Socialism,Economic Development and Planning in Mali, 1960–1968

This article looks at practices of pilferage and bribery among African migrant dock workers in Durban in the 1950s. Many of Durban's dockers regularly engaged in small-scale theft, usually food for personal consumption, but sometimes they also got their hands on bigger and more expensive items or sold the pilfered goods. Many also relied on their social networks to find jobs and did not shy away from bribing izinduna to make sure that they were hired on ships that contained the right goods. Such crimes, which were often not recognised as such by the workers, have often been seen as forms of primitive and individual resistance to proletarianisation. This article, however, argues that these were not just reactive and opportunistic acts, but part of a conscious strategy to combine dock labour with a small business, which allowed several workers to withdraw from the wage labour market altogether.     

Dynamic properties of Taiwanese fertility, 1950–1972

This extensive statistical study focuses on fertility patterns during the postwar period in Taiwan. The analytical technique is economic, with socioeconomic variables generally considered the important determinants of fertility; on the other hand, female education and labor force participation were seen to exert a strong negative effect on fertility. Taiwan has reduced birth rates nearly 50% in the period from the 1950s-1970s. In 1972, Taiwan's birth rate/woman was 3.4, a 50% reduction from 1950, generally attributed to institution of a well-conceived family planning program in 1964. It is hypothesized that the socioeconomic forces (presented in 7 comprehensive tables) which influenced negatively the rate of births, worked primarily to reduce excess rather than desired fertility. The clear connection between women's participation in the labor force and reduction in desired fertility leads to the suggestion that stronger economic incentives must be presented to women. Given the already wide availability and low cost of birth control devices, further fertility reductions caused by expanded participation in the family planning program are not likely to reduce desired family size significantly. Instead, it is argued that such reductions tend to occur slowly and to be associated with more economically meaningful roles for women. Analyzed on a cost-benefit basis, the fertility control efforts of the Taiwanese government should be directed to achieving a synchronization between the skill levels demanded by the economy and those acquired in the system of higher education. Economic incentives for fewer births would then augment, rather than offset, the presently extant negative effects of slowly changing attitudinal variables and economic development. The formulation and usefulness of statistical methods are developed extensively within this article.     

Political Economy of the Environment,Gender, and Resistance under Colonialism: Murang'a District,Kenya, 1910–1950

This article draws on interviews with women resettlement farmers in Wedza District, Zimbabwe, to trace changes in livelihood strategies and gender relations from 2000 to 2006. The research indicates a shrinking number of viable options for livelihoods, and the severe erosion of formerly critical activities. Thewomen interviewed see increases inmarital discord and collapse, with implications for family formation, social order, and survival. The article explores the linkages between changing livelihoods and gender relations, focusing especially on marriage in relation to agriculture and land issues, gendered incomes, sexuality, AIDS orphans and other effects of HIV/AIDS. Within this overall difficult context, the enduring ethic of caring and the buffering effects of people’s access to arable land and other natural resources are apparent. Throughout, the article discusses the theoretical implications of the research, participating in debates about regional conditions and theoretical understandings of labour, economy, livelihoods and gender in southern Africa.     

Gender as Survival: Women's Experiences of Deportation from Romania to the Soviet Union, 1945–1950

This paper offers hypotheses on the role that state social welfare measures can play in reflecting nationalism and in aggravating interethnic tensions. Social welfare is often overlooked in theoretical literature on nationalism, because of the widespread assumption that the welfare state promotes social cohesion. However, social welfare systems may face contradictions between the goal of promoting universal access to all citizens on the one hand, and social pressures to recognize particular groups in distinct ways on the other. Examples from the post-Soviet context (particularly Russia) are offered to illustrate the ways in which social welfare issues may be perceived as having ethnic connotations.     

Combating Coups d’état in Africa, 1950–2014

Recent years have seen African militaries attempt coups in virtually every geographic region, from Egypt to Lesotho and Guinea to Madagascar. They have targeted established democracies, infantile democratic experiments, increasingly authoritarian executives, power vacuums brought on by leader death, and—most recently in Burundi—leaders attempting to circumvent constitutional limitations on their tenure. These continuing acts perpetrated against regimes with such varied backdrops suggests that coups still afflict a wide range of states and remain a continuing threat to leader tenure. This is in contrast to the African Union’s emphasis on curbing the practice. This paper explores the African Union’s effectiveness to combat military coups, primarily focusing on the potential for sanctions to act as a deterrent to would-be coup plotters. The paper also considers potential limitations on the African Union’s (AU’s) ability to project power against certain states. Analyses for the years 1950–2014 indicate Africa has in fact witnessed a meaningful decline in coup activity, an impact even more pronounced than the end of the Cold War. Results also indicate that the AU’s effectiveness in deterring coups is not constrained in cases where they are expected to lack leverage.     

