Mr. Natural

Paul Burkett: Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

James O'Connor: Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. New York: Guilford, 1998.     

Embodying the Deepest Contradiction: A Rejoinder to Alan Rudy

Andrew Ross: The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society . London: Verso. 1994.

Alexander Wilson: The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez . Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. 1992.

Simon Schama: Landscape and Memory . New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1994.     

First impressions: Western barbarians at the Celestial Court

Britain's First View of China: Lord Macartney's Embassy to the Peking Court, 1792–94. A joint British Museum/British Library Exhibition. Sponsored and supported by the British Taiwan Cultural Institute. British Museum, 10 October 1992–4 April 1993.

The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British Expedition to China 1792–4, by Alain Peyrefitte (translated from the French by Jon Rothschild). Harvill, London, 1993. xxxiii + 630 pp., colour illus., maps. £30. ISBN 0–00–272677–7.     

‘A willing Odysseus’: The life and times of Albert O. Hirschman

Abstract

In this review essay of Jeremy Adelman's biography of Albert O. Hirschman, A worldly philosopher, supplemented by references to other secondary works on Hirschman, I take the opportunity to discuss the relationship between the economist's life and his main publications. I argue that in times of crisis more attempts like Hirschman's political economy are needed. I further argue that Hirschman has given us a good idea of what a new moral economy, which really deserves this name, would look like.     

Dragons,lions and gibbering demons

China: A New History, by John King Fairbank. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London, 1992. xvii ± 519 pp., photos, maps. £19.95, $27.95. ISBN 0–674–11670–4. The Lion and the Dragon: The Story of the first British Embassy to the Court of the Emperor Qianlong in Peking 1792–94, by Aubrey Singer. Barrie and Jenkins, London, 1992. xv ± 192 pp., illus, maps. £18.99. ISBN 0–7126–5444–5.

Britain's Encounter with Revolutionary China, 1949–54, by James Tuck‐Hong Tang. Macmillan Press, Basingstoke and London; St Martin's Press, New York, 1992. xiii+ 264 pp., £45. ISBN 0–333–54896–5.     

Hieronymus Bosch (aka Jeroen van Aken), Eco-Revolutionary

Moishe Postone: Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett: Thy Will Be Done — The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1995.

Robin A. Butlin and Neil Roberts, eds.: Ecological Relations in Historical Times. Oxford U.K.: Blackwell, 1995.     

Providence Lost: ‘September 11’ and the History of Evil

Abstract

This paper discusses the philosophical significance of ‘September 11’ by relating it to attempts that have been made throughout the history of philosophy to read particular events as symbols of conceptual change. It draws especially on Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought and Giovanna Borradori's dialogues with Derrida and Habermas, in her Philosophy in a Time of Terror, to relate ‘September 11’ to Kant's versions of Progress, Providence and Cosmopolitanism.     

Hannah Arendt's analysis of antisemitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism: a critical appraisal

ABSTRACT

Hannah Arendt's seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with an extended study of the history of antisemitism. Many of Arendt's arguments in this groundbreaking text have been challenged by other scholars. Examining the chief contours of Arendt's account of the rise of modern antisemitism, Staudenmaier offers detailed reasons for approaching her conclusions sceptically while appreciating the book's other virtues. Arendt's repeated reliance on antisemitic sources, her inconsistent analysis of assimilation, her overstated distinction between social and political dimensions of anti-Jewish sentiment, and her emphasis on partial Jewish responsibility for antisemitism indicate fundamental problems with her interpretation of the historical record. A thorough critical appraisal of Arendt's argument offers an opportunity for both her admirers and her detractors to come to terms concretely with the contradictory aspects of her historical legacy.     

Japan: Still searching for a role

Japan's Rise to International Responsibilities: The Case of Arms Control, by Reinhard Drifte. Athlone Press, London, 1990. xi + 112 pp. £25. ISBN 0–485–11385–6.

Japanese Defence: The Search for Political Power, by S. Javed Maswood. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1990. ix + 113 pp. US$12.00. ISBN 981–3035–39–0.

The Emergence of Japan's Foreign Aid Policy, by Robert M. Orr Jnr. Columbia University Press, New York, 1990. x + 178 pp. $32.00. ISBN 0–231–07046–2.

Same Bed, Different Dreams: America and Japan—Societies in Transition, edited by Alan D. Romberg and Tadashi Yamamoto. Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 1990. xi + 138 pp. $14.95 paperback. ISBN 0–87609–082‐X.     

Modernist art in the service of Nazi culture: Baldur von Schirach and the Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich exhibition

ABSTRACT

Maertz's essay offers a history of a modernist art exhibition that opened in Vienna's Künstlerhaus under the patronage of Baldur von Schirach, the Führer's personal representative in that city, the second largest in Nazi Germany. The significance of the 1943 Junge Kunst im Deutschen Reich (New Art in the German Reich) exhibition lies in its assertion of a modernist variant of ‘official’ National Socialist art that clashes with the orthodox aesthetic system typically associated with the Third Reich.     

