp.165. $39.95.

Hedley Bull (ed.), Intervention in World Politics. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984, pp. viii + 198. $31.00.

Hedley Bull, Justice in International Relations. 1983–84 Hagey Lectures, University of Waterloo, 1984, pp. iii + 36. No price given. (Available from University Publications Distribution Service, Dana Porter Arts Library, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L3G1, Canada.)

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Editions and NLB, London, 1983, pp. 160. £15.00.

Chalmers Johnson, Revolutionary Change. Second edition. Longman, London, 1983, pp.xii + 217. $13.85.

Peter Calvert, Politics, Power and Revolution. An Introduction to Comparative Politics. Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton, 1983, pp.208. £5.95.

John Walton, Reluctant Rebels. Comparative Studies of Revolution and Underdevelopment. Columbia University Press, New York, 1984, pp.xii + 230 $US36.00 (cloth), $US10.00 (paper).

E. A. Tiryakian and R. Rogowski (eds), New Nationalisms of the Developed West. Toward Explanation. Allen and Unwin, Boston, 1985, pp.xii + 394. $69.00.

Peter H. Merkl and Ninian Smart (eds), Religion and Politics in the Modern World. New York University Press, New York, 1985, pp.276. No price given.

Richard Lowenthal, Social Change and Cultural Crisis. Columbia University Press, New York, 1984, pp.viii + 252. $US29.50.

Dietrich Fischer, Preventing War in the Nuclear Age. Rowman and Allanheld, Totowa, N.J./Croom Helm, London, 1984, pp. x + 236. $27.95.

F. Dyson, Weapons and Hope Harper and Row, New York, 1984, pp.340. $24.95.

John Langmore and David Peetz (eds), Wealth, Poverty and Survival. Australia in the World. George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, in association with the Australian Labor Party, 1983, pp. 225.     

Fortresses and fashion statements: gentry castles in fourteenth-century Northumberland

The fourteenth century saw a dramatic upsurge of new castle building in northern England. Not unreasonably, historians have associated this with the Scottish wars, seeing this proliferation as a direct response to Scottish raiding, and assuming that these castles were designed and built solely to perform a defensive military function. However, recent work on castles has questioned such purely functionalist interpretations. This article examines the castles built in the fourteenth century by the ‘gentry’ of Northumberland, the most exposed of all the border counties to Scottish attack, and sets them in their local and national contexts. Were these castles just built as defensive fortresses, or did they also serve a more symbolic role, in a society which had rapidly become militarised with the onset of war in 1296? Were they in fact intended as much to keep up with the neighbours as to keep out the Scots?     

The limits to localization in declining industrial regions? Trans‐National corporations and economic development in Sedgefield borough

’Localization’ has been a recurrent theme in recent debates concerning the regeneration of declining industrial regions. ‘This paper explores the extent and nature of this ‘localization’ in relation to economic renewal and reports on a study of firms and business support organizations undertaken for Sedgefield Borough Council in north‐east England. The findings suggest that, first, production localization is of a limited extent and specific nature. In particular, the nature of localization remains highly dependent upon the decision‐making power concentrated in the hands of a few trans‐national firms. Their continual reorganizations have the capacity dramatically to reshape the fortunes of the local economy and to render local action relatively powerless. Second, the localized approaches to business support that are evident run the risk of reinforcing problems of duplication and fragmentation owing to their relatively narrow focus. In addition, prospects for local economic development remain critically dependent on wider policy and institutional agendas, especially at the regional and national levels.     

