The Efficiency of Input Use During the Early Transition in Hungary

This paper uses Hungarian firm level panel data for the agricultural and light manufacturing sectors during the early years of the transition to investigate differences and changes in the efficiency of input use. Programming techniques measure scale and technical efficiency. The simple radial measure, as well as two other measures that account for programming slacks, are used. The results show little wastage of materials and labour, but inefficient use of energy and capital, which suggests that the development of input markets was uneven. The price liberalisation of 1989 widened efficiency differences, especially in agriculture, but this sector recovered quickest, actually using capital more efficiently by 1991. However, energy efficiency levels were low in the period of soft budget constraints and fell still further after the reforms, suggesting that a free market for energy was not established, particularly in agriculture.     

Women negotiating heterosex: Implications for AIDS prevention

The AIDS epidemic has made it imperative that sexual behaviour be changed. This paper examines heterosexual negotiation, which will form the focus for behaviour change. The processes involved in such negotiation are little understood.Research was carried out using the method memory work, which generated and theorised data relating to women's past experiences in sexual encounters. The method, originated by Haug, provides a way to examine how sexuality is produced and reproduced through reflection and reconstruction of past experiences. Memories are analysed by examining gaps and absences, cliches and metaphors, in the search for the common understandings and taken-for-granted assumptions which set the boundaries within which encounters take place.The memories obtained can be partly understood in terms of three discourses documented by Hollway. These are the male sex drive discourse, the have/hold discourse, and the permissive discourse. The data may also be understood in relation to three permissible figures for women identified in Irigaray's analysis, namely virgin, wife-mother, and whore. The paper acknowledges that these theoretical perspectives are quite distinct, even contradictory, but nevertheless finds that each in its own way illuminates the data. It is shown that some common understandings underlying sexual encounters render negotiation not only impossible but largely unintelligible. The permissive discourse may possibly provide space for some negotiation, but the paper concludes that it is essential to develop a truly woman-centered discourse of sexuality out of which male sexuality can be problematised.     

Reviews

J. S. Prybyla, Market and plan under socialism: The bird in the cage, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987, xv + 348 pp. p/b $18.95.

Thomas A. Wolf, Foreign Trade in the Centrally Planned Economy, Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1988, ix + 77 pp., $33.00.

Arie Bloed, The External Relations of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1988, xvi + 257 pp., Df1.135, US$66, £39.50.

Roger E. Kanet, ed., The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xi + 233 pp., £25.00 h/b.

Stevan K. Pavlowitch, The Improbable Survivor: Yugoslavia and its Problems, 1918 1988, London: C. Hurst & Company, 1988, 167 pp., £17.50 h/b., £7.50 p/b.

Ronald H. Linden, Communist States and International Change: Romania and Yugoslavia in Comparative Perspective, New York: Allen and Unwin, 1987, xviii + 201 pp., £28.00.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe, Soviet Civil Law, Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 36, Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988, ix + 383 pp., £62.00.

M. M. Boguslavskii, Private International Law: The Soviet Approach, Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 35, Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988, ix + 261 pp., £49.50.

Edward A. Allworth, ed., Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1988, xvi + 396 pp., $52.50.

Timothy Edward O'Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution: G. V. Chicherin and Soviet Foreign Affairs, 1918 1930, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988, xx + 250 pp., $24.95.

Aleksander Kan, I Påvente av frigjeringa. Sovjetisk historieteori mellom Stalin og Gor‐batsjov, [Fråtysk ved Jostein Stokkeland] Det Norske Samlaget, Oslo, 1988, 304 pp.

Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987, xviii + 329 pp., $39.95.

Leopold H. Haimson, The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past, in collaboration with Ziva Galili y Garcia and Richard Wortman. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ix + 515 pp., $49.50, £37.50.

Allen K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, Volume II: The Road to Soviet Power and Peace, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, xv + 443 pp., £34.40.

Nurit Schleifman, Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary Movement: the SR Party, 1902 14, London: Macmillan, in association with St Antony's College Oxford, 1988, xvii + 222 pp., £29.50.

Christopher Rice, Russian Workers and the Socialist‐Revolutionary Party Through the Revolution of 1905 07, London: Macmillan, 1988, xiv + 272 pp., £33.00.     

B. Reviews and notes: Bibliographies and works of reference

A GREEK AND ARABIC LEXICON: MATERIALS FOR A DICTIONARY OF THE MEDIÆVAL TRANSLATIONS FROM GREEK INTO ARABIC. Edited by GERHARD ENDRESS and DIMITRI GUTAS. Fascicle 1. (Handbook of Oriental Studies, the Near and Middle East, XI. Band.) Leiden, Brill, 1992. 30*. 96pp. Hfl.40.‐

THE ROLE OF THE BOOK IN THE CIVILISATIONS OF THE NEAR EAST: PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE HELD AT THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY AND THE CHESTER BEATTY LIBRARY, DUBLIN, 29 JUNE – 1 JULY 1988 = MANUSCRIPTS OF THE MIDDLE EAST 5 (1990–1991). Leiden, Ter Lugt Press, c1993. 136pp. Hfl 210.‐

BROCADE OF THE PEN: THE ART OF ISLAMIC WRITING. Edited by CAROL GARRETT FISHER. East Lansing, Michigan State University, 1991. 100pp. B&W illustrations and Arabic calligraphy.

AFGHANISTAN. Compiled by SCHUYLER JONES. (World Bibliographical Series, 135.) Oxford, Santa Barbara & Denver, Clio Press, 1992. xxvi+281pp.     

Appeals to community and crime prevention

This paper considers the growing appeals to the idea of community in criminal justice policy and the involvement of actual communities in criminal justice initiatives. It draws on a completed two year research study of a number of community-based crime prevention initiatives in the South East of England. The paper considers the nature of community to which appeals are made in criminal justice discourse and policies, the contribution of community to the practices of social order and the nature of community representation and participation in crime prevention initiatives. It is argued that appeals to community in crime prevention, and crime control more generally, embody shifts in what constitutes the legitimate responsibilities of individuals, collectivities and the state. This has a number of implications, the first of which is a redrawing of the cost of policing and security services. Additionally, there is an associated shift in blame for failure. Finally, actual community involvement in crime control gives rise to new structures and forms of local governance that evoke key questions about the regulation of social relations, the nature of conflict resolution, citizenship, democracy and social justice.