Reason and the Restlessness of the Speculative: Jean-Luc Nancy's Reading of Hegel

Abstract

This paper examines Jean-Luc Nancy's interpretation of Hegel, focusing in particular on The Restlessness of the Negative. It is argued that Nancy's reading represents a significant break with other post-structuralist readings of Hegel by taking his thought to be non-metaphysical. The paper focuses in particular on the role Nancy gives to the negative in Hegel's thought. Ultimately Nancy's reading is limited as an interpretation of Hegel, since he gives no sustained explanation of the self-correcting function of reason.     

Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: perverse effects,protectionism and Gemeinschaft

Abstract

Drawing upon Karl Polanyi's journalistic writings and unpublished lectures from the 1920s and 1930s, this article reconstructs the lineaments of his research programme that was to assume its finished form in The Great Transformation. It identifies and corrects a common misinterpretation of the thesis of that book, and argues that Polanyi's basic theoretical framework is best conceived as Tönniesian: market society is Gesellschaft, while the ‘protective counter-movement’ of The Great Transformation is Gemeinschaft, understood dynamically. It examines the two central mechanisms by which, in Polanyi's understanding, Gesellschaft broke down in the mid-twentieth century: the ‘clash between democracy and capitalism’ and the ‘perverse effects’ whereby political intervention in markets impairs profitability and saps the vitality of the market system.     

Sudpolitik: the political economy of Taiwan's trade with Southeast Asia

Abstract

In December 1993 the Taiwan government adopted a policy called nanjin zhengce or sudpolitik, a policy aimed at diverting part of Taiwan's trade and investment flows from China to Southeast Asia. This paper addresses the following questions: what is sudpolitik? why adopt such a policy? what are the economic, political, and strategic considerations in the pursuit of this policy? which countries are its specific targets? how do the countries directly affected by this policy respond to it? The paper also discusses the issue of Taiwan's aid in connection with sudpolitik. While the effectiveness of the policy is far from clear at present, the paper concludes with four observations: Taiwan's trade and aid are beginning to intertwine; Taiwan's diplomacy is largely economically or commercially led; Taiwan has achieved some positive results in improving its relations with Southeast Asian countries; and, Taiwan has reached a new stage in its economic development whereby it needs to invest overseas in order to sustain its economic growth. Overall, sudpolitik represents a novel step in Taiwan's diplomatic practice.     

The iron law of democratic socialism: British and Austrian influences on the young Karl Polanyi

Abstract

A central thesis of Karl Polanyi's The great transformation concerns the tensions between capitalism and democracy: the former embodies the principle of inequality, while democracy represents that of equality. This paper explores the intellectual heritage of this thesis, in the ‘functional theory’ of G.D.H. Cole and Otto Bauer and in the writings of Eduard Bernstein. It scrutinizes Polanyi's relationship with Bernstein's ‘evolutionary socialism’ and charts his ‘double movement’ vis-à-vis Marxist philosophy: in the 1910s he reacted sharply against Marxism's deterministic excesses, but he then, in the 1920s, engaged in sympathetic dialogue with Austro-Marxist thinkers. The latter, like Bernstein, disavowed economic determinism and insisted upon the importance and autonomy of ethics. Yet they simultaneously predicted a law-like expansion of democracy from the political to the economic arena. Analysis of this contradiction provides the basis for a concluding discussion that reconsiders the deterministic threads in Polanyi's oeuvre. Whereas for some Polanyi scholars these attest to his residual attraction to Marxism, I argue that matters are more complex. While Polanyi did repudiate the more rigidly deterministic of currents in Marxist philosophy, those to which he was attracted, notably Bernstein's ‘revision’ and Austro-Marxism, incorporated a deterministic fatalism of their own, in respect of democratization. Herein lies a more convincing explanation of Polanyi's incomplete escape from a deterministic philosophy of history, as exemplified in his masterwork, The great transformation.     

Tyndall's elite

The hidden language of race in British politics Frank Reeves, British Racial Discourse: A Study of British Political Discourse about Race and Race‐Related Matters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. viii +287pp. Appends. Bibl. Inds. £22.50.

Fascism on the periphery: ineffectual and insignificant John D. Brewer, Mosley's Men: The British Union of Fascists in the West Midlands. London: Gower, 1984. xii+159pp. Notes. Bibl. Ind. £13.50.

Intellectual ‘angst’ of the powerless Stanley Diamond (ed.), ‘The Jewish Question’. A special issue of Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 8, nos. 1 &; 2, October 1983.     

