A trip to Alamut,Lahijan and Rasht

Middle East

Arab Political Memoirs and Other Studies. By Elie Kedourie. London, Frank Cass, 1974. Pp. 327. Bibliog. Index. £5.95.

Arabian Assignment. By David Smiley. London, Leo Cooper, 1975. Pp. 248. Illus. Index. £6.75.

From Encroachment to Involvement. A Documentary Study of Soviet Policy in the Middle East, 1945–1973. By Yaacov Ro'i. Jerusalem, Israel Universities Press, 1974; distributed in the UK by John Wiley &; Sons. Pp. 616. Indices.

Nasserist Ideology: Its Exponents and Critics. By Nissim Rejwan. Jerusalem, Israel Universities Press, 1974. Pp. 271. Appendix. Index. £6.75.

The Modern History of Israel. By Noah Lucas. London, Weidenfeld and Nicol‐son, 1975. Pp. 500. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £6.00.

The Moors in Spain and Portugal. By Jan Read. London, Faber &; Faber, 1974. Pp. 268. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £4.95.

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean and the Threat to the West. Four Studies in Global Strategy. Edited by Patrick Wall. London, Stacey International, 1975. Pp. 198. Maps. Illus. Index. £3.50 (paper £2.00).

South Asia

China, Pakistan and Bangladesh. By J. P. Jain. New Delhi, Radiant Publishers, 1974. Pp. vi+232. Notes. Appendices. Bibliog. Index. Rs. 55.

Soviet Policy towards Pakistan and Bangladesh. By J. P. Jain. New Delhi, Radiant Publishers, 1974. Pp. 212. Notes. Appendices. Bibliog. Index. Rs. 50.

Soviet Policy toward India: Ideology and Strategy. By Robert H. Donaldson. Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1974. Pp. x+264. Notes. Appendix. Bibliog. Index. £7.50.

Minorities in Madras State. Group Interests in Modern Politics. By S. Saras‐wathi. Delhi, Impex India, 1974. Pp. 247. Tables. Bibliog. Index. Rs. 50.

India ‐ Development and Experience. By Sardar Tarlok Singh. Madras and London, Macmillan, 1975. Pp. xx+458. Index. £8.00.

British Economic Thought and India 1600–1858. A study in the history of development economics. By William J. Barber. Clarendon Press; London, Oxford University Press, 1975. Pp. 243. Bibliog. Index. £6.00.

Marriage, Religion and Society. Pattern of change in an Indian village. By Giri Raj Gupta. London, Curzon Press, 1974. Pp. 180. Glossary. Bibliog. Index. £3.00.

The Lion River. The Indus. By Jean Fairley. London, Allen Lane, 1975. Pp. xv+290. Maps. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £4.95.

An Indian Summer. By James Cameron. London, Macmillan, 1974. Pp. 224. £3.50.

Sources for the History of British India in the Seventeenth Century. By Shafaat Ahmad Khan. London, Curzon Press, 1975. Pp. 395. Index. £4.50.

Political Relations between India and Nepal, 1877–1923. By Kanchanmoy Mojumdar. Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1973. Pp. xv+331. Maps. Appendix. Bibliog. Index. Rs. 30.

Himalayan Traders. Life in Highland Nepal. By Christoph von Fürer‐Haimen‐dorf. London, John Murray, 1975. Pp. 316. Maps. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £7.50.

Pakistan Under Challenge. By L. F. Rushbrook Williams. London, Stacey International, 1975. Pp. 224. Maps. Illus. Index. £3.90 (paper £2.20).

South‐East Asia

Southeast Asia Under the New Balance of Power. Edited by Sudershan Chawla, Melvin Gurtov and Alain‐Gerard Marsot. New York, Praeger; London, Pall Mall Press, 1974. Pp. 196. Bibliog. Index. £2.25.

U Nu: Saturday's Son. By U Nu; translated by U Law Yone and edited by U Kyaw Win. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1975. Pp. xv+358. Index. £7.50.

