Reviews

Archie Brown ed., Political Culture and Communist Studies. London: Macmillan, 1984, xii + 211 pp. £25.00 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges. The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938. Cambridge, New York, London, Cambridge University Press, 1985, viii + 269 pp. £25.00.

Ronald Tiersky, Ordinary Stalinism: Democratic Centralism and the Question of Communist Political Development, Boston, Mass: George Allen and Unwin, 1985, xiii + 209 pp. £15.00.

Michael Ellman, Collectivisation, Convergence and Capitalism. Political Economy in a Divided World. Academic Press, London, 1984, xii + 332 pp. £35.00, $55.00.

Sarah Meiklejohn Terry ed., Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe, a Council of Foreign Relations Book, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984, xiv + 375 pp. £27.50.

Kristian Gerner, The Soviet Union and Central Europe in the Post‐War Era. Aldershot: Gower, 1985, xi + 228 pp. £16.50.

Boris Z. Rumer, Investment and Reindustrialization in the Soviet Economy, Boulder and London, Westview Press, 1984, xvi + 145 pp. £14.50.

David A. Dyker, The Future of the Soviet Planning System, London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985, ix + 172 pp. £17.95 h/b.

Andrew Freris: The Soviet Industrial Enterprise; Theory and Practice; London and Sidney: Croom Helm, 1984, 170 pp. £14.95.

Susan J. Linz, ed., The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union. Totowa, N. J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985, ix + 300 pp., $28.50.

Philippe Frémeaux and Christine Durand, Comprendre l'économie soviétique, Syros, Paris, 1985, pp. 139. 39 FF.

Jacques Sapir, Travail et travailleurs en URSS, Editions La Decouverte, Paris, 1984, 127 pp. 31 FF.

Peter Kneen, Soviet Scientists and the State: An Examination of the Social and Political Aspects of Science in the USSR, London: Macmillan, 1984. x + 138 pp. £25.00.

John N. Hazard, William E. Butler, Peter B. Maggs, The Soviet Legal System: The Law in the 1980's. Oceana Publications, Inc., Dobbs Ferry, New York, 1984. xiv + 439 pp. $45.00.

William B. Simons and Stephen White eds., The Party Statutes of the Communist World, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1984, viii + 545 pp. £58.50, Dfl. 230.00.

Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, ix + 331 pp., £29.50.

Marianna Tax Choldin, A Fence around the Empire. Russian Censorship of Western Ideas under the Tsars. Durham, Duke University Press, 1985, xii + 281 pp. $42.50.

Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney. 1985. xiii + 256 pp. £25.00.

Bohdan Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth‐Century Ukraine. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1985, xix + 333 pp, £30.00.

Jan Adam, Employment and Wage Policies in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary Since 1950. London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1984, xix + 251 pp. £25.00.

Nigel Swain, Collective Farms which work? Cambridge UP Soviet and East European Studies, Cambridge, New York, London 1985, 235 pp. £25.00.

C. M. Hann, A Village Without Solidarity: Polish peasants in years of crisis. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985, ix + 208 pp., £12.00.     

Ordering Iraq: Reflections on Power, Discourse, & Neocolonialism

Several years into the occupation of Iraq, there remain questions as to that nation’s relative sovereignty. Given the degree of political, economic, and military control by the US government, numerous commentators characterize Iraq as a neocolonial state. Indeed, the design for nation-building has been firmly established by external rather than internal forces; those developments invite closer scrutiny into the nature of power in a post-9/11 world. Accordingly, this critique sets out to explore the conceptual underpinnings of neocolonialism by turning critical attention to discourse and biopower shaping the reconstruction of Iraq. The analysis similarly attends to state crime, especially controversial economic tactics banned under international and federal laws. So as to contextualize those violations within a broader social and legal framework, the discussion considers the significance of states of exception and institutionalized impunity. Foucault’s writings figure prominently among these reflections on order, governmentality, and power. Nonetheless, in an effort to contribute to a wider theoretical agenda for critical criminology, the article also draws on other interdisciplinary sources, including Agamben (State of exception, 2005), Gregory (The colonial present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, 2004) and Hardt and Negri (Empire, 2001; Multitude: War and democracy in the age of empire, 2004).