Race, Caste, or Class? The Bunche–Myrdal Dispute Over An American Dilemma

Few observers doubt that Gunnar Myrdal and Ralph J. Bunche had sharp methodological disagreements and differing approaches to tactics for ending the Negro problem. Myrdal has been criticized as a statist liberal and utopian moralist by recent cultural historians defending progressive nationalism (multiculturalism), while Bunche has been characterized as a vulgar Marxist, and, with Myrdal, a denigrator of black culture. Inspection of An American Dilemma in contrast with Bunche's research memoranda suggests that Myrdal represented himself as a Burkean conservative, while Bunche's analyses transmit the radical puritan libertarian tradition, but without rejecting social democratic remedies en route to working-class control of industry. Their shared emphasis on class-based remedies to end poverty and powerlessness, however, renders them similarly unassimilable in a period where the progressive left has generally embraced racial or ethnic identity, not class power, as the source of individual emancipation, mental health, and economic betterment.     

Turmoil in Egypt – 1968–2011: the status of the armed forces in citizen uprisings in Egypt

On 15 January 2011, there occurred an unprecedented event in the annals of Arab states: for the first time, the masses revolted and ousted a local ruler. The Tunisian masses took to the streets and stayed there until Zayn al-‘ābidīn bin ‘Alī stepped down, or, rather, fled the country. Ten days after Bin ‘Alī’s fall, the masses filled the thoroughfares of Egypt's major cities and demanded the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt for 30 years. On 12 February 2011, after 18 days of stormy protests, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak's resignation and announced that Mubarak's powers had been transferred to him. This paper follows the Egyptian saga in the context of the new phenomenon taking place across the Arab world – citizen revolts. It does not address the protests by Islamic opposition groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood; instead, it offers case studies in social, economic, and ideological (one might even say, secular) contexts, not religious ones. It surveys the recent epoch-making events in the Nile region and compares them with violent demonstrations and riots in its past. The paper's importance lies in its examination of the role of the armed forces in each case and primarily in its investigation of the assertion that the broad-based uprisings seem to have written finis to the military's pivotal role in Arab states.     

Workers' Councils in the Service of the Market: New Archival Evidence on the Origins of Self-Management in Yugoslavia 1948–1950

This article provides a new synthesis on the origins of self-management in Yugoslavia on the basis of new archival research. It rejects the dominant view in the historiography that self-management arose merely as an ideological justification for the split with Stalin's USSR in 1948. Rather, it demonstrates that the introduction of workers' councils was part of an elaborate effort on the part of the Communist leadership to return to its pre-1948, proto-‘reform Communist’ strategy that was remarkably open to interaction with the world market. This is shown to have implications for understanding Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, the Cold War and Communism.     

Governmental Corruption and Social Change in New Zealand: Using Scenarios, 1950–2020

New Zealand has long enjoyed a reputation as a country with a corruption-free state sector, and ranks very highly on the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (meaning its corruption levels are perceived to be extremely low). However, there is prima facie evidence to suggest that this situation may be changing, not dramatically but significantly. While the state sector changes of the 1980s and early 1990s may be having some impact on this shift, it also has to be understood in the context of wider societal changes, which are probably more decisive. After some brief conceptual clarification, the article presents three scenarios sketching past (1950s/1960s), present (1990s–2006) and future (2006–2020) social and governmental conditions thought to be relevant to corruption levels.     

United they stood,divided they fell: Nationalism and the Yugoslav school of basketball, 1968‐2000

Evan Mawdsley. The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet: War and Politics, February 1917‐April 1918. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978. Pp. 213. $23.50.

Thomas Hnik, ed. European Bibliography of Soviet, East European and Slavonic Studies (Title also in French and German). Vol. II, 1976. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1979. Pp. xxxviii, 479. $22.00.

Stephen Clarkson. The Soviet Theory of Development: India and the Third World in Marxist‐Leninist Scholarship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978. Pp. xii, 322. $17.50.