V 28 N 03

Back issues of BCAS publications published on this site are intended for non-commercial use only.
Photographs and other graphics that appear in articles are expressly not to be reproduced other than for personal use. All rights reserved. CONTENTS
Vol. 28, Nos. 34: JulyDecember 1996
Resources
Carol L. Mitchell - Sisterhood Is Local: The Rise of Feminist Journals in Southeast Asia Biju Mathew and Jagdish Parikh - The Web as a Marginalizing Technology: The Structure of Web-Based Resources on South Asia Suh Hyuk-Kyo - Korea-related Information, Resources, and Activism in Cyberspace Gerry van Klinken - Indonesia in Transition: A Guide to Resources Greg Knehans - Resources on East Timor Paul S. Gonsalves - Towards a Third World Critique of Tourism: Resources for Global Action and Solidarity WorldViews Asia and Pacific - Periodical Publications from and about Asia and the Pacific Saundra Sturdevant - Video Resource Guide for Asia and the Pacific
Reviews: Regional
Russell Kirkland - The Study of Religion and Society in Contemporary Asia: Colonialism and Beyond / Book review Mark T. Berger - Southeast Asian Trajectories: Eurocentrism and the History of the Modern Nation-State / Book review Reviews: East/Northeast Asia Robert Marks - Are We Concerned Yet? Environmental Crisis and Economic Development in China / Book review Raymond F. Wylie and Peter Zarrow - Revolutionary Discourse in Maos China / Book review Mau-Kuei Michael Chang - Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization / Book review Richard Lufrano - Policing Shanghai / Book review Nick Thomas - Red Flag over Hong Kong / Book review Noriko Aso - Jews in the Japanese Mind / Book review Gerald Figal - An Ainu Memoir / Book review Joan Judge - The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan / Book review Stefan Tanaka - Modernity, Phantasm, and Japan / Book review Kevin M. Doak - Japanese Political Discourse on Education / Book review Wesley Sasaki-Uemura - Japanese War Crimes in World War II / Book review Sonia Ryang - Social Theory and Contemporary Japanese Society / Book review
BCAS/Critical Asian Studies www.bcasnet.org
Chunghee Sarah Soh - Women of Japan and Korea / Book review Jonathan Soffer - The Korean War: An International History / Book review
continued on next page
Reviews: South/Southeast Asia Gail Omvedt - Peasants and Their Leaders / Book review Stephen R. Shalom - United States-Philippines Relations / Book review Brendan J. Luyt - Philippine Forests / Book review Ronald Bruce St John - Economic Development in Vietnam / Book review Kenton J. Clymer - Cambodia: A Shattered Society / Book review
CCAS Statement of Purpose

Critical Asian Studies continues to be inspired by the statement of purpose formulated in 1969 by its parent organization, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS). CCAS ceased to exist as an organization in 1979, but the BCAS board decided in 1993 that the CCAS Statement of Purpose should be published in our journal at least once a year.
We first came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity or silence of our profession with regard to that policy. Those in the field of Asian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their research and the political posture of their profession. We are concerned about the present unwillingness of specialists to speak out against the implications of an Asian policy committed to ensuring American domination of much of Asia. We reject the legitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We recognize that the present structure of the profession has often perverted scholarship and alienated many people in the field. The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confront such problems as poverty, oppression, and imperialism. We realize that to be students of other peoples, we must first understand our relations to them. CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the prevailing trends in scholarship on Asia, which too often spring from a parochial cultural perspective and serve selfish interests and expansionism. Our organization is designed to function as a catalyst, a communications network for both Asian and Western scholars, a provider of central resources for local chapters, and a community for the development of anti-imperialist research.
Passed, 2830 March 1969 Boston, Massachusetts
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4/ July-December 1996
Contents
RESOURCES
Carol L. Mitchell Biiu Mathew and Jagdish Parikh Suh Hyuk-Kyo Gerry van Klinken Greg Knehans Paul S. Gonsalves WorldViews Asia and Pacific Saundra Sturdevant
3
8
15
Sffi~hoodIsLo~:TheRiseofFenrinUrtJo~
17
21
23 28 39
in Southeast Asia
The Web as a Marginalizing Technology: The S1ructure of
Web-Based Resources on South Asia Korea-related Infonnation, Resources, and Activism in Cyberspace Indonesia in Transition: A Guide to Resources Resources on East Timor Towards a Third World Critique of Tourism: Resources for Global Action and Solidarity Periodical Publications from and about Asia and the Pacific Video Resource Guide for Asia and the Pacific
REVIEWS: Regional
Russell Kirkland
59
Mark T. Berger
64
The Study ofReligion and Society in Contemporary Asia: Colonialism and Beyond.; Asian Visions ofAuthority: Religion and the Modem States ofEast and SoutheastAsia by Charles F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre, eds. Southeast Asian Trajectories: Eurocen1rism and the Hffitory ofthe Modern Nation-State; Southeast Asia: Past and Present, by D. R. SarDesai
REVIEWS: EastINortheast Asia

Robert B. Maries
70
Raymond F. Wylie and Peter Zarrow Mau-kuei Michael Chang Richard Lufrano Nick Thomas
NorikoAso
Gerald Figal
Joan Judge Stefan Tanaka KevinMDoak Wesley Sasaki-Uemura SoniaRyang
75 78 82
84
85 86 88 89
91
93
94
Are We Concerned Yefl Environmental Cruffi and Economic Development in China; China on the Edge: The Crisis ofEcology and Development, by He B80Chuan; China's Environmental Crisis: An InqUiry into the Limits ofNational Development, by Vaclav Smil Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's China, by David E. Apter and Tony Saich Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization, by Alan M Wachman Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937, by Frederic Wakeman Jr. Red Flag over Hong Kong, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Newman, and Alvin Rabusbka Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses ofa Cultural Stereotype, by David Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir, by Kayano Shigeru The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan, by Germaine A. Hoston Discourses ofthe Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan, by Marilyn Ivy Learning to Be Modem: Japanese Political Discourse on Education, by Byron K. Marshall Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War IL by Tanaka Yuki. Difference and Modernity: Social Theory and Contemporary Japanese Society, by John Clammer
BCAS. All rights reserved. For non-commercial use only. www.bcasnet.org
Chunghee Sarah Soh Jonathan Soffer
96 99
Women ofJapan and Korea: Continuity and Change,
by Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, eds.

The Korean War: An International History, by William Stueck
REVIEWS: South/Southeast Asia

Gail Omvedt
101 105
Peasants and Their Leaders; Sahajanand on Agricultural Labour and the Rural Poor, by Walter Hauser, ed. Swami Sahajanand and the Peasants ofJharkhand: A View from 1941, by Walter Hauser
Illusions ofInfluence: The Political Economy ofUnited States Philippines Relations, 1942-1960, by Nick Cullather; Managing Nationalism: United States National Security Council Documents on the Philippines, 1953-1960, by Nick Cullather, ed. Deforestation in the Postwar Philippines, by David M. Kummer, Powerfrom the Forest, by Mantes Danguilan Vitug; Hopefor the Seeds, by Vincent Busch The Challenge ofReform in Indochina, by BOlje Ljunggren, ed. Development in Vietnam: Policy Reforms and Economic Growth, by Vu Tuan Anh; Doi Moi: Vietnam's Renovation Policy and Peiformance, by Dean K. Forbes, ed.; The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam, by Tran Khanh; Vietnam: Socialist Economic Development, 1955-1992, by Dang T. Tran; Vietnam's Dilemmas and Options: The Challenge ofEconomic Transition in the 199Os, by Mya Than and Joseph L. H. Tan, ed. Vietnam's Economic Policy since 1975, by Vo Nhan Tri Cambodia: A Shattered Society, by Marie Alexandrine Martin
Stephen R Shalom
Brendan Luyt
112
116
Ronald Bruce St John
Kenton Clymer
123 125
Books Received-1996 Index for Volume 28 (1996)

eratur); International Development Abstracts; International Develop ment Index; Left Index; Periodica Islamica; Political Science Abstracts; Sage Abstracts; and the Social Science Citation Index. Back issues and photocopies of out-of-print back issues are available
With the publication of this special double issue of the Bulletin we are back on a regular quarterly publishing schedule for the fIrst time in a long while. We are grateful to our subscribers, subscription agencies, and supporters for their forbearance as we have struggled to catch up. Outgoing editors Bill and Nancy Doub have already completed and published the ftrst two issues in Volume 29 (1997). This double issue numbers 3 and ~ompletes Volume 28 (1996). The ftrst part of this "~"pecial" issue is focused on Asia- and Pacific-related resource materi als; the second part contains 21 reviews and review essays on books that cover a range ofcountries and topics in the Asia and Pacific regions. We return to the traditional format ofthe journal with the issues that are being published in Volume 29. - Tom Fenton, Managing Editor
from BCAS. Write for a flyer listing all of the available issues or visit the BCAS Web site (see below). Microftlmsofback issues ofthe Bulletin are available from University Microftlms International, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106, USA.
Bookstore distributor: Ubiquity Distributors, 607 DeGraw St., Brook
lyn, NY 11230, US. Tel: 1-718-5491. Fax: 1-718-875-8047.

Internet site: BCAS co-editor Stephen R. Shalom has pioneered the construction ofan attractive, information-packed site for the Bulletin on
Note that all editorial and administrative correspondence for BCAS and the Bulletin should now be sent to our new office in Oakland: BCAS, 464 19th Street, Oakland, CA 94612-2297, USA. Tel: 1-510-451-1742. Fax: 1-510-835-3017. E-mail: <tfenton@igc.org>.
Photo credits: The photograph on the front cover is taken from the video documentary Vietnam: After the Fire and is reproduced with permission
the World Wide Web. Visit us at <http://csf.colorado.edulbcasl>. The Bulletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars (ISSN #007-4810) is publish ed quarterly. Periodical postage is paid in Hayfork, California USPS 0938-040. Publisher: Thomas P. Fenton. Copyright 1996 by the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Inc. All rights reserved.
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from Cinema Guild (New York, N.Y.). The photograph on the back cover was taken by Pearl Sensenig and is from the video Cambodia: Land ofBeauty but Uncerlainty. The photograph is reproduced courtesy of the Mennonite Central Committee (Akron, Penn.), the distributor of the video. We are grateful to all of the distributors who gave us permis sion to include photographs from their fIlms and videotapes in the "Video Resource Guide for Asia and the PacifIc" that appears in this issue (see pages 39-57 below). The Bulletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars is indexed or abstracted in the Alternative Press Index; America: History and Life; Bibliography of Asian Studies; Historical Abstracts; IBR (International Bibliography of Book Reviews; IBZ (International Bibliographie der Zerischriften Lit
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2
Bulletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars
I 1
Sisterhood Is Local
The Rise of Feminist Journals in Southeast Asia
by Carol L. Mitchell
Whether as central members in their own households, as workers in the formal or informal economy, as political figures or as performers and artists, Southeast Asian women have con tributed and continue to contribute to the economic, social, and artistic development of their societies. Yet it is only recently that we have begun to look at their lives separately from-yet vital to our understanding of-those societies and their histories. Over the past twenty years pUblications about Southeast Asian women have grown both in number and scope. Since 1991, the Univer sity of Wisconsin-Madison has added some six hundred new titles about Southeast Asian women to its collection-double the number it acquired in the years 1981 to 1985 and thirty percent more than in the previous five-year period (1986-1990). More impressive than the sheer number of publications is the scope of issues being addressed. Many topics such as prostitution, domes tic abuse, or women factory workers were inconceivable just ten years ago. But the most notable and positive change over the past twenty years has been the growth ofpublishing by the women of Southeast Asia. Women's publishing, especially feminist pub lishing, is best illustrated by the rise of feminist periodicals and newsletters that serve to unite women. The myriad of voices found in these periodicals are those of women who speak differ ent languages and who come from vastly different economic backgrounds. We talk about the emerging global village, but these periodicals demonstrate that sisterhood may indeed be more local than global. 1 In a survey article in Feminist Collections in winter 1995,2 I heralded the entrance of the feminist periodical into the vast wasteland of commercial women's magazines. In anticipation of the Fourth World Conference on Women held later that year in Carol Mitchell is Southeast Asian bibliographic services librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 1. The phrase "Sisterhood is Local" appeared on the cover of the Philippine newsletter Womenews. 2. ''Feminist Periodicals in Southeast Asia," Feminist Collections: A QuarlerlyofWomen 'sStudies&sources 16,no. 2 (winter 1995): 20-24. Beijing, many women's organizations produced newsletters and other fliers outlining their programs. Reaching Out is an example of women using the Beijing Conference as an opportunity for organizing and sharing. Begun by the Asia Pacific NOO Working Group as a way to monitor preparations for Beijing, Reaching Out will evolve, I hope, into a tool for implementation of agree ments worked out at the conference. The fate of other organiza tions and their publications, however, has not been as bright. The need to respond to deep social injustice and to other pressing issues has forced many feminist organizations to re focus their efforts away from information-sharing and the build ing of international coalitions to services and programs at the local level. Many ofthe newsletters and j oumals cited in my 1995 article are now defunct, but those that have endured are flourish ing. Publishing by women's studies centers, programs, and de partments at various institutions in Southeast Asia continues to expand and mature. These periodicals have courted a impressive following; they are the foundations on which others are building. Among those building on the growing interest in women's publishing are women's studies centers, programs, and depart ments. Ranging from polished scholarly titles to newsletters, women's studies publications provide insights into the institu tionalization of women's studies within Southeast Asian univer sities. Although primarily a forum for reviewing and announcing events and broadcasting news, all contain substantive informa tion aimed at making readers aware of women's lives and histo
nes.
Joining their sisters are increasingly vocal groups of lesbi ans. Lesbians, long involved in the women's movement, have begun challenging the way in which feminists think and defme their goals. Nascent lesbian organizations are using newsletters as well as new technologies to forward their vision of a just society. Contact information for feminist organizations in Southeast Asia is unfortunately not readily available in published directo ries. The 1994ASEANClearinghouse on Women in Development (published by the ASEAN Women's Programme and the Center for Scientific Documentation and Information of the Indonesian
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
3
Institute of Sciences, in cooperation with UNICEF) is a useful guide to government-sponsored women's resources centers. The now defunct National Women's Information Network (Philip pines) produced an excellent Directory (1993) that remains the most comprehensive guide to organizations in the region, al though it is now dated. International women's organizations that have created Web directories and resource guides are an impor tant resource, but they are underdeveloped for Southeast Asia. 3 The Women's International Network's quarterly WIN News is a valuable resource for tracking large international feminist or ganizations, as well as emerging indigenous organizations work ing on topical issues. Discovering new women's publishing initiatives is diffi cult, but the rewards of the effort include making new friends and experiencing stimulating encounters.
Regional Publications
Although not specifically a women's journal, Asian Ex change is an important voice for Asian women. Produced by the Asian Regional Exchange for Regional Alternatives (ARENA), this semi-annual bulletin tackles formidable social and economic issues facing the region. Its coverage encompasses a feminist perspective and certain issues have focused solely on women, for example, the examination of the impact of economic restruc turing in the June 1995 issue, "Shadows Behind the Screen: Economic Restructuring and Asian Women." The United Nations, through its Economic and Social Com mission for Asia and the Pacific, provides an excellent introduc tion into the varied issues being addressed at official levels. WINAP Newsletter (Women's Information Network for Asia and the Pacific) is the Commission's semi-annual publication de voted to news and activities in the region with a special emphasis on women in development. The British development and relief agency, Oxfam, has most recently been involved in the campaign to rid Cambodia of its landmines. Through other programs and activities it maintains an active presence in the region. Its diverse publishing program includes Gender and Development, a journal devoted to exam ining the practical and theoretical "connections between gender and development initiatives." Recent issues contained articles, case studies, interviews, and reviews devoted to gender in or ganizations (February 1997), employment (October 1996), and the family (June 1996).4 Isis International is an international women's nongovern mental organization (NGO) founded in 1972 that has an active presence in Southeast Asia through its Manila office. As a grassroots organization it is committed to mobilizing women through action and information. Its monthly bulletin, Women Envision, covers a wide range ofinformation aimed at increasing women's participation in social change. It is an excellent source for information on new organizations, publications, and events. 3. Those that I reviewed include the Global Fund for Women at <http:// www.igc.org/gfw>, WIDNET (Women in Development Network) at <http://www.focusintl.com/widnet.html>. and QWeb Sweden at <http: l/www.qweb.kvinnoforum.selindex.html>. 4. Unfortunately, Oxfam has handed over publishing responsibility to the Carfax company (Oxford) with the result that subscription prices to Gender and Development as well as a related Oxfam journal, Develop ment in Practice. have increased so much as to exclude many libraries,
Another Isis pUblication, Women in Action, has evolved into a substantive journal with full-length articles about women's lives and the issues affecting their lives. Women in Action deserves a space on your shelves next to Ms. Coming not from Asia, but from Africa, is the Isis-WI CCE publication Womens World. Using the Isis-WICCE Exchange Programmes as its focal point, Women s World includes theoreti cal articles, case studies, and information about resources and organizations in each of its thematic issues. As part of its commitment to development studies, the Asian and Pacific Development Centre, based in Kuala Lumpur, contributes to the advancement of women through research and assistance. Issues in Gender and Development, produced by the center's Gender and Development Programme, covers broad issues related to women's participation in social and economic development. Forum News, published by the center's Asia Pa cific Forum on Women, Law and Development, is more narrowly focused on information and news dealing with the legal status and general human rights conditions of women in the region. In 1993, a group of women established the Asia-Pacific Resource and Research Centre on Women (ARROW) as a re gional nongovernmental organization with the aim of "enabling women to better define and control their lives." ARROW's work has centered on direct and indirect assistance to other women's organizations working on health and reproductive issues. An important part of their mission is a computerized documentation center that makes information on women and health readily available. Their publication, ARROWs for Change, communi cates a "clear perspective or framework" on "women and health issues, particularly reproductive health, to Asian-Pacific deci sion makers in health, population, family planning, and women's organisations." For more information on ARROW and its pub lishing efforts see its newly developed Web site at <http://www. asiaconnect.com/arrow> . ARROW focuses primarily on health issues, but other regional organizations are looking closely at workplace issues. The Hong Kong-based Committee for Asian Women publishes Asian Women Workers Newsletter, a quarterly report on the "issues, news, struggles and life experiences" of Asian women workers. Religion plays an important role in many Southeast Asian societies, so it is not surprising that women should begin to organize and share information within their religious institutions. Although there are several Islamic magazines aimed at women, most are commercial and conservative in their content.' In Gods Image, by contrast, boasts articles on women's theology in an Asian context, along with studies of issues of poverty and hunger from a feminist-Christian perspective. Published by the Asian Women's Resource Centre for Culture and Theology in Kuala Lumpur, In Gods Image advocates new ways of "encouraging and cooperating with Asian women in their thinking, action, and organizations, and individuals with limited budgets. For information on subscriptions see <http://www.onewoddorg/oxfam/publish/pjourgen. html>. 5. For example, in Indonesia the simpler and more conservative Ummi: Identitas Wanita Islami (Jakarta) is published by the Department of Religious Affairs. Another publication, Amanah, a glossy magazine aimed at an upscale market, makes no attempt to expand the boundaries of women within the Islamic tradition.
4
Bulletin o/ConcernedAsian Scholars
writing." Buddhist women are linking up through NI.B. WA.: Newsletter on International Buddhist Women s Activities. With a 12-year publishing history, NI.B. WA. is not only an important source for news and events for Buddhist women but also a place .to explore the ever-evolving role of women in shaping Buddhist thought and practice. With the introduction of its regional journal Lila: Asia Pacific Women sStudies Journal. the Institute of Women's Stud ies at st. Scholastica's College (Manila) expanded the scope of its concern beyond the Philippines. The institute continues to excel and serve as a model for regional feminist scholarship. A recent issue (no. 6) "explores and invites us to challenge anew certain accepted paradigms of women in society and culture" by looking at such topics as Islam and the state ideology in Indone sia, aboriginal women and racism in Australia, traditional ideals of women versus contemporary lifestyles in the Philippines, and more. Asian Women. begun in 1995, is the most recent addition to the collection of regional scholarly women's journals. Published semi-annually by the Korean-based Research Institute for Asian
Women, the journal "presents various perspectives and raises important issues in women's studies" while serving as a "com munication channel between researchers in Asia and Western countries." A recent issue examined "gender and politics" in the college curriculum.
Indonesia
Government censorship and other more harsh forms of repression have stifled the collective voice of many, including women. Women's voices can be heard from within many demo cratic and environmental movements. It is their quickly banned newsletters that one needs to look for fITSt. Hope remains that the growth of women's studies will serve as a catalyst for a broader and more active Indonesian women's movement. The Program Studi Kajian Wanita (Women's Studies Pro gram) at the University of Indonesia is the country's largest women's studies program. Its Buletin Kajian Wani/a. now in its third year, is primarily a forum for sharing information and news of events; however, it increasingly addresses issues such as child labor and participatory development.
RESOURCES
ARROW, 2d Fl., Block F, Anjung FELDA, Jalan Maktab, 54000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (ARROWs for Change) Asia Pacific Development Centre, Bldg. Pesiaran Duta, P.O. Box 12224, 50770 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (Forum News; Issues in Gender and Development) Asian Regional Exchange for Regional Alternatives, P.O. Box 31407, Causeway Bay Post Office, Hong Kong. (Asian Exchange) Asian Women's Resource Centre for Culture and Theology, 79, Lorong Anggor, Taman Shanghai, 58100 Kuala Lum pur, Malaysia. (In God's Image) BATIS Center for Women, Rm. 711, Don Santiago Bldg., 1344 Taft Ave, Ermita, Manila, Philippines. (BATIS and BATISMonthly Beeper) CLIC (Can't Live In Closets), P.O. Box 2356, Central Post Office, Quezon City, Philippines. (Breakout) Center for Women's Resources, 127-B Scout Fuentebell, Ka muning, 1103 Quezon City, Philippines. (Piglas-Diwa) Cordillera Women's Education and Resource Center, P.O. Box 7691, GARCOM, Baguio, Philippines. (Chaneg) Foundation for Women. P.O. Box 47, Bangkoknoi, Bangkok 10700, Thailand (Voice ofThai Women andChotmai khao sun khao phuying) Friends of Women Foundation, 1379/30 Soi Praditchai, Pha honyothin Rd., Bangkok 10400, Thailand. (Friends of Women Newsletter and Satri That) Gender Watch Group, Gender and Development Research Institute, Association for the Promotion of Women, 50111 Mu 3 Dechatungka Rd., Sikan, Donmuang, Bangkok 10210, Thailand. (GWG Newsletter and Chotmai khao Ongkon tittam kandamnoenngan than kammuang ruang satri) Institute of Women's Studies, S1. Scholastica's College, P.O. Box 3153, Manila, Philippines. (Lila: Asia Pacific Women's Studies Journal) Isis International, P. O. Box 1837, Quezon City Main, Quezon City 1100, Philippines. E-mail: isis@phil.gn.apc.org. (Women Envision and Women inAction) Isis-WICCE, P.O. Box 4934, Kampala, Uganda. (Women's World) Laya Women's Collective, P.O. Box 4386, 2800 Manila, Philippines. (Laya) NI.B.WA.: Newsletter on International Buddhist Women's Activities. c/o Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, Faculty of Lib eral Arts, Thammasat University, Bangkok 10200, Thai land. Persatuan Sahabat Wanita, 1, Jalan Muhibbah 11, Taman Muhibbah, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia. (Suara Wa nita) Program Studi Kajian Wanita, Program Pascasmjana Univer sitasIndonesia, SalembaRaya4, Jakarta 10430, Indonesia. (Buletin Kajian Wani/a) Research Institute for Asian Women, Sookmyung Women's University Press, Chungpa-dong 2-ka, Yongsan-ku, Seoul, 140-742, Korea. (Asian Women) Women Supporting Women, WSWC, P.O.Box #44-43, UP Shopping Center, UP Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. (Switchboard) Women's International Network, 187 Grant St., Lexington, MA 02173 USA. (WIN News) Women's Information Network for Asia and the Pacific (WI NAP), Women in Development Unit, Rural and Urban Development Division-E SCAP, United Nations Bldg., Ra jadamnernAve.,Bangkok 10200, Thailand (WINAP News letter) Women's Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang mai University, Chiangmai 50002, Thailand. (Women's Studies News)
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
Malaysia In my 1995 article (see note 2) I cited two women's organi zations involved in action and information campaigns in Malay sia. The All Women's Action Society (AWAM), which organizes around issues of domestic violence, health, and women's rights, had been publishing a newsletter, WAVES. Unfortunately, I have not seen an issue oftheir periodical for more than year. Persatuan Sahabat Wanita (Friends of Women) remains actively involved in providing "education, training and support for the organising efforts of women workers and their communities." In addition to organizational news and reports on events, theirnewsletter Suara Wanita (Women's Voice) carries significant articles on trade unions, safety and health issues, child care, and many other issues important to women workers. Philippines
Changes have come rapidly to the Philippines and many of the socioeconomic and political forces that created one of the strongest feminist movements in the world no longer seem so pressing. New concerns and new alliances have been formed in this rapidly changing society. The most notable change in the women's movement is the diminished role of GABRIELA the national nongovernmental organization that for many years'was the center of the movement. Lacking strong national leadership, regional and special-interest organizations are now assuming the important task of information-dissemination at the local level. BAIlS Center for Women was founded in 1989 to "protect the rights and welfare of Filipina migrant workers." BATIS Newsletter and the more brief BATIS Monthly Beeper cover issues affecting women migrants and their families. Womenews, a vibrant newsletter published by the Women's Studies and Resource Center in Davao City, highlights the strength of the regional women's movement. One recent issue ofthis newsletter boasted "Sisterhood is Local." Although not all issues are locally focused, Womenews emphasizes the need to understand women in the context of the diverse Filipino society. A periodical pro duced for and about women of the northern Luzon region by the Cordillera Women's Education and Resource Center is entitled Chaneg.
The Center for Women's Resources (CWR) is one of the oldest and most established independent community-based li brary and information selVices in the Philippines. Although small in size, the CWR library selVes thousands of women each year. The center's pocket-sized publication, Piglas-Diwa, takes up a diff~rent theme in e~ch issue, selVing up biting commentary on questIons as far rangmg as GATT and family violence. Founded in 1988, the University Center for Women's Stud ies (University of the Philippines) moved into its own facilities ~n 1993. Now with a building of its own, it continues to expand Its program of research and selVice. The center's Review of Women s Studies is a model academic journal that balances case studies with theoretical considerations and creative writing. Pa nanaw, the center's newsletter, contains more than the expected reports on institutional activities and is a source for information on struggles to increase women's participation within the univer sity and the federal government. Building on the progressive roots of the feminist move ~ent, .Laya Women's ~ollective (Manila) explores and exposes lmge:mg problems fa.cmg the Philippines from a feminist per spective. From analyzmg the nature ofPhilippine feminist theory in post-Marcos society to exposing the struggle of urban women who are fighting for their housing rights, Laya: Feminist Quar terly sustains a unique indigenous women's movement. Bringing a new-and, to some, a disquieting-perspective to feminist publishing in the Philippines are pro gressive lesbians. Women Supportmg Women published its first newsletter Switch board in 1994 ill an effort to increase "lesbian visibility and empowerment in our society." Some of the founding members of Women Supporting Women are now active in the newly formed CLIC (Can't Live in a Closet), an advocacy group and resource center. CLIC uses the Internet (<http://www.mcs.netl fliplbadaf/clic.html to promote its lesbian quarterly, Breakout.
Singapore
The women's movement in Singapore stands in sharp con trast to the assertive and investigative nature of the Philippine movement. No rallies in support of foreign domestic workers or outrage at a sex industry that lures foreigners to the region mark this primarily middle-class professional women's movement. Yet, in Singapore's heavily censored society, Awareness, the journal of the Association of Women for Action and Research provides local women with their only opportunity for altemativ; expression. The July 1996 issue included an excellent piece by Noeleen Heyzer on women as a global force for change. Thailand The struggle of Thai women is in evidence in several English-language newsletters that are published for the benefit of the majority of us who don't read Thai. Voices ofThai Women, is one such vital source of informa tion. In this semi-annual newsletter, published by Foundation for Women (Munnithi Phuying), we can discover the reactions of T~ai women to issues such as the 1995 Beijing conference, the ph~t of fa~tory workers, and reform efforts concerning Thai land s abortIOn law. F or those who do read Thai, the Foundation for Women publishes a quarterly tabloid, C hotmai khao sun khao phuying. Another active Bangkok-based organization, Friends of Women (Munnithi Phuan Ying), works on issues of women's
V
A Kal~i~oscol'~ Worl~
Women's Resource and Inform01ion Centers in Asia and lhe PaCific
*
Spiral-bound record of the proceedings of two workshops held in Asia in 1995 on the subject of women's resource and information centers in Asia and the Pacific. Contact Isis International Manila, P.O. Box 1837, Quezon City Main 1100, Philippines. E-mail: <isis@gn.apc.org>.
Bulletin ofConcernedAsian Scholars
rights, health, and working conditions, but concentrates the bulk of its energies on sexual crimes and harassment. Its English-lan guage newsletter, Friends ofWomen Newsletter, highlights their activities and their struggle to promote "the social attitude, value and belief that women and men are equal and entitled to equal rights and opportunities." Satri That is its voice for the women of Thailand. The Gender Watch Group (Ongkon Tittam Kandamnoenn gan Than Kammuang Ruang Satri), a vital part ofthe Gender and
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

South Asia Bulletin
Recent and Forthcoming
Sondra Hale, Gender Politics and Islamization in Sudan Michael West, Indians, India and the Politics of Race and Nationalism in British Central Africa Bruce Lawrence, Tracking Fundamentalists and Those Who Study Them Carolyn A. Brown, Struggles over the Labor Process at Enugu Government Colliery, Nigeria Pieter C. van Duin, South African Communism, the White Working Class, and the Ideology of Proletarian Non-Racialism Joselyn Zivin, The Hybrid Origins of the Indian Press and Propaganda State
Duke University Press.
Journals Division
Development Research Institute (Bangkok), is a national organi zation with regional representation. Its goal is to monitor gender issues taken up by the government as part of a campaign to heighten awareness of the role of women in national develop ment. The GWG Newsletter features articles on Thai women and their efforts in national and community development. Its Thai newsletter, Chotmai khao Ongkon tittam kandamnoenngan than kammuang ruang satri, highlights the group's news and events for local readership. I know of only one Thai women's studies publication, Women:S Studies News, pub lished by the Women's Studies Center of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Chiang mai University. The existence of just this one slim journal underscores the need for more scholarly pUblishing on women m Southeast Asia.
Vietnam
Women of Vietnam and its Vietnam ese-language counterpart, Phu nu thu do, afford us a glance at Vietnamese govern ment programs through the eyes of an official organization that is seeking to ad vance women. Related regional newslet ters like Phu nu thu tu, published in Ho Chi Minh City, describe the ways in which women outside Vietnam's major cities re main connected through a powerful organi zation. Although it supports and promotes the government's position and policies on women, the long-established Viet Nam Women's Union (Hoi Lien Hiep Phu Nu Viet Nam) is the most important historical and contemporary source for substantive information on evolving issues for Viet namese women.
I
\ I
Conclusion
There is no doubt that women's or ganizing in Southeast Asia will continue to evolve and allow voices that have not yet been heard to join the chorus of women's empowerment. Lesbians have only recently joined the movement in the region, but many other groups still remain marginalized. Prostitutes and women in the entertainment industry have yet to pe heard from, for instance, and we await the arrival ofyouth onto the feminist publish ing scene. Meanwhile, feminists based in the United States and Europe need to sup port the developmenr of feminist publish ing in Southeast Asia through subscriptions and donations in support of newsletters and journals that provide us with so many opportunities not only to understand South east Asian feminism and alternative mean ings of gender, but also to envision a truly global sisterllOod.
Box 90660 Durham, NC 27708-0660

(919) 687-3617
http://www.duke.edu/web/dupress/
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

The Web as a Marginalizing Technology

The Structure of Web-Based Resources on South Asia
by Biju Mathew and Jagdish Parikh

The World Wide Web (WWW), a potentially non-hierar chical and open mode of information presentation and sharing based on hyperlinked text, has emerged over the last few years as the most celebrated form of information access in most countries that have a well-developed telecommunications infra structure. From the time-not long ago-when the word "in ternet" would produce confused looks, we have come to a time in which the terms "Internet" and "World Wide Web" are virtu ally synonymous and instantly understood. Much of the Web is in the process of becoming one huge overpowering corporate resource, but even in the midst of this commercial inundation, progressive political organizers and a broad swath ofprogressive organizations around the world have also begun utilizing the Web both for broadcasting and for collecting information. It is eminently possible, of course, that a wide section of those with limited access to these networks, namely, the "less developed world," will remain marginalized in this new infor mation age. Marginalization could happen for a number of reasons, some of which we will evaluate shortly. But what is important to insist on right from the start is that any deconstruc tive examination of marginalization in the information broad casting/collecting work of communities in the "less developed world" must be accompanied by constructive efforts to identify resources where they do, in fact, exist, and to produce a guide to these resources for those interested in the information work of these communities. We began work on the production of such a resource guide with an intent to focus on Asia as a whole, asking two questions: What resources are available about Asia that might be of interest to activists interested in the Asia region? What is lacking? We soon realized, however, that this task was too huge for a two-person team. Therefore we narrowed our focus to South Asia, the region we know best. What we present below is a listing and critical evaluation of existing progressive South Asian re source sites on the Web. From this effort we will come to some clarity about what is lacking and why.
Methodology
Biju Mathew is Assistant Professor of Infonnation Systems at Rider University (New Jersey) and a member of the editorial collective of Ghadar, a "South Asian left discussion magazine." He is co-modemter of the <alt.india.progressive> Usenetnewsgroup on the Internet, and a member ofFonun oflndian Left (FOIL). Jagdish Parikh has been working since 1991 with an international volunteer initiative, "Asialink - Inter-doc," helping emerging electtonic networks in the Asia Pacific region. He is closely associated with various initiatives that are exploring the use of electronic networking for global labor communications and infonnation exchange. He works in the New York office of Human Rights Watch as HRW's on-line research associate.
The methodology used for our evaluation was multilayered. We began with general surveys in order to compile an exhaustive list of potential categories for searches. Then we developed a set of keywords under each category that could be used for more focused searches using multiple search engines. Finally we reor ganized and pruned our initial list of sites based on the twin criteria of comprehensiveness and upkeep of the site. Further details of our methodology are available in the Appendix below. We began by using six categories for our keyword construc tion: economy, labor, human rights, social caste/ethnicity, gen der, and environment/ecology. We soon revised this list (based on the contents of the sites we were examining) and settled on these five: general, human rights/ethnicity/ecology, globaliza tion, labor, and women. We have included an addendum with information relevant to the South Asian diaspora. Of these five categories, three deserve some brief explanatory comments. General: This category is without a doubt the one with the least specificity. The primary reason for the creation of this category is that we found many resources that did not fit easily into the other categories we had identified. For instance, we found re source lists of addresses, fax numbers, and telephone numbers of prime ministers and chief ministers of various South Asian countries. We also discovered that sites such as those of the Australian National University or the UC Berkeley South Asia
Program-while focused on academic or scholarly production on South Asia-function just as well as a general resource for activists interested in South Asia. Once we finished collecting all the sites that fell into the top level of the "general" category, we divided the remaining listings into four subcategories: (1) university-based South Asia interest groups, (2) nongovernmen tal organizations (NGOs) and development (including some general introductory documents to the field of development, basic contact information for some NGOs, and two large devel opment-related databases), (3) newspapers and other periodicals, and (4) what we elect to call enemy sites. Human Rights/ethnicity/ecology: Here we note that three ma jor categories have been merged into one. This is primarily because issues of ethnicity-for instance, "triballadivasi" is sues-were often connected to and presented as ecological is sues. Similarly, ecological or caste issues were often brought together under the heading of human rights. Thus, strong ties among these three issues, at least at the level oftheir presentation on the Web, exist. Globalization: We changed the name of this category from "economy" to "globalization" simply because almost all the sites we identified in this area were specifically connected to glob ali zation. The Web as a Space of Marginalization Resources available about South Asia on the Web are short on many counts. Although we found information to include in each of our five categories, the overall comprehensiveness of the Web-based resources leaves much to be desired. There is, how ever, some change visible on the horizon. Two sites-the proXsa (progressive South Asian Exchange Net) site and the South Asia Citizen Web site-promise to grow into the comprehensive sites we had hoped to find. In many cases the sites we identified are those that a progressive activist might fmd of interest not so much because they offer help in direct acts of material struggle but because these sites, which are maintained by forces we are opposed to, offer revealing pictures ofthe internal workings of organizations such as the World Bank. (See listings below for the Bharatiya Janata Party's Kamal Darshan Site, and the Vishwa Hindu Par ishad's Hindu Web.) To further identify the shortcomings we need to look at the Web as a resource structure with a certain set of internal features and ask: How well do we use these features and what is prevent ing us from using them more effectively? Are We Really Using the Web? The World Wide Web is a unique resource because it is an "open" structure with a unique "hyper textual" quality that gives it much of its power. This means that any two organizations even iflocated half the globe away from each other-can use the Web to establish links and information exchanges between them selves. Furthermore, by allowing other organizations and pro gressive elements to "link" up with them, they create an ever larger network of organizations that are all tied together by the coherent politics that they share. In this way, one organization, say in India, would link with another, say in the United States, and together they would build up a set of"Web pages" that would allow each organization to both "deposit" and "collect" informa tion from each of the sites, carry on a dialogue about critical
issues, and build the foundation of mutual understanding that is necessary for successful joint actions. Sadly, this level of cooperative interaction is undeveloped. What must be noted, however, is not just that collaboration is lacking but that most ofthe sites we found contained information on only one of the partners in what should be a collaborative undertaking. The result is an information flow that is unidirec tional,from South Asia to the United States or, more generally, from the less developed world to the over developed world. Most of the sites listed below contain information about organiza tional, social, and political structures in South Asia, not in the United States or in other countries outside the region. Moreover, there are no sites at which a U.S. and a South Asian organization are jointly building an information repository or service. It is quite clear as to what academicians and activists located here in the United States stand to gain from the unidirec tional flow of information. The question to ask, however, is of what use are these Web sites to movements and organizations back in South Asia? How did this "partial" and one-sided structure develop? Strategies for the Web: Sharing versus Consuming The search for answers to the above question leads us to a deeper level of critique. To begin with we need to study the role that "informationlknowledge" about the less-developed world plays in organizations in the "frrst" world. Our contention is that a lively "market" for this informationlknowledge has developed in the United States, a market in which the "consumers" are a broad range of professionalized "progressive" organizations and academicians. Institutional development and career advance ments in these organizations are in many ways determined by the level oftheir access to'the "under-developed." This demand, with the resultant self-perpetuating system of knowledge production, is surely one of the major determinants of the skewed structure we fmd in the organization of information resources on the Web. This line of argument can be extended further if we examine the addresses (the "URL's") of the sites listed below, along with the content/structure of the pages themselves, We note that, by far, most of the information is "located" in the "over-developed" world. By itself, and under "ideal conditions," the location should not matter because, after all, the Web is world-wide. In reality, however, given the tremendous lack of infrastructural facilities in the "under-developed" world, the positioning of infrastructure in the "over-developed" world means that only one ofthe players has real access, those located in the over-developed world. One question comes immediately to mind. Why is it that progressive organizations in the United States have not taken the much bandied about idea of collaboration seriously enough so as to try and locate their information bases in the "under-devel oped" world? Doing this, of course, would require a greater degree of commitment and effort, but it would also mean that by making such a strategic choice an organization would be ensur ing that some infrastructural build-up would happen at the site ofthe movements back in South Asia. It goes without saying that the demands of "efficiency" (i.e" to consume most efficiently) would never allow such a move. When we move beyond the locations of the sites listed and examine the content and structure of the Web pages themselves, we uncover a specific "bias" towards the organization of the
I
1 1
j
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
9
contents according to structures that have currency here in the "over-developed" world. For instance, we were forced by the nature of the information we examined to collapse our three original categories of ethnicity/caste, human rights, and ecology into one category (namely, humanrights/ethnicity/ecology). The content of most of the sites we studied seemed to move seam lessly over all three of these issues. The question of some importance is whether the melding of information about ethnic ity (read indigenous people), human rights, and ecology reflects conceptual categories used primarily by North American and European NGOs and scholars. And is it not the case that the drive to present the information based on conceptual schema "native" to North America and Europe is itself premised on the need for efficient consumption here? This raises concerns about a lop sided "practice of power" in the organization of knowledge/in formation on the Web, one that goes beyond questions about the location of infrastructure. We are both of the mind, for instance, that ecological questions could be related to farmers' movements in South Asia just as easily as they are to issues concerning indigenous peoples. Yet, it is the links between indigenous peoples and the environ ment that are covered far more extensively on the Web. It is precisely such structures ofpower that force some social activists in South Asia to refuse to share information about themselves through media such as the Web. Information collected and dis seminated in this manner, these activists maintain, is being ''used'' rather than "shared." Ifwe are serious about notions ofpartnership, then the Web can indeed be a useful and unique medium, for its very open hyperlink-based structure holds the potential for disrupting the isolated and positivistic ordering of information and knowledge that is becoming increasingly prevalent on the Web. Beyond this,
there is ample scope for subverting the very basis of corporate sponsored regimes of intellectual property rights. Finally, if our suggestion that infrastructure be located in the under-developed world be seen as "impractical," then we have another question to ask. The Web, as we all know, is a resource-intensive technology. The combination oftext, images, and sound, puts enormous pressure on resources. While the manipulation of simple text and binary code is readily handled by a less-than-sophisticated machine, the Web, in contrast, re quires tremendous doses of ~emory and processing capacities. If the building of organizational partnerships is as crucial as many progressives maintain, then the very design of an informa tion exchange medium should have taken this into consideration. Instead, we fmd ourselves continuing to intensify our Web-based resource usage here with little concern for what implications this strategy has for organizations and movements located in the resource-poor parts ofthe world. Genuine partnership efforts, we contend, would involve "sharing" informatlon via "text only sites" and making greater use of "older" technologies, such as e-mail and ftp (file transfer protocols). Instead we find organiza tions he.re building more and more resource-gobbling Web sites, and, in the process, isolating even further the resource-poor organizations of South Asia and other parts of the world. The source of the problem of what is missing from re sources about South Asia is found, we believe, in the concentric circles of marginalization we have described above. Unless the progressive community here acknowledges that technology it self has built-in structures ofmarginalization and that our facility in using the medium is related, at least in part, to the efficiency ofconsumption it creates for us, the widening out ofthese circles of marginalization is bound to continue.
*
National Trade Union Congress) (context-specific). Once keywords were identified for each category we began a proc ess of extensive searches using multiple search engines. For reasons of brevity, we will give only one example of the search construction scheme. The category Economy had multiple keywords, including economy, political econ omy, liberalization, globalization, and neo-liberal economy. Against each of these-keywords we ran six searches with the keyword remaining constant and the regional name changing between South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. For instance one search would be on the keywords ''Pakistan Liberalization." We cataloged the results with brief annotations of the contents of each site. From a total of 1,000 sites, we narrowed our list based on two criteria: 1. Comprehensiveness of site. We eliminated single pages that expressed "opinions" on a particular subject but offered little else. If we found a potentially interesting site on the Tehri Dam, for instance, we dismissed it if it provided no substantive material of concern to the environmental activist. 2. Upkeep of Site. We eliminated sites that had not updated their information for quite some time. Using these criteria we selected the fmallist of more than 60 plus sites described below.
Appendix: Methodology
We began with a detailed analysis of the domain of activilml in general-the multiple and intersecting concerns that social activists identify and about which we use the Web as a medium for information exchange. This was essentially done through a study of popular and important Web sites for social activists and by tapping our personal understandings of what South Asian social activists were concerned with. The objective of this step was to produce a broad set of categories that would potentially be used by activists in the construction of Web searches_ We identified a list of six broad categories under which much of progressive social action could be encompassed. These were: economy, labor, human rights, social caste/eth nicity, gender, and environment/ecology. Once these broad domains were identified we specified a set ofkeywords that would be relevant under each category. The identification of the keywords was, we realized, context specific. In other words, while the six categories identified above were reasonably general, the specific keywords we could use under each category were a mixture of context-spe cific keywords and general keywords. For instance, the category Labor could have a keyword, ''unions'' (general), and also a keyword "INTUC" (Indian
10
Bulleti" ofConceTnedAsiQII Schoum
GENERAL
This section includes Web sites and home pages that provide useful resources for activists, including training materials about the Internet and directories of international nongovernmental organizations. Also listed here are various mega-sites that pro vide links to a variety of resources for several countries in the region.
cation links for more than 40,000 NOOs, activists, educators,

policy makers, and community leaders in 133 countries.
<http://www.othen.coml>
"Others" is a forum of concerned thinkers, writers, and artists

who are seeking "other ways of knowing, being, doing, and
changing." An excellent site for unconventional points of view
on various social issues.
<http://www.idrc:.c:a/>
Academic Gateway Sites

<http://c:oombs.anu.edu.aulCoombsHome.html>
Australian National University, Coombs Server. This site pro

vides extensive links to electronic resources for almost all Asian
countries. Excellent starting point for those researching Asia.
Their links include some key Web sites maintained by NGOs.
The system is built around diverse technologies including ftp,
wais, e-mail and www. Well-designed and updated regularly.
<http://www.c:olumbiLedulc:ullibraries/indiv/area/sarail>
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC). This

Web site is hosted by IORC, a public corporation created by the
Canadian government to help communities in the developing
world fmd solutions to social, economic, and environmental
problems through research. IORC's Web pages provide news and
other information on development issues.
<http://www.iisd.c:allinkageS/index.html>
SARAI. Columbia University. Well-designed andresourced site

for information on South Asia SARAI's Web page on South
Asian languages and linguistics is particularly good. SARA! also
maintains a gopher site at <gopher:llgopher.cc.columbia.edu:
711111clioplUS/scholarlyISouthAsia>.
<http://www.Ub.berkeley.edulSSEAUSouthAsia/
diasporLhtml>
Linkages: A Multimedia Resource for Environment and Devel

opment Policy Makers. Well-designed site with information
about key UN-sponsored events on environmental and develop
ment issues. Updated regularly.
<http://www.halc:yon.c:omIFWDP/fwdptxt.html>
Fourth World Documentation Project. This Web site by the

Center for World Indigenous Studies offers a unique on-line
collection of documents about issues concerning indigenous
people.
<http://www.contac:t.orr/>
University of California at Berkeley. Another excellent resource

on South Asia. Contains a list of useful electronic resources and
is a good starting point for research about South Asia. Very well
designed and updated regularly.
<http://www.lib.virginiLedularea-studies/SouthAsia/
SOUthAsiLhtml>
The Contact Center Network Home Page (New Yorlc). Claims to

have a directory of 9,000 nonprofit organizations that maintain
Web sites. A mega-site for a variety of NOO-related resources.
News and Periodicals: South Asia

<http://wwwl.rlder.edul''''Webc:is/mathew/support/
newsp.htm>
University of VIrginia. A good gateway to South Asia resources,

though it does not seem to be updated regularly.
NGOs and Development Organizations

<http://www.oneworld.orglpanos/panos_internet
One-stop access site for most South Asian newspapers on the

Web.
<http://www.link.noIIPS/englserv/AP.html>
-presshtml>
Critical reports on the spread and use of electronic resources in
the South.
<http://www.idrc:.c:aIlibrary/forum/petrodLhtml>
Inter Press Service (IPS) news from Asia and the Pacific. One of
the best sources for analytical reports from the region. Non-sub
scribers can only read short summaries. Updated daily.
A forum on knowledgefmformation in the development process.