Microclimates of Urban Reproduction: The Limits of Automating Environmental Control

Enclosed, controlled environments, stretching from sites of luxury consumption to urban food production, are proliferating in cities around the world, utilising increasingly advanced techniques for (re)creating and optimising microclimatic conditions for different purposes. However, the role of automated control systems—to filter, reprocess and reassemble atmospheric and metabolic flows with growing precision—remains under-researched. In this article, we explore the phenomenon of automated environmental control at three sites in the UK city of Sheffield: a botanical glasshouse, a luxury hotel and a university plant growth research lab. In doing so, we first show how controlled environments are constituted through specific relations between the inside and outside, which are embedded in inherently political urban contexts and processes. Second, we identify the technical and ecological tensions and limits of indoor environmental control at each site which limit the scope of automation, and the considerable amount of hidden labour and energy required to maintain and restabilise desired conditions. Drawing on these more established examples of ecological interiorisation in a key moment of transition, we raise urgent questions for critical urban and environmental geographers about the possible futures of controlled environments, their practical or selective scalability, and who and what will be left “outside”, when they are emerging as a strategic form of urban adaptation and immunisation in the face of converging ecological pressures.     

British Migrants,Criminality and Deportation: Shaping the Australian Post-war Approach

The British preference of Australian immigration policy was challenged by the demands of a rapidly expanding post-war programme overseen by the newly established Department of Immigration. An essential function of the department was the screening of prospective migrants against criteria shaped by national population policy preferences. This paper examines Australia’s post-war immigration security screening policies in domestic and international contexts. It compares the immigration department’s approaches to immigrating British subjects with their approaches to those from other national and ethnic backgrounds. We explain how assumptions about the free passage of British subjects across empire could persist until the 1970s despite revelations that Australian authorities were powerless to stop those with serious criminal histories gaining entry to the country. These revelations about risky British migrants exposed the limits of Australian control over entry and exclusion, while illuminating the emerging frameworks of post-war border controls.     

Morgawr: an experimental Bronze Age‐type sewn‐plank craft based on the Ferriby boats

This paper reports on the construction of a full‐scale Bronze Age‐type sewn‐plank boat based on the Ferriby boats. The boat, which was named Morgawr, was constructed in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, England, during 2012 and the first months of 2013, as part of a larger exhibition in the museum. This paper provides the background and context of the project, describes the process of building the craft, and reflects in particular on differences between Morgawr and the ‘hypothetical reconstruction of a complete sewn‐plank boat’ published in 1990 by Ted Wright and John Coates which formed the basis for this project.     

Building a Geographical Political Economy of Closure: The Case of R&DCo in North East England

ParentCompany 's decision to close R&DCo in North East England caused the loss of highly skilled scientific and technical jobs. R&DCo was a "white‐collar" R&D operation and supplier of services to ParentCompany 's lead factories in the East Midlands and South West regions. The economic and social costs of closure were acute for the North East with its relatively weak growth, high unemployment and limited R&D activity. This paper argues that a clearer understanding and progressive response to such closures may benefit from a conceptualisation founded upon spatialised social relations and characterised by a social process of production that unfolds over time, across space and in place. Periodised in episodic socio‐spatial "moments", a historically evolving social process of closure reveals differential potential—contingent upon specific conjunctures of structural forces, social agency and the particularities of places—to enable and/or inhibit intervention through public policy and institutional action and political mobilisation and resistance.     

A new approach to recording and monitoring wet-preserved archaeological wood using three-dimensional laser scanning

The analysis and preservation of organic materials preserved within wetland environments represents one of the most costly parts of any post-excavation strategy. This paper outlines the application of high-resolution terrestrial laser scanning to one class of preserved material, worked archaeological wood. Scanning allowed the recording of the artefacts in three dimensions and the identification of features such as toolmarks. Features can be measured and volumetrically modelled within the digital environment, which may not always be possible for these often fragile materials using conventional techniques. Repeat scanning of the artefacts provided an opportunity to use comparative analysis software to investigate changes in the morphology of artefacts under contrasting conditions of short-term storage. The results suggest that immersion in water results in the least deterioration, whereas both freezing and air-drying caused distortion and degradation. This paper demonstrates that laser scanning provides a viable alternative post-excavation method for the recording, analysis and long-term ‘virtual archiving’ of organic archaeological materials, which may be more cost-effective in some instances than other methods of preservation.