Australian liberalism and corporatism

George Brandis, Tom Harley and Don Markwell (eds), Liberals face the Future: Essays on Australian Liberalism, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 386, $14.99 (paper) and Katharine West, The Revolution in Australian Politics, Melbourne, Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 116, $4.95 (paper).

John Rickard, H.B. Higgins: the rebel as judge. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.350. $29.95 (cloth).

Stuart Macintyre, Militant: the life and times of Paddy Troy, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.225. $19.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper).

Alan Metcalfe, In Their Own Right: The Rise to Power of Joh's Nationals, St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1984, pp.268. $20.00 (cloth)

Peter Love. Labour and the Money Power: Australian Labour Populism 1890–1950, Melbourne University Press, 1984, pp.240. $9.95 (paper).

L.F. Crisp, George Houston Reid: Federation Father; Federal Failure? Canberra, ANU, 1979; The Later Australian Federation Movement 1883–1901: Outline and Bibliography, 1979; George Richard Dibbs: Premier of New South Wales, Prophet of Unification, 1980; Federation Prophets Without Honour: A.B. Piddington, Tom Price, H.B.Higgins, 1980; The Unrelenting Penance of Federalist Isaac Isaacs, 1897–1947, 1981; Charles Cameron Kingston: Radical Federationist, 1984.

Philip Toyne and Daniel Vachon, Growing Up the Country: The Pitjantjatjara struggle for their land, Melbourne, Penguin Books and McPhee Gribble, 1984, pp.157. $6.95 (paper)

Jim Kemeny, The Great Australian Nightmare, Melbourne, Georgian House, 1983, pp. 130. $14.95 (paper).

Peter Sekuless, The Lobbyists, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp. 145. $14.95 (paper).

Jennifer Aldred (ed.), Industrial Confrontation, Sydney, Allen and Unwin and Australian Institute‐of Political Science, 1984, pp.111. $15.95 (cloth), $7.95 (paper).

Glenn Withers (ed.), Bigger or Smaller Government? Papers from the sixth symposium of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 1982, Canberra, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 1983, pp. ix, 115. $8.50 (paper)

Commonwealth Grants Commission, Equity in Diversity: Fifty Years of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1983, pp. 180. $15.60 (cloth), $9.90 (paper).

Robin Walker, Under Fire: A History of Tobacco Smoking in Australia, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, pp. 155. $19.50 (cloth).1

Hugh Saddler, Energy in Australia: Politics and Economics, Sydney, Allen and Unwin,1981, pp.205. $7.95 (paper)

Brian Kennedy, A Tale of Two Mining Cities: Johannesburg and Broken Hill 1885–1925, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1984, pp. 146. $25.00 (cloth)

Basile Kerblay, Modern Soviet Society, London, Methuen, 1983, pp.321. $37.50 (cloth), $23.95 (paper).

Gary Littlejohn, A Sociology ofthe Soviet Union, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp.286. $16.95 (paper).

Talal Asad and Roger Owen (eds), Sociology of “Developing Societies”: The Middle East, London, Macmillan, 1983, pp.264. $11.95 (paper).

Richard Mulgan, Democracy and Power in New Zealand: a study of New Zealand politics, Auckland, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp.171. $A12.99 (paper)

Rex Mortimer, Stubborn Survivors, ed. H. Feith and R. Tiffen, Monash Papers on South East Asia No. 10, 1984, pp.xvii, 180. $6.00 (paper).

Philip Lowe and Jane Goyder, Environmental Groups in Politics, London, Allen and Unwin, 1983, pp. 208. $18.95 (paper)

John Surrey (ed.), The Urban Transportation of Irradiated Fuel, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 336. $14.95 (paper)

Ian Hancock, White Liberals, Moderates and Radicals in Rhodesia 1953–1980, London and Sydney, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.230. $31.95 (cloth).

Peter Hain, Political Trials in Britain, London, Allen Lane, 1984. pp 318. $29.95 (cloth).

Anthony Hyman, Afghanistan Under Soviet Domination, 1964–1983, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 235. $18.95 (paper).

Ivor Crewe and Anthony Fox, British Parliamentary Constituencies: A Statistical Compendium, London, Faber and Faber, 1984, pp.397. $67.95 (cloth).