<http://c:aster.ssw.upenn.edul-restes/pruis.html>
Enemy Sites Apart from the usual suspects such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are listed in other sections, there are two other sites of fascist Hindutva organizations:
<http://www.bjp.orr/>
Resources for Social and Economic Development. A mega-re

source on development.
<http://www.apc:.orgllndeLhtml>
APC Home Page. The Association for Progressive Communica

tions (APC) is a global computer communications and informa
tion networlc dedicated to serving NOOs and citizen activists
who are working for social justice and environmental sustain
ability, among other issues. Composed of a consortium of 21
international member networks, APC provides vital communi-
Bharatiya Janata Party WWW Site-Kamal Darshan. The only political party from India that has begun using the World Wide Web to spread its message. Does not appear to be updated regularly.
<http://www.hindunet.orr/>
Home of multiple organizations involved with the Hindutva project in India, including the VIshwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) of
VoL 28, NOI. 3-4 (1996)

11
America, the Hindu Student Council (HSC), and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
international organizations one may want to contact for solidarity and support.
HUMAN RIGHTS/ETHNICITY/ECOLOGY
<http://sunsite.nus.sgJapcell>
Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law Homepage. This
database provides the full texts of and key information about
major global environmental treaties and instruments from the
Asia-Pacific region and environmental laws of member coun
tries and observer states associated with the Association of South
East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
<http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.caIPIRGs/CPHJB/>
Dam-Reservoir Impact and Information Archive. This three
year-old site provides information on dams, water diversions,
impoundments, and hydroelectric projects and their impact. Ap
pears to be updated regularly.
<http://www.igc.apc.orgJenvlaw/asia/asiaiaw.html>
Environmental Law in Asia. This site by Environmental Law
Alliance Worldwide provides useful background information
about environmental laws in Asia.
<http://www.webcom.com/-prakashlissues/
environment/toe.html>
India and the Environment. Interesting collection of articles from
variety of sources. Pages are not very well designed, making
them hard to navigate.
<http://www.irn.org/>
International Rivers Network. The IRN Web site is a global
resource for all people who share a concern for protecting and
restoring the world's rivers and ensuring respect for the rights of
riverine communities. The site provides activists throughout the
world with important, in-depth background and current informa
tion on river campaigns. Very well designed and regularly up
dated. One of the best sources on the Net.
<http://www.oneworld.orgJnews/front.html>
One World News Service. Human rights and development cov
erage from 90 organizations and 124 countries, updated every
day and cross-indexed by country and by topic. A number of
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from all around the
world have their home pages on this site; some of them refresh
their material on a regular basis. An excellent source for infor
mation produced by NGOs and other international development
agencies.
<http://www.law.qub.ac.uklhumanink.htm>
SLS Publications and Human Rights Database. Produced by the
Centre for International and Comparative Human Rights Law,
this site offers a compendium of emergency laws, especially in
India and Sri Lanka.
<http://ourworld.compuserve.comlhomepageslhrw/>
Human Rights for Workers. This is the only site we came across
that is focused on violations of the human rights of working
people. It also provides other useful resources like a list of
<http://www.derechos.org/saranlsaran.html> South Asia Human Rights. This site, which is maintained by the human rights organization Derechos ("rights" in Spanish), is comprehensive in its coverage. It provides a weekly summary of South Asia-related news.
GLOBALIZATION
International Institutions and Agencies

<http://is.eunet.chlgeneva-intllegi.htm>
Geneva International Forum.. This interactive forum. is an excel
lent source for directory-type information about international
organizations based in Geneva, Switzerland. These include UN
agencies and nongovernmental organizations. Includes lists of
Permanent Missions to the United Nations and of organizations
that have "special UN status."
<http://www.undp.orgJundp/>
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Lots of re
sources about UNDP's Sustainable Human Development pro
gram. Additional information is available on the UNDP Gopher
site: <gopher:/Igopher.undp.org:70/ll/undp>; though it is not
clear how frequently the information is updated.
<http://www.undcp.org/unlinks.html>
United Nations and other international organizations. Another
one-stop Web site for information about the United Nations and
international development organizations.
<http://www.wider.unu.edul>
UNUIWIDER Homepage. This Web site by the World Institute
for Development Economic Research (WIDER) of UN Univer
sity contains information about various research projects all
around the world. A good starting point for information on social
issues and the work of international agencies.
<http://www.ait.ac.thlAsia/wb-reps/wb-in.html>
World Bank Projects in India. Hosted by the Asian Institute of
Technology, this site lists all World Bank-funded projects in
India.
<http://www.wto96.org/>
World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference 1996, Singa
pore. Information about the WTO's ministerial conference in
1996. A search engine permits a full-text search of all the
speeches by conference delegates.
Multinational Corporations and Other Industrial Giants

<http://www.pitt.edul-malhotrallNDIA.htm>
India: A Business Researcher's Interests. Business and Informa
tion Technology in India. This Web site provides access to news,
magazines, business sites, technology sites, and other resources
12
in India. Quite comprehensive in its coverage. A good source for

information about businesses in India.
<http://www.corpwatch.org/>
Corporate Watch. This new Web site is dedicated to helping build
greater democratic control over transnational corporations at ~e
local, national, and international levels. Corporate Watch IS
designed to provide Internet users, activists, joumali~ts, an?
policy makers with an array of tools that can be used to InvestI
gate and analyze corporate activity.
<http://www.owlnet.rice.edul-ravilindia/>
The Indian Corporate Gateway. A source of information on a
number of Indian Companies. E-mail addresses are provided for
many of the companies.
<http://www.m-web.coml>
The Indian Economy Overview. Studies of Indian industry by
leading journalists and industry analysts. Well-known journalists
comment on India's current economic and political affairs. An
electronic magazine of sorts.
<http://www.essential.org/clearinghouse/
clearinghouse.html>
The Multinationals Resource Clearinghouse (MRC). The MRC
is designed to help Southern activists, journalists, academics, and
others by providing them with information on the history and
activities of multinational corporations, particularly environ
mental and safety problems associated with their products and
operations. One can search and read full-length articles repro
duced from MRC's magazine Multinational Monitor.
The ILO's International Occupational Safety and Health Infor mation Centre sponsors this Web page with information about its Asian-Pacific Regional Programme on Occupational Safety and Health (ASIA-OSH).
Solidarity and Global Links

<hUp:llwww.stile.lut.ac.ukI-gyedb/STILE/tOOOlOOl.html>
Ed Brown's Bibliography. Ed Brown's extended bibliography,
"Political Economy ofDevelopment," contains abstracts ofsome
interesting printed publications on this subject. Most of the
references are not available in electronic formats.
<http://www.nceo.org/>
ESOP Information and More: The Center for Employee Owner
ship. In order to save their jobs, workers in some countries in
South Asia have been trying to take over what are termed "loss
making" labandoned plants. This site contains some useful infor
mation on various employee ownership schemes (most in the
U.S. context). <http://www.icem.org/>
ICEM Online. This Web site of The International Federation of
Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worlcers' Unions (ICEM)
is well-designed and updated regularly. It provides useful infor
mation on workers' struggles all around the world on global labor
communications. If you are interested in global solidarity and
international labor campagns, this is one of the best starting
points.
<hUp:ilwww.igc.apc.org:8011abometl>
IGClLaborNetHome Page. Through computer communications,
news, information, and resources, LaborNet supports human
rights guarantees and economic justice for workers. Very well
designed and updated regularly. Though it leans heavily toward
coverage of labor movements in North America and Europe, it
remains an excellent starting point for on-line searching for
resources related to the global labor movement.
<hUp:/Iwww.popteLorg.uklifwea/>
International Federation of Workers' Education Associations
(IFWEA). This site provides excellent resources on workers'
education. Back issues of the IFWEA publication (1993-96) are
available at this site. IFWEA's special issue on "Religious Fa
naticism and the Labor Movement" is particularly interesting.
<hUp:/Iwww.popteLorg.uklcgi-binlbblweb/Geo2:ICFI'U
ONLINE>
This Web page provides online access to one of the on-line
conferences hosted by the ICFTU (International Confederation
ofFree Trade Unions). Can be a good source of current informa
tion on ICFTU activities. See also: <http://singnet.com.sg/-icftu
Iwelcome.html> for information on the Asian Regional Organi
sation of the ICFTU.
<http://www.unions.org/>
Union Resource Networlc. Though it doesn't have any informa
tion about workers or unions in South Asia, this URN site
contains useful information about unions in other parts of the
world.
LABOR
Child Labor and Codes of Conduct
<http://www.geocities.comlAthens/AcropoUs/5232/
newnike.htm>
Nike Updates. Excellent source for updates on the international
campaign against Nike's unfair labor practices around the world.
<http://www.oneworld.org/oxfaml>
Oxfam Home Page. Web pages on various Oxfam-supported
campaigns, especially around issues of global trade, corporate
codes of conduct in the clothing industry, and the production and
issue of landmines.
<http://www.uniteunion.org/sweatshops/sweatshp.html>
The Sweatshop Campaign. The Web site of the Union of Nee
dletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) provides
an excellent overview of various campaigns against sweatshop
labor, particularly in North America and Canada. Those inter
ested in making connections between labor campaigns in South
Asia and North America should begin here.
Health and Safety Issues

<http://turvLme.tut.fllcis/home.html>
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
13
WOMEN
<http://www.uaiberta.cal-mupallpacawom/>
The Web site is sponsored by PACAWOM, an international
group of individuals committed to the advancement of women
in Pakistan.
<http://www.umiacs.umd.edulusers/sawweb/sawnetl
index.html>
Produced by South Asian Women's NETwork (SAWNET), this
Web site is one of the best sources for on-line information about
women'~ issues in South Asia.
<http://www.exitl09.comi-faziaiCaravan.html>
The Women's Caravan (TWC) and CyberHarem, a "woman
Space" e-mail list, is a forum for "communication, friendship,
and fun" for women who are interested in women's issues in any
ofthe countries in a region that stretches from the Mediterranean,
through the Middle East, and on to Pakistan.
<http://www.webcom.coml-prakashlissueslwomen/
welcome.html>
Women in India. Collection of articles from India about the
situation of Indian women.
<http://www.popteLorg.uklwomen-ww/>
This Web site is the handiwork of Women Working Worldwide,
a UK-based organization that supports the struggles of women
workers through information exchange and international net
working.
the names of progressive South Asian organizations, film mak ers, and magazines. proXsa is in the process of construction and the contents change daily, but it has the potential to be a reliable and comprehensive site in the near future.
Contemporary South Asia

EDITORS Gowher Rizvi and Robert Cusen, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, UK
There is a growing realization that South Asia has to be both treated and studied as a region. Contemporary South Asia does just that. The purpose ofthe j oumal is to cultivate an awareness that South Asia is more than a sum of its parts: a fact of great importance not only to the states and peoples of the region, but to the world as a whole. It also addresses the major issues facing South Asia from a regional and interdisciplinary per spective.
SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA

<http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/-mmuraiilsabooks.html>
Books ofSouth Asian Writers. This Web page, which is produced
and maintained by Murali Damodaran at Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore, provides extensive lists of (1) books by
South Asian writers (women particularly) and (2) literature on
South Asia-related themes.
<http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/>
South Asia Citizens Web. This is an independent space on the
Net to promote dialog and information exchange related to South
Asian citizens' initiatives. Sections include citizens' dialogues
for peace in South Asia; secularism, democracy and civil society;
South Asian women's movement initiatives; and audiovisual
resources. A good Web site in the making. A "South Asia Labour
Movement Information Service" is under construction at this
site. One of the best places to locate information from social
activist points of view.
<http://home.dti.netlfoiVindex.htm>
Progressive South Asian Exchange Net (proXsa). This site cov
ers multiple themes-from politics and culture, to history and the economy. The site aims to serve the needs of South Asians wanting to link up with their progressive counterparts in other parts of the world. Provides a critical list of resources, including
Contemporary SouthAsia focuses on issues concerning the region that are not circum scribed by the national borders of the states. While national perspectives are not ignored, the j oumal 's overriding purpose is to encour age scholars within South Asia and in the global community to search for means (both theoretical and practical) by which our un derstanding ofthe present problems of coop eration and confrontation in the region can be enhanced.
SUBSCRIPTION RATES 1997 - Volume 6 (3 issues) Institutional: 172; No. America US$324 Personal: 46; North America US $96 ISSN 0958-4935 ORDER FORM
Please send your order, with the appropriate payment to
CARFAX
Carfu Publishing Company P.O. Box2S Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 3UE, UK

Visit the Carfax Home Page at http://www.carfax.co.uk
14
Bulletin ofConcernedAs/an Scholars
Korea-related Information, Resources,

and Activism in Cyberspace
by Sub Hyuk-Kyo
Until a few years ago, information and resources on Korea were hard to obtain. The mainstream media chose to cover news stories on Korea only in times of crisis. One had to search diligently amongst academic journals for in-depth analysis of current events in Korea. With the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, however, an information volcano has erupted, with a constant and seemingly unending flow ofnews about Korea that has been a boon for concerned citizens, scholars, and activists. More importantly, when something happens in Korea, news spreads fast over the Internet. Residents in Korea post "eyewit ness" reports as soon as critical events begin to unfold; on-line discussions emerge soon after. The English-language services of Korean media and international news clipping services also provide a wealth of electronic information daily. Usually all of this information is available electronically before mainstream media outside of Korea take notice. One can now spend hours---on a daily basis-digesting news stories about Korea, engaging in discussions with people allover the globe about issues specific to Korea, checking the Korea-related Web sites set up by numerous media, universities, organizations, and individuals, downloading or printing articles and academic papers, and communicating via electronic mail with Korea-related activists all around the world. In addition to its information and resources potential, the Internet also facilitates new opportunities for networking and activism. Because the Internet enables and fosters the formation of focused groups with shared interests and concerns-tran scending distances and barriers-new coordinated actions can be implemented easily and effectively. The recent South Korean general strike provides a good example. The news of the strike and background information on Korea's labor laws were disseminated and updated continually by the Korean Congress of Trade Unions (KCTU). International support was mobilized quickly through the KCTU's Web site and postings with various discussion groups and list services. Even without a centralized organizing effort, various organizations in different cities were able to organize and coordinate solidarity actions---demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns- based on shared information and action notices distributed via the Internet. While the InternetlWeb provides a wealth of information on Korea, it also has its drawbacks. An abundance of "newsy" po stings has not been matched with in-depth analyses and re search studies. Conservative commentaries abound because of the political orientation ofthe majority ofKorean media that host English -language services on the Internet. Polarized debates and acrimonious ''flames'' characterize many of the on-line discus sions about Korea between conservatives and progressives. It appears, at times, that the cold war is continuing to be fought on the Internet as ideological and policy positions are staked out and tenaciously defended. A disparity between users and non-users ofthe Internet has developed. Users have a tremendous advantage in information gathering capabilities and networking potential. Even among the users, however, only a small minority actively participate in discussion groups and utilize the Internet to promote political activism. Then there is the issue of governmental intervention. The South Korean government fosters a globalization policy that openly promotes the use of the cyberspace. Yet it tries to stifle political dialog among its own citizens whenever the on-line discussion relates to North Korea. (One Internet user in Korea was arrested for violating Korea's National Security Law-just for expressing some doubts about the official government expla nation of the North Korean submarine intrusion incident in 1996.)
Suh Hyuk-Kyo is editor of Korea Report. An Independent Journal of Analysis and Commentary on Korean Affairs, published by the Korea Information and Resource Center in Washington, D.C. The electronic version ofKorea Report canbe found at <http://www.kimsoft.comlkirc. htm>.
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
15
Despite its weaknesses, the Internet has helped disseminate information about Korea to a wider audience (from grade-school students to orphans adopted from Korea), facilitate the airing and discussion of alternative political viewpoints, enable struggling organizations to network and promote a new Net-based activism, bridge the gap between generations, and create a new Internet based "community" of concerned citizens, academics, public officials, and activists. Usen without a Web Connection Even those without access to the World Wide Web can still gather a tremendous amount of Korea-related information sim ply by using e-mail. One can "subscribe" to free "mailing lists" such as the Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network Daily Report (ohtainable through the Nautilus Institute at <napsnet @nautilus.org. NAPSNet contains summaries of news items from Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. It also
ASIA PACIFIC
CENTER
for Justice and Peace
provides in-depth analytical papers, policy briefmgs, and a "VIr tual Forum" on Korea-related security issues. E-mail users can also participate in Korea-specific "Discus sion Groups" (or "listservs") for dialog and information-sharing with other interested citizens and concerned Koreanists. There are "open" lists, which anyone may join, and "closed" lists, which are restricted to members. The MoogoonghwaList is an open list that includes Amer icans (some of whom are living in Korea), Koreans (including foreign students studying in the United States), and members of other nationalities. As is characteristic of open lists, this list provides diverse viewpoints and often-times polarized debates on Korea policy matters such as U.S. policies vis-a-vis Korea and the reunification issue. Send an automated subscription request ("subscribe moogoonghwa [your e-mail address]") to <listserv@ucsd.edu>. The Friends List is a members-only list, comprised mainly of progressive Korean-American scholars and activists, along with some non-Koreans. The listserv provides news and oppor tunities for dialog on Korean-American and Korea-focused is sues. One becomes a member by being "reccimmended" by an existing member. (If you have a difficult time finding an existing member to sponsor you, contact this author at <kirc@igc.org>.) For Web Surfen
The Asia Pacific Center brings together the resources of the Korea Coalition for Peace, Justice and Reunification, the Asia Resource Center, the Church Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, the Philippine Development Forum, and the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge. Write or call for a brochure: Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace, 110 Maryland Ave., NE (Box 70), Washington, DC 20002 USA.. Tel: (202) 546-5103.
If you have access to the Web, then you can tap into an abundance of information and resources on Korea. Since Web sites are inter-connected with "hyper-text links," one can spend endless hours "browsing" various sites. If you don't have much time, you can start your venture with sites that contain extensive links to other sites. See, for example: Harvard's Korean Studies <http://www.fas.harvard.edu/ -hoffman> provides extensive links to university libraries with Korea collections, news sources, and an e-mail list ofKoreanists. Jhan's KRNews <http://gort.ucsd.edu/jhanlkmews.html> lists major Korean daily newspapers and publications, including those that publish English-language versions, such as the Korea Herald. Kimsoft's Korea Web Weekly <http://www.kimsoft.coml korea.htm> has one of the largest collections of information on Korea-related topics, with links to many Korean activist organi zations and labor unions, and news oftheir campaigns (regarding food aid to North Korea, for instance). Gateway to Korea <http://korea.han.comlgateway.htmf> contains a comprehensive list of sites, resources, and companies in Korea. Numerous universities, media companies, activist organi zations, government offices, and even dedicated individuals have set up Web sites on Korea-related topics. With the click of a computer mouse, a vast array of information and resources becomes available conveniently. Web sites are constantly being created, updated, and sometimes "moved" to different "loca tions." Using Web search engines such as "Yahoo" is the best way to keep abreast of these changes and' to identify other Korea-related sites. The "bookmarks" feature ofyour Web brow ser will enable you to tailor a collection of Korea-related Web sites that match your personal and specific interests. For more information see the Web site of the Korea Information and Resource Center:<http://www.kimsoft.com/kirc.htm>.
16
Indonesia in Transition:
A Guide to Resources
by Gerry van Klinken

This essay is my attempt to guide readers through the thicket of print and ftIm resources from and about Indonesia in a way that provides a structure for making sense of the ever growing body of literature about Indonesia. The choice of litera turerecommended in this essay is inspired by my own fascination with the theme of transition from a traditional to a modern society. Just what we understand by "tradition" and "modernity" is, ofcourse, debated constantly, as is the way we evaluate these two conditions. What is not in doubt, however, is that a transition is in progress, that it is taking place rapidly, and that it is at times unrelentingly cruel to those who are experiencing the phenome non. "Concerned" scholarship, I believe, should be determined to achieve a measure of rational control over that transition through its mastery of all relevant literature. (Only book-length studies are included in this essay, and then usually only if they are recent in origin. I also confme this SUlVey to non-electronic sources, though it should be noted that-particularly in this area-there has been an explosion of Indonesia-related resources on the Internet. See my regular col umn in Inside Indonesia for electronic sources ofinformation on Indonesia. )
Current AfJain Two major Asian news weeklies provide reasonably thor ough general coverage of Indonesia: the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) and Asiaweek. The Review used to be the better
ofthe two, but the magazine has become more conservative since it was taken over by Dow Jones. It has also lost the slightly academic edge it once had. Yearbooks published by FEER are excellent reference resources. Putting modesty aside, I have to say that Inside Indonesia, the quarterly magazine I edit, is hard to beat for a general overview of Indonesian society, politics, economics, ecology, and culture. It includes many Indonesians among its authors. The best English-language newspaper published in Indone sia is the Jakarta Post-though one must always remember to read between the lines, as political censorship in Indonesia is a harsh and pervasive reality. John MacDougall (Maryland, USA) provides a marvelous range of English-language news on Indonesia-on the Internet and in paper formats. Among them, Indonesia News Service brings together dispatches from the Reuters news agency and many other wire services; Indonesia Reports provides in-depth reportage on Indonesian affairs. MacDougall's publications have been appearing for many years. If you can fmd a complete collection in a library you have a storehouse of information at your disposal. Contact MacDougall at 7538 Newbeny Lane, Lanham Seabrook, MD 20706 USA. E-mail: <apakabar@clark.net>.
Scholarly Journals
A glance through the major scholarly journals in the field of Indonesian studies demonstrates that the impossible task of encompassing all of Indonesia between two covers has been done, and been done well. Cornell University's Indonesia is one example; the less ambitious Indonesia Circle, produced by the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is another. Indonesian Quarterly, published by the Jakarta think-tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is useful at times, but at other times it is too polite to be effective. The Dutch journal Bijdragen, published by the Royal Institute ofLinguistics and Anthropology in Leiden, also has many English-language articles on Indone sian affairs.
Geuy van Klinken started his professional life as a geophysicist, and has taught science at universities in Malaysia (1979-82) and Indonesia (1984-91). In 1996 he was awarded a PhD at GriffIth University, Brisbane, Austmlia, for a dissertation on religion and politics in late colonial Indonesia. He has been a visiting researcher at the Auslralian National University, has lectured on Indonesian politics and history at universities in Brisbane. and is presently the editor ofInside Indonesia magazine. For additional information on any ofthe resources cited in this article contact the author at 163 Stanley Terrace, Taringa 4068, AusIralia. E-mail: <vklinken@thehub.com..au>.
VoL 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

17
Interdisciplinary resC@l"Ch on IndQ1lesia is published injour nals that are regional in ori~tation, oovering Southeast Asia, all of Asia, or even Asia and the Paoifio to~ether. These include Asian Survey (Berkeley), Mod&rn Asiall Studies (Cambridge, UK), Journal ofAsian Studies (from the Association of Asian Studies, USA), Journal ofSoutheast AsiQn Studies (Singapore), Pacific Affairs (University of British Columbia), Review ofIndo nesian and Malayan Affairs (Univ~ty of Sydney), Southeast Asian Journal ofSocial Science (Singapore), and, of course, the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Schoiws, Internet services like Current Contents and UnCover now mClke it easier than ever to identify and acquire articles that appe.Q.f in these journals.
Politic.
The best recent overviews oflndonesian politics are by two journalists: Adam Schwarz, A Nation in Waiting (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994, 370 pp.), and Michael Vatikiotis, Indonesian Politics under Suharlo (London and New York: Routledge, 1993,220 pp.). Schwarz and Vatikiotis were both FEER corre spondents, as was David Jenkins, who~ fascinating book, Su harlo andHis Generals (Ithaca: Corn~U University Press, 1984), though dated, gives a good pictur~ of life inside Suharto's military kitchen cabinet 15 years ago. I also recommend three readable accounts. by academics: (1) Hal Hill, ed., Indonesia's New Order (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994, 364 pp.) brings together a r~e of well~known observers, most of them at the Australian N~tiWlal University. (2) Doug Ramage, Politics in Indonesia (Rf.>,\\tledp,. 1995) is based on his interviews with important political figures and is particularly good on the role ofIslam. (3) Jeffrey Winters, Power in Motion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) foouses on capital as the driving force behind Indonesian politics.
scholarly chase with his now classic Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1986). An academic conference on this topic produced some lively debate and is still worth consulting: R. Tanter and K. Young, eds. The Politics ofMiddle Class Indonesia (Melbourne: Monash Univer sity, 1990, 187 pp.). Richard Robison later proposed the term "new rich" rather than "middle class," in order to delink the term from democratizing associations. He helped edit the first of a series of publications on the new rich in Asia: Richard Robison and David S. G. Goodman, eds., The New Rich in Asia: Mobile Phones. McDonalds and Middle Class Revolution (London: Routledge, 1996). Robison wrote the chapter on Indonesia. Related to this branch of scholarship is the literature on business in Indonesia. Andrew MacIntyre, Business andPolitics in Indonesia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990, 282 pp.) is well-regarded in this area.
Urban Poor
Less molly -coddled than the middle class are those who labor in Indonesia's mushrooming factories (while the owners all the while contemplate moving their operations to fmd even cheaper labor in Vietnam). David R Harris, ed., Prisoners of Progress (Leiden: INDOC, 1995, 80 pp.) offers a brief overview of the situation these workers face. A snapshot of labor condi tions in Indonesia in the early 1990s is found in David Bourchier, ed.,Indonesia ~ Emerging Proletariat (Melbourne: Monash Uni versity, 1994, 73 pp.). Several fme books examine the life of Indonesia's urban poor. Alison Murray's No Honey, No Money (New York and Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991, 159 pp.) looks at prostitutes in Jakarta. Lea Jellinek's The WheelofForlune: The History ofa Poor Community in Jakarta (Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1991,214 pp.) is also worth reading, as is Harmony and Hierarchy in a Javanese Kampung (Singa pore: Oxford University Press, 1986) by Patrick Guiness.
Economy and Economics

The first source to mention is a specialist periodical on the economy, the Bulletin ofIndonesian Economics Studies (BlES). though you may find that you need a degree in economics to appreciate the pUblication fully. BIES authors are prominent in two recent book-length surveys of the Indonesian economy: Anne Booth, ed., The Oil Boom and After (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1992), and Hal Hill, The Indonesian Economy Since 1966 (Cambridge University Press, 1996,328 pp.). Main stream economics, if you like. BIES authors and other gurus at the Australian National University organize annual "Indonesia Updates" conferences, and publiF;h the proceedings afterwards. The conference papers usually have a strong dose of economics, as well as political analyses by prominent Indonesians. The 1995 Update focused on Eastern Indonesia, a frequently neglected area of Indonesia ttlarked by stark poverty. You will fmd useful statistics on the economy and related matters in Statistical Yearbook ofIndonesia and Statistical Pock etbook of Indonesia. Both pUblications by Jakarta's Central Bureau of Statistics are updated regularly, but are always a little behind the times.
Health and Education

Considering that health indicators in Indonesia are among the poorest in the region, it is surprising that there is no easily accessible overview of Indonesia's health situation in English. I only know of the little booklet by Lorraine Comer and Yulfita Rahardjo, Indonesian Health Policy into the 21st Century (Can berra: Australian National University, 1993, 30 pp.). The same is true of education. There is no up-to-date overview of the subject that is accessible to the non-specialist reader. However, have a look at Saya Shiraishi, Young Heroes: Children. School and the Politics ofFamily in New Order Indo nesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
Women and Men

Discussion of gender issues in Indonesia is pursued by several vigorous women's groups. Kalyanatnitra (Jakarta) is probably the most prominent among them. Not much has ap peared on this subject in book-length studies in English, how ever. Nonna Sullivan, Masters and Managers (Sydney: (Asian Studies Association ofAustralia, 1994,223 pp.) considers work place relations in urban settings. Mies Grijns et al., eds., Different Women. Different Work (Brookfield, Vt.: Avebury, 1994,231 pp.), and Diane Lauren Wolf, Factory Daughters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, 323 pp.), both consider the impact of industrialization in Java on women.
Middle Class
The rise of a new middle class in Indonesia has fascinated scholars who seek evidence of transfonnations in Indonesia that mirror the developments towards capitalism and democracy they fmd in the West. Richard Robison became a leader in this new
18
Bulletin ofConcemedA8ian Scholars
Human Rights and Democracy

Three organizations regularly publish on human rights in Indonesia. Tapol: The Indonesia Human Rights Campaign began as a campaign to free hundreds ofthousands ofpolitical prisoners interned at the beginning of the Suharto era in 1965. The focus of its work-as reflected in Tapol Bulletin-now includes many other human rights-related issues. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Asia are the other two international human rights monitoring organizations that publish frequent reports on human rights in Indonesia. Prospects for a return to democracy in Indonesia have been the subject of several conferences. The published proceedings of such talk fests tend to be patchy, but this one has some great papers: AriefBudiman, ed., State and Civil Society in Indonesia (Melbourne: Monash University, 1990).
Military
Indonesia has had an authoritarian government dominated by the military for many years. Two books trace the history of this military rule. They are Ulf Sundhaussen, The Road to Power (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982), for the years leading up to 1965, and Harold Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), for the crucial transition in 1965. The two studies differ rather sharply in the way they evaluate military domination in Indonesia and in who they hold to blame for it. Two recent books, both written by Australian military officers who spent time in an Indonesian staff college, explore the workings of the Indonesian military today. Ian MacF arling, The Dual Function ofthe Indonesian Armed Forces (Canberra: Defence Studies Centre, 1996, 241 pp.) takes a look at the mindset of military officers and determines that they have no inclination to relinquish power. Bob Lowry, The Armed Forces ofIndonesia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996,282 pp.) takes a more structural approach; the book contains an interesting chap ter on the Indonesian military's involvement in business.
Regions
Indonesia is an enonnously diverse country, yet it is gov erned in a centralized way. This gives rise to tensions between center and periphery, and to fears of a breakup. An example of how not to treat Indonesia's regional diver sity is Christine Drake, National Integration in Indonesia (Hono lulu: University ofHawaii Press, 1989,376 pp.). Based on census data from the early 1980s, Drake's study links the variety of religious and linguistic cultures in Indonesia with the idea of a threat to the integrity of the state. This familiar line of reasoning ignores the more important fact that people will stay in an arrangement they may not like if it suits their pocketbook. Unfortunately, there is as yet no book-length examination of the relationship between regional economics and national integrity in Indonesia. The biggest threat to Indonesia's integrity as a unified state occurred at the time of the military revolts in the 1950s. A recent book by the founders of Indonesian studies in the United States, George and Audrey Kahin, shows how much one particular foreign power had to do with that threat: Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New York: New Press, 1995,318 pp.).
Considering the seriousness of disaffection in Aceh and Irian Jaya it is surprising that not more has been written on these regions. The only book on recent separatist disturbances in Aceh is Tim Kell, The Roots ofAcehnese Rebellion, 1989-1992 (Ith aca: Cornell Modem Indonesia Project, 1995, 93 pp.). In regard to Irian Jay a, I believe that nothing like Kell's book has appeared since Robin Osborne's Indonesia s Secret War: The Guerilla Struggle in Irian Jaya (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985, 213pp). (Irian Jaya is known in some activist circles as West Papua, presumably on the assumption that it should join with the ethni cally similar Papua New Guinea.) George Monbiot, Poisoned Arrows (London: Michael Joseph, 1989,249 pp.) is the work of an informed traveller in this region. As in Aceh, where a lucrative liquid natural gas proj ect has brought local poverty into bold relief, much attention in Irian Jaya has focused on the environmental and social impact of Freeport, the largest copper and gold mine in the world. Free port's president, George A. Mealey, recently produced a lavish and propagandistic book on the mine, entitled Grasberg (New Orleans, Freeport-McMoran, 1996, 384 pp.). This is not the last word on the subject ofcourse. A roundup of debate on Freeport's mining operations can be found in Freeport in Indonesia: Rec onciling Development and Indigenous Rights (Canberra: AC FOA, 1996,46 pp.). The outbreak of ethnic violence in West Kalimantan in early 1997 made me wonder if Kalimantan ought to be added to the list ofregions requiring scholarly attention from others beside anthropologists. The best book-length study-better on the Ma laysian part than the Indonesian-is The Peoples of Borneo (London: Blackwell, 1993) by anthropologist Victor King. The Borneo Research Council, based in Williamsburg, Virginia, has a substantial list of pUblications on this huge island. East Timor is a special case, because its annexation in December 1975 by Indonesian military forces remains unrecog nised by the United Nations. Resources on this topic are de scribed elsewhere in this issue of the Bulletin. One book not mentioned-a wonderful. example of the soul-searching the In donesian invasion of East Timor has triggered among more sensitive Indonesians-is Seno Gumira Ajidarma's collection of short stories, Eyewitness (potts Point, Australia: EET, 1995, 139 pp.).
The Press
Restrictions on freedom of the press have been a marked feature of Indonesian political life since 1966. The best overview of this subject is David Hill, The Press in New Order Indonesia (perth: Murdoch University, 1994, 185 pp.).
Environment
Rapid economic transformation in Indonesia is resulting in serious environmental degradation. True, there are regulations (see Carol Warren and Kylie Elston, Environmental Regulation in Indonesia [perth: Murdoch University, 1994, 73 pp.]), but regulations often mean little in the face of powerful. interests. Fortunately Indonesia has a vigorous association of environ mental groups that come together under the umbrella organisa tion Walhi. Probably the best regularly produced English-language material on the Indonesian environment is found in the quarterly newsletter Down to Earth, from Survival International in Lon-
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
19
don. In Jakarta, the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law produces Green News Indonesia. The only recent book I know of that looks at the environment in general is Joan Hardjono's collection ofreports from a 1989 conference on the environment, Indonesia: Resources, Ecology and Environment (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991, 184 pp.). Specifically on rainforests, there are Shannon Smith, The Politics ofIndonesian Rainforests (Melbourne: Monash Univer~ sity, 1992, 59 pp.) and lisa Sharp, Green Indonesia (Kuala Lumpur and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 184pp.). Sharp's book contains lovely photographs. Plans to develop nuclear energy in Indonesia have attracted the ire of environmentalists. See the modest publication by August Schlapfer, Reactors on the Ring ofFire (perth: Murdoch University, 1996).
Nongovernmental Organizations
In the absence of viable political parties, opposition senti ments in Indonesia are expressed through a huge variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The NGOs range from well-funded organizations rather close to the government, to radical youth movements. In between there are many groups doing good work in community development, legal aid, environ mental advocacy, and so forth. The best recent overview of this movement is Phillip J. Eldridge, Non-government Organizations and Democratic Participation in Indonesia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995, 260 pp.). Indonesian NGOs themselves recently produced a reflective statement in Rustam Ibrahim, ed., The Indonesian NGO Agenda (Jakarta: CESDA LP3ES, 1996,284 pp.).
The seminal period ofmodern Indonesian history continues to be the national revolution that came on the heels of the Japanese capitulation in August 1945. The three best books on that period are Anthony Reid, The Indonesian National Revolu tion (Hawthorn, Victoria. Australia: Longman, 1974); Benedict R. O'G. Anderson.Java in a Time ofRevolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972,494 pp.); and George McTurnan Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell Uni versityPress, 1952, 490 pp.). The three authors differ quite strongly in their interpretations. Indonesian colonial history might be a bit too remote for the general reader, but it is worth at least browsing through Robert Cribb, Historical Dictionary of Indonesia (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1992,661 pp.). Cribb has a hefty Historical Atlas ofIndonesia in the works. Another historical dictionary is better on personalities: Greg B. Clancy,A Dictionary ofIndone sian History Since 1900 (Sydney: Sunda, 1992, 236 pp.). A beautiful new coffee-table encyclopedia with historical coverage is Indonesian Heritage (Singapore: Archipelago Press, 1997). The first five volumes are on ancient history, human environ ment, early modem history, wildlife, and plants.
Culture and Language

Indonesia's ancient yet vibrant culture must not be ignored in a bibliographical essay such as this. An exquisitely illustrated, but also well-written, coffee-table production on the writing styles of Indonesia's yesteryear is Ann Kumar and John H. McGlynn, Illuminations (Jakarta: Lontar Foundation, and New York and Tokyo: Weatherllill, 1996,297 pp.). Seventeen authors contributed to this project. Modem Indonesian literature traces the transition from traditional to modern .urban society for twentieth-century intel lectuals. The standard guide to this literature is A. Teeuw, Mod ern Indonesian Literature (The Hague: KITLV, 1979. 2 vols.). The guide has been faulted for excluding early Chinese writing in the Indonesian language, but it remains unsurpassed in its scope. Some Indonesian literature has appeared in English trans lation. One recent example is Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaver birds (Jakarta: Lontar Foundation, 1991), which brings out some moral ambiguities of the revolution in the late 1940s. The best known and no doubt most inspiring example of recent translations of Indonesian literature is Pramudya Ananta Tur's quartet, written while the author was in internal exile on a prison island during the 197 Os. The flrst in the four -volume series is entitled This Earth ofMankind (New York: William Morrow, 1991,367 pp.). Like Mangunwijaya's novel, This Earth ofMan kind is set in a "sacred" period of Indonesian history, namely the beginnings of the nationalist movement around World War I. The visual at:ts have not received much scholarly attention. A good recent overview is Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit andMoun tain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1994, 270 pp.). Two very different books survey film production in Indo nesia: Indonesian Cinema (London: Zed, 1994), by Krishna Sen, is a rather bleak portrayal of the manipulation of symbols by power that so often marks Indonesia's cinema; Karl Heider's Indonesian Cinema (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1991, 160 pp.) shares the same title as Sen's book, but interprets the moral themes in Indonesian films as arising out of a uniquely Asian society.
History
Much of the vast historical literature on Indonesia is acces sible to generalists. Two student-level introductions are Robert Cribb and Colin Brown, Modern Indonesia: A History Since 1945 (London and New York: Longman, 1995, 192 pp.), and an earlier one by M. C. Ricklefs, A History ofModern Indonesia Since c.J300 (London: Macmillan, 1993, 2nd ed. 378 pp.). The great divide in the history of post-independence Indo nesia is the transition from the Sukamo to the Suharto presiden cies in 1965-66. Two studies among many about what might have happened at that time are the much-debated "Cornell Paper" by Benedict R. O'G. Anderson and Ruth T. McVey, A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971, 162 pp.), and Robert Cribb, ed., The Indonesian Killings of 1965-66 (Melbourne: Monash Uni versity, 1990). A standard text on the remarkably liberal early Sukarno era is Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962,618 pp.). A recent conference compared the politics of those liberal 1950s with the 1990s: David Bourchier and John Legge, eds., Democracy in Indonesia, 1950s and 1990s (Melbourne: Monash University, 1994, 324 pp.). Lots of good speakers took part in the conference. One accessible biography of Sukamo, among several, is JohnLegge,Sukarno (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1972,431 pp.). There is also an evocative pen-portrait of the man in Angus McIntyre, Indonesian Political Biography (Melbourne: Monash University, 1993).
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Bulletin ofConcernedASian Scholars
Some Indonesian films have been shown with English subtitles on Australian television in recent years. Probably the best known is Slamet Rahardjo Djarot, "My Sky, My Home" (Australian Film Institute, 1990), about a rich boy who has'to learn to appreciate a poor boy's l i f e . . . Of the several good films made by forelgners on Indonesla, my favorite-for its relentlessly romantic interpretation of all things Indonesian-is the Blair brother~' BBC series, ."R~~ .of Fire." The series, which was produced m the 1970s wlth mltlal support from the Beatles' Apple Films, is now difficult to find. The best attempt so far to deal with Indonesian histOIY and politic:> on film is tht: three-part series "Riding ~~ Tiger," ma~e by Curtis Levy and Christine Olsen for Australla s ABC teleVl sion in 1992. Notable among the various Indonesian language courses available today is a new grammar produced by James N. Sned don, Indonesian Reference Grammar (Sydney: Allen and Un win, 1996,387 pp.).
Resources on East Timor

Compiled by Greg Knehans East Timor Action Network/San Francisco Until recently information in the United States on East Timor and the Indonesian occupation was scarce and usually outdated; more English-language material has been available in Australia and Britain. The wide international distribution of the videotape of the Indonesian Army's massacre of more than 270 innocent Timorese civilians in the Santa Cruz Cemetery (12 November 1991) contributed greatly to increasing international awareness of East Timor's plight. More importantly, the public ity surrounding the massacre revitalized solidarity groups around the world. As the groups expanded, so did the literature on East Timor. It is noteworthy that, aside from a few scholarly works, almost all of the available literature on East Timor has been written by activists of one sort or another. In the last couple of years, there has been a veritable explosion of information on East Timor, to the point where those who lamented for so long about how little information was available now complain that they do not have the time to read it all. What follows is a selection of the most recent materials on East Timor, along with some important older sources. Sources of electronic information are included as well. Only some of these materials are published in the United States, though all are available from the East Timor Action NetworklUS (address below).
Bibllographies
A recent all-Indonesia bibliography for the non-specialist that has won praise is Gerald H. Krausse and Sylvia C. Engelen Krausse, Indonesia (Oxford: Clio Press, 1994, 408 pp.). Two other bibliographies are now available on CD-ROM. Michael van Langenberg and Suzan Piper, Bibliography ofIn donesian Politics and the Economy, and Northern Territory University, Intan Mas. The latter focuses on Eastern Indonesia. Both bibliographies have been brought together on Asia ROM. a CD-ROM produced in 1996 by Informit (Melbourne).
Books
Indonesia on the Net

