Book reviews

THE PHILIPPINES

FILOMENO AGUILAR. Clash of Spirits—the History of Power and Sugar Planter Hegemony on a Visayan Island. Ateneo de Manila University Press and University of Hawaii Press, 1998.

CHINA

BENJAMIN VANG. Deng: a Political Biography. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. 360 pp. Bibliography, index. US$59.95, hardcover; US$21.95, paper.

CHING KWAN LEE. Gender and the South China Miracle. Two Worlds of Factory Women. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. xiii, 210 pp. Bibliography, index. £12.95, paper.

LINDA BENSON and INGVAR SVANBERG. China's Last Nomads: the History and Culture of China's Kazaks . New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. 270 pp. Index, photographs, maps, charts, bibliography. US$63.95, hardcover; US$ 24.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

TESSA MORRIS‐SUZUKI. Re‐inventing Japan: time, Space, Nation. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. US$21.95, paper.

DAVID MYERS and KOTAKU ISHIDO (eds). Japan at the Crossroads. Tokyo: Seibundo, 1998. xv, 253 pp. Bibliography. ¥3000, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

LINDA CONNOR, PATSY ASCH and TIMOTHY ASCH.

Films: A Balinese Trance Séance (30 mins). Jero on Jero (16 mins). The Medium is the Masseuse (31 mins). Jero Tapakan (26 mins). Produced and distributed by the Ethnographic Film Unit, Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, ANU, Canberra. 16mm (VHS cassette). Colour. English subtitles. A$80.00.

CARL A. TROCKI (ed). Gangsters, Democracy, and the State in Southeast Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1998. 94 pp. No price given, paper.     

Australian geography: The next 10 years (and beyond)?

Geography: Shaping Australia's Future (2018) provides a ‘strategic plan’ for geography aligned with the national research priorities, as well other key areas where Australian geographers are addressing environmental and societal challenges. To provide context, we first describe the state of geography in Australian universities. We then articulate ways forward for strengthening Australian geography—both within the discipline and how we interact externally. We describe how geography may better contribute to policy agendas, capitalising on our unique perspectives of space, place and the environment, but also highlight how we might improve these contributions through a more unified approach across human and physical geography. Third, we discuss opportunities for geographers to build the reputation of the discipline and ways to advocate for its importance in the wider academy, school curricula and community. We conclude with some preliminary suggestions on how Australian geographers may better engage and contribute to the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.     

Measuring the effectiveness of Parks Canada's environmental management system: a case study of Riding Mountain National Park

In 1996, the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization released its ISO 14001 guidelines for environmental management systems (EMSs). By implementing an EMS, an organization is better situated to manage the environmental effects of its operations which, in turn, should lead to better environmental performance. However, research on EMS performance has only recently begun to emerge, and the relation between EMSs and genuine improvement in environmental performance has not been clearly established, particularly for organizations such as Parks Canada, whose principal mandate is to protect the natural environment. While EMSs are gaining recognition amongst parks as a systematic approach for dealing with the environmental aspects of park operations, there has been very little investigation as to the effectiveness of EMSs in improving the environmental performance of park operations. This paper presents the results of a case study of the effectiveness of Riding Mountain National Park's (RMNP's) EMS and its contribution to environmental improvement. The results confirm EMS experience elsewhere in that RMNP's EMS has been only moderately successful at best and that there exists no clear link between the EMS and the environmental improvement of park operations.     

Imagined productive communities: Industrial rationalisation and cultural crisis in 1930s France

This article discusses the French interwar movement in favour of the rationalisation of work and its ideas for a new industrial order. It argues that these ideas were shaped by anxieties about the social consequences of mass production and that a preoccupation with the (re-)creation of productive communities was central to the rationalisation project in France. Rather than embracing American-style mass production as the only model for modernisation, the French modernisers discussed here sought to map out a distinctive route: they sought ways in which goods could be produced on a mass scale, while workers were organised on a human scale, or even returned to the land. Such ambitions gesture just as much towards the passéisme of the Révolution nationale as to the model of Fordist America or the postwar transformation of France.