Book review

Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies

vol. III, no. 2., ed. Robert Pinner and Walter B. Denny. Published by the Islamic Department of Sotheby’ s and OCTS, Ltd., London (n.d., 1990?). 262 pages, with 12 colour plates and many black and white illus. and diagrams; soft‐bound with colour cover.

Textile Conservation and Research

by Mechtilde Fleury‐Lemburg. Bern, Switzerland: Abegg Stiftung. 1988, 532 pp.

An Introduction to Kurdish Rugs and Other Weavings

William Eagleton. New York, Interlink Books. 1988. 144 pp., 124 full‐page color plates.

Kordi: Lives, Rugs, Flatweaves of the Kurds in Khorasan

Wilfried Stanzer, Vienna, Adil Besim. 1988. 220 pp., 78 full‐page color plates, 48 color figures in text.

Carpets in the Baluch Tradition

by Siawosch Azadi. English trans. by Maria Schlatter and Robert Pinner. Klinkhardt and Biermann, Munich, 1986.

Armenian Rugs: Fabric of a Culture. An Exhibition at the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies

August 17‐October 29, 1988. Co‐sponsored by the Armenian Rug Society. Ed. Pamela B. Nelson. 40 pp; colour and black and white photographs, maps and “selected bibliography”. Philadelphia: Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, 1988.

Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East

by Jennifer Scarce, London and Sydney: Unwin Hyman Publishers, 1987. pp. 192     

CARTER AND HUMAN RIGHTS: ADMINISTRATIVE IMPACT OF A SYMBOLIC POLICY

Analyses of foreign policy impact seldom take into account the domestic and symbolic consequences of implementation. This study begins with the assumption that since President Carter's human rights policy is largely an exercise in symbolic politics, the criteria for understanding its impact have more to do with the impression than with substantive improvement in human rights. Implementation to date has been felt primarily in administrative adjustments and revisions, not on concrete achievements in human rights around the world. While in terms of substantive criteria the impact of the policy has been minimal, in terms of increased bureaucratic visibility and other symbolic responses, the policy's implementation can be considered successful.