Portfolio of drawings from the National Liberation Front

Abstract

Young women's participation in industry in Taiwan has increased phenomenally since the mid- 1960s due to the development of light industry for export, notably the textile and electronics industries. The number of women employed as workers in manufacturing increased 3.2 times in the decade 1965 to 1974, while the total population of women over 15 years of age increased 37.5 percent. Table 1 shows the shift in employment by age category, from 1965 to 1977. Most notably, the percentage of employed young women occupied in manufacturing has nearly tripled, and the average age of women in agriculture has increased by almost six years. Of course as the large cohorts born in the early 1950s reached their teens and early twenties, the numbers of young women available for employment swelled. This younger generation has received education of at least primary school level, and a majority have also completed also junior or senior high school; employment as a salaried worker in industry or commerce after junior high school graduation has become a predominant life pattern for young women. In contrast, most women of the previous generation received primary or less education, and now remain in farm households, in family businesses, in petty own-account sales, or do putting-out work such as knitting and finishing while they care for their families. The modern occupations of unmarried women are most succinctly shown in data from the island-wide sample survey carried out by the Taiwan Provincial Family Planning Institute in late 1971. Although the sample included women aged 18 to 29, 90 percent of the unmarried women were under 23 years old (Table 2).     

Review: India's political economy

Abstract

Though this is an extremely important study from one of the most perceptive of U.S. scholars of India, it is not, despite its title, a study of India's “political economy.” That would require a much fuller analysis of Indian relations of production and their contradictions-including those of class, caste, gender, and nationality—within the framework of the world capitalist system. Instead, it is basically a detailed analysis of Indian government economic policy since independence, with a discussion of economic dilemmas and rural class-caste contradictions as a backdrop.     

Gorbachev and the “National Question”: Restructuring the Soviet Federation

An American specialist on Russian economic law and managerial behavior examines the means by which enterprise directors cope with non-payments. Analysis is based primarily on evidence from six in-depth case studies of industrial enterprises in Moscow, Saratov, and Yekaterinburg. On-site observation of managerial routines complements intensive interviews with a range of managerial personnel and examination of sales contracts and other documentary records. The author identifies three basic patterns of adaptation to the threat of insolvency, the factors that explain the managers' behavioral choices, and the implications of these changes for the broader banking, inter-enterprise, and legal systems.     

Criticism of multiparty democracy: Parallels between Wamba‐dia‐Wamba and Arendt

Abstract

The IMF, World Bank, and former colonial powers have put pressure on African countries to adopt multiparty democracy. Because of this pressure, many formerly one‐party states as well as some military dictatorships have embraced Western and Parliamentarian democratic forms. But does this mean that democracy has succeeded in Africa? Ernest Wamba‐dia‐Wamba of the University of Dar‐es‐Saalam and CODESRIA argues that embracing Western paradigms in an unthinking fashion will not bring real democracy, i.e. people's liberation. He advances criticisms of party politics and statism, and suggests that African palaver and people's movements are a surer site of political action. In his criticisms of representative government he parallels the thoughts and criticism of Hannah Arendt. Arendt advocated a council system that shares many of the attributes of African palaver communities. By consulting the criticisms of Arendt and Wamba‐dia‐Wamba, we can see that an easy optimism about the multiparty system is unfounded.     

Transforming academic research findings into economically profitable technologies

The Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) operates on the principle that pooling investment in basic, pre-competitive research permits members to target a larger percentage of their research and development dollars towards devising technologies that will yield a competitive edge. This benefit is mot effectively realized, however, when the research “product” is expeditiously transferred from the research lab into the commercial environment. The product, in this case, may be knowledge, a design or manufacturing tool, personnel who are trained in the use of the tool, or information about a research approach that should be avoided. At the SRC, technology transfer is essential to the success of its cooperative research effort, and consequently, during 15 years of managing this transfer across the university/industry interface, the not-for-profit consortiun has developed and refined structures and methodologies to overcome transfer barriers. The paper written by Lynn Burnett, Gail Massari and Richard LaScala discusses administrative and managerial barriers to technology conversion and transfer and the solutions developed and practiced by the SRC to transcend those barriers.     

Women and rural revolt in India

Women's major productive role (outside of the home) in agriculture and the crucial part which women play in peasant revolts have been more or less ignored by social scientists. In this paper an attempt is made to analyse the interconnections between class and sexual oppression, and between women's movements and class struggle, in rural India: with class structure, the nature of society, and the development of social movements looked at from the viewpoint of women themselves. With the use of two key concepts, work participation and mode of production, it is argued that in India, increasingly during the last decade, capitalism has developed in the countryside, and that, with the changing social relations of production, there has emerged a mass‐based and militant women's movement, whose objective basis has been the militancy of women of the rural poor. This is illustrated for a variety of Indian states, but especially for the state of Maharashtra.     

Arthropods of Forensic Importance on Pig Carrion in the Coahuilan Semidesert,Mexico

Abstract: This is the first report of an ongoing research to establish a sarcosaprophagous arthropod database in the Coahuilan semidesert. Seven pigs (Sus scrofa L.) were used as human models to determine succession in an open urban area during the 2007 winter–spring period. Arthropods were collected manually and from pitfall traps. Carcass biomass loss, as well as arthropod colonization, was recorded during 71 days postmortem. Five decomposition stages were identified during which most abundant orders were found to be Diptera, Coleoptera, and Hymenoptera. Lucilia sericata (Meigen), Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart), Necrobia rufipes (DeGeer), Dermestes maculatus (DeGeer), Pheidole hyatti Emery, and Pogonomyrmex rugosus Emery stood out as dominant species.