All Virtue Is Relative: A Response to Prior

In “The Challenge of Measuring Media Exposure: Reply to Dilliplane, Goldman, and Mutz,” Markus Prior suggests that scholars should avoid using a new method of measuring exposure to political television that we evaluated in a recent article published in the American Journal of Political Science. We respond to each of his criticisms, concluding that although no measurement approach is without its flaws, scholars should always use the best approach that is available at any given point in time.     

Book notes

Household Ecology: Economic Change and Domestic Life among the Kekchi Maya in Belize. By Richard R. Wilks. Tucson, AZ; London: The University of Arizona Press, 1991. Pp. xx + 280. $55 (hardback). ISBN 0 8165 1214 0.

Wagering the Land: Ritual, Capital and Environmental Degradation in the Cordillera of Northern Luzon, 1900–1986. By Martin W. Lewis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. 292. $40 (hardback). ISBN 0 520 07272 3.

Sustainable Development; Papers from the 6th EADI General Conference. Edited by Olav Stokke. London: Frank Cass, 1991. Pp. 132. £24. ISBN 07146 3449 2.

Gender and Development: A Practical Guide. Edited by L. Ostergaard. London: Routledge, 1992. Pp. xiv 220. £10.99 (paperback). ISBN 0415 071321.

Historical Dictionary of Mozambique. By Mario Azevedo. Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1991. Pp. xxix + 250. £22.15 (hardback). ISBN 0 8108 2413 2.

Understanding Contemporary Africa. Edited by April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner, 1992. Pp. xvi + 343. $45 and $19.95. ISBN 1 55587 265 5 and 55587 299 9.     

The Violence of Aid? Giving,power and active subjects in One World Conservatism

Abstract

Using ?i?ek's theorisation of power, we analyse the UK Conservative Party's Green Paper on international development, ‘One World Conservatism’ (OWC). We argue that by placing the West's giving of development aid as something beyond politics, on the moral high-ground of self-evident certainty, it acts to deflect attention from critical engagement with the nature of globalisation, power and aid itself, hiding both economic and epistemological violences behind the apparently benevolent act of giving. An analysis of the nature of the green paper demonstrates the ways in which it draws in UK citizens as active subjects complicit with this vision of the world.     

Feature reviews

Nelson Mandela is free

Higher than Hope: the authorised biography of Nelson Mandela. Fatima Meer, London: Hamish Hamilton. 1990. 288pp. £15.99hb

Pre‐Tiananmen perspectives

Reforming the Revolution? China in transition. Edited by Robert Benewick and Paul Wingrove, London: Macmillan. 1988. 264pp. £30.00hb/£8.99pb

Transforming China's Economy in the Eighties. Edited by Stephen Feuchtwang, Athar Hussain and Thierry Pairault, London: Zed. 1988. Vol 1: 256pp. £29.95hb/£9.95pb. Vol 2: 256pp. £27.95hb

China's Regional Development. Edited by David S Goodman, London: Routledge for the Institute of International Affairs. 1989. 208pp. £35.00hb

China at Forty: mid‐life crisis. Edited by David S Goodman and Gerald Segal, Oxford: Clarendon. 1989. 178pp. £9.95pb

The Political Economy of Chinese Socialism. Mark Selden, New York: M E Sharpe. 1989. 224pp. S15.95pb

One Step Ahead in China: Guandong under reform. Ezra F Vogel, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1989. 244pp. £23.95hb

Gender, development and modernity

Woman's Role in Economic Development. Ester Boserup, London: Earthscan. 1989. 283pp. £6.95pb

Staying Alive: women, ecology and development. Vandana Shiva, London: Zed. 1988. 224pp. £29.95pb/£8.95pb

Women's Asia. Yayori Matsui, Translated from the Japanese by Mizuko Matsuda, London: Zed. 1989. 172pp. £26.95hb/£7.95pb

Structures of Patriarchy: the state, the community and the household. Edited by Bina Agarwal, London: Zed. 1988. 254pp. £28.95hb/£8.95pb