Economic Growth and Development in West Malaysia 1947–1970. By David Lim. London, Oxford University Press, 1974. Pp. xx+346. Tables. Bibliog. Index. £9.95.

Far East

China's Foreign Relations since 1949. By Alan Lawrance. London, Routledge &; Kegan Paul (World Studies Series), 1975. Pp. 261. Maps. Biblog. Index. £5.95.

East Asia &; U.S. Security. By Ralph N. Clough. Washington, The Brookings Institution, 1975. Pp. 248. Index. $8–95 (paper $3.50).

The Logic of “Maoism”: Critiques and Explication. Edited by James Chieh Hsiung. New York, Praeger; London, Pall Mall Press, 1975. Pp. 227. Bibliog. Index. £8.00.

The Pattern of Sino‐American Crises. Political‐Military Interactions in the 1950s. By J. H. Kalicki. London, Cambridge University Press, 1975. Pp. 279. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £7.50.

China's Economic Aid. By Wolfgang Bartke. London, C. Hurst &; Co., 1975. Pp. 215. £5.00.

Russia and the Roots of the Chinese Revolution, 1896–1911. By Don C. Price. Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1975. Pp. 301. Glossary. Bibliog. Index. £8.00.

Mirror to the Son of Heaven: Wei Cheng at the Court of T'ang T'ai‐tsung. By Howard J. Wechsler. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1975. Pp. xii+259. Appendices. Glossary. Bibliog. Index. £7.50.

Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'ao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China. By Paul A. Cohen. Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1974. Pp. x+357. Notes. Glossary. Bibliog. Index. £8.00.

Some Remarks on the Relationship between China and Mongolia. By C. R. Bawden. London, The China Society, 1974. China Society Occasional Papers. No. 17.

United States‐Japanese Relations: The Seventies. Edited by Priscilla Clapp and Morton H. Halperin. Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1975. Pp. 234. £4.00.

Japanese Radicals Revisited: Student protest in postwar Japan. By Ellis S. Krauss. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1974. Pp. xiv+192. Bibliog. Index. £6.60.

The Samurai. By Paul Varley with Ivan and Nobuko Morris. First published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970; London, Penguin Books, 1974. Pp. 106. Map. Illus. Index.

Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura Bakufu, Shugo and Jito. By Jeffrey P. Mass. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1975. Pp. 257. Glossary. Map. Bibliog. Index. £6.25.

Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West. By Mark R. Peattie. Princeton and London, Princeton University Press, 1975. Pp. 430. Glossary (Romaji/Kanji). Bibliog. Index. £870.

The Kuril Islands. Russo‐Japanese Frontiers in the Pacific. By John J. Stephan. Clarendon Press; London, Oxford University Press, 1975. Pp. 279. Maps. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £6.25.     

Is the Torrens System German?

Recently support has grown for the view that the Torrens system of lands titles registration, which has now spread to numerous jurisdictions throughout the world, was actually not Torrens's work at all, but a copy of a German system passed off by him as his own production. This article reviews the evidence, much of which is here discussed for the first time, and concludes that that view is incorrect. Torrens is entitled to the credit for conceiving the principles of the system; for drafting the bill to give effect to them (with the help of a circle of critical reviewers); and for convincing the public and politicians to support it.     

Stewardship and health systems strengthening: An overview

The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the concept of stewardship to clarify the practical components of governance in the health sector. For the WHO, stewardship concentrated on how government actors take responsibility for the health system and the wellbeing of the population, fulfill health system functions, assure equity, and coordinate interaction with government and society. This article overviews the contents of this special issue, which offers examples of how health stewards in a variety of countries have addressed issues of health security, primary care expansion, family planning, and quality of care. The contributors' articles draw lessons for policy, programs, and management useful for practitioners and scholars. Our overview identifies several themes emerging from the articles: the foundational role of legal frameworks for effective stewardship, the importance of institutional arrangements as enablers, the influence of regional and global entities on national stewardship, the connection between credible decision‐making structures and stewardship, and pathways to sustainable financing and domestic resource mobilization. The discussion concludes with highlighting several gaps in knowledge and practice related to health stewardship.     

