China's provincial diplomacy to Africa: applications to health cooperation

There is a prevailing view of China as a unitary actor in its relationships with African countries. This view is incomplete: on the contrary, China is a collection of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities with myriad strategic ties to African countries, with decentralization shaping the current form of Chinese government and its level of efficiency. In this paper, factors have been explored for why Chinese provinces have played a role in foreign cooperation in health of African countries, in addition to trade and foreign direct investment. Incentives and disincentives for Chinese provinces to engage internationally in foreign cooperation and health assistance have been identified. The concept of paradiplomacy for health has been presented and this typology has been applied to the example of Chinese medical teams. Finally, we draw linkages between China and other members of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.     

POLICY MODELING TO SUPPORT ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONMAKING ON THE NEW YORK STATE HIV TESTING LAW

A recent New York law requires medical providers to offer HIV tests as part of routine care. We developed a system dynamics simulation model of the HIV testing and care system to help administrators understand the law's potential epidemic impact, resource needs, strategies to improve implementation, and appropriate outcome indicators for future policy evaluations once postlaw data become available. Policy modeling allowed us to synthesize information from numerous sources including quantitative administrative data sets and practitioners’ content expertise, structure the information to be viewed both numerically and visually, and organize consensus for decisionmaking purposes. This case illustrates how policy modeling can provide an integrated framework for administrators to examine policy problems in complex systems, particularly when data time lags limit pre–post comparisons and key outcomes cannot be measured directly.     

Subsidized housing and neighborhood racial transition: An empirical investigation

Abstract

Popular wisdom has it that the development of project‐based assisted housing will cause whites to flee or avoid the surrounding neighborhood, leading to rapid racial transition. This article examines the question of whether the development of several types of project‐based, federally assisted housing had an impact on neighborhood racial transition during the 1980s. In general, the development of assisted housing in a neighborhood did not lead to racial transition, nor did it approach levels suggesting “white flight” in the few instances where racial transition did occur.

The results of our analysis suggest that one of the major criticisms of project‐based assisted housing—that it contributes to racial segregation by causing white flight—is not supported by empirical evidence.     

Introduction to dalit poems

Abstract

The word dalit in Marathi, the language spoken by 50 million people in the state of Maharashtra in Western India, means “downtrodden,” “ground down,” or “depressed.” A caste-less word which ex-Untouchables have chosen for the new school of literature they have created, it includes all those who have suffered from the religio-social system. Short stories by ex-Untouchables began to appear in the 1950s, but the great swelling of creativity — poetry, novels, short stories, plays — appeared only in the late 1960s. The school is acknowledged by the Marathi literary establishment as a new and important development in the long history of Marathi literature. It represents a new voice, and its themes are protest, grievance, pride — and often revolution.     

Literary Reviews

Classic realism. The Time of the Hero. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Lysander Kemp. London: Picador. 1986. 409pp. £4.50pb

The Green House. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Picador. 1986. 405pp. £3.95pb

Colluding with darkness. Of Love and Shadows. Isabel Allende. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden. London: Cape. 1987. 274pp. £10.95hb

The Lizard's Tail. Luisa Valenzuela. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Serpent's Tail. 1987. 279pp. £7.95pb

Brazilian journeys. The Land. Antônio Torres. Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Neves. London: Readers International. 1987. 136pp. £3.95pb

Sergeant Getulio. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro. Translated from the Portuguese by the author. London: Faber and Faber. 1986. 146pp. £3.95pb

Macunaíma. Mário de Andrade. Translated from the Portuguese by E A Goodland. London: Quartet. 1984. 168pp. £8.95hb

Philosophy and intuition. Family Ties. Clarice Lispector. Translated from the Portuguese with an Afterword by Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet Press. 1985. 140pp. £8.95hb/£3.50pb

The Foreign Legion. Clarice Lispector. Translated from the Portuguese with an Afterword by Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet Press. 1986. 219pp. £8.95hb

The Hour of the Star. Clarice Lispector. Translated from the Portuguese with an Afterword by Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet Press. 1986. 96pp. £8.95hb

