Book reviews

Barbara Harrisson. Pusaka: heirloom jars of Borneo. xvi, 55 pp., 142 plates. Singapore, etc: Oxford University Press, 1986. (Oxford Asia Studies in Ceramics.) £48.

E. E. van Delden (comp). Klein repertorium: index op tijdschriftenarti‐kelen met betrekking tot voormalig Nederlands‐Indië. Deel l. Tijdschrift voor het Binnenlandsch Bestuur, 1887–1900. 79 pp. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, 1986. Guilders 40.     

Reviews

THE GLASS CURTAIN BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE. Raghavan Iyer (ed.). London, Oxford University Press, 1965. Pp. 356. Australian price 64/6d.

NEO‐COLONIALISM: THE LAST STAGE OF IMPERIALISM. Kwame Nkrumah. London, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965. Pp. xx + 280. Australian price 66/‐.

THE ELEPHANTS AND THE GRASS. Cecil V. Crabb. New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1965. Pp. xiii + 237. Australian price 62/‐.

CHINA AND THE BOMB. Morton Halperin. London, Pall Mall Press, 1965. Pp. 166, $5.10.

ON ESCALATION: METAPHORS AND SCENARIOS. Herman Kahn. London, Pall Mall Press, 1965. Pp. 308. $6.60.

NUCLEAR DISPERSAL IN ASIA AND THE INDO‐PACIFIC REGION. A. L. Burns, Nina Heathcote and G. P. King. Canberra, The Australian institute of International Affairs and The Australian National University, 1965. Pp. ii + 101. $1.50 Australian.

THE SECURITY OF SOUTHERN ASIA. D. E. Kennedy. For The Institute for Strategic Studies. London, Chatto and Windus, 1965. Pp. xi + 101. $5.80 Australian.

ISLAM IN THE MODERN NATIONAL STATE. E. I. J. Rosenthal. London. Cambridge University Press, 1965. Pp. xxi + 416. 55/‐ stg.

ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. J. Horris Proctor (ed.). London, Pall Mall Press, 1965. Pp. viii + 221. $7 Australian.

LIVING WITH ASIA. J. F. Cairns. Melbourne, Lansdowne Press, 1965. Pp. 179. $2.50 Australian.

BARBARIAN BEDS. THE ORIGIN OF THE CHAIR IN CHINA. C. P. Fiiz‐Gerald. Canberra, The Australian National University; London, The Cresset Press, 1965. Pp. xvii + 85. Australian price £5/5/‐.

THE CHINESE MODEL. Werner Klatt (ed.). Hong Kong University Press, 1965. Pp. xix + 233. Australian price 34/6d.

CHINESE COMMUNIST EDUCATION. RECORDS OF THE FIRST DECADE. Stewart Fraser (ed.). Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, 1965. Pp. xvi + 542. U.S. $10.

THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN. Herbert Passin (ed.). For the American Assembly, Columbia University. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966. Pp. ix + 169. $U.S. 3.95.

DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN. G. W. Choudhury. Vancouver, University of British Columbia, 1964. Pp. xix + 309. $6.00 Canadian.

THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. J. S. Dickey (ed.). New York, The American Assembly, Columbia University, 1964. Pp. 184. $U.S. 3.95.     

An iconographic exploration of the “rattlesnake” gorgets of eastern Tennessee

ABSTRACT

Compared to other gorget styles and themes made during the Mississippian period, the so-called rattlesnake gorgets of eastern Tennessee have been found in fairly large numbers. Stylistically, Muller assigned these gorgets to the temporally related Lick Creek and Citico styles, while Crawford’s recent work has argued for substyles within. While their style has been studied extensively, the idea that these gorgets depict rattlesnakes generally has been accepted without further consideration. In this paper, we present the results of a systematic iconographic study of rattlesnake gorgets. Ultimately, we conclude that the image’s original referent is not just a snake but instead is intended to be a model of the cosmos at night.     

Contemporary Irish theatre,the new Playboy controversy,and the economic crisis

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the economic crisis on contemporary Irish theatre. More specifically, I contend that the legal controversy surrounding Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s second production of Playboy of the Western World: A New Version in 2008 provides a case study of how professional theatre productions that dramatised stories of immigrant empowerment during the Irish economic boom were profoundly inhibited by the bust that followed. Their collaborative version of the new Playboy was widely regarded as Ireland’s most successful intercultural play and a commercial success when it was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in 2007. The subsequent breakdown in their relationship and ensuing legal dispute is more symptomatic of Celtic Tiger Ireland in economic collapse, I suggest, than the content of the play itself, or most other productions mounted in the period. I argue that this dispute did not simply reflect but also reinforced the social effects of the economic crisis, through its prolonged litigation, enormous expense, and especially the missed opportunity that it represented to position the multicultural and migrant themed Playboy within the Irish theatrical mainstream. More broadly, I suggest that the economic crisis has been marked by the disappearance of immigrants from the professional Irish stage, a void which was only partially filled by community theatre productions. A case in point is Adigun and Arambe’s most recent adaptation of Jimmy Murphy’s The Kings of the Kilburn High Road in The Paddies of Parnell Street (2013), a play which I positively appraise as an example of successful “intercultural re-appropriation”.     

‘Washing men's feet’: gender,care and migration in Albania during and after communism

This article compares the interrelationships between gender, family structures and intra-family care arrangements during two markedly different periods of Albania's recent history. The first of these, the communist era, was dominated by the autocratic state-socialist regime of Enver Hoxha. In contrast, the post-communist period that followed was characterised by a kind of reactive free-for-all capitalism and high rates of both internal and international migration, the latter mostly to Greece and Italy. Families have been torn apart by this mass emigration, resulting in husbands separated from their wives and children, and older generations left behind by their migrant children. All this contrasts with family, residential and care arrangements during the communist period when not only were families generally living in close proximity, but also state welfare was available to support vulnerable and isolated individuals. Across these periods, however, the burden of care responsibilities fell almost wholly on women, despite the egalitarian ideology of the socialist era and the potentially modernising and empowering effects of post-socialist migration on the agency of women. The article provides a valuable lesson in historicising regimes of gender, family and care across dramatically contrasting social models.