Hunger

Abstract

Books about hunger and its causes are nothing new, as anyone who follows development literature is well aware. This is probably because hunger itself has been around as long as people have been writing books. Nevertheless, 1974 was the year of a “world food crisis”: the United Nations saw fit to convene a world food conference in Rome, and a spate of new books has appeared in its aftermath to discuss the problem. Why a crisis should have congealed in 1974 from the world's perennial hunger is one of the subjects ably considered by Collins and Lappe's Food First and Susan George's How the Other Half Dies. Why so much has been written about it is a subject worth considering here.     

Reaching the other side

Abstract

To talk about Vietnam now is to get caught in a flurry of accusations and counter accusations, from the Chinese and Kampucheans, the Western press, and the Vietnamese themselves. At a time when Vietnam is entangled in military disputes and deepening party disputes with its socialist neighbors, it may seem anachronistic to go back and relive the spring days of 1975 when, after decades of war, Vietnam was euphorically reunited and freed from foreign invaders. One is tempted to read into those momentous days a foreshadowing of the conflicts to come. There is another reason to review Vietnam's spring liberation, however, and the reason goes beyond the fact that a good book has been written about the subject. Central to current disputes about Vietnam is an assessment of the meaning and practice of socialist transformation. Reaching the Other Side, by Earl S. Martin, is an eyewitness account of the earliest days of socialist Vietnam's postwar transition. In the pages of Martin's book, concrete form is given to the dreams and difficulties facing the newly reunited Vietnam. Martin offers a quiet, detailed account of the socialist government's early answers to those challenges.     

Shifting the perspective on identity discourse in Estonia

Abstract

I argue that the post-socialist identity discourse in Estonia should be studied as a result of the dialectic relationship between the international context in which Estonia exists and the perceptions of history and culture that elites deploy in the public discourse of Estonia's identity. Four major narratives that compose much of the identity discourse emerge from this dialectic: Estonia as a reconstituted state and society; Estonia as European; Estonia as Finno-Ugric; and Estonia as Nordic. These narratives can be overlooked if research relies simply on “East” and “West” analytic categories or assumes that history and culture alone yield identity. Estonia provides an excellent opportunity to examine this dialectic because of the international community's role in the country's transformation into a European Union applicant state.     

“Saint Jack”

Abstract

Billed as “a Casablanca for the 1970s,” Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack immediately evokes the Bogart classic. Ben Gazzara plays an American expatriate living in Singapore, involved fairly lucratively and with a definite panache in the business of pimping for a stable of Asian beauties. As with Rick, the hero of Casablanca, Jack's background and how he got where he's at are initially obscure. He tells us that he's an Italo-American from Buffalo, and we later leam that he came to Singapore as a seaman, liked the place, and stayed to establish his procurer's street mini-empire. There is, to be sure, the Bogart touch. I have not seen enough of Gazzara's character acting to know if this is his stock in trade, but if it is, then Bogdanovich has selected him shrewdly for the lead role. If it is not, then surely Gazzara has made a studied effort at reproducing the smart-mouthed, straight-from-the-shoulder, tough-guy with-a-heart-of-gold character which made Bogart famous. Unlike Casablanca's major protagonist, however, there is no secret past which catches up with Saint Jack, no reappearance of an old lover whose arrival on the scene peels back the covers from a beshrouded past. All we ever know about Jack is that, for all his gregariousness, his free hand with cash, and seemingly genuine endearment to a host of Chinese acquaintances, he is a loner, a “nowhere man” who abhors commitments, especially to the women he attracts.     

Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir,by Kayano Shigeru

Abstract

In an Asahi Shimbun interview (31 May 1994) Kayano Shigeru (1923-), author of Ainu no ishibumi (An Ainu Memoir, 1980), recalls the fireside uwepekere or folktales told to him in the Ainu language by his grandmother and remarks that “since there's no written Ainu language, it's only the ear, not the eye, that matters.” Our Land Was a Forest, Kayano's autobiographical memoir, impresses the ear as well as the eye of the reader, as Ainu voices—seldom listened to in the past—reverberate between the lines of the original Japanese version and this English language translation by Kyoko Selden and Lili Selden.     

East Asia and the world economy

Abstract

The contrast between Japan's emergence from the late nineteenth century as an industrializing nation and China's continued relative stagnation during the same period constitutes a puzzle that has provoked many attempts at solution. To heighten the sense of paradox, a number of observers have echoed the view of the late Alexander Eckstein that

an informed observer appraising the prospects of economic development and modernization in Asia from the vantage point of 1840 might well have picked China—rather than Japan—as the most likely candidate. China was a vast empire more populous than Japan, much better endowed with mineral resources and large internal markets. Even in terms of social and political institutions, China might have appeared to be in the better position [etc.]     