Each issue of Imide 1ndone.ria: Bulletin ofthe Indone.ria Re.rourrel and Irrfomuztion Progrrzmme (IRIP) contains a one-page list of Indonesia-related resources on the World Wide Web. The list is compiled and annotated by In.ride IndoneIia editor Gerry van Klinkcn. Contact IRIP, P.O. Box 190, North cote 3070, Australia.
All of the following books are in print. A number of others, mostly published in the late 1970s and early 1980s, have long been unavailable. The 6-page bibliography published recently in East Timor s Unfinished Struggle (pinto and Jardine 1997) is a good complement to the list below. See also Matthew Jardine's review essay in Vol. 26, Nos. 1-2 (1994) of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, "Recent Books on Indonesia's Oc cupation of East Timor and the East Timorese Struggle for Self-Determination. " East Timor's Unfinished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resis tance. Constancio Pinto and Matthew Jardine. Boston: South End Press, 1997. xxv + 289 pp. Testimony by Constancio Pinto, one of the leaders of the East Timorese resistance and the current U.S. representative of the resistance movement. A detailed and moving account ofPinto ' s struggles in East Timor and his escape in 1992. Jardine provides a concise and com prehensive background. East Timor: Genocide in Paradise. Matthew Jardine. Tucson, Ariz.: Odonian Press, 1995. 95 pp. Jardine is the only U.S. citizen to have met With resistance forces iIi the mountains of East Timor. A very good and digestible introduction to the persecution that sparked the growth of the resistance. East Timor at the Crossroads: The Forging ofa Nation. Peter Carey and G. Carter Bentley, eds. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press and Social Science Research Council, 1995.259 pp. A collection of recent articles covering all aspects of East Timor. Contains an excellent bibliography. Generations ofResistance: East Timor. Photographs by Steve Cox, with a 45-page historical introduction by Peter Carey. New York: Cassell Academic, 1996. 120 pp. Large format. 60
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Communications (APC), including PeaceNet, GreenNet, and pages of extraordinary photos of East Timor, including 8 Pegasus. "Reg.easttimor" contains postings from a wide range full-color pages of the Santa Cruz massacre. International Law and the Question ofEast Timor. London: of sources, including the National Council of Maubere Resis Catholic Institute for International Relations and the Interna tance (CNRM), ETANIUS, TAPOL, and support groups around the world. Reports and translations from wire services and the tional Platform of Jurists for East Timor, 1995.352 pp. Analy Indonesian, Portuguese, Australian, British, U. S., and Irish press sis by legal experts on various aspects of international law and also regularly appear there, along with official documents and how they apply to East Timor. statements from the United Nations, national governments, and East Timor: Prospects for Peace. Report and Papers of an other sources. Postings average 6-10 per day, although the fre Ecumenical Consultation. Geneva: World Council of Chur ches, 1995. 142 pp. Collection of articles from a wide range of quency varies with the pace of East Timor-related events. The third on-line list, "Network News," is the electronic sources, focused mainly but not exclusively on religious is version of the 8-page newsletter produced by ETANIUS (now sues. Includes key background documents. entitled Estafeta). Many readers, however, still seem to prefer Complicity-Human Rights and Canadian Foreign Policy: The Case ofEast Timor. Sharon Scharfe. Montreal: Black Rose the paper version of the newsletter to the e-mailed one. East Timor-related information in English is available on Books. 1995. 250 pp. the World Wide Web at the University of Lisbon <http://ama In the Shadow ofMt. Ramelau: The Impact ofthe Occupation ofEast Timor. George Aditjondro. Leiden (The Netherlands): deus.inesc.ptl-jotalTimor/>. This site includes background and INDOC, 1994. 96 pp. Well-documented articles by a coura current information, as well as links to many other systems, geous Indonesian professor, who has since had to flee his including the Institute for Global Communications gopher site. There are many other well-maintained sites, including a country. good study course on East Timor, with cultural and historical Power and Impunity: Human Rights under the New Order. reference materials, located at <http://www.uc.ptlTimorlTimor London: Amnesty International, 1994. 126 pp. In-depth report on Indonesia and East Timor, published as part of AI's cam Net.html>, and a number of relevant U senet news groups. paign focusing on Indonesia. For complete information on Internet resources on East Timor, send a blank email message to <timor-info@igc.org>. Telling: East Timor Personal Testimonies, 1942-1992. Mich elle Tumer. New South Wales (Australia): New South Wales Other Resources University Press, 1992. 218 pp. Oral accounts by East Ti morese, recounting what they have lived through. Essential for East Timor Action NetworklU.S. (ETANIUS) distributes a understanding the human aspects of their struggle. wide range of other resource materials. Of particular importance Indonesia 's Forgotten War: The Hidden History ofEast Ti is East Timor Documents, which brings together material from mor. John Taylor. London: Zed Books, 1991. 230pp. The first "reg.easttimor" and other on-line sources. ETANIUS also dis full-length academic study of the war in East Timor. Very tributes videos, cassette tapes, tee-shirts, pamphlets, and other thorough and detailed. Its only drawback is that it came out materials. Contact ETANIUS for a full resource list: P.O. Box just before the Santa Cruz massacre. Essential reading for those 1182, White Plains, NY 10602 USA. Tel: 1-914-428-7299. Fax: 1-914-428-7383. E-mail: etan-us@igc.org. who want to know more than the basics. Funu: The Unfinished Saga ofEast Timor. Jose Ramos-Horta. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1987. 208 pp. Autobiog raphy of the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner. Useful for understanding the roles of the United Nations and of countries such as Australia. A new Portuguese-language edition has appeared, but has not been translated into English.
Electronic Resources on East Timor

The rapid growth of computer networking has kept pace with the renewed activity, information-sharing, and internation alism of the East Timor support movement. There are a number of good resources available now over the Internet, and more are being added all the time. The following list is current as of February 1997; for the latest information about electronic (and print) resources, send a blank e-mail message to <etan-us@igc. org>. There are three major on-line lists: "action alerts," "reg. easttimor," and "Network News." For access, contact John M. Miller <1bp@ igc.org> or Charles Scheiner <etan-us@igc.org>. East Timor Action NetworklU.S. (ETANIUS) maintains the electronic mailing list for "action alerts." These alerts cover efforts to lobby the U.S. government and report on severe viola tions of human rights in East Timor, among many other issues. Items are sent as needed, with postings averaging one per month. The "reg.easttimor" conference-or newsgroup-origi nates with member networks of the Association for Progressive
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Towards a Third World Critique of Tourism:

Resources for Global Action and Solidarity
by Paul S. Gonsalves
Equitable Tourism Options (Bangalore)
"Tourism takes place in the context ofgreat inequality, both of wealth and power. It is this inequality and the power of the European-determined discourse that affects the Other more than the tourist Self. As long as these encounters remain one-sided we are really not going to be able to see iftypologies andforms and types oftourism are going to have any meaningful qualities of transformation in individual biographical, ethnolOgical, and collective terms. We cannot share from the contemporary van tage point a nostalgiafor the traveler ofyore; we have to grapple with the tourism discourse as it exists today. It is in this way that we will be able to extract a space for the counter discourse that the hegemonic denies us today. " -Nina Rao
and articulate a livable space in a changing world of fragile borders, whose contours are still being mapped.
A Call to S06darlty
Third World tourism continues to expand apace. The tour ism industry's promotional materials are replete with images of a ''frontier'' industry, new vistas of "paradise," "virgin" beaches, and "untouched" landscapes. Indeed, the imagery is that of exploration, conquest, and domination. For the people of the Third World, whose natural, human, and cultural resources pro vide the raw material for this industry, this is no imagery, it is reality. The challenge of tourism to Third World people is not merely that of ecological degradation, economic exploitation or even cultural spoliation. While the expansion of Third World tourism pits the forces ofmodernity against those ofthe pre-mod ern, it is, in a much more fundamental way, a challenge to respond to a new political force. It is a challenge to locate, define,
Paul Gonsalves, founder-director ofEquations in Bangalore, has been active in the tourism debate for many years. He recently completed studies as aMacArthurNGO VIsiting Fe1low in the Depar1ment ofWar Studies at King's College, London. This article is an edited version of a critique that first appeared in Contours, the publication of Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (Bangkok), in November 1993 (Vol. 6, Nos. 3-4). For additional details on the sources cited in the article contact the author at <contourS@giasbgOl.vsnl.netin>.
The debate on tourism in the Third World, now nearly three decades old, was long dominated by voices from First World sending countries. However, during the past decade an indige nous Third World critique has been articulated, initially by and through the Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism and its global networks, and more recently, by NGOs, churches, tourism activists, environmentalists and women in destination areas, who have chosen to react directly to the issue, as well as indirectly through the communications media. Acting on behalf of the "host" community, Third World tourism activists (particularly those in Asia) have sought solidar ity with concerned people in sending nations. They have success fully conducted campaigns against five-star tourism (especially hotels and resorts set up by multinational corporations) with active collaboration of network partners in the West. The action of the Goa-based Jagrut Goenkaranchi Fauz (JGF) against the Kempinski hotel conglomerate;, in tandem with German-speaking members of Tourismus mit Einsicht (TmE), is perhaps the best known example of international solidarity on Third World tourism. Of late, the campaign to End Child Prosti tution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT) has sought to create its own model of global collaboration on one very specific tourism-re lated issue, child prostitution. Although the primary focus oftourism activists in the Third World is on building up local awareness and resistance, world wide solidarity is an important aspect of the struggle against an industry that has a web of international links. For Third World tourism activists. the solidarity they seek is in terms ofa response to their local struggles. No less, no more.
Tourism and the New Development Debate
The ideological roots of Third World tourism activism lie in the post-World War II decolonization process and the resulting
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debates on socio-economic strategies to be followed in the "developing world." Central to the development debate were issues of class and state fonnation in these countries, as well as the nature and extent of capitalist development that had already taken place. In the tenns ofthis discourse, the tourism industry was once characterized by Frantz Fanon as a "European hedonocracy," where "the national middle class [in the host country] will have nothing better to do than to take on the role of manager for western enterprise and ... will in practice set up its country as the brothel of Europe." 1 Three decades later, another war has ended, and the debate on nation-states and national identity has started afresh. While most visible in the fonner Eastern bloc (and countries such as unified Gennany), its current is sweeping through much of the Third World as well. No longer underscored by the economic and militaI)' might of !.he erstwhile Soviet Union, socialist countries such as Viet nam and Cuba are forced to embrace the gospel of global capitalism, in a desperate bid for survival. Even India and Brazil, with more resilient economies, have begun to restructure along lines suggested by multinational capital and its lending agencies, the World Bank and the International MonetaI)' Fund (IMF). Inevitably, the Third World development critique has come under pressure. It is being asked to reexamine its fundamental premise that the world is an unequal one, and to accept that, since development strategies followed so far have "failed," a renewed attempt should be made to "uplift" the impoverished masses, with fresh doses of bilateral aid and private capital. A decade into the struggle, tourism activists are being told that tourism is here to stay, and therefore, action towards a new fonn of tourism-humane, acceptable, eco-friendly-could win them new friends and influence more people They are being asked to participate in tourism decision-making, in spite of the fact that they have already made a decision against tourism.
Radicalism or Alternative Action?

In order to establish the kind of alternative tourism we would want to establish we would need a high degree of inde pendence from existing structures. Tourism activist Peter Holden notes that "this probably means we would need to own and operate our own airline, control vast amounts of capital, and operate a giant bureaucracy. Perhaps it's just as well that this is beyond our immediate grasp," Holden says, "and we are free of some of its pitfalls." 2 The idea (or hope, for some) that tourism activists would participate in shaping tourism policy has been around for quite a while. As long ago as 1977, Harry Matthew was saying, "Whether or not future tourism policies ... reflect constructively the radical critique will depend immensely upon the ability of !.he radical critics to put their point across to political leaders. How much political clout do critics of tourism have? In devel oping countries where tourism has not yet become a pervading
1. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched ofthe Earth. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1963. 2. Peter Holden, "Tourism, Problem and Possibility." Discussion Paper. Adelaide. August 1977. 3. Harry G. Matthews, "Radical and Third World Tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, OctoberlNovember 1977.
sector of the economy, there may yet be time for radicals (who will no longer be radicals) to help shape tourism policy." 3 For the Third World activist, involvement in "alternative tourism" meant something quite different, however. Chayant Pholpoke, an early practitioner, described his work thus in 1984: "Alternative tourism, as I perceive it, can playa supportive role in building solidarity among people allover the world who want to build a more just society." 4 At about the same time, Gennan churches, who were sup portive of tourism concerns, evolved a set of "criteria for the promotion of study tours into countries of the Third World and for their reverse programs (return visits)." The aims clearly stated such study tours "must be in line with the ecumenical principles of development which means that they have to be part of proc esses that strengthen liberating and just structures." 5 The message that Pholpoke and others were trying to con vey was one that was picked up quickly, too quickly perhaps. While they saw their efforts as having an essential political basis, their "followers" saw a market for a new tourism. Literature aimed at the "concerned" tourist flooded Europe, the German-language Sympathie magazines setting a trend of sorts. Ludmilla Toting and Kunda Dixit's Bikas-Binas: Develop ment-Destruction, a collection of material on environmental issues in Nepal and the Himalaya, is a "handbook" that was published in 1986 for the new breed of "eco-tourists." (See resource guide below.) Commercial pUblications such as the Rough Guides and Lonely Planet handbooks reach out to the individual traveler rather than the mass (charter/package) tourism market. Alterna tive tourism, in the wake of the Vietnam War, became a collage of red and green, reflecting the pro-left and (early) ecological agendas of the peace movement. Uncomfortable with this rendition of alternative tourism, Chayant Pholpoke, wrote in 1985: "Our friends in the West still do not get the message we are trying to get across. And it seems that the word 'alternative' has confused them more than enlight ening them on the negative aspect of mass conventional tourism. Indeed, the word 'alternative' has many alternative meanings. We may not have that many alternatives left but to build up more awareness." 6 Peter Holden joined the debate in 1988, writing: "I hope that the 'red herring' of alternative tourism can be seen for what it is ... .I do not believe that alternative tourism is the agenda of the Third World, but rather the agenda ofsome elite people in the 'First World' who want to travel in an alternative way .... Our business is to change the shape of tourism. " 7 The view that modern tourism is an extension of colonial ism (with all the attributes of a "master-servant' relationship) is widely held by Third World critics of tourism. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the critique opposes any fonn of its expansion, and refuses to be drawn into a discussion of so-called
4. ChayantPholpoke, "Developing an Alternative Tour Concept," Thai Development Newsletter, 1984. 5. Georg F. PtlifDin, Tourismus und Entwicklung. ZEB, 1985. 6. Chayant Pholpoke,AnAltemative Approach toAltemative Tourism: Theological Reflections on Tourism. Paper delivered at an Asian worlc shop. Khon Khaen, Thailand, December 1985. 7. Peter Holden, The Story ofthe Coalition in Tourism: An Ecumenical Concern, Bangkok EClWT, July 1988.
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Bulletin o[Co1lCernedAsian Scholars
"alternative," "responsible," or "acceptable" tourism. To a Third World critic, such proposals would resemble those on "accept able" colonialism or "acceptable" nuclear power. The following exchange between a Third World radical and a Western industIy specialist illustrates the width of the divide that separates the two sides in debates about native participation in tourism promotion. First, from activist Haunani Kay -Trask: "I don't agree with the fact that we have to accept tourism. I don't want tour ists ... .I'm tired of people saying, 'Well, you know, you need tow-ism. We don't need tow-ism. We lived for 2,000 years without tourism. There is no such thing as an innocent tourist. Everyone is culpable, and the violence that has been done against us and my people, against my culture and my sacred land, will be returned in kind." 8 In response to Haunani Kay-Trask's statement at the 1985 Bad Boll meeting on Third World People and Tourism, industry specialist Leo Theuns writes: "The church multinational (World Council of Churches) moves in strange company opposing mul tinationals in the travel industry. Not only in the sense that 'anti-imperialist forces' were brought together at the Bad Boll meeting under church aegis but, more than that, a revolutionary was given an opportunity to bring her message about the inevi table violence that she hopes will soon occur on the island of Hawaii." 9 Whether or not tourism is here to stay, many of its critics in the Third World will continue to oppose it, on the grounds that the tourism industry is a means of the continued expansion of Western domination in socio-cultural, economic and political terms. That tourism has the support of many Third World gov ernments and national leaders does little to allay the doubts of critics. As Satinath Sarangi says: "To demand 'people's participa tion' in planning such schemes is particularly illogical. It implies that a development process which goes fundamentally against the interests of the people can become acceptable if people participate in it." 10
Wanted: A Third World Political Economy of Tourism
government, feminist, nostalgic conservationist, radical ecolo gist, Marxist, religious, atheist, and just plain moralist. The response of concerned people elsewhere has been largely to the issues raised (the text), with little attention paid to the varied ideological underpinnings (sub-text). As a result, we have failed in the effort to articulate and incorporate a compre hensive Third World critique of tourism. What dominates is a critique of tourism developed and articulated from a Northern, sending-country perspective. A similar fragmentation exists in academic discussions on tourism and for much the same reasons. To quote Nina Rao: "Is there a forum for Third World narratives in international tourism discourse? Can Indian narratives like exploitation of gender, class, caste, poverty, [or] terrorism ever enter the tourism dis course? Can one really describe the encounter between the tourist Self and the Other in the so-called voluntary relation of guest and host? Such a relation is again dictated by the tourism discourse which seeks to sweep away the basic commercial nature of the encounter. What causes concern in the Third World narrative (the subversive narrative) is the effect on the Other.,,11 Conflicting perspectives and expectations within the inter national networks concerned with Third World tourism have inevitably led to doubts, on the part of several Third World activists, regarding the reliability and motivation of their West ern partners, on whom they depend for solidarity action. First raised by the JGF at the 1991 global meeting of tourism activists at Cyprus,12 these doubts have been more comprehensively ex pressed in Anita Pleumarom's paper "Understanding the Crisis in the Third World Tourism Debate." 13 Third World activists have a point. A sea-change is needed in the kind of solidarity that we have today, one that is shaped by contemporary realities. But we must realize, at the same time, that part of the responsibility for shaping the critique of tourism lies within the Third World itself. Too often we have depicted a romantic past that has been deflled by tourism and other evils of "modernity." Rarely do we acknowledge that our own histories are tainted, and not just by former colonial powers. As Sophie Dick writes:
This longing for what [E.] San Juan [Jr.] calls an "antediluvian paradisical origin before the Fall," which neatly tucks sexual politics into nationalism, makes it possible to replay every invasion of the Philippines in the mpe of every Filipino child... minimizing conti nuities, ignoring moments ofcultural change, and missing questions about family structure and sexual politics that have been monopo lized by the right. As Michael Tan says, "a fascist solution is to repress sexual attitudes without solving the problem of poverty which nurtures sex tourism.. What the fascists want is to drive the women back to the kitchen and the bedrOOIn, and not to display themselves 'indecently' in bars. So long as some nationalists also subscribe to a beliefinmytbical 'good old days' when women didn't have to be exploited in bars and brothels, and never mind ifthey got beatenup athome, pushed into the ftmera1 pyre, we (the nationalists) may well become willing accomplices to the fascists." 14
Many-if not all-ofthe underlying factors that motivated Third World people in the frrst place to act on tourism (and a variety of other related issues) continue to exist and grow, and the development gap is widening. It is imperative to take stock, not just of the issues of tourism, but also of the perspectives Third World people have, particularly on the political and economic agendas of tourism. This is not to say that a clear Third World political economy oftourism exists. In the past decade, we have listened to a variety of Third World voices and arguments against tourism. These have ranged across a wide spectrum of philosophical and ideo logical lines: anarchist, nationalist, conservative, liberal, pro
8. HaunaniKay-Trask, Tourism and the Condition o/the Native People. "Third WorldPeople and Tourism" consultation, BadBoll, March 1986.
Bangkok: ECTWT, 1986. 9. H. Leo Theuns, "Review: Third World People and Tourism," Tourism, Recreation, Research 12, no. 2 (1987). 10. Satinath Sarangi, ''Beware ofDevelopers Bringing Gifts," PS (July 1993).
11. Nina Rao, Tourist as a Pilgrim: A Critique o/Post Modemism and the Search/or the Other. New Delhi: Delhi University, November 1991.
12. Sergio Carvalho, "A Statement ofConcem and Solidarity." Global Meeting ofTourism Activists, Limassol, Cyprus, 1993. 13. Anita Pleumarom, "Understanding the Crisis in the Third World Tourism Debate." Unpublished paper, January 1993.
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
25
Western Solidarity Recessions and economic slowdowns in the North have prompted many industries to relocate their manufacturing facili ties in Southern nations in a search for cheap labor. Other "favorable" conditions offered by host countries in the South include less stringent quality standards, legal loopholes that permit companies to operate in ways that would not be possible in their own countries, a lack of environmental safeguards, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians, and so on. Northern economic agendas have also dominated discus SIons about mtellectual property rights, GATT, and international aid issues. These discussions ensure that multinational invest ments are not merely protected, but are guaranteed artificial profitability, all in the name of "fair" trade and the "free move ment of capital." Third World tourism figures prominently in these debates. It is not by chance that a recent annual theme of the World Tourism Organization promoted the "freemovement oftourists." The plain fact is that tourism in the Third World is far cheaper than a holiday at home. Everybody profits from it: the industry, the tourists, and the economies of the countries they come from. There is laughter all the way to the bank. Solidarity on Third World tourism issues needs a clear recognition of this reality. The Third World is not a cesspool for the poverty of the West. International networks concerned with Third World tourism have failed to capitalize on opportunities to influence mainstream development debates atforums such as the Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992) and the World Human Rights Conference (Vienna; June 1993). We must take better advantage of the opportunities that will certainly arise in the future. The choices are clear: either we find new ways of under standing and communicating our concerns, and thereby politi cizing the debate in the widest international arenas or we will remain at our present levels of functioning and interaction. Ifwe choose the first, we must also be willing to accept and work with the consequences of radical change.
GUIDE TO RESOURCES
Since the 1970s the number of tourists travelling to so called Third World countries is estimated to have tripled, from about 27 million in 1978 to more than 95 million in 1990. Critiques of the impact of this "Third World" tourism have also increased and have earned a place of respect in the literature on international development. The guide that follows introduces organizations and printed materials that are key to an understanding of what the lines of debate are regarding tourism in the Asia and Pacific regions and in other areas of the developing world. Organizations Appropriate Technology Tours, 1150 Janes Rd., Medford, OR 97501, USA. Tel: (503) 773-2435. Center for Responsible Tourism, P.O. Box 827, San Anselmo, CA 94979, USA. Tel: (415) 258-6594.
EcoSource, 814 W. Diamond Ave., Ste. 325, Gaithersburg, MD 20878, USA. E-mail: ecosource@podi.com. Web site: http:// www.podi.com/ecosource. Ecum~nical Coalition on Third World Tourism (ECTWT), Inter natIOnal Secretariat, clo Caribbean Conference of Churches P.O. Box 616, Bridgetown, Barbados. Asia office: Box 35 Senanikom P.O., Bangkok 10902, Thailand. Tel: (66) 2-939 7811.1. Fax: (?6).2-512 2124. E-mail: contours@ksc.net.th. End Child ProstitutIon, Pornography and Trafficking (ECPAT), P.O. Box 178, Klongchan, Bangkok 10240, Thailand. E-mail: ecpatbkk@ksc15.th.com. Formerly: End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism. Equitable Tourism Options (Equations), P.O. Box 847, Banga lore 560008, India. Tel: 080-529 2905. Fax: 080-528 2313. E-mail: equation@giasbg01.vsnl.net.in. ANLetter: Equations Quarterly on Third World Tourism, Critique and Response. Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAG'M), clo APPEN, 27 Lorong Maktab, 10250 Penang, Malaysia. (Quarterly GAG'M UP DATE). Global Exchange Reality Tours, 2017 Mission St., Rm. 303, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA. Tel: (415) 255-7296. Fax: (415) 255-7498. One World Family Travel Network, 81868 Lost Valley Lane, Dexter, OR 97431, USA. Tel: (503) 937-3351. Our Developing World, 13004 Paseo Presada, Saratoga, CA 950'ZO-4152, USA. Tel: (408) 379-4431. Rethinking Tourism Project, 1761 Willard St., NW, Washington, DC 20009, USA. Tel: (202) 797-1251. E-mail: DMcla75001 @ao1.com. Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), 19, Kelawai Rd., 10250 Penang, Malaysia. Tel: 04-376930. Fax: 04-375705. T.E.N. (Third World Tourism European Ecumenical Network), clo Tourism Watch (ZEBIFTT), Nikolaus Otto-Str. 13,70771 Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany. Tel: (0711) 7989 281 283. Fax: (0711) 7989 123. Tourism Concern, Stapleton House, 277-281 Holloway Rd., London N7 8HN, England. Tel: (0171) 7533330. Fax: (0171) 753 3330. E-mail: tourconcem@gn.apc.org. Traveler's Earth Repair Network (TERN), c/o Friends of the Trees, P.O. Box 1466, Chelan, WA 98816, USA. Transitions Abroad, P.O. Box 1300, Amherst, MA 01004, USA. Tel: 1-800-293-0373. Transitions Abroad: The Guide to Learn ing, Living, and Working Overseas and Educational Travel Resource Guide (annual). Books and Pamphlets
14..SophieDick, "Perspectives on Prostitution in the Philippines." Paper delivered at the GAPP Conference on Tourism, London, April 1988.
Alternative Tourism: An OperatiOns Manual for Thirrl World Groups. Paul S. Gonsalves. Bangalore: Equitable Tourism Options (Equations), 1987.50 pp. Are Sweet Dreams Made of This? Tourism in Bali and Eastern Indonesia. John McCarthy. Northcote (Australia): Indonesia Resource and Information Programme, 1994. 128 pp. Asian C.0nsultation on Tourism and AbOriginal Peoples: Com muruty Control, Cultural Dignity and Economic Value. Yvonne Lin Mei-jung, ed. Taidong: Huadong Community Develop ment Centre, no date. vii + 134 pp. Bikas-Binas: Development-Destruction (The Change in Life and Environment of the Himalaya). Ludmilla Tilting and Kunda Dixit, eds. Munich: Geobuch, 1986. 400 pp.
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"Breaking Out of the Tourist Trap," in Cultural Survival Quar terly 14, nos. I and 2 (1990). Cultural Survival (Cambridge, Mass.). Burma: The Alternative Guide. Sarah Sutcliffe and Yvette Ma hon. London: Burma Action Group UK, 1996. 48 pp. Burma Dossier: Tourism. Documentation for Action Groups in Asia, 96, 2nd District, Pak Tin Village, Mei Tin Rd., Shatin, NT, Hong Kong. January 1997. 32 pp. Children in Prostitution: Victims ofTourism inAsia. Ron 0 'Gra dy, ed. Bangkok: ECPAT, 1992. v + 64 pp. Ecotourism: The Potentials and Pitfalls. Elizabeth Boo. Balti more, Md.: World Wildlife Fund, 1990. Vol. I: 71 pp. Vol. 2: 165 pp. Ecotours and Nature Getaways: A Guide to Environmental Vacations around the World. Carole Berglie and Alice M. Geffen. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1993. vii + 324 pp. Empty Meeting Ground: The Tourist Papers. Dean MacCannell. London: Routledge, 1992. Environmental Issues ofTourism andRecreation. Zbigniew Mie czkowski. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1995. xiv + 552 pp. Fish Cuny and Rice: A Citizens' Report on the Goan Environ ment. Goa: ECOFORUM, 1993. The Golden Hordes, International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery. L. Turner and 1. Ash. London: Constable, 1975. The Great Escape: An Examination ofNorth-South Tourism. E. Philip English. Ottawa: North-South Institute, 1986. 90 pp. Handle With Care: A Guide to Responsible Travel in Developing Countries. Scott Graham. Chicago: Noble Press, 1991. ix + 167 pp. Indochina Spotlight: Tourism and Related Developments in Cam bodia, Laos and Vietnam. Bangkok: ECTWT, 1994. International Tourism: A Political and Social Analysis. Harry Matthew. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1975. International Tourism: Identity and Change. Marie-Franr.:oise Lanfant, John B. Allcock, and Edward M. Bruner, eds. Lon don, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995. x + 246 pp. Langkawi: From Mahsuri to Mahathir. Tourism for Whom? Bella D. M. Bird. Selangor, Malaysia: INSAN, 1989. Nature Tourism: Managing the Environment. Tensie Whelan, ed. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1991. xii + 223 pp. The Politics of Tourism in Asia. Linda K. Richter. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. x + 263 pp. The Rape of the Innocent. Ron O'Grady. Bangkok: ECPAT, 1994. 142 pp. Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel: The Paving ofParadise and What You Can Do to Stop It. Deborah McLaren. West Hart ford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 1997. 192 pp. Retracing the Track ofTourism: Studies on Travels, Tourists, and Development. Nicole Hasler et al., eds. SaarbrOcken: Verlag fUr Entwicklungspolitik Breitenbach, 1995. 364 pp. Suggested Guidelines for Assessment ofthe Impacts ofTourism on Women. Mary Fillmore. Bangalore: Equations, 1994. 23 pp. Tourism: A Gender Analysis. Vivian Kinnaird and Derek Hall, eds. Chicester and New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994. xiii + 218 pp.
Tourism: Manufacturing the Exotic. Pierre Rossel, ed. Copenha gen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Au gust 1988. 193 pp. Tourism: The State ofthe Art. A. V Seaton et al., eds. Chichester
and New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994. xxiii + 867 pp.
The Tourist: A New Theory ofthe Leisure Class. Dean MacCan
nell. New York: Schocken Books, 1989. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. John Urry. London: Sage, 1990. Tourism andDevelopment in the Third World John Lea. London: Routledge, 1988. Tourism and Indigenous People: A Resource Guide. Bangkok: ECTWT, 1995. Tourism andMinorities 'Heritage: Impacts and Prospects. Peter Bums, ed. London: Centre for Leisure and Tourism Studies, University of North London, 1995. Tourism and Politics: Policy, Power and Place. C. M. Hall. London: John Wiley and Sons, 1994. Tourism in the Less Developed Countries. David Harrison, ed. London: Belhaven, 1992. Tourism in Southeast Asia. M. Hitchcock, V T. King, M. 1. G. Pamwellm, eds. London: Routledge, 1993. Sex, MoneyandMorality: Prostitution and Tourism in Southeast Asia. Thanh-Dam Truong. London: Zed Books, 1990. xii + 227 pp. Structural Adjustment, World Trade and Third World Tourism: An Introduction to Issues. Bangkok: ECTWT, 1995.
Periodicals ANLetter: Equations Quarterly on Third World Tourism, Cri tique and Response. Equitable Tourism Options (address above). Newsletter. 26 cm. 16 pp. Articles, network news, news reports, poetry, list ofresources, book reviews. See also: Eq-News Feature, published by Equations. Distributed in the USA by the Center for Responsible Tourism (address above). Contours: Concernfor Tourism. Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (address above). 4 issueslyr. Magazine. 26.5 cm. 56 pp. $15 per year. ISSN 0857 491X. Editorial, poetry, action suggestions, comment and analysis, feature articles, illustrations, news reports, photographs. Earth Journal: Environmental News, Culture and Travel. Buzz worm, Inc., 2305 Canyon Blvd., Ste. 206, Boulder, CO 80302, USA. 6 issueslyr. Magazine. 28 cm. 88 pp. Ads, letters, news, feature articles, reviews. Often carries articles on ecotourism. Environmental News Digest. Sahabat Alam Malaysia, 19, Kela wai Rd., 10250 Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. 6 issues/yr. Maga zine. 29.5 cm. 60-70 pp. Reports, reproductions of news articles, feature articles, photographs, charts, graphs, maps, illustrations, cartoons. In Focus. Tourism Concern (address above). Newsletter. 4 is sueslyr. 29.5 cm. 18 pp. Single issue: 2. With membership of 12Iyr. Inquire for subscription fees. Feature articles, edi torial, list of resources, letters to the editor, reviews of books. Trans itions Abroad: The Guide to Learning, Living, and Working Overseas. Transitions Abroad (address above). 6 issueslyr. Magazine. 27 cm. 64 pp. SUbscriptions: $18Iyr. ISSN 0276 4717. Feature articles, departments, advertisements, colum nists, list of resources, photographs, book reviews.
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
27
Periodical Publications
from and about Asia and the Pacific
Compiled and edited by WorldViews Asia and Pacific

The periodicals selected to be included in this annotated guide consist, for the most part, of lesser known magazines and newsletters from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) based in or concerned with the Asia and Pacific regions. Deliberately excluded from the guide (for reasons of space only) are main stream newsmagazines and journals that are academic in orien tation or origin. Standard reference guides to periodical literature offer sufficient information about serial publications in these categories. The effort here is to introduce periodicals that may not be as well-known or as readily accessible to readers of the Bulletin o/Concerned Asian &holars as the more established journals, magazines, and other literature in the field. An effort has also been made to limit the scope of this list to periodicals that are focused solely or primarily on the Asia and Pacific regions. Magazines and newsletters that are more topi cally oriented may include Asia and the Pacific in their coverage, but we excluded such publications in the interest of keeping this guide to a manageable size. We made only two exceptions in this regard, namely, Third World Economics: Trends and AnalYSis and Third World Resurgence (see below). The fact that these two long-established magazines are published by one of the premier NGOs in Asia, the Third World Network (penang), singled them out for inclusion, despite the fact that their coverage is broader than Asia and the Pacific. (See Carol Mitchell's article above, "Sisterhood Is Local," for a comprehensive list of feminist publications in Southeast Asia.) The organizations that are responsible for the publications in this list run the gamut of institutional identities and topical interests. They include grassroots development organizations, international human rights groups, church-afflliated agencies, political solidarity organizations, and more. Inclusion of a par ticular periodical in this list implies no necessary endorsement of the publishing organization or its work. The aim is simply to provide access to the wide variety of information that is available from and about Asia and the Pacific. WorldViews Asia and Pacific welcomes suggestions for additional titles to include in future editions of this guide. Write: World Views Asia and Pacific, 464 19th St., Oakland, CA 94612 2297 USA.
ACCESS: THE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF BRAC.

BRAC, 66, Mohakhali, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh. 4 issueslyr. 28 em. 12 pp. Donation requested. This organizational newsletter, intended for "limited circu lation," briefs readers on the progress ofBRAC's activities in a variety of community-based initiatives, including adult literacy, nutrition, health and popUlation, environmental issues, and rural reconstruction. The "internal" nature of this publication is evi dent in the fact that nowhere in the issue examined (no. 19, July 1996) is the BRAC acronym explained, though a note from a visitor, which is reproduced in the July 1996 issue, describes BRAC as "the largest NGO (rated) in the world." BRAC stands for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee.
AMITYNEWSLETTER: QUARTERLYBULLETINOFTHE AMITY FOUNDATION. The Amity Foundation, 17 Da Jian

Yin Xiang, Nanjing, China 210029. Overseas coordination of fice: 4 Jordan Rd., Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issues/yr. 29.5 cm. 10 pp. Free. The Amity Foundation was created at the initiative of Chinese Christians for the purpose "of promoting health, educa tion, and welfare in the People's Republic of China." It is an independent Chinese voluntary organization "in which people from all walks oflife may participate." Amity Foundation organ izers explain that their work in China "represents a new form of Chinese Christian involvement in society, through which Chi nese Christians are joining hands with friends from around the world to serve the needs of China's modernization." Their quar terly newsletter keeps supporters in touch with the work of the
WorldViews Asia and Pacific, an affiliate of WorldViews (formerly Third World Resources), is a non-profit organization that specializes in identifying and publicizing print and audiovisual resource materials having to do with issues ofpeace, justice, and sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific. World Wide Web site: <ht1p:/Iwww.igc.org/ worldviews/wvasp.h1ml>. E-mail: <worldviews@igc.org>.
28
Bullstt" ofConcerned Astan Scholars
Amity Foundation, with project reports, news briefs (on socio economic topics), and commentary on developments in China. Amity Foundation social service projects include blindness pre vention, special education, sustainable development efforts in the countryside, and physical rehabilitation.
AMPO: JAPAN-ASIA QUARTERLY REVIEW. Pacific Asia
November 1996, and child labor in India, China, Pakistan, Bang ladesh, and Indonesia.
ARROWSFOR CHANGE: WOMEN'SAND GENDER PER SPECTIVES INHEALTH POUCIESAND PROGRAMMES.
Resource Center, P.O. Box 5250 Tokyo International, Tokyo, Japan. 4 issueslyr. 26 cm. 56 pp. Individual subscription: $281yr. Institutional subscription: $40Iyr. ISSN 0003-2026. This highly regarded quarterly review had its origins in late 1969 with the Japanese "Peace for Vietnam Committee" and concerns in Japan at that time about the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty that was signed in 1970. Early on the editors stated their aims for the review as an attempt "to overcome the fact that the Japanese left, one of the most articulate and active movements in the world, is covered by a blanket of silence in all languages but Japanese." Topics covered in typical issues include the lingering effects of the so-called "Minamata" disease (a result of the dumping oftoxic substances into MinamataBay), opposition by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the November 1995 meeting of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), and views of Japanese NGOs on international development.
ANLE1TER: EQUATIONS QUARTERLYONTHIRD WORLD TOURISM. Equitable Tourism Options,198, II Cross Church
Rd. (behind Old KEB Office), New Thippasandra, Bangalore 560075, India. 4 issues/yr. 28 cm. 16 pp. For private circulation only. Equitable Tourism Options (EQUATIONS) began publish ing this newsletter in 1985, the year of the organization's estab lishment. Designed "to place tourism in the larger context of development," ANLetter (formerly called Alternative Network Letter) reports on the negative impact oftourism on the environ ment, local cultures and economies, the promotion oftourism by some Asian governments "at the expense of democracy," and the relationship of tourism to the prostitution and drug industries. Publication of the "private circulation" newsletter has been er ratic in recent years, though in the October 1996 issue the editors pledged to resume regular publication on a quarterly basis.
Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women, Block F, 2nd floor, Anjung Felda, Jalan Maktab, Kuala Lumpur, Ma laysia. 3 issueslyr. 28 em. 12 pp. ISSN 1394-4444. This 12-page newsletter furthers ARROW's organizational aims of "[strengthening] initiatives to re-orient health, popula tion, and reproductive health policies and programmes with women's and gender perspectives" and "[improving] women NGOs' [nongovernmental organizations] capacity to influence health, population and family planning organisations at all lev els." Each issue of the attractively designed newsletter develops a theme such as violence against women, improving women's health, or the contributions of women NGOs. Feature articles, research reports, statistical data (presented in a "Factfue"), pol icy analyses, and profiles ofNGOs in the AsialPacific region all focus on one theme. The 2-page centerfold is always devoted to a survey ofhow various countries in the region have been responding to their obligations vis-A-vis the theme developed in the newsletter, e.g., what steps were taken by countries in the AsialPacific region to implement the "programme of action" set forth in the UN-spon sored International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Another regular feature in the newsletter is a 2-page spread with annotated listings of new materials received in the ARROW Documentation Centre.
ASIAAND WESTPACIFICNETWORKFOR URBANCON SERVATIONNEWSLETTER. AWPNUC Secretariat, c/o Pen
APe FOCUS. Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace, 110 Maryland Ave., NE, Box 70, Washington, DC 20002, USA. 4 issues/yr. 28 cm. 8 pp. $25 donation requested. The Asia Pacific Center is composed of U.S.-based non governmental organizations including churches and other relig ious bodies, advocacy groups, and coalitions related to and working on Asia Pacific concerns. APC was established in 1995 as a result of the merger of the operations of five organizations: the Asia Resource Center, the Church Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, the Korean Coalition for Peace, Justice and Reunification, the Philippine Development Forum, and the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge. APC organizers state that their work is motivated "by a commitment to reciprocal and empowering relationships with the peoples of the [Asia Pacific] region." APC's quarterly newsletter provides supporters with infor mation on APC-sponsored campaigns (including lobbying ef forts in Washington, D.C.), commentary on issues such as U.S. China relations, and background reports on topics such as resis tance by Asian nongovernmental organizations to the Asia Pa cific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum held in Manila in
ang Heritage Trust, 19 Kelawei Rd., Penang 10250, Malaysia. 4 issueslyr' 30 em. 12 pp. Inquire forrates. The Asia and West Pacific Network for Urban Conserva tion (AWPNUC) was formed at a seminar on "Urban Conserva tion and Public Participation" held in Penang in 1991, with support from the UN Centre for Regional Development. Housed now in the Penang Heritage Trust, AWPNUC issues this 12-page newsletter to describe regional efforts to counter the "destruction of the historic urban environment and the loss of local culture and identity."
ASIA MIGRANT BULLETIN. Asian Migrant Centre, 4 Jordan
Rd., Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issueslyr. 30 em. 12 pp. Subscrip tions: $30Iyr. $501year outside Asia. The Asian Migrant Centre publishes this quarterly newslet ter as a supplement to its semi-annualAsianMigrant Forum (see below).,The ASiaMigrant Bulletin contains crisply written news reports and commentary on a range ofissues related to migration in and from Asia. These include people-smuggling, the exploi tation of children in the sexual services industry in Thailand, crackdowns on illegal foreign workers in Taiwan, confrontations between "imported mainland workers" and local construction workers in Hong Kong, and protests by Nepalese migrant work ers at the Myongdong Cathedral in Seoul.
ASIANACTION. Asian Cultural Forum on Development, P.O.
Box 26, Bungthonglang Post Office, Bangkok 10242, Thailand. 4 issueslyr. 30 em. 32 pp. SUbscriptions: $15Iyr.
VoL 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

29
Asian Action is published by ACFOD, a nongovernmental organization that aims "to bring together persons and groups in all countries of the Asian and Pacific region into a movement which participates in integral development." The newsletter which published its 100th edition in spring I 996-contains short articles, campaign organizing reports, human rights action alerts, findings from investigative reports into critical social issues (e.g., child labor), and reprints of significant documents related to development and human rights (e.g., "The South Asian Dec laration on Food Security"). ASIAN LABOUR UPDATE. Asia Monitor Resource Center, 444-46 Nathan Rd., 81B, Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issues/yr. 29.5 cm. 28 pp. Subscriptions: $16Iyr. Asian Labour Update is the Asia Monitor Resource Cen
ter's response "to requests from unionists in several Asian coun tries" for "current and useful labor-related neWs" from around the region. The news and analyses carried in the attractively designed newsletter have their origins in AMRC field studies, the center's clipping files, and on information provided by re gional and international labor organizations and unions. The publication's regular coverage includes news articles, a regional roundup (country by country), feature articles (on topics such as unionization in Asia, AIDS and the workplace, and Hong Kong workers in the Sino-British debate), health and safety, a union or wmpany profile, and book reviews. Indexes by subject, by industry, and by country are produced for the four issues pub lished each year.
Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issues/yr. 30 cm. 24 pp. Biannual subscription rates: $20, in Asia, $40, outside Asia. This quarterly publication of the Committee for Asian Women, an independent regional organization for women work ers, aims to report on "the issues, news, struggles, and life experiences" of Asian women worl<:ers. The newsletter contains reprints of articles on women and labor from international peri odicals ,such as Labor Notes, SPEAK, Resource Materials on Women s Labor in Japan, VOices ofThai Women, and the Occu pational Health and Safety Bulletin. In addition the newsletter contains firsthand testimony from women in work situations throughout Asia, analyses contributed by researchers in the region, reports on organizing campaigns by CAW, and reviews and notices of books, documents, and other educational materi als. The lead article in a recent issue ofthe newsletter was entitled "Globalisation = Displacement, Commodification and Modern Day Slavery of Women."
ASIANWORKERS ORGANISING:ANEWSLETTERABOUT TRADE UNIONS AND WORKER ACTIONS IN ASIA. Aus

tralia Asia Worker Links, P.O. Box 264, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia. 10 issue/yr. 30 cm. 12 pp. Individual subscription: $30Iyr. Institutional subscription: $40Iyr. Asian Workers Organising carries news and commentary about Asia's vital trade union movement. Its coverage spans the region, from news of a protest strike in Victoria (Australia) to one by mineworl<:ers in Fiji, and from the repression ofworl<:ers in South Korea to changes in labor laws in Indonesia. Short articles in a typical issue (June 1996) dealt with union organizing efforts by Korean women workers, a strike at a Suzuki motorcy cle production plant in Thailand, child labor and "New Zealand solidarity," the shoe industry and labor conditions in China, a report of a "Nepal Workers' Forum" that brought together 72 delegates from 17 countries to analyze the impact of globaliza tion and structural adjustment policies on workers and workers' rights.
ASIANMIGRANT. Scalabrini Migration Center, p.o. Box 10541,

Broadway Centrum Post Office, Aurora Blvd., Quezon City 1113, Philippines. 4 issueslyr. 28 cm. 32 pp. ISSN 1013-8064. "Asia and refugee have become almost synonymous," the editors of this polished bimonthly observe. Asian Migrant aims to examine this phenomenon and to provide answers to questions such as these: What is it that makes people pull up stakes and journey to foreign lands? What happens to the families of mi grant workers? Does the export of labor from Asia really reduce unemployment at home? What are the hopes and expectations of the migrants? Articles in a typical issue of the magazine cover Asian migrant workers in the Middle East and in the United States, the situation of refugees throughout the Asia region, international migration and "traffic in women," and the labor force status in Australia of newly arrived immigrants from Asia.
ASIANMIGRANT FORUM. Asian Migrant Centre, 4, Jordan

Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong. 3 issueslyr. 28.5 cm. 30 pp. Inquire for rates. This semiannual publication aims to be "a forum to share migrant workers experiences," as well as a dependable source of documentation on Asian labor migration issues. The magazine contains first-person accounts by Asian migrant laborers in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and other Asian countries, along with in-depth analyses of issues such as the "globalization" of labor, migrant workers and trade unions, and trends in Asian labor migration. The November 1996 issue (no. 11) contained articles entitled "China's rapid industrialization and migration," "The costs of labor exports," "Mainland Chinese workers in Hong Kong," and "Labor importation schemes."
BURMA ALERT. Associates to Develop Democratic Burma, PO. Box 659, Shawville, Quebec JOX2YO, Canada. 12 issuelyr. 28 cm. 8 pp. Individual subscription: $25Iyr. Institutional sub scription: $100lyr. ISSN 1182-0454. This fact-filled newsletter is published monthly in order "to provide data for campaigns against the military dictatorship in Rangoon." The editors glean Burma-related information from news services and newspapers in Asia and publish summaries of the content (with full citations ofthe sources used). News sources include Asian Age, Agence France Presse, Bangkok Post, The Hindu, New Light ofMyanmar, the New York Times, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal. Reports and notices range from the murder of an aide of drug warlord Khun Sa to the renaming of Burma's Ministry of Agriculture, and from human rights viola tions by Burma's military rulers to calls for new Japanese loans for airport construction projects in Rangoon. BURMA DEBATE. Burma Project ofthe Open Society Institute,
P.O. Box 19126, Washington, DC 20036, USA. 6 issueslyr. 28 cm. 28 pp. Inquire for rates. This polished publication from the Open Society Institute is dedicated "to providing an ongoing forum for commentary and analysis of issues concerning Burma." The magazine's substan tial feature articles deal with subjects such as the country's efforts to lure foreign investment, the state ofBurma's economy, forced
ASIAN WOMEN WORKERS NEWSLETTER. Committee for

