Riding the Rhino: Conservation,Conflicts, and Militarisation of Kaziranga National Park in Assam

Since 2004, media and public opinion in Assam (India) have focused on increasing instances of poaching of rhinoceros for their horns and presence of Bengali‐speaking Muslim peasants, especially in and around the iconic Kaziranga National Park. From hastily made digital films, to anti‐poaching motifs at Durga Puja pandals, the plight of the rhinoceros has occupied an important position in an acrimonious political discourse on Assamese culture. The innocence and dignity attributed to the animal stands in marked contrast to the lack of discussion on the large numbers of young men who have been killed in anti‐poaching campaigns by the state. This article looks at the interstices of class, culture and commerce in an attempt to understand the popular deification of the rhinoceros and implications of the developmental discourse that seeks to put people and rhino in their “rightful” place.     

澳门作为会议观光城市的现状和前景

近年澳门旅游业的发展基本上依赖于博彩业。为了确保澳门经济的可持续发展,需要进一步研究讨论澳门发展会议观光的潜力。本文讨论澳门发展会议观光的优势和劣势,通过对产业利益相关的参与者的调查,试图寻找发展会议观光之因素、针对澳门的现状予以比较,并指出澳门作为具有竞争力的会议观光城市所存在的差距。     

Book reviews

Barry Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. 183 pp. $34.95 (paper).

David Beetham and Kevin Boyle, Introducing Democracy: 80 Questions and Answers. Cambridge: Polity Press/UNESCO, 1995. xiv + 135 pp. £10.95 (paper).

Jurgen Habermas (interviewed by Michael Haller), The Past as Future, translated and edited by Max Pensky. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. xxvi + 185 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Jacob Bercovitch (ed.), Resolving International Conflicts: The Theory and Practice of Mediation. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996. xiv + 279 pp. $US19.95 (paper).

Georgina Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996. xi + 163 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds), Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, 2nd edn. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1995. viii + 592 pp. npg.

Stuart Woolf (ed.), Nationalism in Europe, 1815 to the Present: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. vi + 215 pp. npg.

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), Post‐Communism: Four Perspectives. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1996. vi + 208 pp. npg.

Stelios Stavridis and Christopher Hill (eds), Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy: Western European Reactions to the Falklands Conflict. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996. x + 202 pp. £34.95 (cloth), £14.95 (paper).

Ramesh Thakur (ed.), The United Nations at Fifty: Retrospect and Prospect. Dunedin: University of Otago Press and the Peace Research Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1996. xvii + 334 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Emma Matanle, The UN Security Council: Prospects for Reform. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs Discussion Paper No. 62, 1995. vi + 70 pp. npg.

Ross Garnaut and Peter Drysdale (eds), Asia Pacific Regionalism: Readings in International Economic Relations. Sydney: Harper Educational Publishers, 1994. xviii + 433 pp. $39.95 (paper).

Russell Trood and Deborah McNamara (eds), The Asia‐Australia Survey 1995–96. Melbourne: Macmillan/Centre for the Study of Australia‐Asia Relations, Griffith University, 1995. xiv + 586 pp. $95.00 (cloth), $42.95 (paper).

Jim Rohwer, Asia Rising. London: Nicholas Brealey, 1996. 382 pp. $34.95 (cloth).

David Shambaugh (ed.), Greater China: The Next Superpower? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ix + 310 pp. $44.95 (cloth).

Anne Blair, Lodge in Vietnam: A Patriot Abroad. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. xv + 200 pp. $US25.00 (cloth).

David Mayers, The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. xiv + 335 pp. $75.00 (cloth).

Christopher Tremewan, The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore. London: Macmillan, 1994. xv + 252 pp. $88.00 (cloth).

John A. Larkin, Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippine Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. xvi + 337 pp. npg.

Hermann Joseph Hiery, The Neglected War: the German South Pacific and the Influence of World War 1. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995. xvii + 387 pp. US$35.OO (cloth).

Anthony Milner (ed.), Australia in Asia: Comparing Cultures. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii + 300 pp. $26.95 (paper).

Lachlan Strahan, Australia's China, Changing Perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xv + 374 pp. $34.95 (paper), $90.00 (cloth).

Graeme Cheeseman and Robert Bruce (eds), Discourses of Danger and Dread Frontiers: Australian Defence and Security Thinking after the Cold War. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin/Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1996. ix + 317 pp. $24.95 (paper).

John Spoehr and Ray Broomhill (eds), Altered States: The Impact of Free Market Policies on the Australian States. Adelaide: Centre for Labour Studies, University of Adelaide/Social Justice Research Foundation, 1995. 226 pp. npg (paper).     

RECONCEIVING THE PRACTICE OF HISTORY: FROM REPRESENTATION TO TRANSLATION

Arguing that history is not the application of a rigorous method to sources bequeathed to us from the past but rather a practice of coding that constructs “the past” in particular ways, this article seeks to delineate the key elements of this coding. Modern history treats past objects and texts as the objectified remains of humans who endowed their world with meaning and purpose while constrained by the social circumstances characterizing their times. This time of theirs is dead, and it can only be represented, not resurrected; the past is only ever the human past, and it does not include ghosts, gods, spirits, or nature. If, as argued here, “the past” does not exist independently of the means by which it is known and represented, then the many different modes of historicity that human beings developed and deployed before the modern form of history became dominant cannot be measured against “the” past in an effort to compare their accuracy or adequacy in representing it. The concluding section of this article asks what we are doing when we write the history of those who did not share the presumptions of the modern discipline but who had their own mode(s) of historicity. What, it asks, is the character and status of the knowledge produced when we write histories of premodern and non-Western pasts?