Analyzing China's socialist revolution

Abstract

Recent trends in “China scholarship” include two dominant sets of goals and foci in examining China's socialist revolution. Exponents of the more traditional view, represented here by Lucian Pye's Mao Tse-tung, seek to explain it away as a pathological deviation from “normality” in social development. The extremism of Pye's book makes it almost a caricature of the worst in the first trend. By the same token this extremism makes the prejudices and assumptions on which this trend is based easier to perceive than would be the case with other more subtle works. The less traditional and less frequently published view, represented here by Nee and Peck's China's Uninterrupted Revolution attempts to comprehend the Chinese Revolution, historically and philosophically, as a meaningful process directed at increasing human liberation.     

OF FIRE AND REJUVENATION: IN SEARCH OF THE ‘POST-’ IN ‘POST- APARTHEID’

ABSTRACT

In the novels, Scatter the ashes and go (Ravan 2002) and Rumours (Jacana Media 2013), Mongane Wally Serote depicts post-apartheid through a leitmotif central to which the soldier of the African National Congress military wing, ‘Umkhonto We Sizwe’ (MK), is ostensibly caught in an interrupted odyssey. In Scatter the Ashes and go, this soldier has returned from exile in various Southern African countries to a South Africa that is on the threshold of the post-apartheid era. By contrast, in Rumours, the soldier, having arrived from exile in 1990, then goes away to Mali in search of a solution for his post-traumatic stress disorder. The article imputes these disruptions on to the failure to ‘properly’ mourn the victims of apartheid's extra-judicial killing squads, and goes on to note that, as a result of Serote's attention to the subsequent angst, post-apartheid appears as a continuum of trauma. The discussion then proceeds to posit that the resolutions to these diversions are hinted at in these novels’ elaborate motifs of fire, and proposes that the depictions of this pattern recall how Batswana suture the spiritual, psychological and social fractures consequent upon death – especially the death that occurs unnaturally, and upon the breadwinner's return home from a long absence. The bulk of the exploration pays attention to the nuances of this symbol of fire, recognising it as an integral component of a social rite populated by a dynamic interplay between poetry and music.     

The origins of the Vietnamese revolution: Taking the long view

Abstract

Americans knew little about Vietnam when they assumed command of the Indochina War in 1954. There were no American scholars who devoted their careers to its study, and, with the exception of Virginia Thompson's French Indochina and a few other works, there was no American body of work on the subject. And so, to better understand the political and social forces confronting them, Americans took possession of the entire French work on Vietnam as part of their legacy of war. Thus, as the first American scholars began to study the Vietnamese revolution, they built on the foundation laid by decades of French scholarly effort.     

Denigrating the local,glorifying the foreign: Malawian language policies in the era of African Renaissance

ABSTRACT

Malawi's Vision 2020 document, a national document that serves as a vehicle to project a future for a more developed, secure and democratically mature nation, laments the tendency of Malawians to denigrade local products and glorify all things foreign. Yet, paradoxically, the document does not address the important issue of promoting Malawi's indigenous languages. This silence can be interpreted as reflective of the population's inclination to ascribe greater value to foreign culture. In Malawi, as in many other African countries, indigenous languages are not considered worthy as media of education, subjects of advanced study or critical vehicles for national development. They are still victim to a discrimination rooted in Africa's 500 plus years of European enslavement and colonisation. Against the backdrop of the pursuit of an African Renaissance, this article looks at Malawi's language policies since independence in 1964, and at how, ten years short of an idyllic national vision, Malawi measures up on the important issue of language.     

A tribute to Leo Cawley, 1944–1991

Abstract

In the late sixties, after his tour of active duty as a marine in Vietnam from 1965 to 66, Leo Cawley returned to the United States and became an economics major at Columbia University. There he joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Columbia University chapter of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), whose national organization founded the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. In March and April of 1972 he traveled to the People's Republic of China with the second CCAS delegation. Leo reviewed Waldemar A. Nielson's The Big Foundations in volume 6, number 3 of BCAS in 1974, and from 1985 to 1987 he was book review editor for BCAS. Leo also contributed money to BCAS even in the last year of his life when his medical expenses were skyrocketing. Above all, however, Leo stood for everything BCAS has stood for over the years, and he was a close friend and inspiration to some of BCAS's staunchest supporters.     

