Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: REALIGNMENT OF WORLD POWER: The Russo-Chinese Schism Under the Impact of Mao-Tse-tung's Last Revolution. By Oton Ambroz. SAMUEL TERRY: The Botany Bay Rothschild. By Gwyneth M. Dow. RURAL INDUSTRY IN THE PORT PHILLIP REGION 1835–1880. By Lynnette J. Peel. NOT A WHITE WOMAN SAFE: Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Port Moresby 1920–1934. By Amirah Inglis. SOCIOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT. Edited by E. de Kadt and Gavin Williams. POLITICAL CHANGE: Collected Essays. By David E. Apter. RICH NATIONS AND POOR IN PEACE AND WAR: Continuity and Change in the Development Hierarchy of Seventy Nations from 1913 through 1952. By Henry Barbera. ECONOMIC REALITIES IN POOR COUNTRIES. By Leslie Stein. G.D.H. COLE: An Intellectual Biography. By L.P. Carpenter. HISTORY AND WILL: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao-Tse-Tung's Thought. By F. Wakeman Jr. TO PHOENIX SEAT: An Introductory Study of Maoism and the Chinese Communist Quest for a Paradise on Earth. By L.R. Marchant. THE COUNTER REFORMATION. By G.W. Searle. ON THE MEDIEVAL ORIGINS OF THE MODERN STATE. By Joseph R. Strayer. IMPERIAL ECONOMIC POLICY, 1917–1939: Studies in Expansion and Protection. By Ian M. Drum-mond. TAMATE — A KING: James Chalmers in New Guinea. 1877–1901. By Diane Langmore. THE BASES OF INTERNATIONAL ORDER. Essays in Honour of C.A.W. Manning. Edited by Alan James. SMALL STATES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: Nobel Symposium 17. Edited by August Schou and Arne Olav Brundtland. THE MAJOR INTERNATIONAL TREATIES 1914–1973. A History and Guide With Texts. By J.A.S. Grenville. INTERNATIONAL LAW AND NATIONAL BEHAVIOUR: A Behavioral Interpretation of Contemporary International Law and Politics. By A. Sheikh. FULL CIRCLE. By S.F. Rowell. THE NUREMBERG FALLACY: Wars and War Crimes Since World War II. By Eugene Davidson. THE AUSTRALIAN COLONISTS: An Exploration of Social History 1788–1870. By K.S. Inglis. JEREMY BENTHAM: Ten Critical Essays. Edited by Bhikhu Parekh. THE DAMNED INHERITANCE: The Soviet Union and the Manchurian Crises, 1924–35. By G.A. Lensen. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AND THE RISE OF SWEDEN. By Michael Roberts. SOCIALISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF WAR: Ideas and Politics in Britain 1912–18. By J.M. Winter. ACCUMULATION ON A WORLD SCALE: A critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment. Vols. 1 and 2. By Samir Amin. Translated by Brian Pearce. GERMANY CONFRONTS MODERNISATION: German Culture and Society, 1790–1890. By Robert Anchor. WORKERS AND PROTEST: The European Labor Movement, The Working Classes and the Origins of Social Democracy, 1890–1914. By Harvey Mitchell and Peter N. Steams. MAJOR IDEOLOGIES: An Interpretative Survey of Democracy. Socialism, and Nationalism. By Alexander Groth. CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT AND POLITICS. By Ernest Gellner. Edited with a preface by I.C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi. MODERN DEMOCRACIES: Economic Power versus Political Power. By Maurice Duverger. DICK DETERRED: A Play in Two Acts. By David Edgar. THE IMAGE OF AUSTRALIA. British Perception of the Australian Economy from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century, By Craufurd D.W. Goodwin. CONFIDENTIAL DISPATCHES: Analyses of America by the British Ambassador, 1939–1945. Edited by Thomas E. Hachey. THE STATE'S SERVANTS: The Civil Service of the English Republic 1649–1660. By G.E. Aylmer. NORMAN LINDSAY, The Embattled Olympian. By John Hetherington. MARKETING BOARDS AND MINISTERS: A Study of Agricultural Marketing Boards as Political and Administrative Instruments. By P.J. Giddings. ELITES IN THE POLICY PROCESS. By Robert Presthus. LAW, LEGISLATION AND LIBERTY: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy. Vol. I Rules and Order. By F.A. Hayek. DEPRESSION AND RECOVERY IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA 1928'29–1938'39: A Study in Cyctical and Structural Change. By G.D. Snooks. INDIA'S SECOND LIBERATION. By Pran Chopra. NORMALIZATION OF JAPANESE-SOVIET RELATIONS 1945–1970. By S. Vishwanathan. MAOISM IN ACTION: The Cultural Revolution. By C.L. Chiou. THE PLANS OF WAR: The General Staff and British Military Strategy c. 1900–1916. By John Gooch. REVUE INTERNATIONALE d'HISTOIRE MILITAIRE. A NEW HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA. Edited by F.K. Crowley. AUSTRALIAN CULTURAL ELITES: Intellectual Traditions in Sydney and Melbourne. By John Docker. SUEZ 1956. By Robert R. Bowie. LABOR IN POLITICS: The State Labor Parties in Australia 1880–1920. Edited by D.J. Murphy. J.H. SCULLIN: A Political Biography. By John Robertson.     