Western filters. Genesis. Eduardo Galeano. Translated from the Spanish by Cedric Belfrage. London: Methuen. 1987. 293pp. £3.95pb

Cultures of resistance. The Last Song of Manuel Sendero. Ariel Dorfman. Translated from the Spanish by George R Shivers with the author. New York: Viking. 1987. 450pp. S18.95hb

Power and polemics. End Papers. Breyten Breytenbach. London: Faber and Faber. 1986. 270pp. £12.50hb

Mating Birds. Lewis Nkosi. London: Constable. 1986. 184pp. £8.95hb

The Scaffold. Edward Lurie. London: Zed Books. 1986. 237pp. £4.95pb

A mind of winter. Memory of Departure. Abdulrazak Gurnah. London: Cape. 1987. 159pp. £9.95hb

Yoruba destinies. Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer. Amos Tutuola. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 156pp. £9.95hb/£3.95pb

Shared history: novels from the francophone Caribbean. The Ripening. Edouard Glissant. Translated from the French by Michael Dash. London: Heinemann Educational Books. 1985. 195pp. n/p

Cathedral of the August Heat: A Novel of Haiti. Pierre Clitandre. Translated from the French by Bridget Jones. London: Readers International. 1987. 159pp. £8.95hb/£4.95pb

A Caribbean poet questing. Mother Poem. 1977. 122pp. £3.95pb Sun Poem. 1982. 104pp. £4.95pb X/Self. 1987. 131pp. £6.95pb Edward Kamau Brathwaite Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fatal passivity: women in Arabic fiction. From Sleep Unbound. Andree Chedid. Translated from the French by Sharon Spencer. London: Serpent's Tail. 1987. 160pp. £4.95pb

The Story of Zahra. Hanan al‐Shaykh. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Ford with the author. London: Pavanne. 1986. 184pp. £2.95pb

Death of an Ex‐Minister. Nawal El Saadawi. Translated from the Arabic by Shirley Eber. London: Methuen. 1987. 110pp. £9.50hb/£2.95pb

Rival unrealities. Sorraya in a Coma. Esmail Fassih. Translated from the Persian. London: Zed. 1985. 287pp. £9.95hb/£4.95pb

Indian truths. Truth Tales. Edited by Kali for Women. London: Women's Press. 1987. 201pp. £8.95hb/£3.95pb

Stories. Satyajit Ray. Translated from the Bengali by the author. London: Secker and Warburg. 1987. 190pp. £10.95hb     

Terrorism and computerized databases: An examination of multidisciplinary coverage

The potential for research in the field of terrorism expanded considerably with the increase in the size, availability, and types of computerized databases, from on‐line systems to the CD‐ROM. This study reviews these relatively new avenues of search in the field and observes its growing interdisciplinarity.     

Question,ethos, event: Foucault on Kant and Enlightenment

The use of labour values as a basis for economic calculation in a socialist economy is defended. A resource allocation mechanism is outlined that uses a combination of labour value calculation with market clearing prices for consumer goods. Conditions for full employment are specified. A type theoretic analysis of economic calculation is presented. Information theory is used to estimate the information content of real price vectors. It is demonstrated that both price calculations and value calculations are type theory equivalent and that both involve information loss. It is shown that modern computer technology is capable of computing up to date labour values with comparative ease.     

Netherlands East Indies: The Large Colonial Surplus of Indonesia, 1878‐1939

Surprisingly few previous contributions to estimates of Indonesia's colonial surplus have been made, all of them using the export surplus method. Having defined the colonial surplus, the export surplus method is rejected here as unnecessary and misleading. The Indies balance of payments data are used critically for the first time. Adding missing items and further analysing an odd but very big private item much larger estimates of the colonial surplus are produced. A comparison with the colonial surplus of British India is made. In all, the new colonial surplus for the Netherlands East Indies is estimated at almost 24 billion guilders, approximately US$10 billion or some US$156 billion in today's terms. Those figures are considered large indeed.