Barukoku bararage: A prayer for rain a play about Miyazawa Kenji by Hatayama Hiroshi

Abstract

Barukoku bararage—words created by Japanese agronomist, poet, and writer of tales, Miyazawa Kenji (1896—1933), this alliterative phrase dances across the tongue, playing the role of a mantra, bringing us closer to an understanding of Kenji's thought and its relevance to contemporary society. The play Barukoku bararage draws us into Kenji's mind and classroom as they are evoked by novelist and critic Hatayama Hiroshi (b. 1935).     

Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's China,by David E. Apter and Tony Saich

Abstract

As early as Edgar Snow's pioneering Red Star over China (1937), Yan'an was seen as the “defining moment” of the Chinese Communists' rise to power. Beginning in 1935, Mao Zedong set his personal imprint on the party as he successfully guided it from the disaster of the Long March to the “Congress of Victors” in 1945. This set the stage for the final showdown with Chiang Kai-shek and the hapless Nationalists in the civil war of 1946-49. With the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, the experiences of Yan'an became the blueprint for the reconstruction of China along the lines first laid out in that remote and impoverished town in the northeast.     

Contesting and upholding the rights of the Irish Parliament in 1698: the arguments of William Molyneux and Simon Clement

SUMMARY

This paper explores the constitutional relationship between England and Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century with a focus on the contemporary debate around the prerogative of the Irish legislature. It examines and contrasts the arguments developed in the pamphlets of William Molyneux of Dublin (1656–98), representing the ruling Irish Protestant nation, and of English Whig Simon Clement (1654?–1730?), asserting the rights of the English empire. Molyneux's The Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated (Dublin, 1698) and Clement's An answer to Mr. Molyneux his case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, stated: and his dangerous notion of Ireland's being under no subordination to the parliamentary authority of England refuted by reasoning from his own arguments and authorities (London, 1698) are compared and analysed in the context of renewed tensions around the woollen trade. These pamphlets highlight the nature, and the perceived nature, of the constitutional relationship between the two polities in the aftermath of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. The main discussion was whether Ireland was a colony of England or an independent kingdom, and how its nature affected the relationship between both legislatures. Molyneux argued that Ireland, although sharing a monarch with England, was an independent kingdom. To Molyneux, Ireland's independence, as a kingdom, signified the independence of its legislature and the unconstitutionality of the English Parliament's claim to legislate for Ireland. Clement refuted Molyneux's assertions point by point, contending that Ireland was part and parcel of an empire. In Clement's opinion, Ireland's subjection to England meant that the English Parliament had a legitimate right to legislate for Ireland.     

Introduction to “two languages,two souls”

Abstract

Morisaki Kazue is a poet, essayist, and chronicler of the lives and histories of Japan's minorities. One of her recent books, Karayuki-san (Asahi Shimbun, 1976), an oral history of the lives of the prostitutes who followed the Japanese armed forces during World War II, became a widely praised bestseller. The article that follows describes what must be understood as the central experience in Ms. Morisaki's life: her birth and childhood in Korea and the permanent influence this had on the structure of her life and thought.     

‘A lucid stream of everywhereness’ in Ben Okri's Wild (2012): A postmodern perspective

Abstract

The argument begins by claiming that the phrase, ‘a clear lucid stream of everywhereness,’ taken from Ben Okri's The landscapes within, at once encapsulates the postmodern theories of complexity and relativity and evokes a cosmic dimension and a striving for Dasein [authentic human existence] that inform his poetic vision in his latest collection of poetry, Wild (2012). It proceeds to argue for the complexity inherent in the notion ‘postmodernism’; then discusses selected poems in terms of modernity's curious dilemma of ‘just now’ negating the preceding ‘just now’, that the French philosopher Jean-François Leotard talks of, treating recurring motifs of change, transformation and continuing presence. This includes a discussion of the two poems, dedicated to the memory of Okri's late mother and father respectively, that bookend the anthology, contextualising them within postmodernity. The article concludes by re-invoking its own abstract title in ‘Towards the Sublime’ in terms of Leotard's definition, before briefly assessing the import of Okri's latest collection of poems.     