Asian Women (CAW), 57 Peking Rd., 4th floor, Rm. 403,
30
labor and freedom of association under Burma's military rule, and efforts by nongovernmental organizations to build an "alter native ASEAN' (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in the region. Regular columns cany Burma-related news briefs, testi monial writings by political activists and political prisoners, reports on U.S. actions relative to Burma, and short reviews of articles and books about the country.
BURMA ISSUES. Burma Rights Movement for Action, P.O. Box 1076, Silom Post Office, Bangkok 10504, Thailand. 12 issues/yr. 28.5 cm. 8 pp. Inquire for rates. This organizing newsletter, produced in Bangkok by an unspecified progressive-leaning publisher, contains authored re ports on topics such as tourism, World Bank structural adju~ ment programs, and foreign investment in Burma, along With summaries of Burma-related articles from other publications as diverse as the Bangkok Post, Synapses Messages (a faith-based solidarity newsletter that used to be published in Chicago), and campaign reports from the Global Anti-Golf Movement. CHINA RIGHTS FORUM: THE JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA. Human Rights in China, 485 Fifth Ave.,
3rdfloor, New York, NY 10017-6104, USA. 4 issues/yr. 28 cm. 52 pp. Individual subscription: $25Iyr. Institutional subscription: $30/yr. Editorial address: P.O. Box 71620, Kowloon Central P.O., Kowloon, Hong Kong. ISSN 1068-4166. This bilingual (Chinese and English) human rightsjoumal acknowledges support from-among others-the European Hu man Rights Foundation, the Open Society Fund, the Chinese Association of Human Rights, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, and Human Rights Watch. With administrative offices in New York City and editorial offices in Kowloon, China Rights Forum carries on an aggressive and highly critical campaign against alleged abuses of and threats to human rights in China and, more recently, in Hong Kong. Titles ofrepresentative articles include "Sojourning in the cracks and crevices: How peasant migrants live in Chinese cities," "Slow shifts from egalitarianism to the market: Public housing in urban China," and "Representation in dispute: Who will rule Hong Kong?"
pines Resource Centre, 84 Long Lane, London SEl 4AU, Eng land. 4 issues/yr. 29.5 em. 4 pp. A joint effort of the Philippines Resource Centre offices in Quezon City and in London, Common Ground seeks "to provide infonnation and contacts in support of genuine and sustainable development." The publication covers issues such as the World Bank- and World Wildlife Fund-sponsored Integrated Protected Areas Scheme conservation program, the response of leaders of indigenous peoples in the Philippines to the program, the new mining code passed by the Philippine Congress and its relation ship to foreign investment, and control of the main international crop germplasm collections (one of which is housed at the Philippine-based Intemational Rice Research Institute). Common Ground's calendar and announcements have to do with activities in England. Although the publication appears to serve this same audience primarily, the Philippines Resource Centre does sponsor projects that involve participation in both England and the Philippines.
CONNECT: TO THE FIGHTAGAINSTDISCRIMINATION AND RACISM. International Movement Against All Fonns of
Discrimination and Racism, 3-5-11 Roppongi, Minato-ku, To kyo 106, Japan. 6 issueslyr. 30 em. 6 pp. IMADR launched this new publication in April 1996, re placing IMADR Review for research and action, in order "(a) to better link regional bases and their activities; (b) to strengthen members' solidarity in their fight against discrimination and racism; (c) to better reflect members' concerns at the United Nations; and (d) to transmit concentrated infonnation for mem bers to use." The organization hopes, not only to foster produc tive networking among indigenous peoples, refugees, migrant workers and immigrants, ethnic, national, and linguisitic mi norities, and women, but also to bring the issues pertinent to the rights of these groups to the increased attention of regional governments and intemational bodies. The cover story in a recent issue of Connect examined trafficking in young girls and chil dren in Asia. The newsletter contains a wealth of news from around the world regarding the efforts and activities of members as well as a major' article highlighting the situation of one member group, for example, the American Indian Law Alliance from IMADR's U.S. section.
CHINA TALK. United Methodist Church China Program, 2 Man Wan Rd., C-17, Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issues/yr. 28 em. 24 pp. Subscriptions: $28Iyr. Produced since 1975 by the Hong Kong China Liaison Office ofthe United Methodist Church (World Division, General Board ofGlobal Ministries), this attractively designed newsletter offers unique insights into the development of the church and religion in China, as well as into secular issues such as China's weapons sales in the Middle East, the projected environmental impact of the proposed damming of China's Yangtze River, "population pressure" on land in China, China's "long battle against poverty," and orphanages in China. Church-related arti cles have explored China's "Jewish past," the "self-support" principles that some Chinese church leaders believe are "funda mental" to the orientation of Christianity in China, and reasons for the rapid "growth-spurt" of Protestant churches in Zhejiang (a province that has the highest percentage of Christians in China). COMMON GROUND: A NEWSLETTER ONPHIliPPINE ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT ACTION. Philip-
CPR UPDATE: A NEWSLETTER OF THE DHAMMAY IETRA CENTER. Coalition for Peace and Reconciliation, c/o
Dhammayietra Center, P.O. Box 144, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Occasional. 30 em. 6 pp. 100 Riels. News and commentary on peace and reconciliation efforts in Cambodia and its neighboring countries are at the heart ofthis modest organizational newsletter. The devastating and lasting effects of landmines, domestic violence against women, food for-guns campaigns, training in non-violence, and grassroots health care are just some ofthe issues that the CPR Update takes up.
CURRENTS. Canada-Asia Working Group, 77 Charles St.
w.,
Ste. 403, Toronto, Ontario M5S lK5, Canada. 3 issueslyr. 28 em. 24 pp. Inquire for rates. ISSN 0820-3296. This Canada-Asia Working Group (CAWG) publication is a stapled-together collection of human rights-related reports, documents, excerpts from speeches, conference statements, and activity updates from nongovernmental organizations in Asia.
VoL 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
31
The contents of Currents are addressed primarily to a Canadian faith-based audience, but their relevance is much broader. Cur rents is particularly useful for the country-focused human rights updates it provides. The third issue in volume 17 (December 1995/January 1996), for example, carried reports on human rights situations in Burma, East Timor, Indonesia, the Korean peninsula, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES: A MAGAZINE FOR SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. Development Al

ternatives, B-32 Tara Crescent, Qutab Institutional Area, New Delhi 110 016, India. 12 issuelyr. 28 cm. 16 pp. Individual SUbscription: $20Iyr. Institutional subscription: $80Iyr. $401year for organizations in the "independent sector" (e.g., nongovern mental organizations). Launched in 1990 this monthly newsletter carries reports on a broad range of development activities at the local, regional, and international levels. Topics covered include global climate change, municipal solid waste, vermiculture, the Indian admin istrative service, biodiversity conservation, the environment and development (in the context of the 1992 Earth Summit), proac tive approaches to shelter rights, energy use in India's construc tion sector, and clean-up efforts in the electroplating industry. The Development Alternatives group sponsors a monthly electronic mail service "for nongovernmental organizations and individuals working for sustainable development." For informa tion on DAINET contact inet@sdalt.ernet.in.
DA GA INFO. Documentation for Action Groups in Asia, 96 2nd

District, Pak Tin Village, Mei Tin Rd., Shatin, NT Hong Kong. 26 issues/yr. 30 cm. 6 pp. Documentation for ActIon Groups in Asia (DAGA) was begun in 1973 with the support of the Christian Conference of Asia-Urban Rural Mission (CCA-URM). The intention was to integrate documentation and research with news of local and regional organizing and activity in the Asian region. DAGA Info aims to inform action groups and documenta tion centers about information resources available in the libraries of CCA-URM, DAGA, and at other organizations in Asia. In addition, the newsletter carries analytical articles about events and trends in Asia, reflections on a topic of special interest (e.g., industrial accident victims), and news briefs from around the region, along with lists of recommended resources for study and action. Documentation for Action Groups in Asia also produces regular dossiers on topics such as the return of Hong Kong to China (in mid-l 997) and tourism in Burma. The dossiers consist of stapled-together reproductions of articles from newspapers and magazines in the region.
DEVELOPMENT UPDATE: ALTERNATIVES IN GRASS ROOTS DEVELOPMENT. S. Pandey, LTC, 1357 University
Ave., Madison, WI 53715, USA. 6 issueslyr. 28 cm. 8 pp. Donation requested. Set to begin its fourteenth year of publishing in 1997 this bimonthly newsletter is intended "to aid the rapid distribution and exc;hange of people-based alternative development proc esses in India and Third World countries." The contents of Development Update deal with "the social and political roles of individuals, and with the systematic analyses of the issues of technology, feminism, ecology, and modernization." The editors of the newsletter explain that they seek "to critique and recon ceptualize the existing knowledge by examining the manner in which development activities are planned and [carried out] by the government as well as by the nongovernmental agencies." Development Update, the editors state, "favors no established ideology, aligns with no political group, and has no government connection. It aims at promoting a network of dialogue and discussion across national boundaries and the range of disci plines." For all its good intentions, the newsletter has appeared only irregularly in recent years. Two 20-page issues were pro duced in 1996: Vol. 13, Nos. 1-3 (March) and Vol. 13, Nos. 4-6 (October).
DALIT INTERNATIONALNEWSLEITER. Dalit International, P.O. Box 932, Waterford, CT 06385, USA. 3 issueslyr. 28 cm. 12 pp. Subscriptions: $lOlyr. Launched in February 1996, this newsletter aims to bring the cause of India's "Dalits" (formerly called "untouchables") to an international audience. Published "at the request of Dalit friends in India" and with support from the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., the Dalit International News letter hopes to convince "overseas friends who have connections with India" to use their connections "to assist Dalits in India in their struggle for dignity, equality, and justice in the face of continued untouchability, discrimination, and oppression." In the lead article in the first issue ofthe newsletter (February 1996), Dr. Eleanor Zelliot ("probably the world's leading authority on Dalit history") introduces the newsletter's international reader ship to the history and importance of the Dalit movement. DAWN NEWS BULLETIN. All Burma Students' Democratic
Front, P.O. Box 1352, GPO, Bangkok 10501, Thailand. 4 is suestyr. 26 em. 34 pp. Inquire for rates. Funded by the Asian-American Free Labor Institute, this publication from the exiled All Burma Students' Democratic Front is a cry from the heart for international recognition of the fact that "every second, every minute, and every hour of each day we are being killed, tortured, and mistreated by the fascist military regime allover the entire country of Burma." The contents of Dawn News Bulletin range from calls for interna tional boycotts to summaries of news reports on foreign invest ments in Burma and from cultural reports on Burma's different ethnic groups to descriptions of human rights abuses by Burma's military rulers.
DOWN TO EARTH. International Campaign for Ecological

Justice in Indonesia, 59 Athenlay Rd., London SE15 3EN, Eng land. 12 issuelyr. 29.5 cm. 16 pp. Subscriptions: lOlyr. Down to Earth began in 1989 as a Survival International publication. Its subtitle until 1991 was "A Monitoring Service for Sustainable Development in Indonesia." At that time the subtitle was dropped and Down to Earth became the newsletter ofthe International Campaign for Ecological Justice in Indonesia and, later that year, a "project" of the Asia-Pacific Peoples' Environment Network in Penang, Malaysia. Through all of its permutations Down to Earth has main tained its no-nonsense presentation-in contrast to "slicker" publications on environmental issues-of news and analysis regarding environmental affairs in Indonesia. The newsletter is obviously designed to serve the information needs of those with a serious commitment to "sustainable development" in Indonesia and thoSe with a professional interest in environmental affairs in Third World countries. Representative issues covered include the
32
Bulkttn ofConcerned Asian Scholars
effects of tourism on Indonesia's indigenous peoples, famine in the highland villages of Western New Guinea, national logging policies, the transmigration or resettlement of native popula tions, and government crackdowns on local nongovernmental organizations.
The Taiwan Grassroots Workers' Centre was established in
July 1988 in order to "provide opportunities for factory women

and family sub-contractors to reform the male-dominated work ers' unions, and to develop women workers' unions and workers' movements through the promotion of feminism." The center's quarterly newsletter, Female Workers in Taiwan. provides news briefs on labor-related issues, workshop reports, short essays, and lists of recommended resources and contacts. Titles of representative pieces in the newsletter are "Economic Miracle at the Expense of Women Workers," "Health: Workers' Heavy Burden," and "Comfort Women: Taiwan Women's Groups State ment of Support. "
THE DRUG MONITOR. Health Action Information Network, 9 Cabanatuan Rd., Philam Homes, Quezon City, Philippines. 6 issueslyr. 28 cm. 10 pp. Inquire forrates. ISSN 0116-292. The Drug Monitor is published bimonthly by the Health Action Information Network (RAIN) ''to provide objective and independent information on phannaceuticals and the drug indus try." RAIN's targeted readers are nongovernmental organIZa tions "concerned about the use of phannaceutical drugs in the Philippines." Each issue of the newsletter carries a cover story on a particular topic (e. g., oral contraceptives, the "miracle drug" melatonin, and the questionable benefits of vitamins). The re mainder ofthe publication contains shorter reprinted articles and reports from periodicals such as the Medical Sciences Bulletin. New York Times. and the Manila Bulletin. EARTH TOUCH. Society for Environment and Human Devel
opment, 44/8 North Dhanmondi, 2nd floor, West Panthapath, Dhaka 1205, Bangladesh. 12 issuelyr. 29.5 cm. 36 pp. This new (as of May 1995) contribution to the on-going discussion of the relationship between environment and devel opment relates particularly to Bangladesh. Earth Touch intends to "provide information bases and ideas to policy makers, devel opment thinkers, activists and journalists." Its stated editorial policy is to seek out and report on those "events and issues involving the national orpublic interest [that] go unreported" and those "controversial activities [that] go unchallenged." Tme to this goal, the first issue of Earth Touch dealt with several important and sensitive topics: the corporate marketing of pesticides alongside the lack of governmental monitoring of pesticide use~ the interconnectedness ofshrimp fanning, the need for foreign exchange, and the political power structure~ defores tation and indigenous forest communities~ soil contamination in two districts due to the use ofU.S. -manufactured zinc oxysulfate fertilizer; and the role of the Asian Development Bank in reduc ing poverty in Bangladesh. The Society for Environment and Human Development. founded in 1993, is active in organizing, educating, and publish ing in the areas of environment, development, multilateral devel opment banking, and human rights.
GHADAR: A BIMONTHLY PUBLICATION OF THE FO RUMOFINDIANLEFTISTS. FOIL, c/o MirAli Raza, School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
01003, USA. 6 issueslyr. 28 cm. 16 pp. Donation requested. This new publication is described by its "collective" pub lishers/editors as "a joumal/newsletterlrag that is born out of a need for the left to have a print medium for organizing and discussion. We, the 'left,' are diasporic Indians (and South Asians) in the United States, and some in Europe, who have banded together under FOIL (Forum of Indian Leftists). FOIL's goals are to put forth into the mainstream the ideas of secularism, social justice, and equality." The successor to an earlier publica tion entitledSanskriti. this modest newsletter serves as amedium for members of FOIL (and other interested parties) to formulate their ideas and argue their positions in a supportive atmosphere. The inaugural issue of Ghadar (May 1997) examined the "gen der-capitalism nexus," with articles on "the linkages between patriarchal practices and the current conjuncture of global capi talism." The name of the newsletter "resonates with the historical, revolutionary, anti-imperialist Hindustan Ghadar Party (of the 1920s), that existed in India as well as [in North America]." Ghadar is not related to the present-day Hindustan Ghadar Party that is active in Canada.
GREEN KOREA REPORTS. Green Korea International, 385

108 Hapjeong-dong, Mapo-ku, Seoul, Korea. 2 issueslyr. 26 em. 32 pp. Inquire for rates. This successor publication to Baedal Update is published by a non-profit organization that describes itself as "one of Korea's leading nongovernmental environmental organizations, with ten local chapters throughout the country." Green Korea. its editors write, "seeks to restore the traditional hannony between the Korean people and the Korean peninsula's eco-systems. In accordance with our traditional philosophical system, Koreans believe 'that all life possesses a kind of life energy, kee, which should be respected and valued. We do not seek to change the natural environment radically, but to live simply and respectfully within it." The modest. but handsomely designed, magazine contains an editorial, reprinted articles and news reports from other pub lications, updates on the activities of Green Korea and its local chapters, and articles written by Green Korea staff members and associates.
EAST TIMOR ESTAFETA. East Timor Action NetworklU.S.,

P.O. Box 1182, White Plains, NY 10602, USA. 4 issueslyr. 28 em. 8 pp. SIO/year donation requested. ISSN 1088-8136. In March 1996 The East Timor Estafeta replaced Network News as the flagship publication of East Timor Action Net worklU.S. ("Estafeta" is a Portuguese word that means messen ger. East Timorese use this word to describe the people who carry messages for the resistance.) The newsletter carries reports on East Timor-related solidarity campaigns and support activities around the world, reprints of news reports from other publica tions, commentaries on the situation in East Timor, and lists of educational and organizing resources.
FEMALE WORKERS IN TAIWAN. Taiwan Grassroots Work

ers' Centre, 208 Chienkang Rd., 4th floor, Taipei 105, Taiwan. 4 issueslyr. 27.5 cm. 8 pp. Inquire for rates.
HEALTHALERT. Health Action Information Network, 9 Caba natuan Rd., Philam Homes, P.O. Box 1665, CPO, Quezon City 1104, Philippines. 26 issueslyr. 28 cm. 12 pp. Subscriptions: S36/yr. Inquire for other rates. ISSN 0116-1202.
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

33
First published in 1985 this Health Action Information Network periodical aims to provide "news on health-related issues, as well as on economic and political developments that shape the health care situation [in the Philippines]." The news letter contains reports on organizing and educational activities and announcements from health groups around the country. It also serves as "a forum for diverse views and options on health issues." Each issue contains one or more special feature articles on topics such as the environmental and health effects of mining activities by the Marinduque Mining Corporation (Marcopper), breastfeeding, pedophilia, midwifery, and relationships between the International Monetary Fund and health issues in the Philip pines. Regular columns in the newsletter carry news updates on public health, women and health, AIDS, activities in the govern ment's Department of Health, and international health-related conferences. Health Alert had to suspend production in 1996 for a financial reassessment, but the editors expressed their hope that publication would resume "by the first quarter of 1997."
HUMAN RIGHTS SOLIDARITY: THE NEWSLETTER OF THE ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION. Asian Hu
man Rights Commission, Kadak Bldg., 3rd floor, Flat E, 171 Sai Yee St., Mong Kok, Kowloon Hong Kong. 12 issuelyr. 29 cm. 44 pp. Subscriptions: $ 171yr. Inquire for other rates. The publisher of this monthly magazine is an independent nongovernmental organization that seeks "to promote greater awareness and realization of human rights in the Asian region," and "to mobilize Asian and international public opinion to obtain relief and redress for the victims of human rights violations." AHRC's human rights focus is broad, covering civil, political, cultural, "locial, and economic rights, as well as the right to development. Articles, news reports, and reprints in the well-de signed publication are arranged by countries first and then under selected (and changing) topical headlines such as "police re forms" and "refugee updates." In an effort to disseminate human rights-related informa tion in a more timely fashion AHRC also issues an 8-page supplement to their monthly magazine entitled Human Rights Solidarity News Flash.
IBON Facts and Figures is the vehicle through which IBON articulates its vision: "a Philippine industrialization, na tionalist in character, determined by the Filipino people, leading to economic sovereignty, and preceded by a restructuring of social relations within the country, a just distribution of wealth and income and an end to a system ofpatronage that limits access to economlc opportunities." From its first printing in 1978, IBON has succeeded m translating the sometimes arcanetermmology of economists mto facts and figures that working people ofthe Philippines can grasp and use for their benefit. Always apt III its use of graphics, charts, and statistical data, the magazine now combines a two-color, computer-designed format with pen and ink illustrations and sidebar materials to draw readers into such weighty topics as international debt, financial cartels, poverty, and the function of the Central Bank. Cover stories in recent issues of IBON Facts and Figures examined the multinational drug industry, women and poverty, the "repercussions of' growth' ," "techno babble" on information technology, the Multilateral Investment Agreement (an initiative being pushed by the European Union), and the "liberalization" of the retail trade industry in the Philippines. IBON is admirable not just for the economic insights it uniquely provides but also because it is a model of clear and persuasive writing about economic and political affairs.
INDOCHINA INTERCHANGE. U.S.-Indochina Reconcilia

tion Project ofthe Fund for Reconciliation and Development, 25 W. 45th St., Ste. 1201, New York, NY 10036, USA. 4 issues/yr. 28cm.18pp. F or up-to-date news of the swiftly and ever-changing rela tions between the United States and countries in the Indochina region, the Indochina Interchange is the place to look. Its pages carry reports on trade and aid negotiations and regulations, legislation affecting international NGOs, summaries of confer ences and forums, new political and diplomatic appointments, cultural exchanges, travel and study tours, the long-term effects ofthe war (landmines, for example), and information on relevant organizations together with their upcoming conferences and other resources (printed and audiovisual). These reports origi nate from sources in both the United States and the countries of Indochina-a true Interchange. Besides this unique and valuable periodical, the US-Indo china Reconciliation Project also publishes directories ofNGOs in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Lao People's Democratic Repub lic as well as the texts of speeches from and proceedings of conferences on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH/ASIA. Human Rights Watch, 485 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10017-6104, USA. 12 issue/yr. 28cm. 24 pp. Subscriptions: $40Iyr. Like the other regional reports in the Human Rights Watch series, Human Rights Watch/Asia contains the text, and support ing documentation, of an HRW fact-finding investigation of one country or human rights-related topic in Asia. Titles of HRW "short reports" issued in this series in 1996 include "China: Chinese Orphanages. A Follow-up," "India: Communal Violence and the Denial of Justice," "The Philip pines: Human Rights and Forest Management in the 1990s," "Indonesia: Election Monitoring and Human Rights," "Bangla desh: Political Violence on All Sides," and "Burma: The Ro hingya Muslims. Ending a Cycle of Exodus?" IBON FACTS AND FIGURES. IBON Philippines Databank
and Research Center, SCC Bldg., 3892 Magsaysay Blvd., 3rd floor, P.O. Box SM-447, Sta. Mesa, Manila, Philippines. 24 issueslyr. 27.5 cm. 10 pp. Subscriptions: $50Iyr.
INDOCHINA NEWSLETTER. Asia Resource Center, 2161 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, USA. 28 cm. 6 pp. Subscriptions: $14Iyr. Irregularly published. Issues of this newsletter are typically given to the explora tion of one topic such as AIDS prevention efforts in Vietnam, an account ofFred Branfman's visit to the infamous Plain of Jars in northern Laos in May 1993, Ben Kiernan's critical analysis of Khmer Rouge gains under the terms of the October 1991 Cam bodian Peace Agreement, reflections on the U.S. prisoner-of-war and missing-in-action issues (in the context of the war in Viet nam), and a field report on the conditions of minority women in northwestern Vietnam.
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Bulletin o/Concerned Asian Scholars
INSIDE INDONESIA. Indonesia Resources and Information Programme, P.O. Box 190, Northcote 3070, Australia. 4 is sueslyr. 30 cm. 32 pp. Individual subscription: $18/yr. Institu tional subscription: $30/yr. Inquire for postage rates outside Australia. This polished news-magazine is published quarterly by the Indonesia Resources and Information Programme, a nongovern mental organization that is made up of academic specialists on Indonesia and members of overseas aid agencies, development action groups, and trade unions. The stated aim of Inside indo nesia is "to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between peoples of Indonesia and Australia and to increase international awareness of issues facing the Indonesian people today." The subject headings used in the cumulative index of issues 32 to 48 (1992-1996) illustrate this highly regarded magazine's range of interests: social conditions and the economy (crime, health, land, tourism, etc.), environment (biodiversity, dams, mining, nuclear energy, etc.), politics and human rights (armed forces, political and human rights analysis, etc.), people's culture (music, theatre, etc.), regions of Indonesia and East Timor, and personality profiles. KOREA REPORT: INDEPENDENTANALYSISAND COM MENTARY OF KOREAN AFFAIRS. Korea Information and Resource Center, P.O. Box 34364, Washington, DC 20043-4364, USA. 4 issues/yr. 28 cm. 20 pp. Individual subscription: $16/yr. Institutional subscription: $20/yr. The Korea Information and Resource Center launched this newsletter in March 1987 with the aim ofproviding readers-es pecially in the United States-with "information about Korea, especially about people's movements" in Korea. Such informa tion, the editors contend, is most often either distorted or lacking altogether in the U.S. media. Another stated aim of Korea Report is "to bring to the American public's attention the reality of Korean-American relations from the viewpoint of the Korean people and to seek viable solutions satisfactory to both Koreans and Americans." The focus of the first issue--on Korean-American rela tions-contained articles on the history of the division of Korea into "south" and "north," a chronology of U.S. involvement in Korea (1882-1943), and an analysis of the anti-U.S. sentiments among Koreans. The winter 1996 issue (no. 22) contained an editorial, a "policy suggestion," and an analytical article, all on the topic of the reunification of Korea. LABOUR FILE: A MONTHLY JOURNAL ON lABOUR AND ECONOMIC AFFAIRS. Centre for Education and Com munication, F 20 Jungpuura Extension, New Delhi 110014, India. 12 issue/yr. 24 cm. 44 pp. Subscriptions: $1O/yr. The bulk of each issue of this slim, concisely directed periodical is given over to one topic of particular importance to the trade union struggle in India. The first issue (October 1995) covered the UNCTAD Report and the World Employment Re port for 1995. Subsequent issues have dealt with labor rights in multilateral trade agreements; a survey of struggles, incidents, debates, and government policies and litigation pertinent to labor; home-based workers; the "unique struggle of the fish workers"; the "killing minefields of Rajasthan"; images of South Asia; and India's mining industry. Labour File also covers labor news from Sri Lanka and from South Asian solidlllity groups.
L4WASJA HUMAN RIGHTS NEWSLEITER. LAWASIA Hu man Rights Committee, School of Law, Ateneo de Manila Uni versity, 130 H.V de la Costa S.J. St., Salcedo Village, Makati, Metro Manila 1227, Philippines. 4 issueslyr. 28 cm. 14 pp. Inquire for rates. Organized in 1966, LAWASIA is a professional, nongov ernmental association oflawyers (private and government), law teachers, and judges. TheLAWASL4 Human Rights Newsletter is a publication of one of LAWASIA's eighteen Standing Commit tees, the LAWASIA Human Rights Committee (formed in 1979). The slim newsletter contains short news reports on human rights-related activities in the Asia and Pacific regions (broadly defmed) and updates on LAWASIA's own human rights initia tives. The January-June 1996 issue, for example, contained reports on the first direct presidential election in Taiwan, the signing of the Nuclear Free Zone Treaty in Suva, Fiji (on March 25th), and initiatives for an "ASEAN human rights mechanism," along with the text of a LAWASIA statement issued on the occasion of the "Fourth Asia-Pacific Workshop on Regional Human Rights Arrangements" (Kathmandu, Feb. 26-28, 1996). MANAVI NEWSLETTER. Manavi, P.O. Box 2131, Union, NJ 07083-2131, USA. 3 issueslyr. 28 em. 12 pp. Donation requested. THis modest newsletter has been published for eight years (in 1996) by a "newsletter collective" made up of South Asian women in New Jersey. Its focus is on issues affecting South Asian immigrants living in the United States and its stated aim is "to assist women of South Asian (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal) descent in empowering themselves so that they can break away from the cycle of dependency and control." South Asian women in the United States, organizers of the Manavi collective point out, "are especially vulnerable to abuse due to their cultural socialization and recent immigration. The loss of traditional family support, lack of proficiency in English, as well as unfamiliarity with the laws and services of their adopted land keep many South Asian women captive within their abusive situation." The Manavi newsletter aims to raise public awareness of issues such as these and to serve as a forum for South Asian women to recognize the violence in their lives, understand the cultural barriers they face in dealing with vio lence, to enhance their problem-solving skills, and to develop awareness about their social and legal rights. NCCP NEWSLETTER. National Council of Churches in the Philippines, P.O. Box 1767, Manila 1099, Philippines. 4 is sueslyr. 28 em. 42 pp. SUbscriptions: $25Iyr. Approaching its fourth decade of publishing this "official publication" of the National Council of Churches in the Philip pines offers readers a window through which to view a broad range ofgrassroots initiatives for social change in the Philippines and to see how a committed and influential national church body participates in education and action campaigns for peace, justice, and sustainable development. The July-September 1996 issue of the glossy magazine dealt with "The Mindanao Peace Process and Christian Educa tion" and the creation of the Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD). The SPCPD is the agency that is charged with post-war affairs in the former conflict areas in the southern Philippines. Interesting to note is the difference in formal opinions expressed by different church agencies (and reproduced in this issue of the NCCP Newsletter) regarding the Mindanao Peace Process and the SPCPD.
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
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OXFAM INACTION. Oxfam Hong Kong, Breakthrough Cen tre, 191 Woosung St., 9th floor, Jordon, Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issueslyr. 28.5 cm. 22 pp. Donation requested. This bilingual quarterly magazine describes the local and regional activities of the very active Hong Kong branch of Oxfam International. The range of issues and programs in which Oxfam Hong Kong is involved is broad and impressive. Issues include social and economic development in Hong Kong, the sale of sexual labor in Cambodia, and resettlement programs in the Philippines. Oxfam Hong Kong programs range from fund raising dance parties to technical assistance training, and from short-term emergency relief efforts in China's Yushu Prefecture to anti-poverty projects in Quang Tri Province in Vietnam. PACIFIC CAMPAIGN FOR DISARMAMENT AND SECU RITY INFORMATION UPDATE. Resource Office of the Pa
cific Campaign for Disarmament and Security, 3780 Lake Rd., Denman Island, BC Canada VOR 1TO. 6 issues/yr. 28 cm. 6 pp. $15/yr. in North America, $20lyr. outside North America. The aim of the Pacific Campaign for Disarmament and Security is to "link and support grassroots organizations through out the Asia-Pacific region" in their common quest for peace, human rights, and equitable development. This newsletter, pro duced by PCDS'sResource Office, isjam-packed with news and reports about efforts by PCDS and others in the region to deal with a broad range of issues including nuclear power, the sale of military hardware, the creation ofnuclear weapon-free zones, the impact of US. military presence in Okinawa, and more.
the world, human rights updates, lists of resources, and network news from WILPF's Asia-Pacific Committee.
PHILIPPINE HUMAN RIGHTS UPDATE. Task Force De

tainees of the Philippines, 45 St. Mary St., Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines. 6 issueslyr. 28 cm. 22 pp. Inquire for rates. ISSN 0116-8029. Although it was launched in response to the rampant human rights violations of the Marcos dictatorship, Philippine Human Rights Update still finds plenty of reasons for continuing its efforts to uncover, describe, and challenge a broad range of human rights abuses in the Philippines. Published by one of the leading church-related human rights activist organizations in the Philippines, the illustrated bimonthly contains news reports and commentary that reflect the determination of Task Force De tainees of the Philippines to "witness to the continuing assaults on the lives, liberty, and dignity ofthe peoples ofthe Philippines, at a time of unrelenting violations against civil, political, eco nomic, social, cultural, and solidarity rights of the citizenry."
PHILIPPINE LABOR ALERT. Philippine Workers Support

Committee, P.O. Box 11208, Mo 'iIi 'iIi Sta., Honolulu, HI 96828, USA. 28 cm. 8 pp. Published irregularly. The Honolulu-based Philippine Workers Support Commit tee (PWSC) produces this action-oriented newsletter to support the growth of "a genuine [organized] labor movement in the Philippines." The labor movement that the PWSC has in mind is the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), which was founded in 1980 as an alternative to the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), a conservative "make-things-safe-for-the-multination als" labor organization that enjoys support from the (U.S.) AFL CIO's Asian-American Free Labor Institute. The newsletter carries news ofKMU activities in the Phil ippines and short articles on and analyses of "efforts of workers in the United States and around the world to improve their working and living conditions."
PACIFICNEWS BULLETIN. Pacific Concerns Resource Cen

tre, P.O. Box 803, Glebe, NSW 2037, Australia. 12 issuelyr. 30 cm. 16 pp. Individual subscription: $30lyr. Institutional sub scription: $45lyr. Inquire for other rates. This monthly bulletin, produced for the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement by PCRC, began publication in 1986. It serves as an update on political, social, economic, military, and sovereignty issues and affairs in the Pacific region. PNB gathers its information from Pacific Island community leaders and nongovernmental organizations in the region, allow ing its readers a grassroots look into situations affecting the people of the Pacific Islands. The bulletin also features articles by independent journalists and prominent personalities. The Pacific News Bulletin is a movement-building, activ ist's guide to news and developments in the Pacific region. The content of the newsletter presumes some background on the issues and familiarity with regional personalities and acronyms.
POISON ALERT. South Asian Campaign for a Toxics Free

World, c/o UBINIG (policy Research for Development Alterna tives), 5/3 Barabo Mahanput, Ring Rd., Shaymoli, Dhaka 1207, Bangladesh. Occasional. 24 cm. 16 pp. Inquire for rates. The goals of this organizing newsletter are "to collect and disseminate urgent information about the threats of toxic haz ards, especially those exported from industrialized to less-indus trialized countries, to build the network of organizations opposed to toxics and toxic trade, and to inform policymakers of the need for legislative action against toxic trade." Though the South Asian Campaign for a Toxics Free World campaigns for the elimination oftoxics and poisons worldwide, the organization as its name indicates-has a special interest in issues that are South Asia-focused. The newsletter reports on "relevant interna tional and national policy developments," reveals "new cases of imported poisons," provides "general information on toxics to support citizen's campaigns against toxics," proflles "specific toxic traders," and suggests ways "to resist toxic trade--espe cially in the South Asian region-and network with other re gional anti-toxics campaigns." Poison Alert is published "whenever there is urgent news about toxics which people need to know."
PACIFIC VISION. Women's International League for Peace

and Freedom, 9666 48th, S.w., Seattle, WA 98136, USA. 4 issues/yr. 28 cm. 30 pp. Subscriptions: $12lyr. This homey stapled-together newsletter contains news and opinions from the Asia-Pacific Committee of the Geneva-based Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Produced by an all-volunteer crew in Seattle, Washington, Pacific Vision pursues the stated goals of WILPF in the Asia-Pacific context: "[To bring] together women of different political and philosophi cal tendencies united in their determination to study, make known, and help abolish the political, social, economic, and psychologi cal causes ofwar and to work for a constructive peace." Contents of the newsletter include news reports excerpted from other publications, letters from WILPF -affIliated individuals allover
PRAXIS: NEWSLETTER OF THE WSCF ASIA-PACIFIC REGION. World Student Christian Federation, Asia-Pacific Re-
36
gion, Kiu Kin Mansion, 12th floor, 568 Nathan Rd., Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issueslyr. 24.5 cm. 28 pp. Inquire for rates. Praxis opens a window upon the activities of social action oriented church youth through the Asia and Pacific regions in support of peace and justice. The focus and contents of the magazine combine the fresh optimism of youth-with group photographs of smiling young people at national and regional Student Christian Movement (SCM) meetings-with a strong sense of earnestness in tackling a variety of social and political issues including human rights violations, economic dislocations, and militarism. A well-articulated and forthright commitment to Christian beliefs suffuses the magazine (but not in a way that would alienate readers who do not share this perspective). Each issue contains one or two major articles, along with reports from SCM affiliates in the region, texts of significant documents, and conference reports. Titles of representative fea ture articles include "The Changing Face of Socialism and its Relevance to the Churches," "Japanese Sex Tours: Imperialism in Thailand," "Student Empowerment for Transformation," and "The Churches in the Multicultural Society of Indonesia."
Tamil people or must Tamils in exile in England and elsewhere declare unequivocally their support for the national liberation struggle of the Tamil people?" The newspaper contains feature articles, texts of docu ments, a calendar, and other materials that are of particular relevance to Tamils living in England.
TAMIL TIMES. Tamil Times Ltd., P.O. Box 121, Sutton, Surrey
SMI 3TD, England. 12 issueslyr. 26.5 cm. 34 pp. Subscnptions: $35Iyr. Inquire for other rates. ISSN 0266-4488. Firmly established in its fifteenth year of publishing (in 1996) this polished newsmagazine chronicles the ongoing strug gle of the minority Tamil people for self-determination in Sri Lanka. Faced with what they regard as a conspiracy of silence about their desperate cause the editors of Tamil Times issue their impassioned pleas month after month for better world under standing of the causes and nature of their struggle and for effective international sanctions in support of their effort. Em blazoned in the masthead of Tamil Times is Voltaire's statement: "I do not agree with a word of what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." The monthly magazine blends articles, human rights re ports, and political commentary, with wedding notices and obitu aries, crossword puzzles, travel and shipping advertisements, and announcements of events that are of particular interest to Tamils living in England.
SRILANKA MONITOR. British Refugee Council, 3 Bondway, London SW8 ISJ, England. 12 issues/yr. 29.5 cm. 4 pp. Inquire for rates. ISSN 0955-5943. This newsletter is part of an information processing service set up by the British Refugee Council to keep Sri Lankan refugees in Britain, Europe, and elsewhere up to date on the political situation in all parts of their home country. Most of the reports deal with refugees, arrests, human rights violations, contested territories, and military offensives by government and Tamil rebel forces. Other reports deal with topics such as World Bank aid programs in Sri Lanka and the South Asian country's a[ITicultural situation. TAMIL INFORMATION. Tamil Information Centre, 720 Rom ford Road, London E12 6BT, England. 6 issueslyr. 29.5 cm. 16 pp. Subscriptions: 12lyr. "Access to information is a fundamental right" is the motto that sits atop the masthead of this publication from the London based Tamil Information Center (TIC). Tamil Information pro vides access to information about the Tamil struggle for self determination through a number of features that are unique to this publication. These include a running bibliographic record of documents received and cataloged in the TIC ("TIC Accession List") and a month-by-month chronology of key events in Sri Lanka. Complementing these features are news reports and commentaIy on the ongoing struggle. TAMIL NATION. London Tamil Forum, P.O. Box 373, Croy don, Surrey CR9 6AB, England. 26 issueslyr. 44 cm. 12 pp. The first issue of Tamil Nation appeared on September 1, 1990, at a time, its editors state, "when over three million Eelam Tamils [in Sri Lanka] are experiencing the worst suffering in their 42-year-old struggle for survival as a people-in a land in which they were born and bred for centuries, and to which they have as much rightful claim as the numerically superior Sinhalese who inhabit that island." A number of periodicals supportive of the cause of the Tamil people already emanate from England. This periodical appears to stake out a position to the political left of older and more established publications such as Tamil Times. The editors ask: "Is it enough to protest human rights abuses against the
TAPOL BULLETIN. Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, III Northwood Rd., Thornton Heath, Croydon, Surrey CR7 8HW, England. 12 issueslyr. 29.5 cm. 24 pp. Individual SUbscription: $35Iyr. Institutional subscription: $70Iyr. Inquire for other rates. ISSN 1356-1154. Readers whose images of Indonesia don't stretch far be yond tourist snapshots of the beaches of Bali will find a far different country painted in the pages ofthis quarterly. Taking its name from the Indonesian term for political prisoner (a contrac tion of"tahanan politik"), TAPOL is relentless in its efforts to let the world know about abuses committed "by one of the world's most repressive military regimes." "The [Indonesian] government," the bulletin's editors ex plain, "does not recognise the existence ofpolitical prisoners [in Indonesia] and feels no compunction to make information avail able." Readers of this long-established pUblication know better. (One Indonesian nongovernmental organization estimates that there at least two thousand tapol in Indonesia; others put the number much higher.) TAPOL Bulletin is a dependable source of data, analysis, and case stories of human rights violations, along with broader coverage ofpolitical, economic, andmilitaIy affairs in Indonesia, West Papua, and the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. THIRD WORLD ECONOMICS: TRENDSANDANALYSIS.
Third World Network, 228 Macalister Rd., 10400 Penang, Ma laysia. 26 issueslyr. 30 cm. 16 pp. Subscriptions: $95Iyr. outside Asia, airmail. Inquire for other rates. ISSN 0128-4134. Published fortnightly by the Third World Network ("a grouping of organisations and individuals involved in Third World and development issues"), Third World Economics pre sents news and analysis in a straightforward fashion. The first half ofthe newsletter consists of"current reports" on issues such as the World Trade Organization, globalization and sustainable development, the role of the state in enteq>rise development, and
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
37
international agreements on telecommunications. The second half of each issue is usually given to an in-depth analysis of one topic. Representative titles of analytical articles are "Poor Coun try Debt Relief: False Dawn or New Hope for Poverty Reduc tion?" and "Trade and Environment in the World Trade Or ganization: Achievements and Future Prospects."
construction in Cambodia, cigarette sales in Asia, and efforts by Christian churches in Japan and Korea "to improve conditions for the differently abled."
THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE. Third World Network, 228 Macalister Rd., 10400 Penang, Malaysia. 12 issues/yr. 30 em. 40 pp. Subscriptions: $60/yr. outside Asia, ainnail. Inquire for other rates. ISSN 0128-357X. Third World Network publishes this monthly magazine in order "to articulate the views of 'Third World groups' " concern ing critical global issues and "to give a Southern perspective to issues related to living and livelihood: environment, basic needs, current affairs, and culture." Each issue contains cover-story cov erage of one topic, for example, the globalization of crime or the production and sale of genetically engineered foods. Section heads in the remainder of the magazine illustrate the breadth of the publication's topical interests: ecology; health and safety; economics; world affairs; poetry; the media; and human rights. The editors routinely review books and highlight recommended resources for further study and/or action. VOICES OF THAI WOMEN. Foundation for Women, P.O. Box 47, Bangkoknoi, Bangkok 10700, Thailand. 2 issueslyr. 30 cm. 24 pp. Subscriptions: $lOlyr. The editors of Voices o/Thai Women state the magazine's goal as the building of "a new image of Thai women." "We are not passive victims," the editors explain. "We are marching on the same team and struggling for the same cause with sisters all over the world." This modest, twice yearly magazine chronicles the progress of Thai women on their march. Voices o/Thai Women commenced publication in 1989. In its early years the magazine featured articles reprinted from English-language newspapers published in Thailand, such as the BangkokPost and the Nation. But, as the magazine has matured and its format taken on a more professional look, more and more of its articles and reports are original. Topics covered have included women and violence, poverty and prostitution, the media and the female image, and the suppression of demonstra tions by the Thai government. Articles in the two issues produced in 1996 were entitled "Thai deVelopment plan targeted," "Bur mese women in Thailand and HIV/AIDS," "Anti-prostitution bill slammed by women's groups," "Breaking the silence on abortion," "Women's human rights after Beijing," and "Teaching children myths about men and women," among others. WINDOWS EAST AND WEST. Friend in the Orient Commit tee, Pacific and North Pacific Yearly Meetings, Religious Society of Friends, 8589 Roanoke Dr., NE, Salem, OR 97305, USA. 4 issues/yr. 28 cm. 10 pp. Donation requested. Crammed from margin to margin with Asia-related news reports, commentary, lists of resources, "friendly news," and personal notes from the editors, this homespun newsletter is published by the Friend in the Orient Committee of the Pacific and North Pacific' Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Salem, Oregon. The fifty-eighth edition of the news letter (fall-winter 1995-1996) contained reprinted articles on topics such as the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in the Pacific, floods in North Korea, the U.S. military in Okinawa, corruption in South Korea's construction industry, post-war re
WOMEN ENVISION. Isis International-Manila, P.O. Box 1837, Quezon City Main, Quezon City 1100, Philippines. 12 issue/yr. 28 cm. 12 pp. Subscriptions: $20Iyr. Women Envision, a publication of Isis International-Ma nila, boasts a brand-new design with its Issue No. 31 (March 1996)-an attractive 8-page fold-out format. The organization has long been active among women worldwide in many areas: research, communications and pUblications, information and resource center networking. This publication, with its special focus on the Asia-Pacific region, reports on all ofthese and more. The newsletter contains articles on recent events (a call for an alternative Habitat, for example) and sections called "Cam paigns and Conferences" (a postcard campaign to stop research on anti -fertility vaccines and efforts to combat the sexual exploi tation of children) and "Isis Currents" (news of workshops and conferences Isis has helped sponsor in the region). WOMEN'S NEWS DIGEST. Association forthe Advancement of Feminism, 119-120, GIF, Lai Yeung House, Lei Cheng Uk Estate, Kowloon, Hong Kong. 4 issueslyr. 30 cm. 68 pp. $3012 years. The Association for the Advancement ofFeminism (AAF) was established in Hong Kong in 1984 in order to campaign for women's rights in the colony through policy advocacy, educa tion, resources development, and research services. The produc tion of Women ~ News Digest is another of AAF's services. The quarterly consists of brief news reports related to women's rights in Hong Kong, feature articles (reproduced or translated from other publications), and newsclippings from periodicals such as the South China Morning Post, China Daily, and the H ongkong Standard. The newsclippings, which take up better than half of the magazine, cover women's issues in Hong Kong and China and are grouped under topical headings such as job discrimination, foreign workers, land rights, sexual assault, and marriage.
*
This supplement to the eleventh edition of the HAS Newsletter (Winter 1997) is the fourth in a series that aims to pr0 vide Asianists and others with succinct in formation about Asian studies. The supple ment features a 6 page guide to "Newsletters on Asia in Europe," com piled by llse Lass chuijt.
For copies, contact lIAS, P.O. Box 9515,
2300 RA Leiden,
The Netherlands.
38
Video Resource Guide for Asia and Pacific
Compiled by Saundra Sturdevant

This is an initial listing of videos and films. Additions or corrections would be appreciated. Entries are in alphabetical order under country headings, with topical sections at the end of the guide. Note that the distributor named in each entry may not be the primary source for the video or film, but all of the organiza tions listed at the conclusion of this guide are authorized distribu tors and/or clearinghouses for Asia and Pacific films and videos. We welcome notices from other distributors who carry the audio visuals listed in this guide. Annotations of these resources are drawn principally from catalogs and promotional literature provided by the distributors. They are reprinted here with permission. The inclusion of re sources in this guide implies no endorsement from BCAS orthe compiler.
BANGLADESH
BHOR HOLO, DOR KOLO. The first in a series of commercial

films made for Bengali audiences, Bhor Holo. Dor Kolo ("It is Dawn, Open the Door") mtroduces the "model couple" and the evil money lender who are the key figures in the "melodrama with a message series." The value of literacy training and shady loans and land deals are at the core of thIs episdde. [30 minutes, DSR Asian Films and Videos]
SONAMONI. Another in the "melodrama with a message se

ries," Sonamoni ("Golden Pearl") finds the "model couple" dealing with a child who gets diarrhea because the villain in the video seriescuts off their access to well water. The villain and his henchmen meet their match in the video's hero, who is a "kung-fu" expert. Produced by John Riber and directed by Alam gir Kabir. [33 minutes, DSR Asian Films and Videos]
BALI
BALI BEYOND THE POST CARD. An intimate story about a

Balinese family whose gamelan music and Legong dance tradi tion span four generations. The film captures both the intensity with which tradition evolves and is passed on in Bali at the same time that it documents increasing exposure to global culture. [60 minutes, 1991, Filmakers Library]
VILLAGE WOMEN OF BANGlADESH: THE RICE HAR VEST. An intimate glimpse into the lives of women as seen
through their work during the rice harvest in a traditional village in Bangladesh. Produced by Devitt Jones Productions. [27 min utes, DSR Asian Films and Videos]
t
I
I
WITH OUR OWN EYES. Produced by CBC Country Canada,

this video focuses on innovators in Bangladesh and Indonesia who use local rather than foreign capabilities to understand and solve food and hunger issues. [22 minutes, 1993, Mennonite Central Committee]
I
I !
t I
i
THE ELEVEN POWERS. Narrated by Orson Welles, this film

by Larry Gartenstein records the Eka Dasa Rudra, or Festival of the Eleven Powers, a sacred ceremony of the Balinese. Bud dhism, animism, Sivaism, and Hinduism go into creating this complex synthesis of rituals and ceremony. [48 minutes, 1980, Filmakers Library]
Saundra Sturdevant is a photographer and historian who lives in Three Rivers, California. She and Brenda Stoltzfus authored the work Let The Good TImes Roll: Prostitution and U.S. Military in Asia (New York: New Press, 1992) and are currently at work on a feature-length docu mentary film and a second book, Her-Eyes. on the subject of U.S. military presence in the Philippines in the post-colonial period. Thanks to the WorldViews Resource Center (Oakland), where the initial research for this project was done, and to Martha Winnacker for editing the manuscript for publication.
WOMEN IN BANGlADESH: TASLIMA NASREEN Pro duced by Journeyman Pictures, this film presents an exclusive interview with Taslima Nasreen in which she places her story in the context of the conditions suffered by women in Bangladesh. Taslima Nasreen is one of the few women in her country who has dared call for more freedom for women. As a result she is the subject of afatwa, a call by Islamic leaders for her death. [23 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
BURMA
CROSS AND KAIASHNIKOV: THE UNKNOWN WAR IN BURMA. Produced by Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation,
this film tells the story of the Karen people, a Christian minority,
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
39
who have been fighting the last forty years for independence and cultural autonomy. [28 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
LINES OF FIRE. Brian Beker's film offers a comprehensive

look at the forty -year-old war in Burma. Shot in Burma's jungles during a series of unauthorized border crossings, the film also includes smuggled footage of the bloody 1988 student uprising, ~h \\hidl goyemment troops gunned down thousands of civil ians. [62 minutes, 1990, First Run/lcarus Films]
FEAR AND HOPE IN CAMBODIA. Produced by the United Nations, written and narrated by William Shawcross, Isabelle Abric's video chronicles Cambodia's recent history from the Paris Peace Agreement to the elections and finally the signing of a new constitution. The film includes previously unseen footage of massacres, intimidation, and human rights abuses. [56 min utes, 1993, First Run/lcarus Films] FROM THE KIllING FIELDS. In an ABC News documen tary, Peter Jennings investigates the threat-still credible in 1990-that the Khmer Rouge might return to power. Included are interviews with Cambodian and U.S. political and military leaders. [50 minutes, 1990, Mennonite Central Committee] KAMPUCHEA AFTER POL POI: Produced for Australia Free
dom from Hunger Campaign, Mark Stiles's film tells of the first three years ofthe emergency aid effort in Kampuchea, providing insight into the international politics that threatened its success. [49 minutes, 1982, First Run/lcarus Films]
CAMBODIA
BEYOND VIETNAM. An ABC News forunl hosted by Peter

Jennings. Features a debate on what US. policy should be in Cambodia and Vietnam. [100 minutes, 1990, Mennonite Central Committee]
CAMBODIA: LAND OF BEAUTY BUT UNCERTAINTY.

