Reviews

Zhores A. Medvedev, Soviet Agriculture, New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987, xiv + 464 pp. $27.50.

Abel Aganbegyan, The Challenge: Economics of Perestroika, London: Hutchinson, 1988. xxvii + 248 pp. £20.00 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Maurice Friedberg and Heyward Isham eds. Soviet Society Under Gorbachev: Current Trends and the Prospects for Reform. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe Inc. 1987, xiv + 159 pp. $28.50 h/b, $12.95 p/b.

Martin McCauley ed. The Soviet Union under Gorbachev. London: Macmillan Press in association with the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1987, 247 pp. £29.50 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

David A. Dyker ed. The Soviet Union under Gorbachev: Prospects for Reform. London: Croom Helm, 1987, 227 pp. £25.00 h/b.

Alexander Yanov, The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000. Translated by Iden J. Rosenthal. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987, xvi + 302 pp. £19.50.

Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of International Relations. Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books, 1988, 376 pp. £35.00.

James R. Millar, Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xiv + 423 pp. £12.95.

Thomas G. Hart, Sino‐Soviet Relations: Re‐examining the Prospects for Normalisation. Aldershot: Gower Publishing Company, 1987, xiii + 128 pp., £18.50.

Donna Bahry, Outside Moscow: Power, Politics, and Budgetary Policy in the Soviet Republics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, ix + 236 pp. £15.50.

Jerry F. Hough, Opening up the Soviet Economy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1988, ix + 100 pp. $8.95 p/b.

Padma Desai, The Soviet Economy: Problems and Prospects. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1987, viii + 281 pp. £29.50.

Trevor Buck and John Cole, Modern Soviet Economic Performance. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987, viii + 192 pp., £27.50.

Adam Zwass, Market, Plan, and State: The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Two World Economic Systems. Armonk, New York and London: M. E. Sharpe Inc., 1987, x + 198 pp., $32.50.

Peter Gey, Jiri Kosta and Wolfgang Quaisser, Crisis and Reform in Socialist Economies, Boulder, Colorado and London: Westview Press, 1987, xi + 196 pp., £28.50.

Ian Jeffries and Manfred Melzer eds. The East Germany Economy. London: Croom Helm, 1987, 329 pp., £35.00.

Andras Raba and Karl‐Ernst Schenk eds. Investment System and Foreign Trade Implications in Hungary, Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1987, 260 pp., DM44.00.

Malcolm R. Hill and Richard McKay, Soviet Product Quality, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press in association with Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 1988, xv + 205 pp. £29.50.

Carl G. Jacobsen ed. The Soviet Defence Enigma. Estimating Costs and Burden. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, xvii + 189 pp. £25.50.

Jacques Sapir, Le Système militaire soviétique, Paris: Editions la Découverte, 1988, 343 pp, 150 FF.

Genia K. Browning, Women and Politics in the USSR. Consciousness Raising and Soviet Women's Groups. Brighton and New York: Wheatsheaf Books and St. Martin's Press, 1987, ix + 178 pp. £25.00.

George Avis, ed., Soviet Higher and Vocational Education from Khrushchev to Gorbachev. Bradford: the University; Bradford Occasional Papers no. 8, 1987, vi + 136 pp. £5.50.

J. Muckle, A Guide to the Soviet Curriculum: What the Russian Child is Taught in School. London: Croom Helm, 1988, ix + 213 pp. £22.50.

Michael Reiman, The Birth of Stalinism: The USSR on the Eve of the ‘Second Revolution’. Translated by George Saunders. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1987, xii + 188 pp. £24.50 h/b. £9.50 p/b.

Alan M. Ball, Russia's Last Capitalists: the NEPmen 1921–1929, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London. xvii + 226 pp. $32.50.

Robert M. Slusser, Stalin in October: The Man who Missed the Revolution. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, xiv + 282 pp. £20.25.

Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987, xvi + 351 pp. £30.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Teodor Shanin, Russia, 1905–1907: Revolution as a Moment of Truth. London: Macmillan, 1986, xiv + 378 pp. £9.95.

Jadwiga Koralewicz, Ireneusz Bialecki and Margaret Watson eds. Crisis and Transition: Polish Society in the 1980s. Oxford: Berg, 1987, 184 pp., £21.00

Joni Lovenduski and Jean Woodall, Politics and Society in Eastern Europe. London: Macmillan Education, 1987, xiii + 432 pp, £30.00 h/b. £8.50 p/b.