Sheikh Muhammad Abu Zahra (1898–1974) on international relations: the discourse of a contemporary mainstream Islamist

The literature on Political Islam has not devoted ample space to the intellectual contributions of contemporary moderate Islamists. This article attempts to rectify this by examining the international relations discourse of a twentieth-century Egyptian religious scholar: Sheikh Muhammad Abu Zahra. Despite Abu Zahra's prominence in the Islamic world, his writings have received scant attention from academics. The article provides a close reading of his three principal works on international relations: al-?Alaqat al-Duwaliyya fi al-Islam, Nazhariyat al-Harb fi al-Islam and al-Wihda al-Islamiyya; as well as a fourth work with a significant bearing on the subject: al-Mujtama? al-Insani fi Dhil al-Islam. It contends that Abu Zahra's international relations discourse is part of a more than a century-old tradition of theorizing on international relations that dates back to the religious reformers Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu. Accordingly, Abu Zahra is treated here as an exemplar of what I refer to as the moderate and reformist school in contemporary Islam, in contradistinction to the radical school that is associated with salafi-jihadist figures and movements. A close analysis of Abu Zahra's international relations discourse thus provides penetrating insights on one pivotal, albeit understudied, dimension of this reformist/moderate current in contemporary Islam: its perspectives on international relations.     

Phenomenological ecology in two occasional poems by Ben Okri

Abstract

This article begins with a brief discussion of the three terms: the poet, ontopoiesis and eco-phenomenology or phenomenological ecology. An explication of its thrust, viz. the significance of sowing/sewing ‘a quilt of harmony’ (Wild 2012: 20), in relation to the broad yet symbiotic theme of cosmic ecology follows. The discussion proceeds by presenting a close critical analysis of Ben Okri's ‘Lines in Potentis’, a poem commissioned by the then Lord Mayor of London in 2002 in commemoration of the bombing of the City of London and which is featured in Okri's most recent anthology of poetry, Wild (2012: 26-27). Both my thrust and my argument are predicated on another occasional poem from Wild, ‘A Wedding Prayer’ (2012: 20-22), which is not analysed in any detail. Axiomatic to the interpretation is the poet's own conception of ‘wild’, cited on the dust cover of the anthology, as ‘an alternative to the familiar, where energy meets freedom, where art meets the elemental, where chaos can be honed’. More precisely, for this London loving Nigerian poet, ‘the wild is our link with the stars…’. This is not aesthetic posturing. As I attempt to show in my reading of the focal poem, it has to do with mystical unrest viewed from an eco-phenomenological ‘enjoyment of literature, of beauty, of the sublime, the elevated, as well as our compassion for the miseries of humankind, [and] generosity towards others.. inspired by the subliminal passions of the human soul’ (Tymieniecka 1996). As the conclusion attempts to show, this projects some of the epistemology of Africans in Africa and the Diaspora. It does this by invoking the contentions of fellow African phenomenologist, Achile Mbembe, in comparison with Tymieniecka's argument that the soul is the ‘soil’ of life's forces and that it is thus the transmitter of life's constructive progress. Such progress is from the primeval logos of life to its annihilation in the anti-logos of man's ‘transnatural telos’ (Tymieniecka 1988: 3).     

Landmine clearance and land resettlement in Cambodia: Agents of rural development

Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today. New York: Gotham Books, 2006. Paperback, ISBN: 9781592403158, 640 pages.

Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy. UK, US: Macmillan, 2007. Hardcover, ISBN: 9780230016545, 871 pages.

Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. Hardcover, ISBN: 0571221025, 496 pages.

Alex Thomson, An Introduction to African Politics (second edition). London: Routledge, 2004. Paperback, ISBN: 9780415282611, 284 pages.

Lorna Lloyd, Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880–2006. Leiden and Boston: Marinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2007. Hardcover, ISBN: 9789004154971, 353 pages.

Ali A Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Hardcover, ISBN: 9780300136142, 518 pages.

Paul Bremer with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope. New York: Threshold Editions, 2006. Hardcover, ISBN: 9781416540588, 419 pages.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. Toronto: Alfred A Knopf, 2006. Hardcover, ISBN: 9781400044870, 320 page's.

Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq. New York: Owl Books, 2006. Hardcover, ISBN: 0805080082, 384 pages.

George Packer, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. Hardcover, ISBN: 0374299633, 481 pages.     

Some recent additions to the library

Richard Calland &; Paul Graham (Eds), IDASA's Democracy Index — Democracy in the Time of Mbeki, Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), Cape Town, 2005, R150, 252 pages.

Pieter Wolvaardt, A Diplomat's Story: Apartheid and Beyond, 1969–1998, South Africa: Galago Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1–919854–15–0, R225, 336 pages.

Greg Mills, The Security Intersection: The Paradox of Power in an Age of Terror, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2005, 321 pages.

Hugh Pope, Sons of the Conquerors. The Rise of the Turkic World, New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2005. ISBN 1–58567–641–1. 413 pages.