The economics of dispossession: The Palestinians

Reviewing the study of US policy towards Africa: from intellectual ‘backwater’ to theory construction

White Men Don't Have Juju: An American Couple's Adventure Through Africa. Pam Ascanio, Chicago, IL: The Noble Press, 1992. 345 pp.

Beyond Safaris: A Guide to Building People‐to‐People Ties With Africa. Kevin Danaher, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1991. 193 pp.

Free at Last? US Policy Toward Africa and the End of the Cold War. Michael Clough, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992. 145 pp.

US Economic Policy Toward Africa. Jeffrey Herbst, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992. 82 pp.

High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood. Chester A Crocker, New York: W W Norton, 1992. 533p

African Americans and US Policy Toward Africa 1850–1925: In Defense of Black Nationality. Elliott P Skinner, Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992. 555 pp.

An African American in South Africa: The Travel Notes of Ralph J Bunche. 28 September 1937–1 January 1938. Robert R Edgar, (ed), Athens, OH: Ohio University Press; Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1992. 398 pp.

Mobutu or Chaos? The United States and Zaire, 1960–1990. Michael G Schatzberg, Lanham, MD: University Press of America; Philadelphia, PA: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1991. 115 pp.

The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945–1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War. Peter L Hahn, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992. 359 pp.

Nigeria, Africa, and the United States From Kennedy to Reagan. Robert B Shepard, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991. 193 pp.

American Intellectuals and African Nationalists, 1955–1970. Martin Staniland, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991. 310 pp.

The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and US Policy in the Congo Crisis. David N Gibbs, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 322 pp.

Arms for the Horn: US Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia 1953–1991. Jeffrey A Lefebvre, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. 351 pp.

Latin American church and politics

Politics and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua. John M Kirk, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1992. 246 pp.

Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism. Daniel H Levine, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. 403 pp.

Kingdoms Come: Religion and Politics in Brazil. Rowan Ireland, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. 262 pp.

Commentaries on Muslim Women

Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting boundaries in sex and gender. Nikki R Keddie and Beth Baron (eds), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991. 333 pp. £19.95 hb

Women and Gender in Islam. Leila Ahmed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. 248 pp.

Women, Islam and the State,. Deniz Kadiyoti (ed), London: Macmillan Press, 1991. 271 pp.

Negritude and Africa: Armah's account     

The conferences

Each of the post-Soviet Central Asian states inherited both inefficient collectivized agricultural systems and an understanding of the nation rooted in categories defined by Soviet nationality policy. Despite the importance placed on territorial homelands in many contemporary understandings of nationalism, the divergent formal responses to these dual Soviet legacies have generally been studied in isolation from one another. However, there are conceptual reasons to expect more overlap in these responses than generally assumed; in this paper, we engage in a focused comparison of three post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) in order to investigate how nationalizing policies and discourse, land distribution, and ethnic tensions interact with each other over time. We reveal that the nationalizing discourses of the three states – despite promoting the titular groups vis-à-vis other groups – have had limited influence on the actual processes of land distribution. Furthermore, the Kyrgyzstani case challenges the assumption that the effect flows unidirectionally from nationalizing policies and discourse to land reform implementation; in this case, there is evidence that the disruption caused by farm reorganization generated grievances which were then articulated by some nationalistic political elites.