We Were Making History: women and the Telangana Uprising. Edited by Stree Shakti Sanghatana, London: Zed. 1989. 290pp. £29.95hb/£8.95pb

Natural Rebels: a social history of enslaved black women in Barbados. Hilary McD Beckles, London: Zed. 1989. 197pp. £29.95hb/£8.95pb

You Can't Drown the Fire: Latin American women writing in exile. Edited by Alicia Partnoy, London: Virago. 1988. 258pp. £6.50pb

Plotting Women: gender and representation in Mexico. Jean Franco, London: Verso. 1989. 235pp. £19.95hb

Peru and the informal economy

The Other Path: the invisible revolution in the Third World. Hernando de Soto, London: I B Tauris. 1989. 271pp. £14.95hb     

Determinants of Personal Income Taxes for Barbados

The purpose of this study was to identify determinants of personal income taxes in Barbados and, using the Engle-Granger two-step procedures with annual data from 1976 to 2008, ascertain how these variables would impact on the dependent variable in the long and short run. The study showed that in the long run, the variables that would impact upon personal income tax receipts were marginal tax rate, real per capita income, and the rate of unemployment, while in the short run, personal income taxes were affected by current real per capita income in addition to lagged values of real per capita income, the marginal tax rate, and the rate of unemployment, respectively.     

Free and unfree labor in Qing China

Though internal migration in China during the Qing era (1644–1911) was mostly unrestricted, the government tightly controlled the movement of peasants who worked state lands in frontier regions and certain other locations. Such peasants accounted for 5–10% of China's population. In the state farms of northeast China, households could move legally only from one place to another within the system. Departure from the system was illegal. In this article, one of the first quantitative studies of migration in late imperial China, we apply discrete-time event-history methods to longitudinal, nominative household register data from six northeast Chinese state farm systems to compare how characteristics of the farm system, village, and household influenced the chances of legal moves and illegal departures. We show that among these state peasants, who were supposedly “unfree,” migration was not uncommon. We also show that the determinants of legal and illegal migration differed substantially. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for our understanding of migration processes in late imperial China.     

Roger Hesketh and the de Guingand letter

Historians have long questioned the extent to which British Intelligence knew about Japan's impending operations on the eve of the Pacific War. An examination of archival sources from Britain, Canada and the United States, as well as credible post-war testimony from former participants in Second World War intelligence operations, produces several conclusions. Throughout 1941, British Intelligence pointed to a war with Japan in South-East Asia. On the eve of the Pacific War, intelligence staff of the British Commonwealth monitored the vast expanses of the North Pacific. Apart from anticipating conflict in South-East Asia, British Intelligence, according to some sources, also suspected that a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, an assessment shared with the United States.     

The politics of kinship

Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim explores our most intimate ties to others – the ties of kinship. Antigone’s Claim explores the politics of kinship through a reading of the figure of Antigone. For Butler, Antigone represents a crisis of the Oedipal order of kinship, revealing the possibility of new forms of kinship itself. Butler presents a persuasive and moving argument for the necessity of changes in our conception and practice of kinship. However, her account of new kinship forms is less persuasive, failing to engage adequately with the sociality of kinship or to provide a radical model of its new forms. Butler argues that Antigone does not represent a feminist politics. However, Antigone’s Claim suggests that, if we are to re-conceive the politics of kinship, then it is necessary to reread Antigone as a political figure.     

Strategic Treasury Debt Management in Public Policy

The Treasury should supplement its bond offerings with adjustable-rate coupon bonds. The adjustable coupon would be linked to the six-month Treasury bill auction yield. Given the different magnitude of adjustable and fixed mortgage rates, the interest servicing costs would be dramatically lower for the floating-coupon bonds. This idea is already a proven winner in the corporate bond market where close to 30 percent of new Eurobond offerings in the last 10 years have been adjustable-rate bonds. In addition to reducing servicing costs, the strategy will relieve some of the burden on the long-maturity fixed-coupon bonds. Reducing the supply of the fixed-coupon bonds should increase prices and decrease long-term yields. Reduction in long-term interest rates enhances spending, construction and capital expenditures. Most importantly, these bonds help enforce a low inflation policy.