Book reviews

General

Peter Elphick. The Far Eastern File: The Intelligence War in the Far East, 1930–1945. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997. xvii, 510 pp. Introduction, author's note, maps, photographs, index. £20.00, hardcover.

Northeast Asia

Nancy Abelmann. Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. US$40.00, hardcover; US$18.00, paper.

Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner, editors. Resistance and Reform in Tibet. London: Hurst and Company, 1994. £32.00, hardcover; £12.95, paper.

Ronald D. Schwartz. Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising. London: Hurst and Company, 1994. £37.50, hardcover; £12.95, paper.

Mick Broderick. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. Japanese Studies Series. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996. x, 255 pp. US$93.50, £55.00, hardcover.

Susan Brownell. Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. 393 pp. Bibliography, index. US$49.95, hardcover; US$18.95, paper.

Lincoln Li. Student Nationalism in China, 1924–1949. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. ix, 209 pp. Acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, plates, index. US$19.95, paper.

Colin Mackerras. China's Minority Cultures: Identities and Integration Since 1912. Melbourne: Longman, 1995. x, 252 pp. Contents, preface, maps, photographs, references, index. A$42.00, hardcover.

David Zweig. Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. xvii, 365 pp. Contents, preface, tables and figures, index. US$62.95, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

South Asia

John Hutnyk. The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of Representation. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1996. x, 223 pp. Preface, bibliography, index. US$65.00, hardcover; US$22.50, paper.

Frederic C. Thomas. Calcutta Poor: Elegies on a City above Pretense. An East Gate Book. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. ix, 166 pp. Preface, plates, notes, bibliography, index. US$29.95, hardcover.

David William Martin. The Changing Face of Calcutta. New Delhi: Vikas, 1997. xxvii, 232 pp. Rs.450, hardcover.

Thomas R. Trautmann. Aryans and British India. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1997. ix‐xiv, 260 pp. Illustrations, maps, references, index. US$35, £24.95, hardcover.

David Gordon White. The Alchemical Body. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. xviii, 596 pp. Preface, abbreviations, notes, bibliography, index. US$49.95, hardcover.

Joanna Williams. The Two Headed Deer: Illustrations of the Ramayana in Orissa. California Studies in the History of Art, No. 34. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xix, 210 pp. 289 plates. US$65.00, hardcover.

Liz Wilson. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. xviii, 258 pp. Foreword, bibliography, illustrations.

Stanley Wolpert. Nehru, A Tryst With Destiny. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii, 546 pp. Preface, illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, index. A$49.00, hardcover.

Southeast Asia

Justin Corfield, editor. Rama III and the Siamese Expedition to Kedah in 1939: The Dispatches of Luang Udomsombat. Trans. Cyril Skinner. Monash Papers on Southeast Asia No. 30. Melbourne: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1993. Editor's introduction, translator's introduction, map, plate, appendices, index. 338 pp. A$24.95, paper.

Duong Thu Huong. Novel Without a Name. Translated from the Vietnamese by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson. London: Picador, 1995. 289 pp. A$16.95, paper.

Dean Forbes. Asian Metropolis: Urbanisation and the Southeast Asian City. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. xxii, 120 pp. Foreword, contents, maps, plates, index. A$19.95, paper.

Antoon Geels. Subud and the Javanese Mystical Tradition. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 76. Preface, author's note, abstract. 262 pp. £30.00, hardcover.

Bryan Hunsaker, Theodore Mayer, Barbara Griffiths and Robert Daley. Loggers, Monks, Students and Entrepreneurs: Four Essays on Thailand. Introduction by Clark Neher. DeKalb, Illinois: Southeast Asia Publications, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1996. Occasional Paper No. 18. vi, 143 pp. Introduction, bibliographies, index. US$12.00, paper.

Ian Mabbett and David Chandler. The Khmers. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995. x, 289 pp. Preface, introduction, plates, maps, appendices, bibliography, index. £35.00, hardcover; £13.50, paper.

Leo Suryadinata, editor. Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians. Sydney and Singapore: Allen and Unwin, and ISEAS, 1997. A$35.00, paper.     

The Forgotten Semantics of Regression Modeling in Geography

This article is concerned with the semantics associated with the statistical analysis of spatial data. It takes the simplest case of the prediction of variable y as a function of covariate(s) x, in which predicted y is always an approximation of y and only ever a function of x, thus, inheriting many of the spatial characteristics of x, and illustrates several core issues using “synthetic” remote sensing and “real” soils case studies. The outputs of regression models and, therefore, the meaning of predicted y, are shown to vary due to (1) choices about data: the specification of x (which covariates to include), the support of x (measurement scales and granularity), the measurement of x and the error of x, and (2) choices about the model including its functional form and the method of model identification. Some of these issues are more widely recognized than others. Thus, the study provides definition to the multiple ways in which regression prediction and inference are affected by data and model choices. The article invites researchers to pause and consider the semantic meaning of predicted y, which is often nothing more than a scaled version of covariate(s) x, and argues that it is naïve to ignore this.     

A Route Map for Successful Applications of Geographically Weighted Regression

Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) is increasingly used in spatial analyses of social and environmental data. It allows spatial heterogeneities in processes and relationships to be investigated through a series of local regression models rather than a single global one. Standard GWR assumes that relationships between the response and predictor variables operate at the same spatial scale, which is frequently not the case. To address this, several GWR variants have been proposed. This paper describes a route map to decide whether to use a GWR model or not, and if so which of three core variants to apply: a standard GWR, a mixed GWR or a multiscale GWR (MS-GWR). The route map comprises 3 primary steps that should always be undertaken: (1) a basic linear regression, (2) a MS-GWR, and (3) investigations of the results of these in order to decide whether to use a GWR approach, and if so for determining the appropriate GWR variant. The paper also highlights the importance of investigating a number of secondary issues at global and local scales including collinearity, the influence of outliers, and dependent error terms. Code and data for the case study used to illustrate the route map are provided.