Ray Taras, Poland, Socialist State, Rebellious Nation. Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1986, xviii + 200 pp. £27.50.

Geoffrey Hamilton ed. Red Multinationals or Red Herrings? The Activities of Enterprises from Socialist Countries in the West. London: Frances Pinter 1987, 202 pp., £18.50.

Gérard Duchêne, L'Economie de l'URSS, Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1987, 127 pp., No price.

Klaus Ziemer, Polens Weg in die Krise. Eine politische Soziologie der ‘Ära Gierek’. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum, 1987, 491. DM68.00.

Sandor Szakály, A magyar katonai elit. 1938–1945 (Military Elite in Hungary 1938–1945) Budapest: Magvetö Publishing House, 1987, 275 pp., 28Ft.

Jan A. Pichna Sociologicke Problemy Vynalezcovskeho a Zlepsovatelskeho Hnutia v Priemyselnom Podniku, (Sociological Problems of the Invention and Improvement Movement in the Industrial Enterprise). Bratislava: Praca Vydavatel?tvo a Nakladatel?tvo ROH, 1987, 240 pp., Kcs. 25.

William Chase and J. Arch Getty, The Soviet Data Bank. Version 1.0. 1986, $100.00.     

What role for trade in food sovereignty? Insights from a small island archipelago

The food sovereignty movement has been gathering momentum in advocating the rights of individuals and nations to control their own food systems. Alongside this is a mounting critical engagement regarding its privileging of local food production as the means through which to achieve this goal. Adopting a place-based approach, we explore the foodways of diverse communities across a small island archipelago – the Turks and Caicos Islands in the West Indies. Based on interviews and focus groups, we unpack narratives relating to islanders’ changing food practices and aspirations. These are understood as two competing but inter-related themes of disruption and reification of current practices shaped by wider food regimes in interaction with ecological challenges. Given that conditions of historic dependency implicate the islands in a myriad of dependent trade relationships, we argue that small island economies offer, and require, unique cases for understanding how sovereign conditions for trade might be developed in line with a food sovereignty framework. We underline the importance of an inter-disciplinary focus for bringing forth a nuanced understanding of what might be required to shape more sustainable, sovereign and secure food futures. Doing so is necessarily rooted in an appreciation of islanders’ accounts of social, economic, political and ecological change over time.     

Explaining institutional amnesia in government

This article explains why different government agencies experience variations in organizational memory loss. It first explains institutional amnesia theoretically by expanding the formal‐institutional view of organizational memory to include agential and structural‐contextual properties, revealing a broader range of novel explanations for amnesia. Institutional amnesia is then explained empirically through an international analysis of memory loss in four Westminster systems (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom). This analysis, which principally relies on 100 interviews with ministers, policy officials, and public‐sector leaders across the four countries, leads to the introduction of four explanations for amnesia, relating to: organizational churn, absorptive capacity, strategic‐instrumental decision making, and historical storytelling.     

Are there “women’s crops”? A new tool for gender and agriculture

A “Gender Control Tool” was developed to measure women’s control over decision-making for agricultural production, sales, and use of income. The tool was tested for groundnuts in Eastern Province, Zambia, where mechanisation has increased male participation in groundnut shelling, and for goats in Gwanda district, Zimbabwe, where the introduction of auctions has increased investment and sales. A mixed methods approach was used, that involved focus group discussions (FGDs) and a quantitative household survey. This article compares the results obtained from these two methods and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the tool in understanding how commercialisation affects women’s control.     

Location and Assessment of an Historic (150–160 Years Old) Mass Grave Using Geographic and Ground Penetrating Radar Investigation,NW Ireland*

Abstract: Reburial of human remains and concerns regarding pathogens and pollution prompted the search for, and assessment of, a 156-year-old graveyard. To locate this graveyard, historic and anecdotal information was compared to landscape interpretation from aerial photography. To assess and map the contents, surface collapses, metal detector indications, and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) were used. Some 170 anomalies compatible with burials were identified on 200 MHz GPR data, 84 of which coincided with surface collapses, suggesting both noncollapsed ground, subsequent infill, and multiple inhumations. The graveyard was possibly split into Roman Catholic plots with multiple inhumations; Protestant plots; and a kileen, or graveyard for the unbaptized (often children). The work serves as one approach to the location and mapping of recent and historic unmarked graves.