This slideshow transferred to video reviews Cambodian culture, history, current challenges, and Mennonite Central Committee work with grassroots and community organizations. [13 minutes, 1994, Mennonite Central Committee]
CAMBODIA: THEBETRAYAL. Produced by David Munro for Central Independent Television, the film exposes the hypocrisy of the Western nations which, at the time the film was made, supported guerrilla forces led by Pol Pot despite the atrocities of his regime. [52 minutes, 1993, Filmakers Library]
SPIRIT AND THE LIFE. This video shows the continuity of Buddhism in Cambodia over 800 years, including its persistence through the near annihilation of monks during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. [33 minutes, 1989., AFSC Video and Film li brary] THE TENTH DANCER. Under the Pol Pot regime, nine out of ten of Cambodia's artists, including most ofthe classical dancers ofthe Royal Court Ballet, were killed. This film by Sally Ingleton is a portrait of the tenth dancer and her relationship with one pupil. It is a film about survival, dignity, and the role of culture. [52 minutes, 1993, Women Make Movies] YEAR ZERO: THE SILENTDEATH OF CAMBODIA. Made in 1979 shortly after the overthrow of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1978), this film includes historical footage on how the Khmer Rouge came to power. It also documents the begin nings of US. help to the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and the manipu lation of aid programs as part of the US. effort to overthrow Cambodia's new, Vietnam-backed government. [60 minutes, 1979, AFSC Video and Film Library]
CHINA
Ashln F"ms " Videos
From Bangladesh "THE MELODRAMA WITH A MESSAGE" Series

Made in the commercial Bangladesh cinema format for Bengali audiences;
all three feature the "hero, heroine and villian"
I. Bhor Holo, Dor Kolo (It is Dawn, Open the Door) - The first in the dramatic series which teaches the hero about the importance of literacy. 16mm film only (US$495), 30 min, Bengali 2. Amra Dujon (Together) - The hero and heroine get married and they discuss their reasons to delay the birth of their first child. 16mm film with/without English subtitles (US$495), VHS NTSC or PAL (US$39.95) 30 min, Bengali wlEnglish subtitles 3. Sonamoni (Golden Pearl) - The hero and heroine have a child who gets diarrhea because the villain cuts off their access to tube-well water. They use oral rehydration solution to cure her. l6mm film with/without English subtitles (US$495), VHS NTSC or PAL (US$39.95), 33 min Bengali wlEnglish subtitles
Available from DSR, Inc

9111 Guilford Road
Columbia, MD 21046 USA
Tel: 800-875-0037 Fax: 301-490-4146 sgs@dsr.us.net http://www.catalog.com/dsr/film.htm
A PLACE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. Seeking refuge from Nazi

terror, some 17,000 Jews travelled to Shanghai. Karen Shopso witz's film uses archival photographs and interviews with survi vors to tell this little-known story. [22 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
ALL UNDER HEAVEN. This film in the series by Carma

Hinton and Richard Gordon provides an intimate look at daily life in Long Bow Village. Recounting the 1949 revolution, col lectivization, the Great Leap Forward, and decollectivization, it presents a story of the persistence of traditional life through adjustments to these great political and economic changes. [60 minutes, 1986, Full Frame Film and Video Distribution]
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Please call, e-mail or fax for a flyer or more information
Other Titles Available: Snakebite! Village Women 0/ Bangladesh: The Rice Harvest What Future/or YacubAIi? Country Boats in Bangladesh Irulas: Hunters/Gatherers in the Space Age Vanishing Sho/as, Vanishing Rivers Tuna
BLACK MARKET. This is part of a series produced for Channel

4 in the UK by Sue Clayton and Jonathan Curling. The series is a history of commodities and trade over 350 years. This segment begins in 1650 and looks at early globalization by focusing on British control of the seas and international trade. Shows that opium exports from India to China fmanced the British East India Company's administration of India and paid for the products
40
economic realities of a system without an "iron rice bowl." [40 minutes, 1997, Filmakers Library]
CHINA: UNLEASHING THE DRA GON. A 4-part series by Miracle Pictures with Joan Chen as narrator. (1) "Deng's Leg acy" examines Deng Xiaoping's role in shaping the reformed China. (2) "The Fragile Rice Bowl" looks at the impact of economic and generational differences. (3) "The Soul of the Master" illustrates how changing values and economic pressures are influencing cultural institutions. (4) "Hong Kong and the Boom Towns" examines how Hong Kong and China may inter act with international cultural and economic communities. [Each part 60 minutes, 1995, First RunlIcarus Films] CHINESE PRISON LABOR: INSIDE CHINA'S GULAG. Harry Wu, a Chinese dissident who was released after 19 years
in Laogai prison, returns to China with a video camera. Through prison interviews and undercover footage of factories in the camps, Wu tells the story of prison labor and its products sold on the international market. [52 minutes, 1993, Films for the Hu manities and Sciences]
THE DESERT. Focusing on peasant farmers living on the edge of the Mongolian desert, Peter Entell's film focuses on their use of modem agricultural techniques to combat erosion and to reclaim land. [28 minutes, 1989, First RunlIcarus Films] ELECTRIC SHADOWS. Filmed in Sichuan, Herve and Renaud
Choen's documentary follows a three-person team of itinerant film projectionists as they travel through the countryside to put on monthly film programs in twenty villages. Films shown run from educational films to Kung Fu hits. [20 minutes, 1993, First RunlIcarus Films]
"Escape from China." Courtesy: Cinema Guild, New York Britain imported from China. [26 minutes, 1986, First Run! Icarus Films]
THE EMPEROR'S EYE: ARTAND POWER IN IMPERIAL CHINA. Filmed with the cooperation of the National Palace
Museum, Alvin Perlmutter and Lisa Hsia's film is a story of the passionate collector, Emperor Chienlung. The film brings the viewer into another culture and another age as the priceless treasures of the imperial art collection are displayed. [58 minutes, 1990, Filmakers Library]
THE CAT AND THE MOUSE: CHINA AND TIBET. This

BBC Television production is an intimate portrayal of Tibetan resistance to Chinese occupation. The Dalai Lama's moderate approach is contrasted with that ofyounger Tibetans who employ more direct forms of protest. [50 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library] century u.s. missionaries in China is based on personal film collections, archival photos, and diaries. Produced by James Culp. [58 minutes, 1994, UC Extension Media Center]
ESCAPE FROM CHINA. Filmed clandestinely in China and

later smuggled out, this film by Iris Kung (a pseudonym) recre ates the experiences of student leader Zhang Boli after his flight from Beij ing in the wake of Tiananmen. President of the student group University of Democracy, Zhang was one of the 21 stu dents on the Chinese government's "most wanted list." Zhang gives his account of Tiananmen, and friends and relatives who enabled him to evade arrest for two years and make his way to the United States are interviewed. [57 minutes, 1993, Cinema Guild]
THE CHINA CALL. This video on nineteenth and twentieth
CHINA DIARY. Jinhua Yang, a filmmaker raised in China during the Cultural Revolution, returns to China in 1988 after a five-year absence. The film provides a perspective on the forces behind China in transition, just prior to Tiananmen. [57 minutes, 1989, NAATA] CHINA'S CHAIR. This history of "the China question" in the
United Nations ends with the People's Republic of China being seated in the General Assembly in 1971. [27 minutes, 1991, UN Film and Videos]
FEMALE COLLEGE STUDENTS IN CHINA. In this survey

of current attitudes on Chinese campuses among women, film maker Zhuang Zhuang interviews a law student, a fashion design student, and a student who participated in the hunger strikes after the Tiananmen demonstrations. Each discusses her hopes for the future and her experience of government repression of individu ality. Each of the three women looks abroad for opportunities. [26 minutes, 1991, First RunlIcarus Films]
CHINA: THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD. By 2000, some 200 million Chinese will have left their villages and migrated to cities in order to become rich and send money home. Journeyman Pictures follows Wu Zhong as he leaves his village and lands a job in a huge textile factory. There, with haIfhis salary going for food and no job security, he quickly learns about the harsh
FIRST MOON. Part of the Long Bow series made by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon, this film records a series of celebra tions that begin with the Kitchen God's return from heaven and
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
41
continue through the Lantern Festival 15 days later. The festival celebrates life and hope, renewal in the earth and In the lives of Chinese people who till the soil. [37 minutes, 1988, Full Frame Film and Video Distribution]
training and generational differences within PLA. [Each part 46 minutes, 1993, Landmark Films]
THE GATE OFHEAVENLYPEACE, TIANANMENSQUARE, JUNE 4TH, 1989. Skillfully compiled from still photographs
smuggled out of China, eyewitness accounts and news sound tracks, J.B. Pictures captures the shock and horror the Chinese students experienced when government troops opened fire on them. [10 minutes, 1990, Filmakers Library]
GENERATIONS: A CHINESE FAMILY. Portrait of a contem porary Chinese family embracing four generations in the village of Long Bow. [28 minutes, 1985, Mennonite Central Commit tee] HALF THE SKY. Produced by the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, this film explores the revolutionary promise of women's equality in settings ranging from remote villages to urban factories. It concludes that Chinese women have little more control over their lives now than their ancestors did and that their concerns are neglected while their burdens increase. [27 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
THEGATEOFHEAVENLYPEACE. Carma Hinton andRich ard Gordon's film documents the events and complex political process that led to the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the eventual massacre of June 4th. [150 minutes, 1995, NAATA] THE GRASSLANDS. Following a nomadic Mongolian family
and its ponies, cattle and goats across the grasslands of northern China, Peter Entell's film looks at a way of life in harmony with its environment. [28 minutes, 1987, First Run/Icarus Films]
INNER VISIONS: AVANT GARDE ART IN CHINA. Lydia

Chen's documentary focuses on young artists and intellectuals in Beijing and the tension between their artistic expression and the requirements of economic and political survival. Influenced by Western modem art, these young men and women have turned inward for inspiration and use art to express their emotions. They have not had an official exhibit since the Tiananmen Square protests but most have jobs that allow them to support them selves. [28 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
THE GREAT WALL OFIRON. Four-part series on the People's Liberation Army. (1) ~'The Blood Red Flag": development of the PLA from the 1970s to the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. (2) "The People's Army": the PLA's war with the Kuomintang. (3) "Mid dle Ages with Missiles": the PLA generates income by various economic activities. (4) "Better Expert than Red": Officer cadet
LOTUS. Lotus is a traditional woman with bound feet in rural

China of 1914. She must decide whether ornotto bind heryoung
Maryknoll World Productions
ASIA
CLOSE-UP
28 minutes - $16.95 + $3.00 postage/handling Children of The Earth Series
Study Guide included
JAPAN
A schoolgirl, Satomi Tamura, age thirteen, shares with you her life in historic Kyoto, Japan. She highlights the value Japanese place on education as you follow her to classes in English and character painting. She also introduces you to her parents and home life and takes you to visit a cemetery and Shinto shrine. First part: 14 minutes
CAMBODIA
Sok Thea, a 13-year old Cambodian boy, lost his leg to a land mine as he tended his family's cows in his village, 60 miles north of Phnom Penh. The loss of his leg changes his relationship with family and friends. The teenager struggles with new feelings, even as he labors to use his prostheSiS. You visit his family and get a rare view into rural Cambodian life. Sok Thea is one of thousands of people maimed or killed in the aftermath of the country's genocidal civil war. Second part: 14 minutes 1996
This video shows U.S. children the different ways young people live in other parts of the world.
Send check with order to:
Maryknoll World Productions-A P.O. Box 308 Maryknoll, NY 10545-0308 Tel: 800-227-8523 Fax: 914-945-0670
42
Bullstin ofConcerned Asian Scholars
daughter's feet. Directed by Arthus Dong. [27 minutes, 1988, NAATA]
LOVE SONGS OF THE MIA 0 IN CHINA. Courtship rituals

of the Miao people who live deep in the mountains of southern China are the subject of this NHK Television production. The film focuses on a 17-year-old woman's participation in the Pa-po-jeh festival at which young people. seek marriage.partners from villages other than their own. [45 mInutes, 1997, Filmakers Library]
as refracted by the Tiananmen Square events. Chinese popular songs and classical music, sayings of Mao and Confucius, and the voices of women and artists are combined with calligraphy and film footage of rural China in a work that is both essay and art. [10 I minutes, 1991, Women Make Movies]
SMALL HAPPINESS: WOMEN OFA CHINESE VILLAGE.

Part of the Long Bow series by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon, this film focuses on women's lives. Women speak about love, marriage, childbearing, birth control, family relationships, work. The filmmakers, who worked without any restrictions by the Chinese government, provide an intimate but critical treat ment of Chinese life, especially that of women. [30 minutes, 1985, Full Frame Film and Video Distribution]
THE MUSICAL STEPPES OF MONGOLIA. Alain Desjac ques has lived in Mongolia, learned .the language, ~d gained access to domestic life and culture. ThIS has enabled him to make a film that provides a close view of a rapidly disappearing culture. Daily life is interwoven with a narrative centered on flutist Nrantosogt and an epic song that requires seven days to perform. [51 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library] MY HUSBAND DOESN'T MIND IF I DISCO. Nina Egert's
video focuses on traditional Tibetan values and newer ideologies ofthe state, principally the effects on wome~ offemi~sm during the Mao era. [28 minutes, 1995, UC ExtenSIon Media Center]
SONG OF THE BICYCLE. China is a land of 370 million

bicycles, with 600 bicycle factories manufacturing 41 million more each year. Yang Shu's lyrical film captures the central role and use of the bicycle in the livelihood of many Chinese. [17 minutes, 1991, First RunlIcarus Films]
NO LONGER COLONIES: HONG KONG 1997, MACAU

1999. Filmed on location, the video looks at the prospects, hopes and fears of people in these two colonies as the date approaches for their becoming part of China. [30 minutes, 1993, Maryknoll World Productions]
TEA FORTUNES. Another in the Sue Clayton and Jonathan Curling series, this film documents the history of the tea industry in China, India, Sri Lanka, and East Africa. It profiles Sir Thomas Lipton and development of his empire of control. [52 minutes, 1986, First RunlIcarus Films] TIBET IN EXILE. Since China's occupation of Tibet in 1949, more than one million Tibetans have died, and over 6,000 mon asteries have been destroyed. This film by Barbara Banks and Meg McLogan documents this story by focusing on the nearly 120,000 Tibetans in exile in India and Nepal. [30 minutes, 1991, The Video Project] TO TASTEA HUNDRED HERBS. Part ofthe LongBow series by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon, this fi~ describes. the life of the village doctor. Dr. Shen treats everythIng from mInor aches to mental illness, employing a mixture of old and new, Chinese and Western herbs and medicines, acupuncture and physical therapy. [60 minutes, 1986, Full Frame Film and Video Distribution] WESTWARD TO CHINA. Recounts the North American expe rience in China during the decade prior to the Sino-Japanese War. It includes missionaries, entrepreneurs, military men, journalists, and diplomats living in villages and cities and features interviews with Jack Service, Maud Russell, and Harrison Salisbury. Pro duced by James Culp for Film History Foundation. [58 minutes, 1994, UC Extension Media Center] WILD SWANS-JUNG CHANG. An epic account of the lives of three generations of Chinese women captures the turbulent transformation of China in the twentieth century. The film by Mischa Scorer for BBC Omnibus interweaves family history with archival and contemporary footage. [59 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library] ... WILL BE TELEVISED: CHINA-PRESENTING RIVER ELEGY. This epic television series stimulated heated debate
when it was first broadcast in China in 1988. The series was subsequently banned and its script writer has been on the "most wanted" list since the Tiananmen demonstrations. Curated by Mi Ling Tsui, the six-part video traces Chinese culture from its origins to the present, demystifying the cultural icons ofMao and
NO MORE DISGUISES. Shot entirely in Tiananmen Square

before and during the 1989 student uprising, Chui Jian sings prophetically of his view of the co~sion and dissa?sfaction of China's youth. [6 minutes, 1989, FIrst RunlIcarus FIlmS]
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE REALMS IN RURAL WENZHOU, CHINA. Produced by Mayfair Yang, this documentary .ex~es
how the privatized market has led to emergence of a publIc spmt as prosperous peasants and merchants d~ate money to non~ovem mental organizations. Scenes of rural life, markets, facton~s, and the tension between public and private are shown. [52 mmutes, 1995, UC Extension Media Center]
RED CAPITALISM: CHINA'S ECONOMIC REVOLUTION.

Produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp~ration, this f~lm focuses on Shenzhen, where Western corporatIOns are movmg factories to take advantage of cheap labor and access to China's consumer market. It examines both what Chinese gain from working in Shenzhen and the rise in crime and prostituted labor. [57 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
RED DETACHMENT OF WOMEN. Produced by the People's

Republic of China, this ballet tells the story ofa women's mili.tary unit during the Chinese Revolution. The ballet-staged I~ a highly politicized revolutionary style that challenged claSSIcal Chinese art-became a center of fierce debates over the role of art during the Cultural Revolution. [105 minutes, 1968, Third World Newsreel]
RED FLA G OVER TIBET. In a film produced by David Breash

ers for Frontline TV, Orville Schell secretly videotaped Tibetans as they described imprisonment, torture, and mas.s killings at the hands of the Chinese. [60 minutes, 1994, PBS VIdeo]
SHOOT FOR THE CONTENTS. This film by Trinh T. Minh

ha explores questions of power and change, politics, and culture
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
43
mer's film looks at the consequences of Western-style consum erism taking hold in large developing countries. [51 mmutes, 1995, Bullfrog Films]
BOMBAY: OUR CITY. This film recounts the daily battle for
survival by Bombay's 4 million slum dwellers. Although they are half the City'S population and participate in the workforce as industrial laborers, construction workers, and domestic servants, they are denied city utilities. sanitation, and water. [57 minutes, 1985, First Run/Icarus Films]
CASTEATBIRTH. India's 150 million "untouchables" are the focus of this documentary by Mira Hamermesh. It explores issues surrounding access to land and education, restriction to menial jobs, and a wide range of discriminatory practices. [52 minutes, 1991, Filmakers Library] DAASI (SLAVES). This documentary by Jabeen Siddique is
about social injustice and the exploitation of prostituted labor in the Karmathapuri area of Bombay, where over 200,000 women and girls, mainly from Nepal, live and wode. The contemporary situation is traced back to British importation of large numbers of Indian women to provide sexual labor for the troops of the Empire. [45 minutes, 1985, Cinenova]
DALDA 13: A TALENI'ED WOMAN HISTORY FORGOT.

Homai vyarawall's photographic images of India, including such historic moments as Gandhi's death and Ho Chi Minh's visit, have been seen around the world. Yet she was so little noticed that after retirement she burned all her negatives in the belief that no one was interested in her work. Monika Baker's film for the Arts Council of England suggests she was over looked because she was Asian and a woman. [23 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
"Partners in India." Courtesy: Mennonite Central Committee, Akron. Pennsylvania. the contemporary uncritical embrace of Western capitalism. [58 minutes, 1990, Deep Dish and Third World Newsreel]
DEMOCRACYIN CRISIS. Manjira Datta's film examines the

strains and pressures caused by religious differences, IMF de mands for economic restructuring, separatist movements, and caste battles in the twenty months following Rajiv Gandhi's ouster from government in 1989. As successive governments fail to address these issues, India continues to devolve in a downward spiral towards violence and chaos. [50 minutes, 1991, First Run/Icarus Films]
... WILL BE TELEVISED: HONG KONG-ONLY SOME THING THAT IS ABOUT TO DISAPPEAR BECOMES AN IMA GE. Readying themselves for change in governance in
1997, young artists contemplate their shared history and present anxieties. Archival film, contemporary art wodes, and stories are interwoven. Curated by Danny Yung. [58 minutes, 1990, Third World Newsreel]
DIVISION OF HEARTS. The partition of India and Pakistan

in 1947 cost 500,000 lives and the relocation of millions. Satti Khanna and Peter Chappell's film allows ordinary people from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh to tell their stories against a backdrop of archival news film. [57 minutes, 1987, First Run! Icarus Films]
WOMEN OF THE YELLOW EARTH. Peasants of the loess

plateau of rural China are the subject of this BBC Television documentary in which two women carry the story. Bai has just delivered her third child and is dealing with family planning officials. Ma Ning is about to be married as a result of arrange ments made by a matchmaker. [50 minutes, 1997, Filmakers Library]
INDIA
AJIT. Arvind Sinha provides a close-up portrait ofan eight-year

old boy who wodes as a domestic in a middle class Calcutta household. One of nine children from the countryside, Ajit sweeps, cleans, does laundry, and cares for the children of the household with no time for school, which is not a major concem to the boy's family. [28 minutes, 1997, Filmakers Library]
BOMB UNDER THE WORLD. An ornately decorated elephant

leads a parade through a village. The occasion is not a religious holiday but a promotional campaign to sell soap. Werner Volk
FATHER,SONANDHOLYWAR. This two-part film by Anand Patwardhan explores India's political polarization. Its central theme is the psychology ofviolence against "the other" built into the insecurity that men experience as an inevitable product of the construction of "manhood." Part 1, "Trial by Fire," sets the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya beside the trial by fire that Lord Rama imposed on his wife Situ and the custom ofthrowing widows on their husbands' funeral pyres. Opposition is fur nished by a Rajasthani woman, a Muslim woman and a group of Hindus and Muslims who march for comm\Dlal harmony in the streets of riot-torn Bombay. Part 2, "Hero Pharmacy," examines the expression of "manhood" in the context of religious strife when men of one group systematically rape women of "the
44
BuUetin ofConcernedAlian Scholars
other." It suggests that the absolute necessity of proving "man hood" by avenging the crime is the fonnula for ongoing carnage. [Each part 60 minutes, 1995, First Run/Icarus Films]
munity's social problems. [25 minutes, 1991, First Run! Icarus Films]
JAMA MASJID STREET JOURNAL. This film by Mira Nair

is a personal record of street life around Jama Masjid, or Great Mosque, in Old Delhi. [20 minutes, 1979, First Runllcarus Films]
HELLO PHOTO. Nina Davenport leads viewers through rural

and urban India with a hand-cranked movie camera. Images are graphic and often mind-bending: a jute factory, a mosque deco rated with erotic sculptures, cows stuck in traffic jams, a travel ing circus, a school for the blind. [55 minutes, 1995, First Run/Icarus Films]
KASTHURI: A SOUTH INDIANFILMSTAR. Richard Breyer

and N. C. Rajamani's film documents the paradox between the public and private life of 21-year-old film star Kasthuri. By following her daily life, the film explores the interaction between this very gifted young woman and the social culture of India. [30 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
IN MEMORY OF FRIENDS. Anand Patwardhan's film exam

ines the political turmoil of the late 1970s and the rise of Sikh fundamentalism. Different parties to the conflict claim the sym bolic legacy of Bhagat Singh, a young socialist hanged by the British in 1931 at the age of 23. Yet ironically, just before his death, Singh wrote "Why I Am An Atheist." [60 minutes, 1990, First Run/Icarus Films]
LARGE DAMS, FALSE PROMISES. About 200 large-scale

dams are built each year around the world, primarily in develop ing countries and often with International Monetary Fund or World Bank loans. Produced by David Phinney of the Interna tional Rivers Network, this film looks at three recent or proposed dam projects in India, China, and Brazil and the movements to oppose these projects. [36 minutes, 1994, The Video Project]
IN THE NAME OF GOD. This film by Anand Patwardhan

examines the challenge to India's secular state posed by the rise of Hindu religious fundamentalism. It focuses on the campaign waged by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to destroy a sixteenth century mosque in Ayodhya. Efforts of secular Indians seeking to combat religious intolerance and hatred are also documented. [90 minutes, 1992, First Run/Icarus Films]
THE LEGACY OF MALTHUS. Deepa Dhanraj's film exam ines the entrenched view that overpopulation is responsible for poverty and environmental degradation. In India peasant farmers are evicted from their land and then accused of being feckless,
INDIA CABARET. Mira Nair focuses on a group of

female strippers who work in a nightclub in the suburbs of Bombay to explore the "respectable" and "corrupt" stereotypes that typify perceptions ofwomen in contem porary Indian society. [60 minutes, 1986, Filmakers Library]
INDIA: SEED AND EARTH. This film, by a team of

ftlmmakerslanthropologists, focuses on everyday life in rural West Bengal. Janta is a prosperous, multicaste village that derives its livelihood from agriCUlture. The cycles of production and daily life are captured with no intrusive narration. [36 minutes, 1997, Filmakers Li brary]
INDIA: THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. Focusing on two

families who live near Ahmedabad, this video examines the industrialization of the textile industry and the re suiting unemployment as people are replaced by modern machinery. [20 minutes, 1996, Films for the Humanities and Sciences]
INDIA: TURMOILS OF THE CENTURY. Opening with scenes ofthe Ganges from the first moving pictures ever shot in India in 1899, Point du Jour's film uses archival footage to trace the epic history of India's past one hundred years. British rule and the Maharajas, the independence movement, partition and its conse quences, and relations with the Soviet Union and China are covered. [52 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library] JA GRITI (THE AWAKENING). Jagriti is a school for the children ofMotiaKhan, a slum in the poorest district of Delhi and the site for a redevelopment project that never took place. Filmmaker Jugnu Ramaswamy uses interviews with local people, administrators, and aid organizations to expose the political red tape and cor ruption that prevented progress toward solving the com-
II1It.
"The Bomb under the World." Courtesy: Bullfrog Films, 01ey, Pennsylvania
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

45
poor, and irresponsible. During the Highland clearances in nine teenth century Scotland, local farmers were subjected to much the same process and accusations. [52 minutes, 1994, Bullfrog Films]
MEMORIES OF MILK CITY. Ruchir Joshi documents the

devolution of Ahmedabad in Gujarat from a healthy city to one suffering communal violence. [10 minutes, 1991, First Run! Icarus Films]
TALES OF PABUJI: A RAJASTHANI TRADITION. Bhopo productions documents an ancient story-telling tradition. Using impressionistic animation techruques and footage of live per formances, the video brings to life episodes m the 600-year-01d stories of Pabuji. A delight in itself, the video also raises ques tions about the impact of modern c:ommunications technology on traditional methods of storytelling. [32 minutes, 1997, Fi1 makers Library J VANISHING SHOLAS, VANISHING RIVERS. An introduc tion to the tropical mountain forests of the Palni hills in South India, known locally as Sholas. Their ancient primary forests playa critical role in regional water management, protection of bird, insect, and animal life, and they are an indispensable deposit of floral genetic diversity. Human settlements in the area are threatening these mountain forests. [14 minutes, DSR Asian Films and Videos] WAVES OF REVOLUTION. Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan covers the populist anti -government Bihard Movement led by Shri J aypraskash Narayan from March 1974 to March 1975. [30 minutes, 1976, First Run/lcarus Films]
JAPAN
NARMADA DIARY. The Sardar-Sarover Dam in western India

is the lynchpin of a mammoth World Bank-Indian development project on the Narmada River's banks. When completed, the dam will drown 37,000 hectares of fertile land and displace over 200,000 indigenous people. This project and the non-violent protests of Narmada Bachao Andolan are the subject of this documentary by Anand Patwardhan and Simantini Dhuru. [60 minutes, 1995, First Run/lcarus Films]
NEHRU: A PROFILE. A Reuters TV production, this film

recounts the personal and political growth of Pandit Nehru, the first prime minister of an independent India. His focus on build ing a secular society in a religious country is contrasted with his neglect of agriculture and rural poverty issues. [22 minutes, 1997, Filmakers Library]
NO LONGER SILENT. Lorette Deschamps' film takes a close

look at two aspects of discrimination against women. It docu ments the dowry case of a mother who fights for a just investi ~Mion into her daughter's death and examines the increasing use of amniocentesis to determine the sex of the unborn, leading to decisions to abort female fetuses. [56 minutes, 1986, Cinenova]
AGING IN JAPAN: WHEN TRAl)ITIONAL MECHANISMS VANISH. Japanese senior citizens created the economic miracle
of modem Japan only to find that happy retirement has been replaced by isolation. [45 minutes, 1989, Films for the Humani ties and Sciences]
ONCE THIS LAND WAS OURS. Documentary by Shikha Jhin

gan focuses on women agricultural workers and their struggle to provide for their families. The film explores the feminization of poverty in rural India in the context of Third World development and women's labor. [19 minutes, 1991, Women Make Movies]
EAT THE KIMONO. Claire Hunt and Kim Longinotto have

sought to capture the independence and individuality of Hanay agi Genshu, a Japanese feminist and avant-garde dancer and performer in this arresting film. Hanayagi Genshu expresses her political strength by denouncing Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal and standing up to death threats made against her by right-wing groups. [60 minutes, 1989, Women Make Movies]
PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE. Filmmaker Anand Patward

han examines human rights in India during Indira Gandhi's State ofEmergency from June 1975 to March 1977. [45 minutes, 1978, First Run/lcarus Films]
A QUESTION OF AID. The world's poorest nations have to

make difficult choices when dealing with hunger and malnutri tion. Yorkshire TV uses two case studies, Kerala in India and Bangladesh, to show how these problems can be addressed. [20 minutes, 1987, Mennonite Central Committee]
THE GOOD WIFE OF TOKYO. Kazuko Rohki returns to Tokyo with her band, the "Frank Chickens," after living in England for fifteen years. This film by Claire Hunt and Kim Longinotto records her re-experiencing Japan after this long absence, examining traditional attitudes to women and those of KazukQ's friends who are trying to live differently. [52 minutes, 1992, Women Make Movies] HELLFIRE: A JOURNEY FROM HIROSHIMA. Iri and To
shi Maruki's Hiroshima Murals, de:picting the aftermath of the atomic blast, have been viewed by millions around the world. John Junkerman and John Dowd 's film reveals the artists' vision, their work, and their message of hope in the nuclear age. [58 minutes, 1986, First Runllcarus Films]
RUSHTE. Following the story of Lali Devi, a mother of five

daughters who poisoned herself and two of her daughters, Man jira Datta's film explores the Indian preference for male children and growing organizational efforts to protect women and their legal rights. [28 minutes, 1995, Women Make Movies]
SEEDS OFPLENTY, SEEDS OF SORROW. ManjiraDatta's film examines negative consequences of the Green Revolution: the emergence of a new serf class and the rising incidence of pesticide poisoning. [52 minutes, 1994, Bullfrog Films] SOMETHING LIKE WAR. This film by Deepa Dhanraj exam
ines India's family planning program from women's perspec tives. Women discuss their status, sexuality, fertility, health, and how the state's programs are and are not related to their concerns. r52 minutes, 1991, Women Make Movies]
HIROHITO: JAPAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. This

film covers highlights of twentieth-century Japanese history, including economic depression, invasion of Manchuria, Tripar tite Alliance, Pearl Harbor, war, Emperor Hirohito's surrender message and funeral. [58 minutes, 1989, Films for the Humani ties and Sciences]
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI, AUGUST1945. With the first film footage shot following the bombings, producers Erike Bamouw and Akira Iwasaki provide immediate eyewitness documentation
46
Blllletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars
4fter tbe Cloud Lffted over Hiroshima, atomic-bomb sur vivors fought the battle of their lives.
Cartoonist Keiji Naka7Jlwa lost half his family in the fires following the blast. Now his art teaches mil lions about the terrors of nuclear war.
As a girl, Koko Tanimoto
kusha, survivors of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, and their fear that others will suffer the horrors ofnuclear war. [26 minutes, 1984, First RunlIcarus Films]
OSAKA STORY. After three years abroad, filmmaker Toichi Nakata returns to Osaka and records Japanese and Korean house holds as family members confront cultural and personal issues and conflicts that are very contemporary and universal. [75 minutes, 1994, First RunlIcarus Films] RAIN OFRUIN. President Harry Truman threatened a "rain of
ruin" to compel Japan's unconditional surrender. Was the second atomic bomb, or any atomic bomb, necessary to end the war with Japan? Produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, this fllm pre sents a defmitive examination ofthe political and military history of the three months leading up to the atomic bombings. Declas sified documents from U.S., Japanese, and Soviet archives, as well as film footage are used. [56 minutes, 1995, The Video Project]
Kondo swore revenge against the U.S. airmen who dropped the bomb.
Then, to her shock, she faced Captain Robert Lewis-the
co-pilot of the Enola Gayl
4fter tbe Cloud Lifted tells the personal stories of these and other bomb survivors-how they buried their broken dreams...and learned to live again. 1997. 28 minutes. Pro duced by Richard Santoro. Distributed by The Video Pro ject, 200 Estates Dr., Ben Lomond, CA 95005 USA Call for a copy of our 1997 catalog: 1-800-4-PIANET.
RIPPLES OF CHANGE: JAPANESE WOMEN'S SEARCH FOR SELF. This documentary by Nanako Kurihara focuses on the
Japanese women's liberation movement of the 1970s and its influ ence on contemporary Japanese society. She uses interviews, archi val footage and her personal impressions to create the story. [57 minutes, 1993, Women Make Movies]
SENSODAUGHTERS. Japan's "Forgotten War" was the cam

of the bombing's aftermath. [17 minutes, 1970, The Video Pro ject] paign in Papua New Guinea, where approximately 140,000 Japanese troops died; only 11,000 returned to Japan. Also for gotten, indeed covered up, were the Japanese army's mistreat ment of New Guinean women and its use of "comfort girls." Noriko Sekiguchi's fIlm focuses on these women and what happened to them, noting that 90,000 "comfort girls" were sent to battle sites as "military commodities" without any record of the names by which they could be traced. An indictment of war and the culture that created it. [54 minutes, 1989, First RunlIcarus Films]
HIROSHIMA: WAS TRUMAN'S DECISION TO USE THE BOMB JUSTIFIED? Truman's reasoning is clearly stated and
juxtaposed with views of historical and contemporary critics who present several alternatives, leaving viewers to discuss the pros and cons. Produced by Zenger Video. [20 minutes, 1989, The Video Project]
JAPAN DREAMING. Director Sue Clayton focuses on the revolutionary technological advances being made in Japan, in cluding clean and silent trains, microbes that eat toxic waste, "and computerized buildings that are self-cleaning. The emphasis is on peaceful uses oftechnology and on surroundings that promote serenity and harmony. The film is a blueprint for a technologi cally and socially responsible future. [58 minutes, 1991, First RunlIcarus Films] NAGASAKI JOURNEY. A compelling production by John Irv
ing and Chris Beaver, the film portrays the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki as narrated by two Japanese survivors and by U.S. Marines who occupied the city shortly after the end of the war. Marine fllm footage and Yosuke Yama hata's black and white still photographs illustrate the fIlm. [27 minutes, 1995, The Video Project]
SHADOWS IN THE SUN. Frank Rijavec follows a group of

Japanese as they visit sites in New Guinea where their fathers and/or comrades fought and died during the Pacific War. Those who were children during the war share their regret and anger over what happened. Their remembrances and emotions together with stories of the veterans provide a critical perspective of Japan's wartime aggression. [57 minutes, 1995, First RunlIcarus Films]
SHINJUKU BOYS. Filmmakers Kim Longinotto and Jano Wil

liams focus on three annabes who worle: as hosts at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo. Annabes are women who live as men and have girlfriends but do not usually identify as lesbians. The three annabes discuss their views about women, sex, transvesti tism' and lesbianism. This documentary raises a number ofissues about the complexity of female sexuality in Japan today. [53 minutes, 1995, Women Make Movies]
NINE DAYS OF HELL: JAPAN'S TOUGHEST SCHOOL. Produced by Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, this fllrn
looks at the academic boot camp to which very ambitious parents send their children at holiday time. Successful completion of the ordeal enables them to stand up to the tremendous pressures of the Japanese school system. But what of independent thought and creativity? [18 minutes, 1993, FilmakersLibrary]
SPIRIT OF HIROSHIMA. Director Geoffiy Poister examines the bombing of Hiroshima through the eyes Qf those who lived through it and who live there now. Archival fIim clips and home fIlm footage are interwoven. [56 minutes, 1996, NAATA] SUMMER OF THE BOMB. A dramatic recreation of the deci sion to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, produced
by BBC Timewatch Series. The fIlm concludes that Truman
NO MORE HIROSHIMA! Produced by the National Film

Board of Canada, Martin Duckworth's fllm focuses on the hiba
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
47
knew that Japan was ready to surrender and that the bomb was not needed and suggests, in Gar Alperovitz's analysis, that the bomb was dropped to prevent the spread of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and Asia. [60 minutes, 1989, AFSC Video and Film Library]
in South Korea, reunification with the North, and resistance to the presence ofU. S. bases. It includes footage from 1960 to 1987 to show the roots of the crisis. Produced by the Korean Peace Committee in Japan. [21 minutes, 1987, AFSC Video and Film Library]
SURVIVORS. Japanese-American survivors caught in the atomic

bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki describe what they saw '1nd felt fit the time in this film produced by Steven Okazaki. r35 minutes, 1988, The Video Project and NAATA]
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE: THE SAKHALIN KOREANS.

Although 43,000 Koreans were brought to Sakhalin Island dur ing World War II as forced laborers, fewer than 1,000 Koreans remain. Director/producer Dai Sil Kim-Gibson brings us this story of displaced peoples amid the power struggles of our times. [59 minutes, 1995, NAATA]
THE U.S.A. VS. {{TOKYO ROSE." Using court records, FBI documents, and archival footage, director Antonio A. Montanari documents the story of UCLA graduate, Iva Toguri, a Japanese American who was tagged by U.S. authorities as "Tokyo Rose." She was prosecuted and convicted in the late 1940s for making what were deemed to be treasonous radio broadcasts during World War II. [48 minutes, 1995, Cinema Guild] UMINCHU: THE OLD MANAND THE EAST CHINA SEA.
John Junkerman's fllm follows the travails and stories of a traditional way of life as experienced by Shigeru Itokazu, an 82-year-old fishennan, and the residents of tiny Yonakuni Island near Okinawa. [54 minutes, 1991, First Run/lcarus Films]
HOMESAPART: KOREA. In 1953, with the end ofthe Korean

War, 10 million Korean families were tom apart. That situation continues today. This fllm documents one person's journey to unite with a sister in the northern part of Korea. Director J. T. Takagi and producer Christine Choy reveal personal. social, and political dimensions of a divided nation and culture. [56 minutes, 1991, Third World Newsreel]
LIFTING THE BLACKOUT: IMAGES OFNORTH KOREA.