Frederick C. Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China: From a Charismatic Mao to the Politics of Succession, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp.167. $21.95 (paper)

John Wong, The Political Economy of China's Changing Relations with Southeast Asia, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp.246. $14.95 (paper)

Adrian Leftwich (ed.), What is Politics? The Activity and its Study, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp. 172. $25.00 (cloth), $11.95 (paper).

Ted Benton, The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and his Influence, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 259. $14.95 (paper).

Ben Fine, Marx's Capital, London, Macmillan, second edition, 1984, pp. 87. $9.95 (paper).

Stefan Collini, Donald Winch and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth‐Century Intellectual History, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 385. $25.00 (paper).

William W. Bostock, Approaches to Political Explanation, Melbourne, RDI Press, 1983, pp.123. $9.00 (paper).

Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment, London, Methuen, 1983, pp. 199. $17.95 (paper).

John F. Wilson, The Politics of Moderation: An Interpretation of Plato's Republic, New York, University of America Press, 1984, pp.213. $12.25 (U.S.) (paper).

Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, trans. P.J. Rhodes, Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 198. $6.95 (paper).

Carol O'Donnell, The Basis of the Bargain: Gender, Schooling and Jobs, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1984, pp.186. $19.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper).

Dorothy H. Broom (ed.), Unfinished Business: Social Justice for Women in Australia, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1984, pp.213. $24.95 (cloth), $10.95 (paper).

S. Fabian and M. Loh, The Changemakers: Ten Significant Australian Women. Milton, Jacaranda Press, 1983, pp. 190. $14.25 (paper).     

Plastic possibilities: Contrasting the uses of plastic ‘waste’ in India

This article draws on examples of inventive plastic reuse from India and personal anecdotes of elders as an anthropological reflection on possible plastic futures. It sketches the large-scale governmental reforms in the domain of municipal solid waste management, or MSWM (which, by legal definition in India, includes plastic waste). In this regard, it draws out some of the problematic socio-political and environmental implications of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ‘Clean India’ campaign, whose technocratic policy orientations towards standardized centralized MSWM echo his cultural nationalist agenda. These reforms contrast with home-based re-engineering methods and the redeploying of plastic discards (thereby making them notuner moton (‘like new again’), and their localized circulation through relatively local but uneven reputational and economic networks. Clean India sequesters and processes vast quantities of plastics through the wide-ranging adoption of a waste-to-energy techno-fix (in which plastics are incinerated). In contrast, the authors illustrate routine practices and relations whereby people reuse, repurpose and recycle plastics. While Clean India can detract from and disrupt these mundane practices and everyday relations, these are suggestive of alternative plastic futures – both socio-material and environmental.     

FROM VIOLENCE TO RECONSTRUCTION: THE MAKING, DISINTEGRATION AND REMAKING OF AN APARTHEID CITY

This article analyzes the relationship between violence and the racial city. It examines Durban's construction and disintegration in the context of unsuccessful apartheid reform, and traces corresponding distinct but overlapping stages of violence. Internecine violence of the latter 1980s constituted a racially displaced confrontation over political control and resources of the society transformed into internecine conflict within black residential areas, especially the urban peripheries. The violence was rooted in spatial and material differentiation reinforced by township and shantytown power structures, which clandestine state intervention accentuated. The article concludes by analyzing the new spatial and racial city forms, suggesting alternative urban reconstruction paths to redress the deeper causes of violence.     

‘White Skins‘, ‘Real People’ and ‘Chinese’ in Some Spatial Transformations of the Western Province,PNG1

To understand more fully contemporary forms of colonialism in PNG I argue we need to move our analysis beyond local narratives of encounters with Europeans to include narratives about non-Europeans. Through a consideration of Kamula accounts of Europeans, especially missionaries, and Chinese I show how the Kamula model two quite different experiences of colonialism. In one, local people are able to transform Europeans into analogues of themselves and in the other, currently more associated with the Chinese, the emphasis is on difference, rather than on commonalities. These interrelated representations of two distinct kinds of colonialists are, in part, complex signifiers of national, and especially local, concerns about ‘development’ based on logging. I outline how these accounts of Europeans and Chinese express the different forms of power which are currently deployed to transform space in the Western Province. I conclude by speculating that to understand these powers adequately we may need to follow Latour and Callon and extend our analysis of colonialism to include non-human agents.