“We need more clips about Putin,and lots of them:” Russia’s state-commissioned online visual culture

In this article, we examine how the Putin government is attempting to respond and adapt to the YouTube phenomenon and the vibrant oppositional online visual culture on Runet. We show how these processes are giving rise to new forms of state propaganda, shaped and driven above all by the quest for high-ranking search-engine results and the concomitant desire to appeal to the perceived new sensibilities of the Internet generation through the commissioning and production of “viral videos.” We focus in particular on the videos created by Iurii Degtiarev, a pioneer in the development of this genre, whose works we explore in light of the “Kremlingate” email leaks, which offer inside information on the strategies and aims being pursued on the online visual front of the campaign to manage the Russian mediascape, and Degtiarev’s own reflections on this subject. Examining the output of young creatives patronized by the Kremlin offers a “bottom-up” view to supplement studies of the Russian ideological and media landscape as shaped by “political technologists” such as Vladislav Surkov and Gleb Pavlovskii.     

Boxed In: Human Cargo and the Technics of Comfort

Since the 1990s, public outcries over the “return” of human cargo commonly point to the physical horrors of travel as a key sign of the inhuman and the unfree in contemporary social life. Whether in debates over migrant shipwrecks across the Mediterranean or over air rage battles on budget American flights, the moving vehicle and its uncomfortably tight quarters often serve as the space par excellence for grappling with questions of proper stranger sociality and the limits of “fellow feeling” or moral sympathy in a globalizing world. This paper examines how a relatively novel problem of “comfort” came to inform and shape the politics of mobility starting in the late eigteenth century when abolitionists first successfully argued for distinguishing the human/izing rights of passengers from the movement of nonhuman goods through sensory invocations of the techno-rational and embodied terrors of the slave ship. Through both the historical and contemporary cases discussed, this paper suggests that the problem of comfort was never just a technical one of cramped transport resolvable through mere material and instrumentalist means. Rather, comfort is better described as a form of technics in so far as its technical-material dimensions are always already entangled with an existing social repertoire of ideas, habits, and aspirations, that is, it has aesthetic and affective capacities as part of moral imaginaries of how to deal with Others and, in turn, how to live the good life.     

Traumatic Injury Pattern Analysis in a Light Rail Transit Death: A Retrospective Case Study

Within the context of medical examiner's offices, forensic anthropologists are increasingly being asked to assist with the interpretation of traumatic skeletal injury. This case study presents an example of trauma analysis performed by forensic anthropologists at the Maricopa County Forensic Science Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The primary goal of this study is to document an uncommon pattern of traumatic injury—severe grinding abrasions of the lower appendage that macroscopically resemble sharp force trauma, especially as observed in dismemberment cases—resulting from an individual being dragged beneath a Light Rail train for c. 1.7 miles. The abraded skeletal elements include a femoral shaft fragment, a femoral head portion, and the right foot. Second, this study aims to illustrate the efficacy of forensic anthropological analysis of patterned skeletal trauma. Finally, this study demonstrates the critical importance of analyzing scene information before drawing conclusions as to the etiology of a traumatic injury pattern.     

A randomized experimental study of sharing crime data with citizens: Do maps produce more fear?

The larger roles of the community in crime prevention and improvements in technology have increased police–citizen communication and the distribution of information from police departments to private citizens. Combined, these changes have led to the current movement among law enforcement agencies toward sharing both summary reports and maps of crime with community groups. Although the dissemination of crime information is intended to benefit community members, there is a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the effects of crime mapping on citizen perceptions and fear of crime. This experiment compared three formats for disseminating crime data; two popular types of crime maps (i.e., graduated symbol and density) and the traditional tabular format of crime statistics. A randomized experimental design was used to measure residents fear of crime and their perception of the safety of different areas of Redlands, CA. Overall, residents who viewed either type of map reported less fear than those who viewed tabular statistics. Respondents who viewed graduated symbol maps consistently reported less fear than either density maps or tabular statistics. However, there were differences depending on the type of map. While graduated symbol maps were associated with the lowest levels of fear of robbery, theft or assault; density maps produced different reactions depending on the area of the city. Finally, the maps did not stigmatize high crime areas of Redlands. Where statistically significant differences existed, respondents who were given maps were more likely to recommend someone move into an area than those who were given tabular statistics.