Filmmaker Erika Andersen examines the history, politics, and culture ofNorth Korea. The fllm covers the daily lives ofwomen and children, the educational system, perspectives on reunifica tion, and the impact of U.S. military presence in Korea. [54 minutes, 1989, Cinema Guild]
KOREA
CAMPARIYANG. Filmmakers Diana S. Lee and Grace Yoon Kyung Lee look at prostituted labor around U.S. military bases in Korea though the eyes of Yon Ja Kim, a 50-year-old ex-pros titute. Her story, together with voices of other Korean women who sell their sexual labor, detail the brutality ofthe camptowns and their hopes for the future. [28 minutes, 1995, Third World Newsreel and NAATA] FOR REAL DEMOCRACY: SOUTH KOREAN PEOPLES JUNE 1987 STRUGGLE. This fllm focuses on the mass move
ment of the 1980s that called for independence and democracy
LIVING IN HALF TONES. Since the beginning of U.S. occu pation in 1945, the southern part of Korea has consistently exported children, mostly female and mostly Amerasian, to the United States for adoption. Me-K Ando's short video is an autobiographical lament about alienation in a displaced home land. [9 minutes, 1994, Third World Newsreel] SOUTH KOREA: INSIDE THE MIRACLE. This video exam
ines the human consequences ofthe repressive labor and political policies that have accompanied South Korea's growth. It includes coverage of the struggle for union rights and issues of political repression. [26 minutes, 1995, Films for the Humanities and Sciences]
... WIll BE TELEVISED: KOREA-UNTIL DAYBREAK. Curated by Hye Jung Park and
produced by One Korea Peoples Video Collec tive in Korea, this fllm focuses on a decade of street insurrections from the view of students, farmers and workers who stood in the front line ofthe reunification movement and against eco nomic exploitation and militarism. Film foot age covers the massive K wangju uprising and its brutal suppression in 1980 and subsequent strikes by workers and farmers through 1990. [58 minutes, 1990, Deep Dish and Third World Newsreel]
"A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans." Courtesy: National Asian American Telecommunications Association, San Francisco, California.
THE WOMEN OUTSIDE. Mixing inter views, archival footage, and military propa ganda, this fllm by J. T. Takagi and Hye Jung Park presents an intimate look at women who work or have worked in the brothels and clubs outside U.S. military bases in Korea. The film makers also tell the stories ofwomen who have
48
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examines the North American arms industry's continued produc tion for war. [23 minutes, 1986, Mennonite Central Committee]
OLD BOMBS, YOUNG LIVES. This is the chronicle of a diplomatic mission to Xieng Khouang Province in 1995. The diplomats visit the site of the Mennonite Central Committee and Mines Advisory Group bomb removal project and watch the bomb removal team in action. [10 minutes, 1995, Mennonite Central Con'lmittee] THE PAST IS PRESENT. Lao people explain how the ball-like "bombies" full of shrapnel, dropped by U.S. planes during the Vietnam War era, continue to kill farmers and children. The film reports how Lao people are being trained to locate and explode bombies. [7 minutes, 1994, Mennonite Central Committee]
Ijj.
NEPAL
TOMORROW WE WILL FINISH. More than 150,000 girls between the ages of five and sixteen work in 2,000 carpet factories in Nepal. This video tells the story of one girl, Suri, and her friends and describes the 16-hour work days they spend filling high quotas. [26 minutes, 1994, Maryknoll World Produc tions] UJELI: A CHILD BRIDE IN NEPAL. By the time they are fourteen, 40 percent of Nepal's young women are married. The parents of ten-year old Ujeli arrange her marriage to a young boy of the village despite her wish to remain in school. The film documents the work of her married life and relations with her husband and his family, especially a sister-in-law. [60 minutes, 1992, Maryknoll World Productions] VALLEY OF THE GODS: WORSHIP IN KATMANDU. This is the ftrst in a series of films by a Nepalese television crew supervised by Finnish Broadcasting that documents a series of festivals in Nepal. They are shown to stem from Hindu, Bud dhist, and Moslem faiths and are sometimes interwined. The film captures the intricacies of pageants and ceremonies. [48 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
NEW GUINEA
"Letter from Laos." Credit: John Leckie. Cowtesy: Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pennsylvania.
married G.1.s and gone to the United States to live, hoping to fmd happiness. Their fates do not begin to approximate this hope. The film challenges the U.S. military presence in Korea and the role women are forced to play in geopolitics. [60 minutes, 1995, Third World Newsreel]
LAOS
THE INNOCENT. Unexploded ordinance litters the earth. JRB Motion Graphic's production focuses on the true story of a Lao. woman killed by anti -personnel "bombies" years after the end of the war in Vietnam. [23 minutes, 1994, Mennonite Central Committee] JOURNEY TO LAOS. This is a report on revived Laotian culture and nature as seen by six North Americans who had
previously worked for International Voluntary Services in Laos. Produced by Jacqui'Chagnon and Roger Rumpf, whose ability to speak the language and interpret the historical and contempo rary situation of Laos made the video possible. [45 minutes, 1986, AFSC Video and Film Library]
ARROWS AGAINST THE WIND. Filmed secretly in Irian

Jaya, Tracey Groome's documentary is the story of the life of two tribes, the Dani and Asmat, both living on land containing valuable resources. The story is one of social, political, and environmental upheaval, state power, and issues surrounding assimilation. [52 minutes, 1993, Bullfrog Films]
FIRST CONTACT. In 1930 the Leahy brothers carried a movie

camera into the interior ofNew Guinea as they hunted gold. Thus they captured on film their unexpected confrontation with thou sands ofPapuans who had no concept ofhuman life beyond their valleys. This amazing footage forms the basis of the film by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson. [54 minutes, 1983, Filmakers Library]
LAOS: THE FORGOTTEN WAR. Santiago Alvarez's film

focuses on the wars waged in Laos by the French and then by the United States. Under continuous U.S. bombing, Laotians were forced to run a society in hidden caves and tunnels, organizing schools, cultural activities, and clinics as well as political and military activities. [20 minutes, 1967, Third World Newsreel]
GUARDIANS OF THE FLUTES: THE SECRETS OFMALE INITIATION. Produced by Paul Reddish for BBC Television,
this film is for mature audiences. The Sambi a, a mountain people, have allowed their male initiation rites to be documented as'a way of preserving their vulnerable culture. What emerges is a portrait of a society shaped by the ritualized distinction between male and female roles, epitomized by the severe initiation-=m
MAKING WAR IN PEACEo This film tells the story of people

of northern Laos who face the devastation of war and the diffi culties of living in the aftermath of intense U.S. bombing. It
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
49
eluding secret sexual rites-through which boys become men. [55 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
JOE LEAHY'S NEIGHBORS. Also by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson (see First Contact above), this film traces the
life of Joe Leahy, the mixed-race son of Australian explorer Michael Leahy, and his uneasy relationship with his tribal neigh bors. European educated, freed by his mixed race from tribal obligations, Joe leads a lifestyle governed by individualism and the pursuit of affluence. The conflicting values of tribalism and capitalism are captured in a non-judgmental narrative. [90 min utes, 1989, Filmakers Library]
Nighat Said Khan examines the inequities in Pakistan's Islamic law, which does not distinguish among rape, adultery, and "for nication." The film examines these contradictions and introduces the efforts of women's organizations to bring about change. [25 minutes, 1991, First RunJIcarus Films]
PHILIPPINES
BAKWET: REFUGEES IN THEIR OWNLAND. The Aquino
government's military offensive against the New People's Army forced thousands of Filipino peasants to flee their homes. Mal com Guy documented this process and the uncertain future of Filipinos forced to live in crowded, makeshift refugee camps. [33 minutes, 1989, Cinema Guild]
MOUNTAINS OF GOLD: THE PEOPLE OF PORGERA.

Since gold was discovered on their land in 1984, the Ipini have become some of the wealthiest people in Papua New Guinea. This Davis Film and Video presentation chronicles theirten- year transition from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer society to a money based economy. [52 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
PAKISTAN
BENAZIR BHUTTO: WALKING A TIGHTROPE. This film,
directed by Etienne Duval and produced by Rene-Jean Bouyer, traces Pakistan's relations with its four powerful neighbors and examines internal violence, corruption, and poverty as the con text in which Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to head a Muslim country, served as Pakistan's Prime Minister. [52 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
BONTOC EULOGY. This personal docudrama examines the Filipino experience at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, focusing on the filmmaker's grandfather, an Igorot warrior and one of the 1,100 tribals exhibited as anthropological "specimens" in the Philippine Village exhibit. Archival :images, verite, and carefully orchestrated visual sequences shot in the present make this a remarkable film. [60 minutes, 1995, Cinema Guild] CELSO AND CORA. Gary Kildea's feature-length documen tary about a young couple and their two children living in a squatter settlement in Manila shows their life over a period of three months. Rather than a report on poverty, the film recounts commonplace struggles, humor, and the courage to survive. [109 minutes, 1983, First RunJIcarus Films] GABRIELA. Trix Betlam's film reports on the work of Gabriela,
a mass national organization of diverse women's groups, that bears the name of Gabriela Silans, a Filipina nationalist who was
ISLAM AND FEMINISM. In 1989, Nafisa Hoodbhoy, ajour nalist, investigated the rapes ofthree on-duty nurses in a hospital in Pakistan's capital city, Islamabad. Since the story aired, two attempts have been made on Hoodbhoy's life. This video by
"The Money Lenders." Courtesy: Robert Richter Productions, New York, N.Y. The scene shows Leona Briones in the foreground ofa demonstra tion videotaped for "The Money Lenders." Briones is leader of the "Freedom from Debt Coalition" in the Philippines.
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Bulletin o/ConcernedASian Scholars
active in the struggle against the Spanish occupation. [67 min utes, 1988, Women Make Movies]
was a dramatic part of the struggle against the Marcos regime. [28 minutes, 1986, First Run/Icarus Films]
KABABAIHAN: FlliPINA PORTRAITS. Marie Boti and Mal colm Guy look at some of the grassroots organizing behind the "People's Power" movement that brought down the government ofFerdinand Marcos and swept Cory Aquino into power in 1989. [40 minutes, 1989, Cinema Guild] THE LASTREFUGE: THEAETASOFTHE PHILIPPINES. Relegated to remote reservations on the rugged slopes of Mt. Pinatubo, the Aetas, original inhabitants of the Philippines, have battled lowland expansion, commercial logging, and increasing encroachment on their land as they have struggled to sustain their ancestral culture. The devastating eruption of Mt. Pinatubo de stroyed much of the land on their reservations, confronting the Aetas with the possibility of obliteration. [51 minutes, 1994, Filmakers Library] LUCIA. Filmed by Mel Chionglo, from a screenplay by Lino Brocka, for Manila Inter-FilmlBBC. This dramatic feature film begins at dawn in a fishing village in Bataan after a tanker ~as spilled oil in the night. The oil threatens marine life and the existence of the fishing community. The film chronicles the unsuccessful efforts of Lucia and her family to stay in the village and shows what happens to the family when a Manila slum becomes their new home. [89 minutes, 1994, Bullfrog Films] THE MAGNUM EYE: LIVING WITH THE DEAD. At the North Cemetery in Manila, some 5,000 homeless squatters have taken up residence among the gravestones and in the mausole ums. Misha Erwitt's short video records this reality and tells some of the stories of the people. [10 minutes, 1992, First Runllcarus Films] MILES FROM PEACE: u.s. BASES IN THE PHIliPPINES. Using historical footage and interviews to describe the eco nomic, political, and cultural impact of Subic Naval Base, Clark Air Force Base, and nine other U.S. bases in the Philippines, David Goodman's documentary provides the groundwork for undemanding the popular movements in the Philippines for the withdrawal of the U.S. bases. Particular attention is paid to the impactofthe military bases on women and children. [30 minutes, 1990, AFSC Video and Film Library] ON BORROWED LAND. Using archival footage and inter views, Matthew Westfall documents the conflicts between squat ters, who have built on land slated for commercial development, and their opposition-wealthy developers and the government of Cory Aquino. [51 minutes, 1990, Cinema Guild] PHIliPPINE DIARY. Four vignettes of Philippine life are offered as evidence of the need for fundamental change in the Philippines. Included are slum dwellers of Manila, prostitutes near a U.S. military base, tenantfarmers on Negros, and peasants bypassed by the march of development on Mindanao. [28 min utes, 1987, Maryknoll World Productions] PHIliPPINES: THE PRICE OFPOWER. Jeffrey Chester and Charles Drucker's ftIm explores the role of the Igorots, in the events that led to the "People's Power" revolution. The Igorots are indigenous Filipinos whose mountain rice cultivation has created a distinctive landscape and way of life. Their resistance to a massive dam project that threatened their lands and culture
PUSSYCAT III. This is a video version ofSaundra Sturdevant's slide show made for Buklod Center in Olongapo. It includes images of Olongapo, Samar, urban poor areas, work in the bars, neighborhoods, markets, families, and children. Women who sell their sexual labor outside Subic Naval Base tell parts oftheir life stories accompanied by Joey Alaya's music. [28 minutes, 1990, Sturdevant and Stoltzfus] SIN CITYDIARY. Rachael Rivera looks at the lives of women who sold thetr sexual labor outside Subic Naval Base. Working from her experiences as a Filipina-American, Rivera raises ques tions about power and sexuality. [29 mmutes, 1992, Women Make Movies] SISTERSANDDAUGHTERSBETRAYED. Millions ofwomen and young girls have been illegally transported from rural to urban 'areas and across national borders for the purpose of prostitution. Produced by Chela Blitt, this video explores the social and economic forces that drive this lucrative underground trade and its impact upon women's lives. It reports on organizing efforts against this trafficking in Nepal, Thailand, and the Phil ippines. [28 minutes, 1996, UC Extension Media Center] SPIRITS RISING. Using myth, literature, news footage, and interviews with Cory Aquino and Imelda Marcos, director Ra mona Diaz seeks to document an epic journey of women in the Philippines from pre-colonial priestess to present-day power positions. [56 minutes, 1995, NAATA] THIS BLOODY, BLUNDERING BUSINESS. Using a silent movie format with ragtime piano music background, an under stated narration, and excerpts from newsreels ofthe period, Peter Davis examines the history of the Philippine-American War. U.S. troops killed some 600,000 Filipinos and laid waste parts of the Philippines in the process of bringing the coun~ under U.S. control. [30 minutes, 1978, Cinema Guild] WASTE FROM SUBIC AND CLARK. Louella Lasola and Ben Pimentel's documentary presents facts about life-threatening waste left behind by departing U.S. military personnel in the Philippines. [30 minutes, 1991, NAATA] VALENCIA DIARY. Rogel and Aida Gonzales tend a small plot of land and care for their children in the Valencia district of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. They offer comments on unfolding events in the context of their own experiences. Gary Kildea captures the atmosphere of tension in the time leading up to the downfall of the Marcos regime while documenting the universal themes of life in a small village. [108 minutes, 1992, First RunlIcarus Films] WILL BE TELEVISED: THE PHIUPPlNES-A LEG ACY OF VIOLENCE. Underground video was an important tool during the Marcos era. During Cory Aquino's administra tion, it was possible to air critical video on television. This video captures comedy and ribald satiric humor as Aquino's pro-bases policy and reliance on U.S. military aid are juxtaposed to in creased military repression. Curated by Nick DeoCampo, with Philippines Education Theater Association (PETA) and others. [58 minutes, 1990, Deep Dish and Third World Newsreel]
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51
A WORLD ON DISPLAY. The st. Louis World's Fair in 1904

was the grandest of all expositions. Highlights included 2,000 indigenous people from around the world who were brought to live on display in "authentic" villages at the fair. Director Eric Breibart uses archival footage, unpublished photos, and inter views with elderly Americans who went to the Fair to tell this story. [53 minutes, 1994, Cinema Guild]
change. Video has become a tool for organizing those exploited and excluded from Taiwan's "economic miracle." [58 minutes, 1990, Third World Newsreel]
TIMOR
SRI LANKA
AGGRESSION AND SELF-DETERMINATION: MASSA CRE IN EAST TIMOR. This documentary explains the com
plicit role of the U.S. government in support of the Indonesian government's invasion and occupation of East Timor, which caused the death of nearly a third of the population. It includes images from the 1991 massacre in Santa Cruz cemetery. [30 minutes, 1992, East Timor Action Network]
THE SHATTERED PEARL. Once the "Pearl of the Indian

Ocean," contemporary Sri Lanka is a battleground for a civil war waged by Tamil, Sinhala, and Muslim groups. Nimal and Ran jani Mendis's mm reports on the war, human rights abuses, and the women who continue to struggle for justice and peace. [25 minutes, 1991 , First Runllcarus Films]
DEATH OF A NATION: THE TIMOR CONSPIRACY. David

Munro and John Pilger were among the first to alert the world to Cambodia's holocaust. In this film they document the holocaust in East Timor. [76 minutes, 1994, Films for the Humanities and Sciences]
TAIWAN
FROM COURTYARD HOUSE TO BLOCK APARTMENT.

Wynette Yao examines how the rapid industrialization of the last two decades has changed traditional patterns of living and hous ing and how the Chinese of Taiwan have adjusted. [23 minutes, 1987, First Runllcarus Films]
EAST TIMOR: BETRAYED BUT NOT BEATEN. The first

documentary on East Timor made in North America recounts the historical background to the role played by the United States and Canada in support of Indonesia's occupation. Interviews with Noam Chomsky provide political and economic analysis. [29 minutes, 1988, AFSC Video and Film Library]
... WIll BE TELEVISED: TAIWAN-THE GENERATION AFTER MARTIAL LAW. In 1949 the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) imposed strict martial law that lasted 38 years. Since
martIal law ended m 1987, alternatIve medIa makers have joined farmers, workers, and students to press for social and political
EAST TIMOR: TURNING A BLIND EYE. Paper Tiger Tele

vision footage documents massacre and resistance in East Timor.
"A World Beneath the War." Produced by Janet Gardner and Pham Quoc Thai. Courtesy: National Asian American Telecommunications Associa tion, San Francisco, California.
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"Cold Blood: Massacre of East Timor" is a longer version of this document8lj'. [30 minutes, Paper Tiger Television]
SHADOW OVER EAST TIMOR. This Australian production

documents key events in East Timor from the 1975 declaration of independence through the Indonesian invasion and "pacifica tion," the man-made famine to the reemergence of the inde pendence movement in the 1980s. The role of the Unit~ Stat~s is highlighted. [38 minutes, 1987, AFSC Video and FIlm Ll br8lj']
VIETNAM
AO DAI (THE TUNIC DRESS). Le Trac's film considers the

visibility of ao dai. the traditional Vietnamese tunic dress for women, as a gauge of Vietnam's prosperity. Focusing on Trinh, a student at a large Ho Chi Minh City high school, the film examines clothing, the war, peace, prosperity, tradition, religion, and the costofliving. [13 minutes, 1991, First Run/Icarus Films]
AS SEENBY BOTH SIDES: AMERICANAND VIETNAM ESEARTISTS LOOKAT THE WAR. Filmed in both countries,
the document8lj' features the remarkable art exhibit that show cases work of American and Vietnamese veterans. Archival footage of the war, interviews with artists, historians, and schol ars combine in a testament to the powerful role of art in chroni cling and shaping experience and interpretation. [58 minutes, 1995, Cinema Guild]
"Young Vietnam." Courtesy: Cinema Guild, New York, N.Y. may give younger audiences an opportunity to understand some of its complexities and its horrors. [55 minutes, 1980, Filmakers Library]
AS THE MIRROR BURNS. This film by Di Bretherton and

Cristina Possan dispels some misconceptions of Vietnamese women's wartime roles, reporting that an estimated 70 percent of the guerrilla forces were women who were not victims but active participantfol in the struggle against foreign domination. The film also shows how the war still shapes life for women of Vietnam as they work to restore peace to their work places, homes, and country. [58 minutes, 1990, Women Make Movies]
HANOI, TUESDAY THE 13TH. Filmed on December 13,

1966, this film by Santiago Alvarez records the lives of people in the Vietnam capital and surrounding countryside at the height of U. S. bombing. Daily activities of building irrigation ditches, planting rice, fishing, and weaving are documented. [40 minutes, 1967, Third World Newsreel]
BURDEN OF A WAR: WOMEN AND AGENT ORANGE.

Nancy Strakosch's fIlm focuses on a nurse who, along with her officer husband, was sent to Vietnam. It deals with scientific, psychological, and political issues surrounding Agent Orange as it has affected women and their children who were exposed. [30 minutes, 1991, Filmakers Libr8lj']
HO CHI MINH: THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH. Produced

by Reuters Television, this film tells the storyofHo Chi Minh's life through newsreel footage and interviews with his contem poraries. [52 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
HOW TO BEHAVE. Originally banned in Vietnam, this docu

mentary by Tran Van Thuy was eventually released and proved a smash hit. Dying of cancer, the camerman asks his friends to make a film on the subject of human relations and kindness. The result is an exploration of the realities behind nationalistic slo gans. The video reveals a troubled society where it is difficult to define humanitarianism or, for that matter, greed. [43 minutes, 1987, First Run/Icarus Films]
A DAY OF PLANE HUNTING. Produced by the Democratic

Republic of Vietnam and fllmed during the U.S. war against Vietnam, this film focuses on the crucial role that Vietnamese women played in the war. The viewer sees the methods of cooperation developed by women in agriculture, defense, child care, and other essential activities of life. [20 minutes, 1968, Third World Newsreel]
FIRST VIETNAM WAR: 1946-1954. Episode number 2 in a

Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series on Vietnam. Shows how the United States turned against Ho Chi Minh's government and supported France in Vietnam. Culminates in the Vietnamese victory over French military forces in Dien Bien Phu. See Roots ofWarbelow. [60 minutes, 1983,AFSC Video aftd Film Library]
FRONTLINE: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE VI ETNAM WAR. David Bradbury's film focuses on Neil Davis, a
news camerman whose famous combat footage was shown all over the world. Davis, an Australian, was the only Western journali.ftlm the liberation of Saigon. His insights on the war
IN THE YEAR OF THE PIG. Produced by Emile de Antonio, this classic film traces the history of Vietnam as a nation while documenting U.S. involvement and the escalating war. Political analysis is achieved through juxtaposition of images, text, and public statements by war-makers. Historical footage of Vietnam, Dien Bien Phu, Ho Chi Minh, and Gen. George Patton III is striking. [100 minutes, 1969, Full Frame Film and Video Distri bution] KIM PHUC. During the Vietnam War, a picture of Kim Phuc,
seared by napalm and running naked down a country road became a metaphor for the horrors ofwar. Manus van de Kamp's 1984 film is the story of that girl's mutilation by war and her
VoL 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
53
growth into a spirited young woman trying to find her place in life. [25 minutes, 1984, First RunlIcarus Films]
LAMENT OF A WARRIOR'S WIFE. Produced by the Asia

Resource Center, this video depicts the sorrow and concern among Vietnamese for their 300,000 military arid civilian MIA's. In addition to showing how mothers and wives from northern and southern Vietnam deal with losses of sons and husbands during the war and today, the film uses historical war footage and interviews to examine the human and psychological costs of the war that are borne by all Vietnamese. [55 minutes, 1991, AFSC Video and Film Library]
bullet are examined. Napalm and the devastation caused by Agent Orange are also documented. [35 minutes, 1968, Third World Newsreel]
VIETNAM MISSION: FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE MON TA GNARDS. Gordon and Laura Smith use archival diaries,
photographs, and film footage gathered during fifty years living and managing leprosariums and orphanages in Montagnard areas to depict the history of French, Japanese, and US. involvement in Vietnam. The film also includes archival footage and tradi tional music as well as interviews with Montagnards. [56 min utes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
THE NEW BOSSES. After three decades of war, the Vietnam ese government in the mid-1980s introduced economic reforms that were designed to reduce the size of the state sector, increase employment opportunities, and open up new opportunities for entrepreneurs. Le Trac's film looks at this reform economy, its successful entrepreneurs, and its costs. [13 minutes, 1991, First RunlIcarus Films] PEOPLE'S WAR. This vintage Newsreel film records the mo
bilization and participation of Vietnamese people in their coun try's fight against colonialism and foreign military aggression. It details the history of struggles against French colonialism and US.military intervention, while showing efforts to deal with the French colonial1egacy ofeconomic underdevelopment. [40 min utes, 1969, Third World Newsreel]
VIETNAM: AFTER THE FIRE. Directed by Edward Milner, this film documents the extent of war-caused damage to the environment and people of Vietnam. Bomb craters litter the landscape, and thousands of unexploded bombs remain. Cancer and deformed births resulting from the US. use of defoliants such as Agent Orange are detailed. Attention is given to efforts on the part of the Vietnamese government to deal with these issues. [53 minutes, 1988, Cinema Guild] VIETNAM: ANAMERICAN JOURNEY. Robert Richter was the first American filmmaker allowed in Vietnam after the war, and his seven-week trip down Highway One from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City is the subject of this film. He visits Vmh, Quang tri, My Lai, Danang, and a UN refugee camp for Cambodians, and conducts interviews with officials and citizens. [85 minutes, 1979, Robert Richter Productions] VIETNAM: AT THE CROSSROADS. Hien Duc Do, a profes sor at San Jose State University, returns to Vietnam for the first time since 1975. He explores the country's struggles over West ern capitalism and the painful legacy of recent history. Directed by Bob Gliner. [59 minutes, 1994,NAATA] VIETNAM: THE LASTBATTLE. This video by David Munro, written and presented by John Pilger, covers events from April 30, 1975, when the United States withdrew by helicopter from the roof ofthe U.S. Embassy in Saigon, through the war with Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge and China, and the U.s. embargo, to eco nomic reform and the Vietnamese government's tum to a market economy. The film describes a new invasion of Vietnam by foreign governments and multinational companies attracted by cheap Vietnamese labor. [52 minutes, 1995, First RunlIcarus Films] VIETNAM: WHEN NIGHT COMES. This video looks at Vietnam's new economic policies and the daily lives of people in the countryside. The video describes the tunnels of eu Chi and the Vietnamese workers who convert war debris into useful objects. [30 minutes, 1987, AFSC Video and Film Library] WHICH WAY IS EAST? Filmmaker Lynne Sachs and her j oumalist sister, Dana, travel from Ho Chi Minh City in the south of Vietnam to Hanoi. The film is about remembrances ofthe war on television, a search for traces of war today, and contemporary Vietnamese life as seen by these two women. [33 minutes, 1994, Women Make Movies] WOMEN OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS STATION #6. Pro duced by the Vietnamese People's Army, this film documents young North Vietnamese women's participation in the war. It also touches on the more personal aspects of women's lives and their transforrnation from the constricted role allowed by tradi-
ROOTS OF WAR. The first in a two-part PBS series on the

Vietnam War (see First Vietnam War above) looks at Vietnam's ancient history, the French conquest, the struggle for indepen dence, and the alliance between Ho Chi Minh and the United States during World War II. [60 minutes, 1983, AFSC Video and Film Library]
SEVENTY-NINE SPRING TIMES OFHO CHI MINH. San tiago Alvarez's biography of the leader of the Democratic Re public of Vietnam combines still photos, newsreel footage, and Ho's poetry to depict a life that spanned three revolutions, three continents, and three wars. Adelberto Galvez's music provides the sound track. [25 minutes, 1969, Third World Newsreel] STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. Produced by the National Liberation Front, this documentary film depicts Vietnamese medical cadres working to save the lives ofpeople in the Iiberated areas of South Vietnam during the war. Wounded are carried to concealed tunnels where surgery is performed with the aid of generators powered by pedaling bicycle wheels. [30 minutes, 1968, Third World Newsreel] SURNAME VIET, GIVEN NAME NAM. Vietnamese-born
Trinh T. Minh-ha's personal documentary explores the role of Vietnamese women in history and in contemporary Vietnamese society. Using dance, printed texts, folk poetry, and the words and experiences of Vietnamese women in Vietnam and in the United States, Minh-ha uses the voices of women to challenge official culture. [108 minutes, 1989, Women Make Movies]
U.S. TECHNIQUES AND GENOCIDE IN VIETNAM. Pro duced by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, this film de scribes the use ofelaborate US. weapons against civilian targets. Anti-personnel weapons designed to kill human targets while causing minimal damage to buildings, steel pellet bombs that zigzag in all directions, and the internationally banned dum-dum
54
tional society to full participation in their country's struggle for independence. [20 minutes, 1969, Third World Newsreel]
A WORLD BENEATH THE WAR: THE SECRET TUNNELS OF VIETNAM. Vinh Moc village in North Vietnam lived un
derground during the war in miles of tunnels. Some 2,000 people took shelter there. An American Air Foree historian and a female guerrilla commander offer their perspectives on the war. Filmed by Janet Gardner, with associate producer Pham Quoc Thai. Features rare archival footage. [53 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library]
HEARTS AND MINDS. This Academy Award-winning docu mentary examines the Vietnam War and its roots in the U.S. consciousness and American institutions. It includes interviews with Daniel Ellsberg, General William Westmoreland, Walt Ros tow, and others. It is perhaps the best educational tool available to counter contemporary attempts to rewrite the history of the war. [90 minutes, 1975, AFSC Video and Film Library] THE LAST EMPIRE: INTERVENTION AND NUCLEAR WAR. This film explores the relationship between U.S. interven
tion in the Third World and the increasing danger of nuclear war arising from these military adventures and foreign policy strate gies. Produced by Cambridge Documentary Film, with assis tance from the New England regional office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Boston Mobilization for Survival, the film features analysis by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Retired Admiral Gene LaRocque. [30 minutes, 1986, Cambridge Documentary Films]
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YOUNG PUPPETEERS OF VIETNAM. Produced by the gov

ernment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, this film fo cuses on art, dance, music, and poetry in the struggle to survive bombs and napalm in the liberated areas of South Vietnam. Teenagers make beautiful and intricate puppets from remains of downed U.S. warplanes and put on puppet shows in dramatic ballet form. The puppet performances are given for children in villages throughout the liberated areas. [25 minutes, 1969, Third World Newsreel]
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YOUNG VIETNAM. Interviews with a young nurse and stu dents in Ho Chi Minh City form the base of Edward Milner's look at the last generation of Vietnamese to remember the horrors of the war and the first to hope for an end to the country's isolation by increasing trade and communication with the West. [28 minutes, 1989, Cinema Guild]
U.S. MILITARY AND VIETNAM
THE LOTTERY: WHO FIGHTS OUR WARS? Produced by Ken Jacobson, this video presents an historical account of lotter ies as a method ofchoosing soldiers that dates from the Civil War era. During the Vietnam War, the system of lotteries failed. Film footage of that era will spark discussion on the moral obligation of citizens to support their country, right or wrong. [18 minutes, 1994, Filmakers Library] THE MEDIA AND THE IMAGE OF WAR. Produced by the
Center for Defense Information, this film investigates whether

the portrayal of war on film and TV presents a false sense of U.S. history and values that paves the way for future wars and increas
ing violence at home. [26 minutes, 1994, The Video Project]
I
t I ! ,
~
BEYOND VIETNAM: LESSONS UNLEARNED. This Veter

ans for Peace production raises questions about the meaning of the Vietnam War and the reality of combat and psychological wounds that veterans must endure. [55 minutes, 1992, AFSC Video and Film Library]
I ,
!
! !
DISOBEYING ORDERS: G.I. RESISTANCE TO THE VIET NAM WAR. Pamela Sporn's documentary focuses on the anti
war movement within the u.S. armed forces. Archival still photos, film footage, interviews, and the music of the 1960s are interwoven. The film highlights the intersection ofthe civil rights and anti-war movements and examines the ethical questions that arise in the choice to obey or refuse orders that are perceived as immoral. [29 minutes, 1990, Filmakers Library]
EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS. The legacy of the nuclear age

extends to over 300,000 U.S. military personnel who were deliberately exposed to radiation from above-ground nuclear bomb texts. Produced by Michael Porter and Vivienne Verdon Roe, this documentary focuses primarily on the story of one "atomic veteran," Anthony Guarisco. Archival footage of nu clear tests and short profiles of other atomic veterans form the backdrop to Guarisco's story. [35 minutes, 1994, The Video Project]
HEART OF THE WARRIOR. A former U. S. Army paratrooper

who fought in Vietnam until his left leg was shot off carries on a dialogue with a former paratrooper in the Soviet Army who served in Afghanistan until his right leg was shattered. In this production by Michael Franck and Stephen Peck, the two veter ans talk of enduring the pain of war; they display humor in describing some of their common experience. A message of hope. [54 minutes, 1990, The Video Project]
"Vietnam: After the Fire." Courtesy: Cinema Guild, New York, N.Y
,
Vol. 28, Nos. 34 (19%)
55
I I
MILITARY AND ENVIRONMENT. This Center for Defense Infonnation video analyzes how military production of nuclear weapons has contributed to the environmental disasters oftoday. It looks at nuclear sites in the United States and estimates that U.S. taxpayers face cleanup costs in the range of $200 billion. [30 minutes, 1990, AFSC Video and Film Library] ONLY THE BEGINNING. In April 1971, thousands of G.I.s came to Washington, D.C., to protest the Vietnam War. They stood in front of the U.S. Capitol and threw away their medals. This Third World Newsreel film tells the story from the veterans' point of view. [20 minutes, 1971, Third World Newsreel] REMEMBER MY LA/, This Frontline program examines the
events that led to the U.S. assault on the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968, the slaughter that took place, and the cover-up of the story by the military and the press for over a year. Special focus is on the young men who made up Charlie Company, Vietnamese survivors ofthe massacre, and soldiers who took part in the massacre. [60 minutes, 1989, AFSC Video and Film Library]
WHY VIETNAM? A U.S. Department of Defense film to edu cate American forces being sent to Vietnam. Presenting the official case for the U. S. war in Vietnam, this film caused an uproar when it was publicly released. It demonstrates the role of propaganda in building support for an unjust and disastrous war. [32 minutes, 1965, AFSC Video and Film Library]
GLOBAL ECONOMY
BATTLE OF THE TITANS: PROBLEMS OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. How can U.S. workers compete with their counter
parts in Third World countries who work for 30 cents an hour? Filmed in Indonesia, Venezuela, Egypt, and Nigeria for Denmark Radio, this film poses tough economic questlOns while showing the correlation between economic deprivation and political un rest. [54 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
THE DEBT CRISIS-NEW PERSPECTIVES. This film de scribes the debt crisis as the most urgent problem in the world economy. Third World countries borrowed heavily in the 1970s and are unable to service their debt today. The result is political unrest. [55 minutes, 1989, Filmakers Library] THE FOOD MACHINE. Despite producing one-third more food than it needs, the United States suffers from agricultural economic stresses. This video by Yorkshire TV explores the causes of farm crises and their effects on rural society. The trend toward larger farms with fewer workers and the transplanting of this kind offarming to the Third World is exanlined. [20 minutes, 1993, Mennonite Central Committee] FOOD OR FAMINE? In the year 2020, the world will have three to four billion more mouths to feed. The last forty years have produced impressive food surpluses, but new agricultural tech niques have led to erosion, salinization, and chemical pollution. Looking at projects in North America, Chile, Indonesia, India, and countries in Africa in which there is a return to agricultural methods based on sound ecological principles, this film pro duced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation discusses the costs of food production and offers an alternative. [2-part series, 60 minutes each, 1996, Filmakers Library] THE FUTURE OF WORK. Produced by the Canadian Broad casting Corporation, this video centers on the analysis of econo mist Jeremy Rifkin (author of The End ofWork). Rifkin foresees a calamity of global proportions as 80 percent of the work force is marginalized, replaced by robots and computers. The result will be the polarization of society into rich and poor, a lower standard ofliving for the middle class, and great unemployment. How to cope? [28 minutes, 1996, Filmakers Library] GLOBAL ASSEMBLY LINE. From Mexico to the Philippines and back into the United States, the fIlmmakers vividly portray the lives of women in the free trade zones of the Third World as U. S. industries search the globe for lower-wage labor. In 1986, 85 percent of the new work force in free trade zones was female aged 15 to 26. [58 minutes, 1986, Full Frame Film and Video Distribution] GROW OR DIE. The developed world has a vast choice of consumer goods, but most markets are controlled by two or three companies that bought out their competitors and diversified to produce thousands of different items. In a Channel 4 Television (UK) production, Sue Clayton and Jonathan Curling examine consumer-goods multinationals and their origins as producers of
STRAIGHT TALK. Five Vietnam veterans from the Veterans

Education Project in Massachusetts speak to high school stu dents about their experiences in the war. They talk about their decisions to enter the military and share stories of combat and non-combat situations. Directed by Robbie Leppzer, the film provides human and timeless insights into war and helps counter the images of war presented by Hollywood, politicians, and recruiters. [31 minutes, 1990, Turning Tide Productions]
THEIR OWN VIETNAM. Nancy Kates has made a documen

tary about U.S. women who served in the Vietnam War. Inter views with five veterans are intercut with archival images and home movies to explore the work of the women as nurses and, officers .. l'he film contrasts the U. S. Anny 's depiction of Vietnam as an exciting career opportunity for women with the reality of work within a mostly male work environment. [23 minutes, 1995, Women Make Movies]
VIETNAM STORIES. Eleventh grade students interview both Vietnam combat veterans and draft resisters who went to jail. Both groups talk candidly about their decisions and the ordeal of war/prison. Directed by Robbie Leppzer, the film is about the human consequences of war and underscores the importance of each generation sharing with the next. [35 minutes, 1989, Turn ing Tide Productions] WAR AT HOME. This is the only major motion picture docu mentary made about the anti-Vietnam war movement. Focused on student political activities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the video includes extraordinary contemporary foot age that documents how the anti-war movement grew as a genuine people's revolt. [SO minutes, 1987, AFSC Video and Film Library] WAR: ANYBODY'S SON WILL DO. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, this documentary reports on basic train ing at the Parris Island Marine Recruit Training Depot. Eighteen year-olds aretransfonned into U.S. Marines through a brutal and calculated mental and physical regimen designed to create within the youths a new set of morals that allows them to kill. [60 minutes, 1985, National Film Board of Canada]
56
a single commodity. The documentary analyzes the cost of this kind of near-monopoly to Third World countries, caught on the treadmill of rising debt, falling prices, and stunted growth. [52 minutes, 1986, First Run/lcarus Films]
system and its drive for the greatest profit whenever possible. [85 minutes, 1994, New Day Films]
HUMAN TIDE. This film explores the thesis that population

growth is explosive and threatens to deplete the resources of the planet. Depletion of agricultural soil, fossil ground water, and biodiversity caused by the population explosion means disease, famine, and poor education for future generations. A major cause of population growth is viewed as lack of access to family planning by two-thirds ofthe world's women. [37 minutes, 1995, Filmakers Library]
THE INVISIBLE WALL. Directed by Ole Alskov for Pace News, this video is an expose of how multinational corporations, Third World debt, and trade barriers fuel poverty and environ mental destruction in the world's poorest countries. John Ken neth Galbraith, Susan George, and Noanl Chomsky present their respective analyses of how this trinity operates and what its impact is upon peoples of the world. [53 minutes, 1996, Filmak ers Library] SOWING FOR NEED OR SOWING FOR GREED? The
Green Revolution in agriculture came with "miracle seeds" developed by Norman Borlaug, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. This fUm by Judith Bourque and Peter Gunnarson takes a critical look and concludes that the Green Revolution has been good business for multinational chemical companies, but that it has also brought economic dependence, erosion of genetic diversity in food crops, and poisoned land. Farmers in Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines and Indonesia are interviewed. [56 minutes, 1990, Bullfrog Films]
I
f
THE HUNGER BUSINESS. In the United States, export of

grain is seen as a good way to reduce the trade deficit and eliminate agricultural surplus. This video by Yorkshire TVex amines the social and political implications offood aid programs through which grain is exported to poor countries. [20 minutes, 1987, Mennonite Central Committee]
HUNGRY FOR PROFIT. Is our food bought at the price of famine in the developing world? Filmed on five continents, Robert Richter's fUm takes a close look at the global agribusiness
*
Box 500, Akron, PA 17501-0500, USA. Tel: (717) 859 1151. National Film Board of Canada, P.O. Box 6100, Sta. A, Montreal, QuebecH3C 3H5, Canada. Tel: (514) 283-9000. 1251 Avenue of the Americas, 16th floor, New York, NY 10020-1173, USA. Tel: (212) 586-5131. NAATA (National Asian American TeleCommunications As sociation), 346 Ninth St., 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA. Tel: (415) 552-9550. New Day Films, 22-D Hollywood Ave., Hokokus, NJ 07423, USA. Tel: (201) 652-6590. Paper Tiger Television, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, USA. Tel: (212) 420-9045. PBS Video, 1320 Braddock PI., Alexandria, VA 22314-1698, USA. Tel: (800) 424-7963. Robert Richter Productions, 330 W. 42nd St., New York, NY 10036, USA. Tel: (212) 947-1395. Saundra Sturdevant and Brenda Stoltzfus, 44095 Dinely Dr., Three Rivers, CA 93271, USA. Third Worid Newsreel, 335 38th St., 5th floor, New York, NY 10018, USA. Tel: (212) 947-9277. Turnblg Tide Productions, P.O. Box 864, Wendell, MA 01379, USA. Tel: (800) 557-6414. UC (University of California) Extension Media Center, 2176 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705, USA. Tel: (510) 642-0460. UNFllm and Video, United Nations, New York, NY 10017, USA. Video Project, 200 Estates Dr., Ben Lomond, CA 95005, USA. Tel: (800) 4-PLANET. Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, 5th floor, New York, NY 10013, USA. Tel: (212) 925-0606.
FILM AND VIDEO DISTRIBUTORS
AFSC Video And Film Library, 2161 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA. Tel: (617) 497-5273. BuUfrog Films, P.O. Box 149, Oley, PA 19547, USA. Tel: (610) 779-8226; (800) 543-3764. Cambridge Documentary FUms, P.O. Box 385, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Tel: (617) 354-3677. The Cinema Gulld, 1697 Broadway, Ste. 506, New York, NY 10019, USA. Tel: (212) 246-5522; (800) 723-5522. Cinenova-Promoting Films by Women, 113 Roman Rd., LondonE2 OHU, England. Tel: (081) 981-6828. Deep Dish Television Network, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, USA. Tel: (212) 473-8933. DSR Asian Films and Videos, 9111 Guilford Rd., Colum bia, MD 21046, USA. Tel: (301) 490-3500. East Timor Action NetworklU.S., P.O. Box 1182, White Plains, NY 10602, USA. Tel: (914) 428-7299. Filmakers Library, 124E. 40th St., Ste. 901, New York, NY 10016, USA. Tel: (212) 808-4980. Films for the Humanities and Sciences, P.O. Box 2053, Princeton, NJ 08543, USA. Tel: (609) 275-1400; (800) 257-5126. First RunlIcarus Films, 153 Waverly PI., New York, NY 10014, USA. Tel: (212) 727-1711. FuU Frame Film and Video Distribution, 394 Euclid Ave., Ste. 201, Toronto, ON CanadaM6G 2S9. Tel: (416) 925 9338. Landmark Films, 3450 Slade Run Dr., Falls Church, VA 22042, USA. Tel: (SOO) 342-4336. Maryknoll World Productions, P.O. Box 308, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0308, USA. Tel: (800) 227-8523. Fax: (914) 945-0670. Mennonite Central Committee, Audiovisuals Library, P. O.
Vol2S, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

57
New
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Frederic C. Thomas
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Society Country Briefing Series I
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SHADOWS IN ACHINESE LANDSCAPE
Chi Yun 's Notes from a Hut for Examining the Subtle
David Keenan. Ed. & Trans.
Senes New Studies In ASian Culture
I CHINA BRIEFING: The Contradictions of Change

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CALCUTTA POOR Elegies on a City above Pretense
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AN EMPIRE OF SCHOOLS
Japan's Universities and the Molding
David R. McCann, Ed.