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The political feasibility of full ownership property rights: The cases of pollution and fisheries

The present paper investigates the political feasibility of policies to control pollution and fishing. It first hypothesizes the following: when common or usufruct property rights are changed to full ownership, the new policy is not an unadulterated charge or auctioned license because of the implied wealth transfer. This hypothesis is “tested” by reviewing the cases in which full ownership rights have been established and is found to be consistent with the evidence. The paper then investigates the conditions that facilitate the development of full ownership rights. It concludes that proposing policies that are simple and incremental increases political feasibility, in large part because of greater understanding by fishermen and polluters.     

Critical criminology,social justice,and an alternative view of incarceration

Despite its lack of general popularity, critical criminology continues to offer compelling criticism of the dominant paradigm of criminal justice. In this essay, critical criminology is presented along with its principal assertions, theoretical assumptions, and implications for social reform and criminal justice. The author argues that critical criminology provides a valuable theoretical backdrop for the analysis of incarceration, particularly its emergence as a form of local industry. Other developments pertinent to the political economy are also discussed, especially as they pertain to the shaping of patterns of unemployment and imprisonment.     

Analysis of lipsticks

A combination of thin-layer and gas chromatography has been shown to be suitable for the analysis, characterisation and discrimination of the small quantities of lipsticks which may be encountered in forensic casework.     

Economic man and diffused sovereignty: a critique of Australia’s asylum regime

Governing asylum, especially in Western migration zones, is correctly understood as an expression of centralized state power, or sovereignty. Still, there is much to learn about asylum regimes by turning critical attention to how sovereignty is de-centralized. This critique focuses on Australia where sovereign power is diffused into privatized detention, outsourced decision-making, and offshore processing. The reliance on diffused sovereignty, the article contends, is a maneuver by the state as it attempts to evade legal obligations enshrined in refugee law and human rights. As discussed throughout, economic mentalities figure prominently in the Australian asylum system. In particular, the notion of economic man continues to shape the government’s perception of asylum seekers as being highly rational and responsible, thus manageable by way of deterrence and prolonged detention. Special attention is given to recent disputes between the High Court and the then Gillard government with respect to the processing of refugees.     

Recovery of human DNA profiles from poached deer remains: A feasibility study

Poaching is a crime that occurs worldwide and can be extremely difficult to investigate and prosecute due to the nature of the evidence available. If a species is protected by international legislation such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora then simply possessing any part of that species is illegal. Previous studies have focused on the identification of endangered species in cases of potential poaching. Difficulties arise if the poached animal is not endangered. Species such as deer have hunting seasons whereby they can legally be hunted however poaching is the illegal take of deer, irrespective of season. Therefore, identification of deer alone has little probative value as samples could have originated from legal hunting activities in season. After a deer is hunted it is usual to remove the innards, head and lower limbs. The limbs are removed through manual force and represent a potential source of human touch DNA.We investigate the potential to recover and profile human autosomal DNA from poached deer remains. Samples from the legs of ten culled deer were obtained (40 in total) using minitapes. DNA from samples was extracted, quantified and amplified to determine if it would be possible to recover human STR profiles.Low quantification data led to the use of an extended PCR cycling protocol of 34 cycles. Samples from seven deer amplified, however some samples were excluded from further analysis due to ‘drop in’ alleles or the low level of successfully amplified loci. Samples from five deer could be further analysed and gave match probabilities ranging from 6.37 × 10^{− 3} to 9.53 × 10^{− 11}.This study demonstrates the potential of recovering human touch DNA from poached animal remains. There is the potential for this test to be used in relation to other species of poached remains or other types of wildlife crimes. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that human STR profiling has been successfully applied to touch DNA in regards to simulated wildlife crime.