Reviews

Susan Gross Solomon (ed.), Beyond Sovietology: Essays in Politics and History. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993, 254 pp., £38.00.

Alice H. Amsden, Jacek Kochanowicz & Lance Taylor, The Market Meets Its Match. Restructuring the Economics of Eastern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 250 pp.

Robert E. Ebel, Energy Choices in Russia. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994, xii + 152 pp., $16.95.

Michael Waller, The End of the Communist Power Monopoly. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, viii + 287 pp., £35.00 h/b., £9.99 p/b.

Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 253 pp., £29.95.

William G. Rosenberg & Lewis H. Siegelbaum (eds), Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialisation. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, xix + 296 pp., £12.99 p/b.

Taras Kuzio & Andrew Wilson, Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence. Basingstoke: Macmil‐lan Press, 1994, xiv + 260 pp., £40.00.

Russell F. Farnen (ed.), Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Identity. Cross National and Comparative Perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction, 1994, xiv + 538 pp., £49.95.

Edwin Thomas Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of Archives. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994, xii + 190 pp.

Robert S. Ross, China, the United States and the Soviet Union: Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, x + 204 pp., £42.00.     

Stevie Smith's Myth-Kitty

Abstract

Although Stevie Smith's poetry is in many ways very close to the laconic and less-deceived tone characteristic of Philip Larkin, there is one aspect of her work in which she differs strikingly from him and from the general features of Movement poetry: that is, in her use of what Larkin, in his 1956 ‘statement on poetry’, contemptuously called a ‘common myth-kitty’. In this chapter, I attempt to examine the treasures of Stevie's myth-kitty, not merely with the aim of distancing Smith from the Movement, but of reassessing her relationship with modernism and other poets of the generation which came to prominence in the 1930s, in particular, W. H. Auden. Smith's closest connection with modernism has often been seen to be her use of a stream-of-consciousness technique, as deployed in Novel on Yellow Paper—a technique which is inevitably compared to and dismissed as inferior to that of Virginia Woolf. Instead, I will put forward the claim that Smith's relationship to modernism should also be seen in her use of intertextuality, in the classical and other mythic fragments which, despite considerable differences of tone, place her work in the same tradition as James Joyce, Ezra Pound and T. S Eliot. I attempt to demonstrate how she draws on this ‘myth-kitty’, especially ?n her poetry, focusing on her treatment of female mythical figures, and argue that the key figure in Smith's oeuvre—the counterpart and equivalent of Eliot's Tiresias—is the figure of Persephone on her journey to the underworld.     

Renminbi appreciation and Global Value Chains in China: exploring the linkages

China has experienced a rapid integration into Global Value Chains and a decade long appreciation of its exchange rate. However, these trends have been analysed largely in isolation from each other. In this paper, we explore the linkages between the two based on interviews with a sample of firms in Jiangsu Province. We show (1) how the distribution of the costs and benefits of exchange rate appreciation depends on the power hierarchies between firms in GVCs; (2) how exchange rate changes are important drivers of upgrading and even downgrading in GVCs; and (3) that the firm heterogeneity evident in GVCs provides additional insights into the politics of exchange rate determination in China.     

The geopolitical economy of social policy in the Philippines: securitisation,emerging powers and multilateral policies

Recent geopolitical and economic changes have altered global social policy formation. The Bretton Woods multilateral development agencies (MDAs) have selectively incorporated ideas emerging from developing country states and decision makers, with a recent increased acceptance of social transfers as part of renewed efforts at poverty alleviation based on social risk management. There has been an instance in the use and promotion of conditional cash transfer (CCT) policies by MDAs. CCTs were a product of the emergence of a neo-structuralist welfare regime (understood as an ideal type) in Latin America – an attempt to reconcile neoliberal strategies of development with aspirations for guaranteed minimum incomes. The Bretton Woods and regional development bank MDAs have facilitated the adoption of CCTs in other developing countries, including the Phillipines. Here, a combination of actions by national political actors and MDAs has resulted in the implementation of a securitised and compliance-focused version of CCTs derived from the Colombian security state. Although poor Philippine households welcome income assistance, CCTs have acted to enforce further state monitoring without altering the national-based political and economic processes that replicate poverty.     

Gender and Feminism in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Feminist scholarship has been central to the success and prominence of the Australian social sciences. The impact and significance of the work of sociologists such as Raewyn Connell and Rosemary Pringle, historians Barbara Caine and Marilyn Lake, philosophers Genevieve Lloyd and Moira Gatens and political scientists Carol Bacchi and Louise Chappell are recognised internationally. But how effective has feminist critique been in reshaping what counts as authoritative knowledge and research excellence in the disciplines? And what is the relationship between the disciplines' varying incorporation of feminist perspectives and their progress towards organisational gender equity goals?     

Epistemic Credibility and Women in Philosophy

Abstract

Women in philosophy are disproportionately under-represented at elite institutions, and publishing patterns can be analysed to show that the ‘top’ journals publish articles by women at rates significantly lower than even the levels of women who have made it into tenure at these elite universities. In such journals, the type of epistemology that Lorraine Code describes as ‘immune to feminist critique’ is dominant, assuming that neutrality is the benchmark for knowledge, and that knowers float free of the encumbrances of situation. It is right to worry, as Code does, that feminist and critical race theory hold an increasingly fragile place in disciplinary philosophy and that disciplinary philosophy itself is thereby the loser. The question of how to reinvigorate radical projects of contestation is both urgent and vexing. To align this issue with the under-representation of women in philosophy poses its own problems, as this article explores: for women need not be feminist philosophers, and feminist philosophy can be a project of assimilation into the mainstream as much as it can be a project of radical transformation of disciplinary norms. There may be something to learn, however, both about equity in the academy and the fate of critique by considering the relation between prevailing institutional conditions, disciplinary trajectories and the gendering of prestige in the academic sector.