248pages 1996 1563248859 He $58.95 I 8867 PB $19.95
I BLACK CLOUDS OVER THE ISLE OF
:~~:.sL. ~~~s
of a National Power Elite

1.56324.843.3
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He $29.95
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ADJUSTING TO CAPITALISM
Chinese Workers and Their State
Greg O'Leary, Ed.
200 pages FBI/1997 07656-0039-0 HC $62.95
I GODS AND OTHER MODERN
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INDONESIAN SHORT STORIES

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NEW GHOSTS, OLD GHOSTS

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THE DESCENDANTS OF CAIN

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188 pages Summer 1997 0765601362 HC $52.95 I 0137-0 PB $19.95
"MEDIC"
The Autobiography of Crawford F. Sams
Zabelle Zakarian
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UNDERSTANDING KOREAN LITERATURE

Hunggyu Kim / Robert J. Fouser, Trans.
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FREEING CHINA'S FARMERS

Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era
David Zweig
380 pages Summer 1997
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THE STRUGGLE FOR MODERN TIBET

The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering
Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and
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220 pages 1997 1563249502 He $27.95
THE WOMAN WITH THE FLYING HEAD AND OTHER STORIES BY KURAHASHI YUMIKO
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COOPERATIVE AND COLLECTIVE IN

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Japan in the Modern World
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__ From the National Bureau _

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Reviews: Regional
,
!
The Study of Religion and Society in Contemporary Asia: Colonialism and Beyond
Charles F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Har
dacre, eds. Asian Visions ofAuthority: Religion and
the Modern States ofEast and Southeast Asia. Hono
lulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. 368 pp.
by Russell Kirkland
(
t j
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1
In 1989, the Islamicist Bruce Lawrence suggested that, in a global context, the termfundamentalism should be replaced by the term anti modernism, which, to Mark Juergensmeyer, "sug gests a religious revolt against the secular ideology that often accompanies modern society." 1 The papers in this volume are similarly concerned with the social implications of "religious revolt," i.e., of continued religious vitality in lands that had presumably adopted "modern" patterns of secular nationalism. Such thinking, however, raises deeper issues about the very notion of "modernity." What is notable about this volume is an internal critique by Jean Comaroff that raises precisely such issues. Comaroff's potent reflections on the problematic nature of categories like "modernity" force us to question some of the editors' unexam ined assumptions, as well as our own. The problem is not that the studies collected here are weak. To the contrary, it is precisely because they exemplify "good scholarship" that this book raises questions about the assumptions that shape our approaches to issues like "tradition" and "modernity." The fundamental prob lem is the degree of self-awareness with which first-world schol ars, who define themselves as "modern" and "objective," posi tion themselves to explain the realities of third-world societies Russell IGrldand, a specialist in Chinese religion, focuses on the histo rieal origins of interpretive categories, especially in the modem study oftraditional Taoism. He has taught Asian history, religion, and culture at Oberlin College and Stanford University. He currently teaches in the Department ofReligion at the University of Georgia. 1. Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 5. His reference is to Bruce B. Lawrence, Defenders olGod: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modem Age (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989).
in which "tradition" is valued differently than modernists assume it should be. illtimately, the issue is one of unconscious intellec tual colonialism. Asian Visions ofAuthority originated in a series of work shops in the 1980s, intended "to compare types of religious resurgence in East and Southeast Asia" (p. vii). The editors selected eleven papers from a 1989 conference to publish here. Part I, "State Authority and Religion," includes articles by James Foard on rites at Hiroshima; Charles Keyes on the Buddhist past and communist present in Cambodia; and Robert Hefner on Muslim education in East Java. Part 2, "Reshaping Religious Practice," includes contributions by Shamsul A. B. on the Is lamic resurgence in Malaysia, Jean DeBernardi on Chinese popular religion in Malaysia, Robert Weller on amoral cults in Taiwan,2 and Laurel Kendall on changes in wedding traditions in Korea. The final section, "Modes ofResistance, " presents papers by Kwang-ok Kim on shamanism in Korea. Ann Anagnost on ritual and politics in mainland China, Dru Gladney on Muslim and Chinese ethnicity in mainland China, and Chaiwat Satha anand on the Islamic resurgence in Thailand. These papers are too diverse to be assessed fully here. Suffice it to say that they are all stimulating and informative works of solid scholarship that wrestle with issues ofethnic identity, social change, religious resurgence, and concomitant political problems. Unlike most conference volwnes, this book has a clear, if needlessly complex, thesis: "The essays in this volume examine various religious facets of what we term a crisis of authority that has emerged as a consequence of the modernization and nation building projects ofAsian states" in the twentieth century. Those projects "have not only failed to subordinate religious authority to state authority but have generated ... [a] 'deficit oflegitimacy.' As a result, many people in these countries have turned to religious visions of authority other than those sanctioned by their states." 3 The papers in the volume only partly share this thesis, a point significant for assessing whether there is really a "criss of authority" in contemporary Asia. A stated goal of this book was to disprove the conclusion of a 1963 conference, "Cultural Motivations to Progress in South and Southeast Asia." The editors state:
:,
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2. Weller's article essentially duplicates his bookResistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels. Taiwanese Ghosts. and Tiananmen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994). 3. Page 1; emphasis in the original.
Vol. 28. Nos. 3-4 (1996)
S9
In our conference and in this book we demonstrate that the thesis of the earlier conference-that as Asian states 'progress', they will increasingly be secularized-has not been borne out in practice. On the contnuy, as these states have modernized, religion has become more, not less, significant. 4 This statement is clearly true, and we can be grateful to all the contributors for bringing the situation in various lands to our attention. But problems arise when the editors attempt to explain the continued vitality of religion: "The varieties of Asian reli gious experience considered in this book all relate to a 'modem' crisis of authority" (p. 3). They concede in passing that "religious challenges to the authority of the past are not distinctively modem phenomena" (ibid.), but insist that recent Asian devel opments result from "modernity," which they carefully define:
It is the experience of having a problematic relationship with the past, of being alienated from traditional certainties..., of being of fered and often pressured to accept an identity with one particular version of one's heritage rather than another that constitutes what we term the modem crisis of authority....The crisis has become particularly acute in the late twentieth century. (pp. 4, 6)
Ironically, Comaroff'sEpilogue (to be discussed more fully below) denounces this idea of "modernity as the alienation from traditional certainties," calling it a "myth" of modernity that we need to rethink (p. 303). Nonetheless, the editors, and some contributors, generally equate signs of religious vitality and change with "religious questioning of the social order" (p. 1), which they then equate with a challenge to political authority. That interpretation may strike historians and religion scholars as dubious. But to the editors it seems to be not only a logical possibility, but an inevitability. It is upon this issue, and the
4. See p. 3. Note that the 1963 conference included South Asia but not East Asia, while the present volume does the opposite. The editors do not adequately address the significance ofthat fact. One might imagine that one could better evaluate religion in Indonesia and Malaysia by a comparison with South Asian nations than with China or Japan. Another problem is that the editors present this book as a groundbreaking study, although there have been several analogous collections: Bardwell Sllllth, 00., Religion and Social Conflict in South Asia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976); Carlo Caldarola, ed., Religions and Societies: Asia and the Middle East (Berlin: Moulton Publishers, 1982); Emile Sahliyeh, ed., Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990); and Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupa, eds., Secularization and Fundamentalism Reconsidered (NewYork: Paragon House, 1989). Most specifically, one wonders how-if at all-the putative Asian crisis of authority differs from crises in other regions today-especially formerly colonialized regions of Africa and Latin America. And in the former Soviet nations-never "co1onialized" in the traditional sense-one also sees problems ofethnic identity and political authority as "modernization" occurs and ''nations'' are created See most recently John Anderson,Religion, State, andPolitics in the Soviet Union and Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), and Michael Bourdeaux, ed., TIw Politics ofReligion in Russia and the New States ofEurasia (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sluupe, 1995). Readers interested in the broader questions will need to tum to other pUblications, such as Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? (see above, note 1), and Said Amir Atjomand, ed., The Political Dimensions ofReligion (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1993). Atjomand's essay "Religion and the Diversity of Normative Orders" will be of great interest to readers of the present volume.
editors' lack of self-awareness concerning their assumptions about "modernity," that I will focus here. It should first be noted that the term modem is used in this book to mean what most of us would term contemporary: the papers focus primarily on the 1980s. There are only scattered references to earlier times, usually couched in such broad terms as "Confucian society" or "the colonial era." The reason is apparent: of the thirteen contributors, ten (including the senior editor) are anthropologists. (Two scholars of religion and a lone political scientist round out the field.) Much of the volume thus exhibits a temporal myopia born of a methodologically dubious extension of the ethnographical perspective. Ethnographers tra ditionally concerned themselves with living subjects in societies that had little or no written history. When an ethnographer wanted to study, say, the Trobriand islanders, he/she went there to observe; there were no indigenous textual sources, and no native historians, much less social scientists, from whom to learn. Though many anthropolOgIsts today do work in histori cally informed ways, the editors of the present volume did not consider the broader history of the societies in question.~ Though hundreds of historians have studied pertinent topics (and in East Asia that study includes a long indigenous tradition), these editors generally do not just ignore history, but act as if it were irrelevent for understanding Asia today. The results are profound. Writers may struggle to find "reasons" for the current state of affairs in a given society never realizing that the lines might become clearer if they considered "pre-modem" parallels and long-term historical patterns. Let us consider, for instance, the presence of "religious minorities" in China today, the topic of Gladney's article. Have there ever before been such minorities? Well, how about the Buddhists of the Han and Six Dynasties period? The interplay of religion, state, and society in that context has been well studied, and if the issue is how Chinese people and the Chinese state struggle to define "Chineseness," the Buddhist example should shed some light upon contemporary events, and vice versa. But this volume contends that what occurs in a post-1970 Asian society is inevi tably the result of "new" factors that did not-indeed could not -exist in earlier periods. That assumption is debatable. Chinese minorities today force the Han to struggle with the issue of "Chineseness," but the same has been true for 3000 years. 6 Let us return to the editors' defmition of the "modern crisis of authority" in Asia: "It is the experience of having a problem atic relationship with the past, ofbeing alienated from traditional certainties ... of being... pressured to accept an identity with one particular version of one's heritage...." Question: In what regard does this situation differ from the situation in China 2200 years ago, when Qin Shi huangdi eradicated most of the pre-existing social, political, economic, and cultural traditions? He endeav
5. The scholarly "discourses" that peremptorily dismiss historical reali ties are not always so egregious: Cultural Encounters on China sEthnic Frontiers, ed S~yan Harrell. (Seattle and London: University of Wash ington Press, 1995) also focuses on contemporary realities, and its contributors are again virtually all anthropologists, but they give more consideration to historical realities. 6. A beginning point for the consideration of such issues is H. G. Creel, The Origins ofStatecraft in China. Vol. 1, The Western Chou Empire (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), chapter 9, "The Barbarians" (pp. 194-241).
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ored, quite successfully, to destroy previous "certainties"-es pecially "traditional conceptions of the moral basis of the social order"-and pressured the inhabitants of all the subjugated lands to accept a new identity, not merely as subjects of Qin, but as subjects of an unprecedented new type of social and political order, a new "nation." The editors argue that "the modem crisis of authority ... is a consequence of the efforts by Asian rulers to reshape political orders in the mold of the nation-state .... AI though the models varied, all entailed the establishment of po litical orders under strong central governments administered by trained officials ... who followed what were by Western measures rationalized laws and regulations" (p. 4). But such a "molding of a nation-state" sounds very much like what Qin Shi huangdi did: there had never before been a strong central government in what we now call "China," and the "Legalists" had long pressed for precisely such a government, run by functionaries who followed "rationalized laws and regulations." 7 Keyes and his colleagues also assert that in twentieth-cen tury Asia, "The modem state was-and this was probably the most innovative characteristic for those Asian countries-to represent and promote the interests of a 'nation,' a 'people' " (ibid.). But again, Qin Shi huangdi did something quite analo gous: instead of permitting people to conceive of themselves as people of Qi or people of Chu, he labored-again, quite success fully-to homogenize the populations ofthose lands. He not only instituted new "national" standards (in government, commerce, and script), but strung together the protective walls of the north erly states to construct the "Great Wall," which both locked his subjects in and defined them all as subjects of a new social and political order-"China." The Qin empire even seems to compare with Asian nations today in terms of "resistance" and "religious resurgence." Keyes et a1. say: "By seeking to regulate, control, or even suppress religious practices, states have stimulated people to look to religion for authority in criticizing, resisting, and challenging those who control state power" (p. 15). Qin Shi huangdi did attempt to control religion, but the rebel who eventually sup planted his regime sought authority on the basis of a claim to the "spiritual efficacy of Heaven." 8 Indeed, the eminent historian Michael Loewe writes of the "crisis" of early Han times as the conflict between the "Modernists [who] derived their tradition from Ch'in [Qin]" and the "Reformists" who "barked back to a tradition which they traced to the kings and ethical ideas of Chou [Zhou]... and...worshipped Heaven, as the kings of Chou had done before them." 9 All these factors seem worthy of analysis when postulating a "crisis of authority" in Asia today. Issues of "religion and authority" were not only present in earlier ages, but were at times a clear indicator of how changing social realities posed problems for governments, and vice versa. Are the dynamics of that
process in Qin or Han China, or in Yamato or Heian Japan, inherently different from the dynamics of the process in the late twentieth century? This book not only fails to address that question, but it leads the uninformed reader to imagine that such questions are unworthy of asking. Jean Comaroff's comments appear inconspicuously at the end of the book. Ironically, her cogent observations serve as an indictment of the interpretive failures of the book's editors. Comaroff notes that in recent years many scholars of various disciplines, have become intensely self-critical and increasingly aware of our methodological and theoretical preconceptions; others, however, have not, and still work with antiquated con ceptual frameworks. The editors of the present book seem un aware of these issues, for they express amazement (notably in their thesis statement) when elements of an outdated conceptual framework turn out to be inadequate. In this sense, the book constitutes both a contribution to the sociology of religion and an indictment of it. Comaroff, unlike the editors, seems to appreciate that irony. For instance, she astutely observes that "our scholarly sense of 'religion' is a function of the modernity [that] we [ought to] seek to analyze" (p. 302). In particular, the "discourse of social science," and its traditional assumptions about "religion" and "secularity," is itself the product of a spe cific Western intellectual heritage, which privileges the latter both as "rational" and as "modern." Comaroff argues persua sively that such traditional assumptions of the social sciences "must be the subject, not the terms, of scholarly analysis ... " (p. 301). Yet the editors cling stubbornly-and in light of Coma roff's internal critique, inexplicably-to what Comaroff calls the modernistic fallacy that "modernity [is] a sociohistorical break, [thereby] reifying its opposition to 'tradition'." (p. 303) This book's theme, according to the editors, is that religion in Asia today is not doing what we thought that it would be doing, i.e., succumbing to the inevitable march of modem secularism. But
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7. See for instance H. G. Creel, Shen Pu-Hai: A Chinese Political Philosopher ofthe Fourlh Century B.C. (Chicago and London: Univer sity of Chicago Press, 1974). 8. See Homer H. Dubs, trans., The History ofthe Former Han Dynasty (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1938), I, p. 131. 9. Michael Loewe, Crisis and Conflict in Han China (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974), p. 11.
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Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
61
that thesis demonstrates a lack of self-awareness about modernist assumptions that is common even among otherwise fine schol ars. The editors show little awareness of some of the fundamen tal issues in the study of religion, specifically the issue of overcoming colonialistic assumptions. When, for instance, an ethnographer entered the Trobriand village, he/she was expected to become an instant expert on every aspect of an alien society: politics, religion, economics. Yet, he/she may have had little or no real training in the theoretical issues involved in the study of such subjects. The logical course for the editors here would have been to enlist the participation of scholars who specialize in the cross-cultural study of religion, and to have relied upon their theoretical expertise. Regrettably, they did not: although a few religion scholars were involved, their participation in shaping the overall project appears to have been negligible. Anned with colonialistic assumptions, un-self-conscious social scientists here posed as the proper definers of both subject matter and modes of investigation and presumed upon their own interpretive expertise to resolve a problem that, as Comaroff shows, is inherent not to the subject matter but rather to the interpreters' own paradig matic assumptions. Comaroff notes, for instance, that until"quite recently" the sociology of religion, especially as practiced by anthropologists, "was resolutely Durkheimian," and that ritual "was fetishized in this scheme." In fact, anthropologists, she notes, often use the term ritual "as a loose synonym for religion itself' (p. 312; ironically, she herself is no exception). Of course, when we consider the ethnographer's traditional methodology, such would naturally be the case: "ritual" equals "religion" because there is an inherent bias in favor of what is taking place in front of the observer's eyes. And traditionally, he/she would then ask the participants to explain what they were doing and why, and would duly report the response, though generally not as a valid expla nation of the act. It is that fact, an un-self-conscious devaluing of the indigenous culture's interpretive categories, that is deeply colonialistic. During the colonial period, Westerners invaded the lands of other peoples, exploited and controlled them, suppressed indigenous traditions, and justified their actions as those of an enlightened, superior culture. In most cases, the conqueror also indulged in various forms of "intellectual colonialism." That is, he engaged in a one-sided intellectual activity: convinced of his own cultural superiority, he undertook to "explain" the cultures that he had conquered, ignoring the indigenous people's expla nations of their own lives and cultural traditions. Just as the colonial authorities could ignore the wishes ofthe subject people, intellectual colonialism presumptuously ignores indigenous ex planatory frameworks, dismissing them as the fatuous imagin ings of "primitive" and "unenlightened" minds. So the colonial istic interpreter imposes instead a framework that suits his own sensibilities. For instance, when studying natives' religion, an thropologists would often define the "meaning" of a ritual as
lying not, e.g., in a transcendence of the moment (as participants themselves might say), but rather in the social dynamics of the group. But if the participants can easily explain the "meaning" of their own ritual, by what right can an alien interpreter simply dismiss that explanation? Today, such assumptions strike many of us as relics of a paternalistic colonial era.
Just as the colonial authorities could ignore the wishes ofthe subject people, intellectual colonialism presump tuouslJ! ignores indigenous explanatory frameworks, dismissing them as the fatuous imaginings of "primi tive" and "unenlightened" minds.
Let me give one example of how imposing explanations can hamper true understanding. In his article on Muslim education in East Java, Robert Hefner maintains that premodern East Asian societies did what Europe and the Middle East could not do-re sist the challenge of the world religions. 10 They did so, he argues, because of "the influence of high ethnicity on popular iden tity.... high ethnicity was a form of 'imagined community' .... In East Asia the cultural influence of high ethnicity was so strong that it made conversion to a foreign religion tantamount to the repudiation of one's ethnicity" (p. 76). But if Hefner were right, there should be no Buddhists in East Asia. Clearly, the situation is much more complicated than he implies. It seems quite true that participation in a religious tradition involves the individual in "a form of 'imagined community'," but Hefner is incorrect that such an imagined community is necessarily distinct from much less at odds with-the natural community. Throughout history, men and women across the globe have been immensely creative at blending the two, and at fashioning rationalizations on the basis of which any perceived discrepancy between the religious reality and the local reality can be thoroughly "ex plained away." In any society, the "imagined community" of a religion involves two important elements: ideas about life and a tradition (a "history"). Religion involves the individual in living out the tradition's ideas about life. Insofar as others share those ideas they all share in the religious community, which inherently involves them in-something that transcends local identity. Relig ious activity is never just a matter of what people do in the present: it involves-some might say that it consists in-inter preting the present in order to understand it within a realm of meaning that transcends past and present. That dimension of religion is seldom discernible in this book. What is missing is an awareness of the aspects of religion that are real to the participants but not visible to visitors from another culture, aspects that may be difficult for such visitors even to recognize, much less understand. I refer here most specifically to what is generally called "myth"-the set of ideas
10. "It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity were all effectively domesticated or marginalized within these premodern societies" (p. 76). I confess that I don't see how the domestication of Buddhism in East Asia constitutes "resistance," as Hefner asserts, or why domestication and marginalization are effec tively equated here, when they actually seem to be opposites.
~ 1. Similarly, ~ho1ars often consider themselves members of an imag med. commuruty-"the scholarly community" (called "academia" by oUtslders}-as well as, or lllStead of, members of the local community in which they live and work. 12. Of course, the concept of a "scientific" study of humanity has its own long and complex history, of which the practitioner is generally unconscious, as Comaroff indicates.
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in telTIlS of which people explain their lives to themselves and to each other. In my usage, the telTIl "myth" is simply shorthand for "the believer's axiomatic assumptions about the true meaning of life." In this broad sense, it is thus a function not of "religion" per se, but of culture itself-including the culture of "scholars." In traditional societies-and, though seldom noticed, in modem society as well-it is the story, the "myth," that constitutes the reality of life, that both constitutes the "imagined community" and identifies it with what the outside observer might call the "real community." 11 The study of religion involves the study of such "myths," particularly a culture's traditional explanations of the meaning oflife's structure and events. Butto understand such matters, one must eschew colonial attitudes, and traditionally, many social scientists were uncomfortable doing so: in coloni alistic fashion, the un-self-conscious social scientist paternalis tically assumed his subjects to be not only ignorant of the true realities of their lives, but actually incapable of understanding those realities. According to this story, only the outsider who is trained in the modem West as a "social scientist" can truly understand those realities. Consequently, an un-self-critical so cial scientist can be hampered in achieving an accurate under standing of religion by herlhis own self-defmition as a "scien tist." 12 The "scientist," we were told in the colonial days of the nineteenth century, doesn't deal with anything that is "unreal," i.e., that is not susceptible to empirical observation. But other
cultures generally did not assume such a materialistic definition of "reality," and that is most clearly the case when "religion" is concerned. Un-self-critical scholars often fall victim to the colo nialistic imposition ofmodernistic definitions, such as by assum ing that "modernity" equals "secularity." The fact that the reali ties of Asia today disprove that equation-as the studies in this volun1e show-should challenge us not just to ask what is going on in Asia today, but also to re-examine our common assump tions about how we study non-Western societies. Is there actually a "crisis of authority" today in East and Southeast Asia? Perhaps so. But Comaroff is right to challenge us to beware unexamined "stereotypes," such as that of"moder nity as the alienation from traditional certainties." Crises of authority occurred in pre-modern Asia as well, in ways that sometimes resembled the "modernizing" and "nation-building" efforts of post-war Asia. We would certainly expect the contem porary crises to be distinct in some regards from those of earlier ages. But we moderns must beware the myth that we somehow attained a higher, clearer, truer perspective than "others," espe cially those whom we study. To privilege ourselves as "objec tive" interpreters of other cultures is to risk imposing our own myths upon them, thereby distorting their realities. The present book stimulates us to re-examine our methodological premises.
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Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
63
Southeast Asian Trajectories: Eurocentrism and the History or the Modern Nation-State
D. R. SarDesai. Southeast Asia: Past and Present Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. 3d. ed. First pub lished 1989. xii + 379 pp. by Mark T. Berger
In the aftennath of World War II, the number of nation states worldwide expanded dramatically. Over the course of approximately two decades colonial boundaries, sometimes the result of centuries of custom, became national boundaries. State power was transferred to, or eventually seized by, nationalist elites and movements throughout much of Asia and Africa and later Oceania. The international recognition of these fonner colonies and their incorporation into the international system epitomized by the United Nations conferred legitimacy on na tionalist leaders and on the territorial boundaries of the new nations. I Decolonization and the expansion of the nation-state system were key trends in the post-1945 era. Equally crucial was the emergence of the United States as the dominant international economic and politico-military power. The United States was driven forward by an unprecedented economic boom and by an increasingly assertive anticommunist globalism directed at the Soviet Union and its satellites or allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Connected to the onset ofthe cold war was the growth and professionalization of area studies. It was against this back ground that Asian studies was consolidated as a discrete field of knowledge production. 2 In the 1950s an academic division of labor emerged within the North America-centered Asian studies profession-one that Mark Berger is history/politics lecturer in Asian Studies and Programme Chair of Development Studies at Murdoch University. He is senior editor of The Rise ofEast Asia: Critical Visions ofthe Pacific Century (New York: Routledge, 1997). His overall research interests include theories ofhistory and comparative history, comparative political econ omy, international relations and theories of development and social change, with a geographical focus on Northeast and Southeast Asia, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Americas. The author would like to thank Anne Marie Medcalf (Asian Studies, Murdoch University), who made a number of useful comments on an earlier version ofthis article. Any errors of fact or interpretation are the responsibility of the author. l. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Rela tions, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 2. The main North American-based professional organization for the study of Asia came into existence in the late 1940s as the Far Eastern Association-around the Far Eastern Quarterly, which first appeared in 1941. The Far Eastern Association became the Association for Asian Studies in 1958. Although the Asian Studies profession emerged as a result of, and tended to complement, the cold war policies of the United States, a number of individual Asian studies specialists were treated badly by the U.S. government in the early cold war era. In the 1950s the reputation of the Institute for Pacific Relations, which provided an early institutional focus for Asian experts, suffered irreparable damage after
increasingly set the study of Southeast Asia apart from the production of knowledge about other parts of Asia. This trend was given added impetus by the fonnation in 1954 of the South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), which was part of the expansion and consolidation of a wider u.S.-centered cold war alliance system in Asia. In the 1960s the emergence of a growing number of Southeast Asian specialists and an increase in univer sity-level courses on various aspects of Southeast Asia meshed with the onset of the Vietnam War, the establishment of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967, and the growing perception of the region as an important zone of the cold war. Southeast Asian studies specifically, and Asian studies more generally, was shaped by the U.S.-led effort to contain communism and ensure that as many of the new nations in Southeast Asia as possible remained part of a wider system of democratic capitalist modernity centered on North America and Western Europe. 3 It was in the context of the cold war that the use of an idealized version of North American and Western European history as the model by which the rest of the world was measured was secularized and systematized around a growing concern with modernization. This exercised a profound influ ence on the rise and transfonnation of Asian studies. 4 The resil ience of various fonns of modernization theory, along with the liberal structures ofthe North American university system, have acted to ensure that the dominant discourses in Southeast Asian studies specifically, or Asian studies more generally, continue to generate narratives that evaluate the various nations of Southeast Asia in tenns of their progress towards a relatively universal form of capitalist democratic modernity.' In the 1990s, the end of the cold war and the reading of the demise of state-socialism in Eurasia as a victory for the fonn of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee concluded that the organi zation had been instrumental in the so-called loss ofChina. The tensions swrounding the debate over the loss of China, and the Institute for Pacific Relations controversy, complicated the emergence oftheAsso ciation for Asian Studies in the 1950s. For example, John King Fair bank, who was a major figure in the operations ofthe Office ofStrategic Services during the Second World War and in the institutionalization of Asian studies in North America before and after 1945, had come under scrutiny in the McCarthy years and did not have a particularly good relationship with the State Department until the 1960s. In the early 1950s Fairbank's services as a State Department consultant were dis continued, and he was refused entry into Japan in 1951. See Paul M Evans, John FairlJank and the American Understanding ofModem China (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 64, 206-213. See also John N. Thomas, The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars and American Politics (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1974), and Robert P. Newman, Owen Lattimore and the "Loss" of China (Berke ley: University ofCalifomia Press, 1992). 3. The relative acquiescence to, if not wholehearted support for, the imperatives of the cold war on the part of the majority of the members of the Asian studies profession was readily apparent in the 1960s and early 1970s at the height of the Vietnam War. In the Vietnam era, the Association for Asian Studies, which boasted a membership of almost 5,000 academics in 1970, adopted a relatively detached majority stance on the war in Southeast Asia. Theodore De Bary's presidential address to the Association for Asian Studies at the end of the 1960s called for a position on the war that was "nonpolitical but not unconcerned." See William Theodore De Bary, ''The Association for Asian Studies: Non political but Not Unconcerned," Journal ofAsian Studies 29, no. 4 (1970). The active academic opposition to the war was left to the much
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capitalist democracy most closely associated with the United States provide the overall context in which English-language works of Southeast Asian history continue to be produced. At the same time, although Southeast Asian studies generally, and the study of Southeast Asian history more particularly, are now well established, the end of the cold war has undermined the coherence of Southeast Asian studies, even as it has taken on the "appearance of normalcy." 6 In Southeast Asian studies, and Asian studies generally, new forces are at work reshaping the production of knowledge about Asia. Geo-political concerns continue to provide direct stimulation for some types of research and teaching and an indirect framework for others, but the growing importance of geo-economics, the trend towards glo balization, and a complicated process of elite integration in the Asia-Pacific region are now central to the reorientation of Asian studies. 7 At the same time, as Laurie 1. Sears has argued with regard to Southeast Asian studies specifically, the emergent post-colonial critique of the relationship between power and knowledge has combined with the end of the cold war to produce "a vague suspicion" amongst Southeast Asian specialists "that the field we have been trying so hard to construct over the past fifty years may not exist." She notes that the study of Vietnam has been, and can be, incorporated into East Asian studies, while the Philippines has never meshed with the rest of Southeast Asia and is often more readily illuminated by reference to the history of Latin America. Although the initial unity of Southeast Asian studies may have flowed from decolonization and the cold war, the dramatic industrialization ofsome countries in the region, the smaller Conumttee ofConcemedAsian Scholars, which broke from the Association for Asian Studies in the late I 960s. See Douglas Allen, "Antiwar Asian Scholars and the VietnamlIndochina War," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 21, nos. 2-4 (1989). 4. While classical modernization theory was very much a product ofthe cold war, it also built in part on the concepts deployed by the colonial powers in their civilizing missions of the pre-I945 era See Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology. and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 402-418. 5. The dramatic capitalist success in Northeast Asia by the 1970s and in parts of Southeast Asia by the 1980s has also reinforced the overall trajectory of the Asian studies profession. Many ofthe most influential explanations for the origin and character of Northeast and now South east Asian capitalist dynamism continue to flow from liberal Anglo American discourses which represent the dramatic industrialization of the region as a vindication of, or at best a variation on, anAnglo-Ameri can model ofhistorical development. See, for example, The WorldBank, The EastAsianMiracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1993), pp. 347,366-368. For a critique of the way in which the histories of a variety of social fonnations in Asia continue to be read as belated versions of the rise of the West (or more particularly the rise of England and the United States of America), see Mario Rutten, Asian Capitalists in the European Mirror (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994). 6. Benedict R. Anderson, "The Changing Ecology of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States, 1950-1990" in Charles Hirschman, Charles F. Keyes and Karl Hutterer, eds.,SoutheastAsian Studies in the Balance: Reflections from America (Ann Arbor: The Association for Asian Studies, 1992), pp. 25, 38-39. 7. Mark T. Berger, "Power and Pedagogy in the Pacific Century: Post-Cold War Capitalism and the 'New' Political Economy of Asian
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increasing external significance of an industrializing China, and the growing importance of organizations such as ASEAN (which now includes Vietnam), have generated powerful unifying initia tives within Southeast Asia. 1 The study of Southeast Asia may have been born of the international power relations of the past fifty years, but governments and a variety of other actors in the region have now domesticated what began as externally imposed territorial and epistemological boundaries. 9 Despite the vicissitudes of regional and international poli tics, and related changes in Southeast Asian studies, most general texts, which are produced in English for use in college and university-level courses on Southeast Asian history, are still grounded in the dominant historiographical tradition that was consolidated during the cold war era. These texts provide us with a liberal elite-oriented narrative on the region's gradual and uneven, but apparently inexorable, modern democratic capitalist trajectory.10 The power of this approach to history is readily apparent in the latest edition of Southeast Asia: Past andPresent, by D. R. SarDesai, professor of history and chair of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. 11 This book provides considerable coverage for any reader seeking brief and descriptive coverage of the so-called main events of the modern history and politics of Southeast Asia, but it is of limited use to anyone who wants a book that will outline and clarify the major debates that have been central to the historical study of Southeast Asia for many years. These can be found in a wide range of more specialized and monograph literature. 1l The author eschews an approach that sees history as a "record of events," but his book is still very much a work of liberal empiricism that avoids direct engagement with a wide range of theoretical and/or historiographical questions that are specific to Southeast Asian studies or general to the historical profession. Its elite-oriented analysis accepts elite driven popular conceptions of the nation as-in Ben Anderson's words-"a deep, horizontal comradeship" regardless of "the actual inequal ity and exploitation that may prevail." 13 Nor does the book make any serious effort to engage with important debates about Euro centrism and history, falling back on a superficial conception of Eurocentrism, while using the dubious, albeit powerful, EastStudies," Australian Historical AssoCiation Bulletin, no. 81 (December 1995): 31-33. 8. Laurie J. Sears, ''TIle Contingency ofAutonomous History" in Laurie J. Sears, ed..,Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in Honor ofJohn R. W Smail (Madison: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993), pp. 3-4. 9. For example, there is the well-known Institute for Southeast Asi8n Studies in Singapore. 10. This approach is not exclusive to history texts. For example, CIarlc Neher argues that "U.S. aims" in Southeast Asia ''have been achieved" insofar as "[t]he area is dominated by economically vital, anti-Commu nistnations, and it shelters no adversarial superpowerthat threatens U.S. interests." At the same time, "[w]ith varying success, the ASEAN nations have moved toward democratic rule" and "rather than falling as dominoes" most of "the ASEAN countries are dynamic models for successful development" Clark D. Neher, Southeast Asia in the New International Era (Boulder: Westview Press, second edition 1994; fIrst published 1991),pp. 245-246. 11. D. R. SarDesai, Southeast Asia: Past and Present (Boulder: West view Press, 1994. 3d. ed. First published 1989).
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West distinction as a means of explaining the different historiog raphical approaches to Southeast Asia.
Eurocentrism and the

Historical Trajectories of East and West
According to the publisher, Southeast Asia: Past and Pre sent is "a balanced, readable account of the region from ancient to modern times, covering traditional history as well as current events." It is argued that the author "avoids exaggerating (as others do) the importance of the period of European colonial rule" and "manages to convey an Asian point of view through out" (p. 359). Certainly SarDesai does not treat the history of Southeast Asia as entirely driven by the arrival and impact of European colonialism. At the outset he makes a sharp distinction between an Asian-centered approach to history and what he calls the "Eurocentric view" of Southeast Asian history. These are the two main approaches to the history of the region in his opinion (pp. xi, 59). If the standard of measurement is simply the amount of coverage given to Western versus Asian involvement and impact, then D. R. SarDesai's book is probably not Eurocentric. It can be argued, however, that this primarily empirical approach masks a much more deeply embedded Eurocentrism. And this points to the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of transcending the Eurocentrism of the historical profession generally. It is clear that Eurocentrism-defined as the implicit or explicit assump tion that the overall historical trajectory that is seen to be char acteristic of Western Europe and North America represents the model against which all peoples and social formations are to be evaluated and understood-is thoroughly entrenched in the con temporary historical profession both in, and well beyond, the English-speaking world. 14 It is also clear that, despite his chum that his book takes an Asia-centered view, SarDesai's work remains part of the wider tradition of liberal historiography that views the history of the nations of Southeast Asia and elsewhere in terms of their success at becoming, or their failure to become, modem capitalist democracies along Western lines. Southeast Asia: Past and Present clearly rests on the assumption that Southeast Asian history is primarily a story of how a growing number of nations in Southeast Asia have been able to take, or are moving towards taking, their place in the modem nation-state system, or as SarDesai calls it at one point, "the family of nations" (p. 272). The interpretive position taken in SarDesai 's book is clearly grounded in the practices of liberal Anglo-American historiog raphy, but it is also linked to academic and popular discourses
on Asia that rest on a powerful albeit dubious distinction between East and West and overlook the hybrid history of the region. 13 The continuing power of this kind of binary analysis is clearly linked to the way in which the national elites of the region speak, not only for their own nations, but for Asia and Asians. 16 Furthermore, so-called Westerners have often uncritically privileged elite voices in an effort to display cultural sensitivity. There are numerous instances of Western scholars who--intent on challenging North American and/or Western European he gemony, m both matenal and discurSIve terms-end up uncriti cally privileging the elite narratIves of power-holders in Asia as authentic representations of a particular nation or social forma tion.17 As Thongchai Winichakul has argued in relation to Thai land, the widespread concern on the part of academics and intellecmals to address the long history of Eurocentrism in so-called Western scholarship and to adopt a more culturally sensitive position has resulted in the acceptance of "the estab lished views of the Siamese elite as the legitimate discourse about Thailand." 18 This is apparent in SarDesai's book, which works to legitimate elite voices and interests, and melds the concerns and priorities of powerful minorities with the history of the nation as a whole. 19 This kind of approach fails to clarify the complex ways by which elites succeed in mobilizing the majority of the popUlation, nor does it explore the diverse proc esses of accommodation and resistance involved in the emer gence and consolidation of nations. 20
15. Significantly, the tenn hybrid fIrst gained currency in late nine teenth-centIlry Europe as a biological or physiological tenn for the offspring of parents of different "races." While the deployment of the concept ofhybridity serves to criticize fIxed conceptions of culture and ethnicity, given its own history, its very use also draws attention to the continued power ofracist categories and racialized political discourses in ordering knowledge about historical change. As Robert Young has noted, the current appropriation ofthe tenn by critical theory to proble matize fIxed notions of identity and continued assertions of cultural/ra cial purity suggests that contemporary critical theory may not have transcended the racial concepts ofan earlier era as much as it is assumed attimes. Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 6, 10,27-28. 16. Mahathir Mohamad and Shintaro Ishihara, The Voice ofAsia: Two Leaders Discuss the Coming Century (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1995). For a critique see Mark T. Berger, "Yellow Mythologies: The East Asian Miracle and Post-Cold War Capitalism," positions: east asia cultures cntique 4, no. 1 (1996). 17. This is apparent, for example, in Donald G. McCloud's recent book on Southeast Asian politics. Although he rejects evaluating Southeast Asian trajectories by comparing them directly to the West, his analysis wolks to authorize elite voices in the region and legitimate their defIni tion oftradition confiating elite interests and concems with those of the nation. Donald G. McCloud, Southeast Asia: Tradition and Modernity in the Contemporary World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995). 18. Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History ofthe Geo-Body ofa Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), p. 7. 19. The now classic critique ofelite nationalist historiography is Ranajit Guha, ''On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India," in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Cha1cravorty Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988),pp. 37-44. See also Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making ofPostcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1995), pp. 1-20.
12. For a brief introduction to some of these wider debates in relation to Southeast Asian history see Laurie J. Sears, "The Contingency of Autonomous History," in Sears, ed.,Autonomous Histories, Parlicular Truths (1993), pp. 3-6,9-14,18-19. See note 8 above. 13. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread ofNationalism (London: Verso, second revised and extended edition 1992; fIrst published 1983), pp. 3-7. 14. Alex Callinicos, Theories and Narratives: Reflections on the Phi losophy ofHistory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p. 165. See also Samir Amin, Eurocentrism (London: Zed, 1989; flISt published in French as L 'eurocentrisme: Critique d 'un ideologie, 1988), pp. 106 108; Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 2-3; and Jack Goody, The East in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
66
Colonialism and Modernization

SarDesai's position within the wider ambit of elite-oriented liberal historiography and his superficial conception ofEurocen trism are apparent in his treatment of colonialism and the process of modernization as it relates to Southeast Asian history. He notes that-apart from Georges Coedes, D. G. E. Hall, and John F. Cady-the majority of general histories of Southeast Asia "have given undue emphasis" to the colonial period (p. xi.). 21 While, as we have seen, SarDesai eschews the "Eurocentric view," he also emphasizes that "Ct)here is no denying that most of the present-day economic, communications, and educational patterns of the region's independent states owe much to the colonial period." He argues that, "while focusing on the activities of the indigenous people," there is a need to regard the colonial period as more than just an "interlude" (pp. xi, 59). In his clearest statement on the significance of the colonial period, he argues
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20. A key point of departure for conceptualizing accommodation and resistance in Southeast Asia is, of course, the work of James Scott. In the influential book he produced in the mid-l 980s, Scott sought, among other things, to rethink the relationship between class and culture, infusing the former with the historical partiCUlarity which is central to any discussion of consciousness generally and class or subaltern con sciousness more particularly. He also sought to shift the focus ofanalysis away from violent revolution towards "everyday fonns of resistance." See James C. Scott, Weapons o/the Weak: Everyday Forms o/Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) and James C. Scott, Domination and the Am o/Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). Scott's work is now at the center of a wider debate about resistance and accommodation within and beyond Southeast Asia. Recent critics have emphasized that, in an effort to challenge the privileging of violent revolution as the main manifes tation of peasant resistance, Scott has turned resistance into a protean concept that treats all manner of actions on the part of subalterns as resistance, regardless ofwhether they themselves perceive their actions and ideas as resistance. Critics also argue that domination and oppres sion can generate accommodation mther than resistance. Finally, it is charged that, while Scott's analysis is important for its emphasis on the local and the quotidian, it slights the relative commonality of violent uprisings and the role of international events and tmns-national idiom in peasant consciousness and action. See Jennifer W. Nourse, "Official Rhetoric, Popular Response: Dialogue and Resistance in Indonesia and the Philippines," Social Analysis: Journal o/Cultural and Social Prac tice 35 (1994): 3-4, and Thomas Gibson, "Ritual and Revolution: Contesting the State in Central Indonesia," Social Analysis: Journal 0/ Cultural and Social Practice, no. 35 (1994): 62-63,79-80. More gen emIly see Mark T. Berger, "Post-Cold War Capitalism: Modernization and Modes ofResistance after the Fall," Third World Quarterly: J oumal o/Emerging Areas 16, no. 4 (1995). 21. D. G. E. Hall, A History o/South-East Asia (London: Macmillan, 1981. 4th ed. First published 1955); John F. Cady, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964); Georges Coedes, The Making 0/ South East Asia, tmnslated by H. M. Wright (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). For works of modem Southeast Asian history that focus on the colonial period see D. 1. M. Tate, The Making 0/ Modem South-east Asia, Vol. 1: The European Conquest (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971); D. J. M. Tate, The Making 0/ Modem South-east Asia, Vol. 2: The Western Impact, Economic and Social Change (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford Univer sity Press, 1971); John Bastin and Harry 1. Benda, A History o/Modern Southeast Asia (Prentice-Hall, 1977. 2d ed.); and Milton E. Osborne, Southeast Asia: An Introductory History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995. 6th ed.).
that "[t]he impact of colonial rule on the people varied from the unashamedly exploitative to the benign and benevolent. It gen erated forces of industrialization, urbanization, modernization, intellectual ferment, and political ambition that inspired at least a small elite in each colony to abandon part of the traditional trappings and step into the modem age" (p. 131). He distinguishes between the "pre-modem or traditional" period in Southeast Asian history, which extends up to the beginning of the nineteenth century and the modem period from 1800 to the present, which links the rise of formal colonial rule throughout the region with the onset of modernization (p. 76). He also views the rise of the middle class as an important and unproblematic element in the emergence of a modem democratic nation, lamenting at one point the failure of a "healthy middle class" to appear in the Philippines during the U. S. colonial period (p. 152). SarDesai's analysis can be clearly located within various revisionist trends in modernization theory. The classical modern ization paradigm focused on the need for cultural transformation in order to achieve modernity. In the post-1945 period the domi nant Asian studies discourses were organized around a perceived dichotomy between modem societies and their traditional fore runners. In classic modernization theory considerable emphasis was placed on the progressive influence of emerging middle classes, or middle sectors. The failure to modernize was attrib uted to feudal elites concerned with retaining their position in traditional agrarian socio-economic structures and to primordial loyalties and obligations. It was hoped, if not confidently ex pected, that primordial sentiments would fade and new loyalties to the modem nation would become the central, if not the only, aspect of every citizen's identity and consciousness. By the 1960s, however, proponents of modernization theory were argu ing that historical change was not simply about the transition from tradition to modernity, but rather about the modernization and adaptation of tradition. All modem societies, they main tained, were a mix of traditional and modem. Revisionist trends in modernization theory displayed less optimism about the rise of a middle class and the emergence of modem national con sciousness. Although a majority of Asian specialists continue to regard economic and social change in liberal terms as an evolu tionary process, the tendency is now to underline the resiliency of tradition, at the same time as it is assumed that a middle class will or should eventually emerge (and will playa progressive political function when it does) and that elite conceptions of the nation have been, or will become, a primary source of identity for the majority ofthe population. It is within this wider approach that SarDesai can be 10cated. 22
Nationalism and Pod-Colonialism

SarDesai makes no attempt to engage with the important debates of the past fifteen years about nationalism and the
22. D. R. SarDesai's analysis, which still focuses on the modernizing impact of colonialism as a crucial element in modem Southeast Asian history, differs somewhat from that laid out in one of the most well known, and certainly the most thorough and sophisticated, general works of Southeast Asian history. In their book, In Search o/Southeast Asia, David Steinberg and his co-authors have rejected many elements of the modernization-oriented approaches. In their view these perspec tives continue to exaggerate the role of colonialism in the changing
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
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process whereby the colonial empires of Southeast Asia became nation-states. He defines nationalism as a "conscious sentiment of kinship" encouraged by "common characteristics like lan guage, tenitory, religion, race and heritage." He notes, however, that "the commonality of these factors is not always a necessary prerequisite of nationalism" (p. 135). In answering the question as to whether or not "nationalism was an entirely new force among the Southeast Asian peoples" he argues that there is plenty of evidence of what he calls "'nationalist' sentiment" going back over many years. At the same time he takes the view that, although the "memory" of "historical resistance and rival ries is a potent factor in fostering nationalism, such premodern movements must be distinguished from the twentieth century phenomena largely by their aims and goals" (p. 136). It can be argued, however, that this kind of approach presumes far too much continuity between twentieth century nationalism and the earlier resistance movements and dynastic and ethnic rivalries of the region. Twentieth-century nationalism is not just earlier "nationalist sentiment" with new goals added. This formulation overlooks or downplays the profound and ongoing processes of transformation that characterized the dynamic shift to colonial ism and then to decolonization. Furthermore, although his early coverage of regional mi gration patterns and his later discussion of nationalism challenge fixed conceptions of ethno-national identity, SarDesai still de ploys fixed and essentialized formulations as a means of explain ing the actions offar from homogeneous national categories. For example, he argues that as a result oftheir longstanding "conflict social formations of Southeast Asia. They argue for an interpretation that emphasizes the domestication of external forces to local institutions and practices. Speaking of external influences in both the colonial and post-colonial era they argue that "[t]his process of change, which continues unabated, can be dated from the middle of the eighteenth century, when Europeans in the region first had the power and inclina tion to impose on others their technical skills and new world view. The strong Western components of this process however, have worked partiaJly to obscure the nature ofSoutheast Asian history, because many historians have interested themselves primarily in external stimuli, to the detriment of the study of indigenous institutions. By thereby elevat ing foreigners beyond their position as actors on a common Southeast Asian stage, Southeast Asians have been reduced to roles as mere bit players, too weak to do more than reflect the brilliance of other civili zations. Southeast Asia faced similar chaJlenges in earlier eras; indeed it has perhaps interacted with a greater variety of external cultures for a longer period than has any other area of the world. From the vantage point of Southeast Asians, therefore, what is important in the history of the past two centuries is less the 'modernization' or 'we~ternization' others imposed on them than it is the process of acculturation through which their societies adjusted to their changing environment and cir cumstances" (David Joel Steinberg et ai., In Search ofSoutheast Asia: A Modem History [Sydney: AJlen and Unwin, 1987], p. 1). Such an approach chaJIenges the claims of most modernization theorists, and contradicts the analysis offered by D. R. SarDesai, who sees colonialism as the driving force of a universal process of modernization that has produced, or will eventually produce, a series ofmodern national social formations in Southeast Asia. The point made by Steinberg and his co-authors is important. However, it can be argued that their perspective conjures up an excessive degree of cultural continuity and their analysis works to cotlflate the activities of the elite with the nation. Steinberg and the other authors of In Search ofSoutheast Asia can stiJl be located in the liberal elite-oriented historiographical tradition of which D. R. SarDesai's book is also a part.
with the neighbor to the north" (China), "the Vietnamese have developed into one of the most determined, persistent, and tenacious people anywhere" (p. 34). He cites as evidence the presence of "the Vietnamese spirit of nationalism" in the fif teenth century (p. 38 and p. 173). Elsewhere he characterizes the Thais as "traditionally a freedom-loving people" (p. 49). He sees a clear manifestation of"national consciousness" in various parts of Thailand by the mid-eighteenth century (p. 72). This treatment of nationalism reinforces primordial conceptions of the particu lar ethno-tenitorial configurations that are characteristic of con temporary Southeast Asia.23 Although he views the colonial impact as important, SarDe sai also draws a relatively sharp distinction between the colonial period and the national period, in contrast to a growing number of perspectives that flow from debates about post-colonialism. Colonialism provided the overall framework for the rise of nationalism. This has meant that the ability of the new nations to transcend their colonial history has often been more circum scribed than was initially anticipated or is currently still as serted.24 Nicholas Dirk has emphasized that while nationalism represented "the single most important site of resistance to colonialism" it also "provides the most salient demonstration of the power of colonialism to reproduce itself, spawning myriad clones in new nations throughout the post-colonial world." 2S In the context of a series of complex and variegated colonial em pires that had been built up in Southeast Asia by the late nine teenth and early twentieth century, modem nationalism emerged between the tum ofthe century and the 1940s as an elite discourse that sought (virtually everywhere except in Thailand) to mobilize the population around opposition to colonialism and the power of the colonial state. At the same time, the structures of the colonial state, which had been extended deep into society in the form of education, irrigation, agricultural improvements, hy giene, mineral exploitation and political surveillance, also pro vided the very politico-economic and socio-cultural framework within which anti-colonial nationalism emerged. At their "mo ment of arrival" (that is decolonization) nationalist movements turned the "state" into the embodiment of the national struggle and the latter's many contradictions and tensions were given a
23. For a corrective see David E. F. Henley, "Ethnogeographic Integra tion and Exclusion in Anti-Colonial Nationalism: Indonesia and Indo china," Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 2 (1995). 24. Partha ChatteIjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Press, 1986) and Partha ChatteIjee,
The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 25. In many ways "[c]olonialism is coming back to haunt 'new nations' where shifting identities and precarious polities are anchored against the modern by the reinvention of forms of tradition that too often clearly betray the traces of a colonial past" (Nicholas B. Dirks, "Introduction: Colonialism and Culture," in Nicholas B. Dirks, ed., Colonialism and Culture [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992], pp. 3-4, 7, 15,23-24). Or, in the words, of Gyan Prakash, the present historical juncture is "after colonialism." It is "a reinscriptive colonial aftennath, which arises neither inside nor outside colonial norms" (Gyan Prakash, "Introduction: After Colonialism," in Gyan Prakash, ed., After Coloni alism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995], p. 16).
68
Bulletin ofConcerned A sian Scholars
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unity by the new "nation-state" erected on the foundations of colonial power. 26