Why Governments Innovate: Adoption and Implementation of Open Source Software by Four European Cities

ABSTRACT

A growing number of governments will consider and even choose to migrate to an alternative operating system that uses Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). This research examines why governments choose to migrate and what factors affect implementation. Drawing on a comparative case study of four cities, I find that governments decide to migrate for a range of factors, but are driven more by democratic values such as independence and self-determination than by a desire to cut costs or save money. I also find that implementation is affected by a variety factors but in particular by information technology's place within a city's organizational structure.     

The pressures for protection

Japan's Unequal Trade, by Edward J. Lincoln. The Brookings Institution, Washington, 1990. xiii+223 pp. $26.95. ISBN 0–8157–5262–8.

Japan's Quest for a Role in the World: Roles ascribed to Japan Nationally and Internationally, by Bert Edström. Institute of Oriental Languages, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, 1988. xiii+325 pp. ISBN 91–7146–585–5.

Japan at the Summit: Its Role in the Western Alliance and Asian‐Pacific Cooperation, by Shiro Saito. Routledge for RIIA, London, 1990. xii + 220 pp. £30. ISBN 0–415–04271–2.

Made in Japan And Other Japanese ‘Business Novels’, translated and edited by Tamae K. Prindle. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY and London, 1990. xviii+203 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0–87332–529‐X.

Trade and Investment Relations Among the United States, Canada and Japan, edited by Robert M. Stern. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1989. viii+448 pp. £47.25 ($43.95). ISBN 0–226–77317–5.

International Economic Pluralism: Economic Policy in East Asia and the Pacific, by Peter Drysdale. Allen and Unwin Australia, Sydney and London, 1988. 294 pp. £20 paperback. ISBN 0–04–350075–7.

Japanese Business Down Under: Patterns of Japanese Investment in Australia, by David W. Edgington. Routledge, London and New York, 1990. xiv + 294 pp. £40. ISBN. 0–415–03499‐X.

Japan's Foreign Policy, by Reinhard Drifte. Routledge and the RIIA, London, 1990. x + 112 pp. £7.95. ISBN 0–415–03234–2.

Japan's Trade Policies: 1945 to the Present Day, by Takashi Shiraishi. Athlone Press, London, 1989. viii + 228 pp. £37.50. ISBN 0–485–11363–5.

Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade, by Helen V. Milner. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1988. xiii+329 pp. $29.50. ISBN 0–691–05670–6.     

Reviews

A philosophical approach to racism Thomas W. Heilke, Voegelin on the Idea of Race. An Analysis of Modern European Racism. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. xii + 161pp. Bibl. Ind. £21.50.

British antisemitism under the microscope Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society during the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989. ix + 257pp. Notes. Ind. £29.95.

The Jew as scapegoat Yves Chevalier, L'Antisémitisme. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1988. 464pp. Bibl. Ind. 125 FF.

Austrians for Nazism F. Parkinson (ed.), Conquering the Past. Austrian Nazism Yesterday and Today. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989. 345pp. Ind. $34.95, $14.90.

The rise of Germany's extreme right Gerhard Paul (ed.), Hitlers Schatten verblaßt—die Normalisierung des Rechtsextremismus (Hitler's Faded Shadow—The Normalization of Rightwing Extremism). Bonn: Dietz, 1989. 231pp. Notes. Tables. Bibl. DM 16.80.

The Nazi affiliations of a great philosopher Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism. Trans. from German and French by Paul Burrell and Gabriel R. Ricci. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989. xxii + 349pp. Notes. Ind. £29.95.

Ebensee: death through forced labour Florian Freund, Arbeitslager Zement: Das Konzentrationslager Ebensee und die Raketenrüstung (Industrie, Zwangsarbeit und Konzentrationslager in Österreich vol. 2) Vienna: Verlag für Gesell‐schaftskritik, 1989. 486pp. DM 57.00.

The variety of Latin American Jewry AMILAT (ed.), Judaica Latinoamericana. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988. 266pp. $27.     

Compromising liberty: Friedrich Hayek's The road to serfdom in practice

Abstract

This paper examines a rare and unstudied piece of consultancy work undertaken in 1944 by Friedrich Hayek for the British Colonial Office and for the Government of Gibraltar. Hayek's subsequent reports suggested the reorganization of the state-regulated Gibraltar housing market in line with free market principles designed to relocate the colony's working-class population into neighbouring Spain. However, rather than freeing Gibraltarians from the evils of state planning, as identified in The road to serfdom (also 1944), this proposal would have delivered them into the dictatorship of General Franco. Not only was Franco's regime brutal, but it also practised autarkic economic policies virtually identical to those which Hayek maligned in The road to serfdom. In sum, Hayek's proposals would have benefited Gibraltar's landlords at the expense of the liberty of the majority of the civilian population.