The queer Third World

This article attempts to align ‘queer’ and ‘Third World’ – grouping them in their common inheritance of subjugation and disparagement and their shared allegiance to non-alignment and a politics aimed at disrupting domination and the status quo. In assembling both terms one is struck by how, in the mainstream discourse of international development, the Third World comes off looking remarkably queer: under Western eyes it has often been constructed as perverse, abnormal and passive. Its sociocultural values and institutions are seen as deviantly strange – backward, effete, even effeminate. Its economic development is depicted as abnormal, always needing to emulate the West, yet never living up to the mark (‘emerging’ perhaps, but never quite arriving). For their part, postcolonial Third World nation-states have tended to disown and purge such queering – by denying their queerness; indeed often characterising it as a ‘Western import’ – yet at the same time imitating the West and pursuing neoliberal capitalist growth. I want not only to make the claim that the Western and Third World stances are two sides of the same discourse but, drawing on Lacanian queer theory, also to suggest that a ‘queer Third World’ would better transgress this discourse by embracing queerness as the site of structural negativity and destabilising politics.     

Safe house fiction

John LeCarré: The Secret Pilgrim Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1991, 335 p., $21.95.     

世界杯的由来

现代足球起源于英国,后风靡世界.由于足球运动的发展,国际比赛也随之出现.1896年,第一届现代奥运会在希腊举行时,足球就列为正式比赛项目,丹麦以9:0大胜希腊,成为奥运会第一个足球冠军.因为当时奥运会不允许职业运动员参加,到了1928年(第九届奥运会)足球比赛已无法持续.     

Book reviews: The Islamic World

The Palestine Problem in International Law and World Order. W Thomas Mallison and Sally V Mallison London: Longman. 1986. 564pp. £36.00hb

Prisoners of God: The Modern‐Day Conflict of Arab and Jew. David Smith. London: Quartet. 1987. 243pp. £12.95hb

Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. David K Shipler. London: Bloomsbury. 1987. 562pp. £17.95hb

Tunisia: Crossroads of the Islamic and European Worlds. Kenneth J Perkins. Boulder, Colorado: Westview/London: Croom Helm. 1986. 192pp. n/p.

Habib Bourguiba, Islam and the Creation of Tunisia. Norma Salem. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 270pp. £19.95hb

Iraqi Politics 1921–41: The Interaction between Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy. Ahmad Abdul Razzaq Shikara London: LAAM. 1987. 227pp. £11.95pb

Iraq since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship. Marion Farouk‐Sluglett and Peter Sluglett. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1987. 332pp. £29.95hb

Iraq, the Gulf States and the War: A Changing Relationship 1980–1986 and Beyond. Gerd Nonneman. London: Ithaca Press. 1986. 224pp. £17.00hb/£9.00pb

Western Strategic Interests in Saudi Arabia. Anthony H Cordesman. London: Croom Helm. 1987. 308pp. n/p

Saudi Arabia, the West and the Security of the Gulf. Mazher A Hameed. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 189pp. £19.95hb

The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. Roy Mottahedeh. London: Chatto and Windus. 1986. 416pp. £12.95hb

Egypt: The Stalled Society. Hamied Ansari. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 1986. 308pp. S44.50hb/$16.95pb

Islam and the Third Universal Theory. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub. London: Kegan Paul International. 1987. 175pp. n/p

Qaddafi's World Design: Libyan Foreign Policy, 1969–1987. Ronald Bruce St John. London: Al Saqi. 1987. 184pp. £14.95hb

Class and Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State 1840–1985. Michael Johnson. London: Ithaca Press. 1986. 243pp. £18.00hb

Israel into Palestine. Gwyn Rowley. London: Mansell. 1983. 208pp. £18.50hb

Classand Power in the Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 1898–1985. Tim Niblock. London: Macmillan. 1987. 370pp. £35.00hb

Sudan: State, Capital and Transformation. Edited by Tony Barnett and Abbas Abdelkarim London: Croom Helm. 1987. 224pp. £25.00hb

The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State John Obert Voll and Sarah Potts Voll London: Croom Helm. 1985. 178pp. £18.95hb

The Sudan: Ethnicity and National Cohesion. Mohamed Omer Beshir, Mohamed A R Mohammed‐Salih and Musa Adam Abdul‐Jalil Bayreuth, West Germany: Bayreuth University (African Studies Season). 1984. 85pp. n/p

The Return to Democracy in Sudan. Adib Halasa, John D Cooke and Ustinia Dolgopol. Geneva: International Commission of Jurists. 1986. 103pp. n/p

Sudan Since Independence. Edited by Muddathir Abd al‐Rahim, Raphael Badal, Adlan Hardallo and Peter. Woodward. Aldershot, England: Gower. 1987. 181pp. £19.50hb

Fueling the Fire: US Policy and The Western Sahara. Leo Kamil. Trenton, New Jersey: Red Sea Press. 1987. 104pp. $12.95hb/$4.95pb

The Arab Radicals. Edited by Adeed Dawisha. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. 1986. 171pp. $17.50hb/$8.95pb

Social Legislation in the Contemporary Middle East. Edited by Jeswald W Salacuse and Laurence O Michalak. Berkeley, California: Institute of International Studies, University of California. 1986. 376pp. $14.95hb

The Dilemma of Development in the Arabian Peninsula. Abdul Rahman Osama. London: Croom Helm. 1987. 203pp. £25.00hb

The Economic Development of the Yemen Arab Republic. Ragaei el Mallakh. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 196pp. £22.50hb

Arabia and the Gulf: From Traditional Society to Modern States. Edited by Ian Richard Netton. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 259pp. £29.95hb

Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History.. Ahmad Y al‐Hassan and Donald R Hill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Paris: Unesco. 1986. 304pp. £25.00hb     

The Making and Remaking of Agro-Industries in Africa

This article introduces the special section on the making and remaking of agro-industries in Africa. It examines what the contributions tell us about how agro-industries work, but also why national industries work the way they do, how they came to be that way and what factors and forces drive or hinder their dynamism.     

The challenge of the creative Third World

This article is a contribution to recent literature on the shape of the polycentric world order. It argues that the Third World remains a valid concept for describing the interests and ideas that shape the foreign policies of many key non-Western states. However, the Third World has changed in a fundamental way. The article describes the historical emergence and contemporary manifestations of a ‘creative’ Third World in contrast to the ‘protest’ Third World of the past. It describes the nature of this shift and how it is reshaping Western leadership. It argues that the main challenge for the West is to create a coherent pluralism in international order that embraces this creative Third World.     

The World Bank and India's irrigation reform

The decisions to be taken on canal irrigation in India during the next five years will have repercussions well into the next century, and the World Bank's role in those decisions will be substantial. Yet the Bank's approach to improving existing canal systems and designing new ones fails to match the components of the approach with their environments. This paper suggests that in a wide range of social and physical environments the Bank's proposals are likely to give little net benefit compared with alternatives. An alternative way of thinking about irrigation improvement programmes would emphasise operational procedures and the information ‘system’.     

The Cold War and Third World revolution

Much of the Cold War took place in the Third World. The three works authored by Gregg A. Brazinsky, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry During the Cold War; Jeffry James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order; and Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, are reviewed here and they provide historical details. A consistent theme that emerges is the importance of ideological factors in driving the events are discussed. It is also clear that the Third World states were not passive objects of pressure from great powers but had agendas of their own. These books provide useful material for theorists of international relations and policy makers.