What causes employees to whistle while they work? Factors affecting internal whistle‐blowing in the Australian Public Service

What causes employees in the Australian Public Service (APS) to internally blow the whistle on corruption in the workplace? This research examines the impact of the nature of corruption, organisational culture, and employees’ work attitudes and actions on internal whistle‐blowing in the APS. The respondents were found to internally blow the whistle for most types of corruption: fraud, conflict of interest, unlawful disclosure of government information, and perverting the course of justice. Their whistle‐blowing behaviour was, however, unaffected by observations of theft of official assets. They were also unlikely to report observations of cronyism and nepotism. Active observers of workplace bullying (those who have blown the whistle after witnessing someone else being bullied) were three times more likely to also internally report corruption than inactive observers of bullying.     

Forensic identification science evidence since Daubert: Part I--A quantitative analysis of the exclusion of forensic identification science evidence

The U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Kumho Tire Co. Ltd. v. Carmichael transformed the way scientific expert evidence was reviewed in courts across the United States. To gauge the impact of these rulings on the admission of forensic identification evidence, the authors analyzed 548 judicial opinions from cases where admission of such evidence was challenged. Eighty-one cases (15%) involved exclusion or limitation of identification evidence, with 50 (65.7%) of these failing to meet the "reliability" threshold. This was largely because of a failure to demonstrate a sufficient scientific foundation for either the technique (27 cases) or the expert's conclusions (17 cases). The incidence of exclusion/limitation because of a lack of demonstrable reliability suggests that there is a continuing need for the forensic sciences to pursue research validating their underlying theories and techniques of identification to ensure their continued acceptance by the courts.     

An autoethnography of hunting

To better understand why we do harm by killing and eating nonhuman animals, we engaged in autoethnography. We used reflections on our harmful behavior to understand harmful behavior more generally. Our method first and foremost was to be as honest as we know how to be. The process of reflecting on our behavior had us moving through a series of questions that organize the essay. We also referred to scholarly literature on violence and on hunting to challenge our thoughts. In this way we arrived at insights on aspects of doing harm, including the role of positioning the target in a certain way; not thinking about the harm and the institutional supports for not thinking; the particular lure of power through killing; and the problematic indictment of hunting by meat-eaters.     

Controlling the Airwaves: Incumbency Advantage and Community Radio in Brazil

Direct influence over communication media is a potent resource during electoral campaigns, and politicians have an incentive to gain control of the airwaves to advance their careers. In this article, we use data on community radio license applications in Brazil to identify both the causal effect of incumbency on politicians’ ability to control the media and the causal effect of media control on their future electoral prospects. Using a regression discontinuity design, we compare city council candidates who barely won or barely lost an election, showing that incumbency more than doubles the probability of an application’s approval by the Ministry of Communications. Next, using genetic matching, we compare candidates who acquired community radio licenses before an election to similar politicians who did not, showing that a radio station substantially increases one’s vote share and probability of victory. These findings demonstrate that media control helps entrench local political power in Brazil.     

The Strategic Fears of the Ruling Class: The Construction of Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877

In early 1877, there were no immigration restrictions in any of the Australian colonies. Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877 was the first of many laws that restricted Chinese immigration, in a movement that ultimately led to the White Australia legislation of 1901–2. This article finds that, contrary to the hegemonic understanding of White Australia, there was no significant working class or popular pressure behind the passage of the Act. Instead, it reflected the agendas of Queensland's elite, and in particular their concern that the large influx of Chinese people to the Palmer River goldfield could threaten their strategic control of Far North Queensland. In support of anti‐Chinese laws, Queensland's conservative newspapers whipped up fears of a Chinese “invasion”, a theme that would continue for nearly a century.