Southeast Asian Trajectories
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This review began with a brief attempt to chart the rise and transformation of Asian studies against the background of the cold war and the dawning of a post-cold war era. The more particular path taken by Southeast Asian studies, especially the study of Southeast Asian history, was highlighted as a way of contextualizing a number of problems that are characteristic of a range of English-language books on Southeast Asian history and politics written for the college and university textbook market. These problems were then discussed with particular reference to Southeast Asia: Past and Present by D. R. SarDesai, a recent and well-known general history of Southeast Asia. Despite attempts to down play the significance of the colonial period, and despite claims that his book reflects an Asian-cen tered rather than a "Eurocentric view," SarDesai's book does examine the countries of Southeast Asia as successful or unsuc cessful on-the-rise variations of Western Europe and North America. This book, like a great deal of other work within the Anglo-American historiographical tradition, does not transcend Eurocentrism in any meaningful fashion. However, as has al ready been suggested, bringing an end to Eurocentrism is an illusory project. The new and reconfigured culture(s) of global capitalism have all emerged in a fashion that has meant that they remain implicated in various forms of Eurocentrism. For this reason, even as the material and discursive power ofthe so-called west declines, Eurocentrism as a series ofpopular and academic assumptions and practices remains widespread. Individual and collective efforts to overcome Eurocentrism, like nationalist initiatives against colonialism, are contaminated from the outset
and can work as much to reinforce neo-traditional power rela tions as they can help in bringing. about a more thorough-going liberation from the West. 27 In many ways, as has been emphasized at various points in this review article, the most problematic aspect of the dominant Anglo-American discourses on modem Southeast Asia (as reflected in the general English-language texts of which SarDesai's book is representative) is not their failure to overcome Eurocentrism, but the way in which they continue to assume a commensurability between the interests of national elites and the majority of the peoples of the modern nation-states that have emerged in Southeast Asia.
*
CCAS Statement of Purpose
The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (BeAS) con tinues to be inspired by the original 1969 statement of purpose of its parent organization. the Committee of ConcemedAsianScholars (CCAS). The BCASboam thus decided in March 1993 that even though CCAS has not existed since 1979. the Bulletin should include the CCAS statement of purpose at least once a year:
26. The (re)tum to colonialism and the failure of the early nationalist promise is argued in the case ofIndonesiain Mark T. Berger, ''Post-Cold War Indonesia and the Revenge of History: The Colonial Legacy, Nationalist VISions and Global Capitalism," in Mark T. Berger and Douglas A. Borer, eds., The Rise ofEast Asia: Critical VISions ofthe Pacific Century (London: Routledge, forthcoming 1997). 27. Arif Dirlik, After the Revolution: Waking to Global Capitalism (London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994),pp. 51-52,96-97. Contrary to Dirlik, who argues for the impossibility of transcending Eurocen trism, Alex Callinicos argues that Eurocentrism can be overcome at the
We fIrst came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity of silence of our profession with regard to that policy. Those in the field ofAsian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their research and the political posture of their pro fession. We are concerned about the present unwill ingness of specialists to speak out against the impli cations of an Asian policy committed to ensuring American domination ofmuch ofAsia. We reject the legitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We recognize that the present structure of the profession has often perverted scholarship and alien ated many people in the fIeld. The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a humane and knowledgeable un derstanding of Asian societies and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confront such prob lems as poverty, oppression, and imperialism. We realize that to be students of other peoples, we must fIrst understand our relations to them. CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the pre vailing trends in scholarship on Asia, which too often spring from a parochial cultural perspective and serve selfish interests and expansionism. Our organization is designed to function as a catalyst, a communications network for both Asian and West ern scholars, a provider ofcentral resources for local chapters, and a community for the development of anti-imperialist research.
PUHd 28-30 March 1969, Boeton
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politico-ethicallevel by recognizing, and giving ''proper weight to, the crimes perpetrated during the establishment and maintenance ofWest em domination over the globe," and, then, by linking this politico-ethi cal shift to ''the conceptual decentring ofhistorical discourse" and ''the refusal to treatthe pattem ofdevelopmentassociated with any particular region or country as a model in terms of which happenings elsewhere are to be understood" At the same time, Callinicos's book is primarily a spirited defense of marxism. He makes clear that where marxism succeeded outside ofEurope, it did so as a result of a complex process of domestication that did not and could not eliminate its Eurocentric elements. (Dirlik's work on Chinese marxism also bears out this kind ofanalysis.) Furthennore, Callinicos ultimately adopts an interpretative position, which can still be characterized as Eurocentric, when he concludes that "now would be an odd moment to say farewell to the idea of universal emancipation, and the class that could still be its bearer" {Callinicos, Theories and Narratives [1995], pp. 169, 188-189, 202-203).See note 14 above.
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69
Reviews: EastINortheast Asia
the tension between the state and the collective institutions it created, seeking to establish hegemony over household and market in defming parameters of accumulation, production, con sumption, welfare, and mobility, and on the other side attempts by households and individuals to survive and flourish as autono He Baochuan. China on the Edge: The Crisis ofEcol mous economic and social units in the face of growing state ogy and Development. Translated by China Books power."IQuestions aboutthewaysinwhich China's developmental strategies have remade the Chinese enVIronment are not in and Periodicals. San Francisco: China Books and Selden's problematic. Indeed, he sees only two crises facing Periodicals, 1991. xvii + 208 pp. China: a profound loss of confidence m CommunIst leadership and a crisis of the reform economy. 2 He does not consider China's Vaclav Smil. China's Environmental Crisis: An envIronmental cnSlS at all. Inquiry into the Limits ofNational Development Other recent works on China's economy fail to make the Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. xix + 257 pp. connection between economic growth and environmental prob lems. Neither Riskin,3 Lippit,4 nor Rawski 5 mention environ mental conditions, either as context or consequence of economic by Robert B. Marks development. Thus if one wondered whether or not China faced any environmental problems, let alone crises, relative to its The storyline of China's late imperial and modem history development, one would not find much help in macro-analyses typically revolves around questions of economic development: of China's developmental story. Was China's economy in the late imperial period developing on Case studies of particular villages offer only a few exam its own? If so, what is the evidence? If not, why not? What impact ples of the ways in which economic deVelopment has created did imperialism have? What have been the developmental strate or ecological problems for villagers. Indeed, in environmental gies of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and how success one village-Chen Village in the Pearl River Delta in Guang ful have they been? Regardless of whether or not the scholar dong province-environmental problems (if there were any) did pursuing these questions is a Marxist (of whatever flavor) or not crop up at all in the story as related by Chan et al. 6 In Lu neo-Smithian economist working for the World Bank, develop Home Village, on the northern edge ofthe same delta, the Potters ment remains at the core of the inquiry and is its central prob cited but one instance of ecological damage arising from devel lematic. opment in the 1980s: "Traditional rural industries ... were se But seldom (if ever) are questions about the environment verely limited by the availability ofraw materials; these, whether included in our thinking about China's contemporary or histori mud [for bricks], palm leaves, or the evergreen boughs used as cal developmental experiences. In The Political Economy of kiln fuel, were soon depleted or exhausted if exploited too Chinese Development, for example, Mark Selden locates-at the vigorously, and the industries were not sustainable. The deple center ofthe inquiry -"an unresolved tension: that is, on one side
Are We Concerned Yet? Environmental Crisis and Economic Development in China
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Robert B. Marks is Professor of History at Whittier College. He is currently working on a two-volume environmental history of South China, with the first volume, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China, 1400-1850 forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in August 1997. He is the author of Rural Revolution in South China (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) and co-author of The Making ofthe Modem World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. 2d ed.). 1. Mark Selden, The Political Economy ofChinese Development (Ar monk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), p. 3.
2. Ibid., p. 5. 3. Carl Riskin, China ~ Political Economy: The QuestforDevelopment Since 1949 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 4. Victor Lippit, The Economic Development ofChina (Annonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1987). 5. Thomas G. Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989). 6. Anita Chan, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger, Chen Village Under Mao and Deng (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali fornia Press, 1992, expanded and updated edition)
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tion of native raw materials was ecologically damaging." 7 Only Friedman et al., in their study of Wugong in North China in the early years of the PRC, intimate that Maoist development strate gies precipitated an environmental crisis: "Nothing in the system generated action to deal with a deepening ecological crisis. Well drilling ignored environmental factors; the water table kept falling. Chemical fertilizers were used to the maximum possible; the impact on human health and on the survival of other species was ignored.... No acknowledgement of a need to deal with the worsening ecological crisis came from China's socialist leaders." 8 But while Friedman et a1. acknowledge the environmental crisis in the early years ofthe PRC's development, they do not examine it in any depth. In these village studies, then, the importance given to environmental issues ranges from complete absence (Chan et al.), to a presentation of evidence of ecological damage (the Potters), to a simple characterization of a crisis situation (Fried man et a1.). Interestingly, even in the latter two studies, the "damage" and the "crisis" take up but a paragraph in each book. To be sure, Friedman et a1. document extensively the well drilling movement and its social and economic consequences. But the environmental dimension, even though labeled a "crisis," is given very short shrift. If these six works can be taken as representative of the conventional wisdom on China's modem developmental experi ence, then it is fair to say that concerns about China's environ ment have not been part of China's history as it is usually told in the English-speaking developed world. Given both the global environmental movement over the past three decades and the struggles in the United States between those who believe eco nomic development solves everything (like former Reagan ad ministration Secretary of the Interior James Watt) and environ mentalists (from the Sierra Club to Earth First!), this absence of any significant consideration of the environmental crisis in the literature on China (especially the progressive literature) is un nerving. Indeed, in looking through the literature, I have felt somewhat like Lu Xun's madman, who, when he gazed for hours
into his history books filled with discussions of Confucian "virtue and morality" suddenly saw the words "eat people" emerge from between the lines. From beneath the term "eco nomic. development" I see the words "environmental disaster" emergmg. Yet we neglect to make the connections. Why is that? To be sure, access to China was limited until the early 1980s, but since then many of us have traveled throughout China's cities and countryside and have seen with our own eyes the vast environmental degradation and pollution. 9 Have we been blind, for whatever reasons, to what our own senses were telling us? Or have we simply not wanted to explore the connection between economic development and environmental conditions in China? Why did we ignore Vaclav Smil's first book, The Bad Earth? 10 Whatever the reasons for these oversights, and I am sure they are
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7. Sulamith Hems Potter and Jack M Potter, China s Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 141-42. 8. Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, with Kay Ann Johnson, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale Uni versity Press, 1991), p. 270. 9. During 1996,1 traveled into the Pearl River DeltasouthofGuangzhou to learn more about how the inhabitants at the beginning of the Ming dynasty some 600 years ago had created the fertile fields known as sha~tan, or "sand flats," that make up the delta. I was particularly interested in seeing the celebmted "fish pond and mulberry tree embank menf' system that Chinese and Western biologists alike had described as an "ecologically sound" method of farming: the muck and mud scooped out from the ponds fertilized the mulberry trees, and the mulberry leaves fed silk wonns, whose droppings were tossed into the ponds to feed the fish, beginning the cycle allover again. Not only was the "fish pond and mulberry tree embankment" ecologically interesting, it had also sustained the silk industry in the Pearl River Delta, one of the driving forces of the economic development ofthat region from the middle of the sixteenth centwy on. But as we drove through what had been the silk districts, I noticed few if any mulberry trees on the fish pond embankments; planted in
their stead were fruit trees of various varieties, mostly young saplings not more than a few years old Fruit trees in fact had preceded mulbeny trees in combination with fish ponds before the silk industry developed, so I guessed that the recent return to fruit after some 600 years had economic causes. It did, but not the one I had expected. When I asked why the change had occurred, I was told: "The silk worms have been killed by the air pollution." And the air pollution, ofcourse, came from the rapid-some might say super-heated-economic development of Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta in the years since 1979 when the reforms of China's economy began. Reflecting upon this experience, I began to wonder whether the silk worms might not be China ~s equiva lent ofthe canary in the miner's cage, warning of impending danger. Heightening my sense ofalarm, on this same trip I traveled some 200 kilometers north of Guangzhou to the Nanling Mountains sepamting Guangdong from Jiangxi province. Like the foray into the delta, this one too was prompted by my desire for historical perspective on south China's economic development, in particular the role of the Melling Pass and how it had been "chiseled" through the mountain during the Tang dynasty in 716. The area was not deforested, though the hills were sparsely planted with pines, with nothing of the original broadleaf evergreen forest remaining. Women and girls from nearby villages scomed the hillsides for needles, ferns, fallen limbs, and anything that could burn, stoking their hearths for the evening meals' and filling the valleys with a choking smoke, not blocking out the low-hung January sun, but rendering it the blood red of Malibu sunsets during fITe stonns in southern California. Returning to the city ofShaoguan from the Meiling Pass that evening, as the taxi headlights shone onto the two-lane road, I felt something was not quite right, though I could not put my fmger on what. The images ofenvironmental degradation that I had seen danced in my head, as my ey~s focused upon the portion ofthe road illuminated by the headlights. After about an hour, I realized what was bothering me was not what I had seen, but what I was not seeing. Nearly anywhere in the United States where I have driven on two-lane roads, there is always road kill ofone kind or another (innorthem Wisconsin, the most spectacularwere the deer smashed by passing vehicles, while even in southem California there are dead possums, plenty of chipmunks, snakes, and lizards, cats, dogs, and the occasional coyote). But on this stretch ofroad in northem Guangdong province, there was no road kill. If living things are more or less equally distributed throughout an ecosystem, then the amount of road kill is a very rough population count ofthe species in an ecosystem. So, what does it mean if there is no road kill? I came away with the dreadful fear that I was passing through ecosystems in complete col lapse. 10. Vaclav Smil, The Bad Eanh: Environmental Degradation in China (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe: 1984). This book is absent from the bibliogmphies ofall of the six books cited above.
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complex, we tand by that I mean scholars in the China field) have been unconscionably silent about the environmental costs of, and limits upon, China's "quest for development."1l Thus the two books reviewed here should be seen as welcome first efforts rectifying that glaring oversight.
China's Ecological Crisis and the "Wartime Guarantee Economy"
China on the Edge. written for a Chinese audience, is more a call to action than a scholarly work. Written in 1988 by He Bochuan, a lecturer in the philosophy department at Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) University in Guangzhou, China on the Edge sold more than 400,000 copies before June 4, 1989. Shortly after wards, following its suppression in China, China Books and Periodicals in San Francisco arranged for its translation into English, making it available to a wider audience. He Bochuan not only describes the ecological crises caused by soil erosion, water pollution, deforestation, and desertifica tion, he also explains why these disasters limit the development ofthe Chinese economy. He locates the environmental problems within the context of China's developmental strategies (which he calls the "wartime guarantee system"), and places every thing-the crises of environment and of development-in the context of China's population. Indeed, the author begins with a Malthusian chapter in which he argues that China's population has surpassed the capacity ofthe land, and that China's optimum population is around 600 million; a larger population, He be lieves, would destroy the Chinese environment. And what destruction there has been already. The desert encroaches upon the Northwest, as lakes there have been drained to irrigate newly opened lands; there are but 178,000 acres of forest left, with more being cut down than planted; soils have eroded, filling in reservoirs; and fresh water shortages afflict both cities and villages, in the South as well as in the more arid North. While acknowledging that many of these environmental prob lems predate the establishment of the PRC, He is relentless in providing examples of mismanagement, greed, and just plain silliness on the part ofstate bureaucrats and party cadre. But more than just reciting the litany of problems and pointing the finger at official stupidity, He Bochuan develops a systemic explana tion for the ecological deterioration and the inability of the state to halt it: the economic workings of the "wartime guarantee system." Basically, He argues, the entire Chinese economy was designed for one thing and one thing only: "From the 1950s to the 1970s, our basic development strategy was to strengthen centralized management, strive for self-sufficiency, and prepare for a possible invasion. The key concepts underlying economic policy were guaranteed supply, production, allocation, adjust ment, subsidies, and so on .... These terms all have a wartime flavor, and China's brand of economics could be called 'wartime guarantee economics' (zhanshi baozhangjingjixue), or 'wartime supply economics' (zhanshi gongjijingjixue)" (p. 43). He traced the origins of the concept of"guarantees" to a 1933 Mao article, and argues that "even today" state bureaucrats take "guaranteed supply" to be the starting point of economic policy. Conse
11. One exception is Kenneth Lieberthal's book. Governing China (New YOlk: W. W. Norton., 1995), which devotes a chapter to the environment
quences of this system include the irrational pricing and use of resources (he gives some good examples), subsidy economics, and shortages of most consumer goods most of the time. If the Maoist approach to development had these results, He asks, what about the reformed economy from 1979 on? Pointing out that key elements of the MaOist system remam in place (the one-party state, central planning, and state-owned industry, to mention but a few), He argues that the very goal of the reforms-quadrupling per capita output by the year 2000 (from the beginnmg pomt in 1979)-not only emerged from an offhand remark Deng Xiaoping made, but also IS realizable only if several undesirable consequences are overlooked. "If effi ciency were not a concern, and it were just a question of racing to quadruple output, we would have no trouble reaching the target. But the inevitable consequence would be another round of huge economic swings. If we continue using the present technology, products, and industries, while frantically pouring in more inputs, as we did in the past, we will also succeed in reaching our goal, but the technology gap between China and the advanced industrial countries will grow to unimaginable propor tions' while the actual benefits will be minimal" (p. 58). And the impact on the environment will be disastrous. To illustrate the problems with the goals of the reforms and the limitations that environmental constraints place on achieving them, He devotes chapters to "energy and transportation: two weak links," industry and agriculture, foreign trade and capital, regional development, and education. Each of these chapters contains information, perspectives, and connections that most readers will fmd new, provocative, and perhaps a little surprising. Let me mention just the most obvious: the energy problem. Quadrupling output requires minimally doubling energy production. A shortage of oil reserves, inefficiencies of genera tion, waste caused by old equipment, and irrational pricing (at lower than production costs) all magnify the problems to be solved in doubling the amount of energy. The drive to increase energy output leads to (a) increased open pit coal mining and the burning of coal in inefficient plants that spew globally warming carbon dioxide and sulfur into the atmosphere, (b) offshore exploration in the South China Sea and disputed territorial claims involving Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and (c) the Three Gorges Dam project, which entails at least $20 billion in fmancing and environmental transformations of staggering pro portions. Each and every one of these developments has impli cations for the people of China, the people on her borders, and, indeed, for much of the rest of the world. Environment and economic development are very much interrelated. Where the energy shortage appears to have solutions (albeit ones that might lead China into international conflicts), He paints a gloomy picture for agriculture. "The shortage of agricultural resources, the decrease in cultivable land, desertification, salini zation of the soil, the destruction of the ecological environment, and soil erosion are all increasing dramatically ... it can require from five to several hundred years to restore the ecological balance, and possibly as long as a thousand years for the natu ral ... environment to recover. For the present, however, the envi ronment continues to deteriorate, and it is unclear when a serious attempt will be made to control this deterioration" (p.lO 1). Yields have stagnated, total grain production may actually begin to fall for lack offertilizer and water, the population continues to grow, and peasants in much of rural China are wary of the reforms, choosing instead to return to subsistence fanning, He says.
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Even in the optimistic days before June 4th, He Bochuan was pessimistic. "There is nothing to indicate that things will improve in the future. In China there is rarely an item on environmental protection in the policy agenda of officials at various levels. Most people are only concerned with immediate material benefits and very few look at long-term and far-ranging effects... And they have no concept of the notion of a crime against nature, even where the damage is most severe.... China's latent crisis may explode with increasingly severe deterioration of the environment, forcing her to pay an even higher price for economic development" (pp. 192-93). Although aimed at a Chinese audience, whom He hopes to prod into action, China on the Edge also addresses Western social scientists, urging them not to let their preoccupation with the "development" problematic blind them to the connections among developmental strategies, environmental deterioration, popula tion growth, and political power. To be sure, acceptance of the grinding poverty of the vast mass of the Chinese people is not the solution to China's environmental crisis, but neither ~ environmentally destructive developmental strategies. The point is not that He Bochuan has delineated the problems and offered few (if any) solutions, but that he has explicitly linked China's crises of "ecology and development." This is a new problematic, one that should be taken up seriously by all those concerned about China, concerned about China's attempts to overcome poverty, and concerned about China's place in, and impact on, the environment of the one globe we all inhabit.
The New Problematic: Connecting Environment and Development

Only one Western analyst has engaged this problematic to date, Vaclav Smil. Smil's first book on the subject-The Bad Earth: Environmental Degradation in China-was either criti cized or ignored when it came out in 1984. (It has stood the test of time nonetheless.) In China's Environmental Crisis: An In quiry into the Limits ofNational Development, a new book that is more analytical and less sensationalistic than his earlier work, Smil takes up virtually the same topics as He Bochuan-popu lation size and growth; the needs for water, farmland, and forests; the modernization program; the needs for energy; and the pros pects for agriculture-although he has somewhat different things to say about each. Following chapters on China's population size and growth prospects (increasing to 1.5 billion by 2020) and on the ecological bases for all life in China, Smil concludes that "the environmental foundations of China's national existence are alarmingly weak, and they continue to deteriorate at high rates" (p. 66). He then proceeds to analyze and discuss the "environ mental constraints for the long-term course of China's modern ization" (p. 69). Smil's assessment of China's developmental prospects over the next twenty-five years is sobering, but not grim or overly depressing. Like He Bochuan, Smil begins by critiquing Deng Xiaoping's 1979 goal of quadrupling China's GNP by the year 2000, pointing out that the goal was unrealistic if for no other reason than that it arbitrarily took as the measuring stick China's per capita GNP as measured in U.S. dollars, overlooking real purchasing power (quantifed as PPP, or purchasing power pari ties). Smil concludes that a doubling of China's GNP is not unrealistic (even though that measure overlooks questions of the quality of life for people and families), and he uses that as the
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basis for his calculations of the resource needs for that goal to be
achieved.
Like He Bochuan, Smil figures that China will need to double its energy output by the year 2000 (from 1988 levels) to power economic growth (pp. 127-28). After assessing the range of power sources available to China (hydroelectric, .wood, hy drocarbon, biogas digesters), and noting that the truly horrifying energy shortage is the one in the countryside (where families struggle simply to cook and stay warm), Smil argues that "China will have to cover the bulk of this need by continuing expansion of coal mining" (p. 128). Smil then reveals the consequences of that reality: air pollution fouling both cities and rural areas, acid rain destroying what little is left of China's coniferous forests, and emissions of carbon and sulfur dioxides (from inefficient plants that China has little hope of replacing anytime soon) that raise international alarm about global warming and the contribu tion China's coal-burning power plants make to the problem. Noting that China will face mounting international pressure,
Smil observes that China cannot maintain C0 2 emissions at their current levels and accommodate the economic growth necessary
to provide for another 250 million people. This, Smil notes, is
"China's predicament" (p. 135).
To feed the 1.5 billion people likely to be living in China by 2020 (estimated at 1985 per capita levels), Smil argues that China will have to increase grain supply by 25 percent, from annual harvests of 390 to 490 million tons (p. 82). Smil explains that these per capita figures obscure important regional differ ences, and he evinces deep empathy for the undernourished people living in China's poorest provinces (such as Guangxi and Guizhou), who he thinks are caught in real binds that will probably not loosen in the near future. Faced with a loss of farmland to urbanization, coal mining, irrigation works, and reversion to forest or grassland, China realistically can increase grain production only by increasing two inputs, water and fertil izer. Noting that 50 percent of China's farmland is irrigated already, and pointing to the water shortages and shrinking aqui fers north of the Yangzi River, Smil contends that the limit on the amount of irrigated land is already nearly reached. Not so with fertilizer. In a long and fascinating discussion of nitrogen fertilizer (the biological bases of plants' need for nitrogen, the complexities of producing, storing, and using syn thetic nitrogen fertilizers), Smil notes that while China has already achieved high rates of nitrogen application, there is wide regional variation. The southeastern coastal provinces from Jiangsu to Guangdong use nitrogen fertilizer at rates comparable with the highest rates in Western European countries, and Smil implies that substantial gains in grain output could be obtalined by increasing the application of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in poorer provinces (pp. 166-68). Even so, the trend toward increased fertilizer use and the consequent mono cropping ultimately lead to unsustainable agricultural practices that result in the depletion of organic content from the soil. Thus while the picture that Smil paints of China's ability to feed a growing popUlation is some what hopeful in the short run, the cost would be greater deterio ration of the "environmental foundations of increased productiv ity" (p. 187). "Assessed against this background," the author concludes, "China's modernization plans guarantee further extensive envi ronmental deterioration, destruction, and pollution" (p. 191). Nonetheless, China has few other choices than to forge ahead, and thus China's environment will continue to deteriorate. In
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Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
73
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Smil's view "there are no solutions .. _that could halt or reverse these degradative trends" (p. 192)_ The best case scenario, in his estimation, is that a combination of enforcement of the environ mental laws passed in the early 1980s, greater public awareness of environmental issues, education, success in reducing the rate of population increase, continued reform of the irrational pricing mechanism, and improvements in the efficiency of coal-burning power plants will only slow the rate of environmental damage. "The reality for tens of millions of Chinese in the worst-affected areas will be a desperate effort to survive; for the nation as a whole, the continuing decline in environmental quality will mean a steady narrowing of future developmental options and inexo rable lowering of possible goals. For the world, China's environ mental debacles will be yet another intractable destabilizing factor" (pp. 192-93). In reaching these sobering conclusions about the implica tions of China's developmental strategy for the environment, Smil assumes that the current socio-political formation will remain in place, guiding the development and excluding demo cratic participation. That, regrettably, is the safest assumption to make. But for He Bochuan, who sees the environmental out comes in much the same light as Smil, democratic reform at least
holds out the hope that the centralized, bureaucratic system that he thinks is largely to blame both for the developmental strate gies-the Dengist reform period included---can be replaced by one that is simultaneously decentralized and capable of pushing through thorough-going economic reforms that eliminate ineffi ciencies and irrational pricing schemes. Regardless ofwhat one thinks of Smil's assumptions about the sociopolitical structure or of He's arguments for democratic political reform, both authors do raise two interesting questions: (1) would democratic reforms begin to halt the environmental degradation? and (2) how responsible is the PRC for the envi ronmental disaster over which it presides? I do not intend to answer those questions here, but merely to pose them and to offer a few preliminary observations about them. For the peasant farmers in the Pearl River Delta faced with the loss of their silk industry because of air pollution, to whom do they direct their anger or their concerns that something be done to clean up the air and the water? Without democratic protections, do they (or any other choking resident of Guang zhou) stand any chance against the owners of industrial plants who have joint ventures with units of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)? Clearly, the answer is no, but until the power of that combination is contested and checked, neither the PLA nor the joint venture operators have any interest in abiding by the environmental laws already on the books. In short, it seems to me that anyone concerned about the deterioration of China's environment will have to be concerned too about the protection of human and democratic rights in the PRC. But is China's current environmental crisis systemic to the government and the era of the PRC? Hardly. Much of the North China plain was deforested by the Song to fuel the iron smelters in Kaifeng, the geometric surge in China's population began in the late seventeenth centwy, and much of Guangdong province had been deforested by 1800. 12 By the middle of the nineteenth centwy China already was mired in vast ecological crises that festered into the twentieth century and no doubt fueled (along with other matters) the Chinese communist revolution. But the point is that we do not know what the connections are between China's historic environmental crisis and the communist revolu tion, and we certainly need to begin investigating them if we are to understand more fully how and why the environment has degraded so extensively under the watch of the Chinese Com munist Party of the past fifty years. The books by He Bochuan and Vaclav Smil make a power ful argument not only that environmental crisis and economic development are linked in China, but also that the environmental crisis places serious constaints upon China's developmental prospects, and that resolving the environmental crisis is an important rationale for the democracy movement. Unfortunately, China's environment has not been included in the problematic most Western analysts adopt when examining China's develop mental strategies and experience. That is a glaring oversight that needs to be addressed. Are we concerned yet?
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12. RobertB_ Marks, Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China. 1400-1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcom ing 1997).
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David E. Apter and Tony Saich. Revolutionary Dis course in Mao's China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1994. xviii + 403 pp. by Raymond F. Wylie and Peter Zarrow
As early as Edgar Snow's pioneering Red Star over China (1937), Yan'an was seen as the "defining moment" of the Chi nese Communists' rise to power. Beginning in 1935, Mao Ze dong set his personal imprint on the party as he successfully guided it from the disaster of the Long March to the "Congress of Victors" in 1945. This set the stage for the final showdown with Chiang Kai-shek and the hapless Nationalists in the civil war of 1946-49. With the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, the experiences of Yan'an. became the blueprint for the reconstruction of China along the lines first laid out in that remote and impoverished town in the northeast. Not surprisingly, the Yan'an period has attracted consider able attention from foreign scholars of China and revolution. Mark Selden's The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (1971) was the first systematic study of the Yan'an experience and its implications for later Communist Party rule over the whole nation. It was followed by a number of other studies that focused on the CCP's political and military struggles (Shum Kui-kwong, The Chinese Communists' Road to Power, 1988), or on the ideological and factional disputes that accompanied Mao's rise to theoretical preeminence at Yan'an (Raymond F. Wylie, The Emergence a/Maoism. 1980). Now David Apter and Tony Saich have written what is likely to be regarded (at least for the foreseeable future) as the definitive work on Yan'an communism. Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's Republic (the title is somewhat misleading, as only the fmal chapter deals with the People's Republic after 1949) is significant at two levels. First, it is an up-to-date, comprehensive account ofthe historical ody ssey of the C CP' s rise to power from the ashes of the Long March. More importantly, it is a rare application of sociological theory to the study ofmodem Chinese politics, and, especially, to the phenomenon of "Mao Zedong Thought" as both a theory and a praxis of the revolutionary endeavor of the Chinese Communists. Specifically, the book offers a rigorous application of "discourse theory" virtually unprecedented in Sinology (one of the reasons it has made such a stir). If it has some flaws, as we think it does, these can wait
Raymond F. Wylie is Professor and Chair ofInternational Relations and Director of the International Center for Democracy and Social Change at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Destinies Shared: U.S..Japanese Relations (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989) and has contributed articles to publications such as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. China Quarterly. and Far Eastern Economic Review. Peter Zarrow is interested in the intellectual and cultural history of modem China. He is author of Anarchism and Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) and the forthcoming Twenti eth-Century China: An Interpretive History. He and Joshua A. Fogel co-edited a book entitled Imagining the People: Chinese InteJJectuais and the Concept of Citizenship. 1890-1920 that is forthcoming in summer 1997 from M E. Sharpe (Armonk, N.Y.) He teaches in the School of History at the University of New South Wales.
for the moment. Suffice it to say that it is a landmark study, already much talked about, cited, and hailed by many scholars as "significant." Revolutionary Discourse in Mao s China pre sents a critically new perspective on Maoism and the Yan'an "stage" of the Chinese Communist revolution. We deal with the historical narrative fIrst, as it is less noteworthy than the methodological value of the study. Apter and Saich offer a history of the rise of Maoism (1935-1945) in Yan'an, where, after several major defeats, the CCP was able to recover and grow to dominate much of north China during the war against Japan. The largerhistory-ofthe war, base activities, rural reforms, and so forth-while important, is mere back ground to the activities of Mao and the institutions established in Yan'an. Certainly, Apter and Saich have not stinted in their survey of primary and secondary materials from all sides-Chinese and non-Chinese, mainstream and radical alike. The notes in particu lar are a compendium of essential reading on the subject and are a testimony to the explosion of literature in this and most other fields of modem Chinese studies. (The authors also usedinter views with surviving "Yan'an hands," but more on this later.) Still, when all is said and done, the historical account presented here does not appreciably add to our understanding ofthe period. It does refine it to some degree, however, as in the colorful (?) description ofKang Sheng (who wore only black), one of Mao's political "enforcers," and the fearsome and quickly aborted "rescue campaign" he launched against recalcitrant cadres and others during the "rectification movement" of 1942-44 (pp. 288-292). Similarly, an earlier study of the period by one of the present reviewers-The Emergence a/MaOism. 1935-45 (Wylie I 980)-had overlooked the dubious practice of victorious party factions burying or boiling their adversaries alive, in the best traditions of Chinese imperial rule. This is a dense book-fact-fIlled, tightly argued and some what repetitious in the interest of making a point. The authors at times assume their readers are all China specialists-how other wise to explain the casual reference to one Cui Jian in the concluding chapter (p. 316)? Many people in the field know this young man is a prominent rock star in today's China, but other readers may not be so well informed. A parenthetical explanation would have helped here and at several other places throughout the book. Nonetheless, the historical chapters read as light fiction compared to those dealing with "discourse theoty," the authors' chosen methodological approach to Yan'an. Perhaps this is in evitable, given the current state of jargon in the Western "acad emy," but we would like to think otherwise. Still, one has to deal with the real world, and in this spirit we approach Apter and Saich's original contribution to Yan'an studies and to China scholarship as a whole. Their thesis, in brief, is that Mao developed at Yan'an a "discourse community" that embraced an "inversionary" (nega tive) critique of the political status quo in China and he pledged himself to realize the "utopic/utropic" goals (p. 224) of "new democracy" and, ultimately, socialism and/or communism. This "discourse community" oflike-minded believers came gradually to accept Mao's version of Chinese history, political power, and inner-party conflict. They then voluntarily (well, not quite) un derwent a process of"exegetical bonding" based on a close study of Mao's texts and submitted themselves to the discipline of the danwei (work unit) that was both mother (nurturer) and father
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
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(disciplinarian). Finally, they abandoned "methodological indi vidualism" for "collective individualism" under party supervi sion, thus providing Mao, as the ascendant party "cosmocrat," with a vast reserve of "symbolic capital" on which to draw as he led the Communists ever closer to their historic destiny to guide China to a bright new age. Apter and Saich's main contribution to our understanding of the Communist revolution, in a nutshell, is to reveal the links between Maoism as an intellectual system and Maoism as a socio-political system. Indeed, the authors show that the two systems were in fact one. Maoism defined both theory and practice in such a way as to draw large numbers of new party members to Yan'an in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Thus, he succeeded in rebuilding an innovative, uniquely efficient polit ico-military organization in the wake of the disaster of the Long March. The questions the book attempts to answer are these: How did Mao come to have so much power? And conversely, why did so many key people follow Mao wherever he led? The authors are not shy in suggesting how their answers to these questions apply to the post-1949 history ofthe People's Republic of China (pRC), but the main focus of the book is the develop ment of Maoism in its earlier stages. The authors largely succeed in showing how Mao rose from one among equals to first among equals and then to unequaled power. Mao created "stories" that explained Chinese history, the inevitable rise of the CCP, and the correctness of Mao himself; these stories created a "mythology" that gave events meaning and also created a place, a role, for every individual seeking to help the dispossessed Chinese people regain their patrimony. Finally, in a process the authors repeatedly refer to as "exegetical bonding," the stories became the basis of texts which groups studied under highly controlled circumstances, leaming a sense of "collective individualism," and thus creating a psychological state whereby they felt that they had found their best selves (or created "new persons") in dedicated group service based not on blind trust but on shared understanding.
Power and BeUef
outside ofa discourse community. It would be nice to know more precisely what an idea is, but Apter and Saich do not help us here. Putting that problem aside, on the grounds that we all have a basic sense of what ideas are, the real issue, for the authors, is not Mao's ideas or the ideas of anyone else, but the means by which ideas are tumed into acnon and the mystery of how a relatively tiny, outgunned, and peripheral group not only took over but also remade the nation. Mao himself, of course, in his disdain for dogma and his union of theory and practice, had a lot to say on this very subject. But Apter and Saich find his early Marxist essays, such as "On Practice" and "On Contradiction," less interesting in this regard than his "stories" and the feelings his audience experienced listening to his speeches.
Apter and Saich's main contribution to our untler standing ofthe Communist revobdion, in a nutshell, is to reveal the links between Maoism as an intellectual system and Maoism as a socio-politi.cal system./ndeed, the authors show that the two systems were in fact one.
Yet there is a whole other level to the book; the authors say that "we are not interested in Mao per se but in the connection between power and belief" (p. xiv). They take Yan'an as a case study of "how inversionary discourse generates power that in return helps form discourse communities" (p. xiii)-"discourse communities" being the true believers described in the para graphs above. Apter and Saich hope to add to our theoretical understanding of how "mere ideas" can actually have real life consequences. They correctly point out that to say Mao came to power by manipulation and ruthless domination begs the ques tion of how he came to be in a position to manipulate and dominate in the frrst place (as well as why so few objected). The authors say they wish to add a lens to the camera, not to replace traditional categories used by political scientists and historians. Nevertheless, the book stands, it seems to us, as a justified rebuke to such resolutely materialist (post-Marxist) approaches as The da Skocpol's States and Revolutions (1979). Essentially, Apter and Saich want to show as precisely as possible how ideas- often dismissed as st2itimentality by self styled realists-could take the fOl'Dl of sYmBolic capital that could, if spent properly, buy power (our extension of the meta phor, not theirs). Not just any idea can become symbolic capital, the authors explain, and no idea can become symbolic capital
Mao's stories conveniently turned defeats into victories, always maintaining a sense of reality. They explained how Chinese feudalism had displaced the peasantry and how foreign imperialism had dispossessed China, but then how the bourgeoi sie and the Guomindang rose up to strike the first blows against oppression. Finally, they showed how the CCP and Mao himself were fully engaged in defeating the enemies ofthe future utopia. As Mao ruthlessly defeated his real enemies (within the CCP) in Central Committee votes, and concentrated power in himself, he developed ultimately into a "cosmocrat"-the source of all wis dom. Key to this development was the rectification campaign of 1942-44, which the authors see as necessary to "Maoism," ifnot necessarily (but possibly?) the only way to have turned both peasant activists and nationalist intellectuals into good Commu nists. The rectification campaign was also the direct precursor of Mao's cosmocratic Cultural Revolution two decades later. As convincing as the authors' basic argument is, they do not cite material from their interviews with the Yan' an survivors very often. The authors report that they conducted repeated interviews with 150 persons between 1986 and 1989. Only chapter 5, "The Surviving Yan'anites," specifically used the stories of people who had been in Yan'an. Yet the whole argu ment of the book concerns the "audience"-the people who decided to follow Mao, while most ofthe book offers a structural analysis (albeit one dressed in post-structuralist clothing) of Maoism itself. No analysis of Maoism can tell us how it was received. The notion of a "discourse community" remains more a logical inference than a proved entity. Apter and Saich give not a single description ofan actual (or, forthat matter, paradigmatic) group ofpeople studying Mao's texts, criticizing themselves and each other, "bonding," and creating veritable new personalities for themselves. Presumably, their interpretation is derived from their interviews rather than a creative reading of Maoist texts, but they do not make this clear. Chapter 5, the most readable in the book, promises much, but in the end it does not deliver. One would have hoped that the Yan'an interviews would have provided greater insight into two central issues. One, did the conversion from "methodological individualism" to "collective individualism" really take place, or
76
Bllllstin ofConcernedA'ian Scholar.
did most people simply "go along to get along"? Two, did the interviewees shed any light on why some party members reso lutely refused, at considerable personal cost, to take the leap of faith demanded of them? (Wang Shiwei was the most famous case, but there were others as well.) Alas, the various interview ees, who, as noted, were not well integrated into the larger analysis, did not delve into these murky issues. Perhaps, having made the choice for Mao so long ago, they felt it was best to stay with their decision in their declining years rather than face the stark realization that they had possibly lived a life of lies. Or perhaps they decided not to get too far out of step with the prevailing party line, which, even today, reserves a special place for the "Yan ' an mythology." Whatever the cause, the interviews, albeit interesting in their own right, tum out to be somewhat superficial, or, at least, not sufficiently revealing of the alleged "discourse community" at Yan'an. There is no gainsaying the fact that this analysis reveals a sophisticated grasp of the theoretical and empirical literature on the subiect. with numerous references to evetyone from Plato to Popper. Yet, one has to ask, do Apter and Saich, apart from a sophisticated methodology, really go much beyond Eric Hoffer's anti-communist (anti-utopic?) classic of 1958, The True Be liever? Simply substitute "indoctrination" or "brain-washing" for "exegetical bonding." But then, perhaps we are not a part of the contemporary "discourse community" that is defmed by Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and other "cosmocrats" in the field. These hesitations aside, there is no doubt that Revolution ary Discourse has stimulated a lively discussion in the China field, and this is all to the good. The authors would have helped themselves-and all of us-if they had presented their ideas in a more stylistically palatable way, without the use of redundant jargon and a penchant for obscure vocabulary. At the risk of exposing our own limitations, we had to reach for the dictionary a number oftimes to decipher the exact meaning ofsuch beauties as "bricolage," "rapscallion." "lapsarian," "Aufheken," and even "Stand" (Stephen King?). One wonders if these esoteric terms are absolutely necessary to the analysis, or whether in fact they only obscure it?
Yan' an. This is really stretching theirthesis, especially when they are careful to point out (p. 387, note 21) that their comments "should not be taken to imply that the movement of 1989 was of itself a democratic one." Apart from this breathless inconsis tency, to equate the authors' "Yan'an simulacrum" with a few spontaneous weeks in Beijing poignantly undermines the entire edifice of sophistication on which they constructed their argu ment throughout the book. Can a so-called "discourse commu nity" be based on such flimsy foundations? If so, pemaps the theory itself needs some serious rethinking. For example, can one have a "discourse community" among Hell's Angels motor cyclists, and, if so, who cares-apart from the sociologists who have probably written the defmitive volume on the subject? Back to Yan'an. hI addition to their overt analysis, Apter and Saich have given us a complex and erudite hint at the state ofmodern Chinese studies. Their study combines both ''theoreti cal" and "empirical" approaches to understanding the dynamics of that particular time and place in China's historical odyssey. Which approach will prove to be the most valuable in the long run is unclear, but at least the issue has beenjoined. For this, we students of China (theorists and empiricists alike) are all grateful and expectant. Whether or not we will be "exegetically bonded" remains to be seen.
"Master Narratives" and "Exegetical Bonding"

Despite stylistic shortcomings such as these, this book promises to change the very vocabulary we use to speak about Maoism and the rise of communism in China. As such, it also promises to change what we think. From now on, increasing numbers of scholars will have to deal with "master narratives" and "exegetical bonding" even if they try to avoid the unusual terms. This is an extraordinarily rich book in that its daring and sometimes difficult speculations offer opportunities for intellec tual engagement and even disagreement. In other words, the greatest strength of the many strengths of this book is that whether right, wrong, or (occasionally) opaque-it stimulates further thought. One fmal point. In their concluding chapter, Apter and Saich argUe that the Yan'an model reached its logical (and "monstrous") conclusion in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-67 (and subsequent years to 1976). This is a reasonable proposition, but the authors then proceed to argue that the "Tiananmen" democracy movement of 1989 was, like Van 'an, a new "simula crum" in which a new "discourse community" espousing liberal democracy (or at least the semblance of it) suddenly "displaced"
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Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

77
Alan M. Wachman. Taiwan: National Identity and De mocratization. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. xvi + 294 pp. by Mau-kuei Michael Chang
How does the national identity problem affect the process of democratization? Is consensus on national identity a prereq uisite for democratization? Alan Wachman writes about the most intractable problem in Taiwan and its implications for under standing democratization in general. He contends that previous studies suggesting the importance of a consensus on national identity for building a democratic system are inapplicable to Taiwan. From 1991 to 1993 Wachman interviewed prominent political figures and scholars of various backgrounds in Taiwan regarding five general questions: (I) Is it possible to distinguish between Chinese culture and Taiwanese culture? What are the sources of cultural identity for Taiwanese and Mainlanders? (2) How should we regard China in the present era? Is it a culture, a people, or a place? (3) To what degree is democracy compatible with Chinese culture? (4) How should the matter of Taiwan's political status be resol ved? Is democracy a means or an end? (5) To what degree does the inability to resolve the matter of national identity impede the development of democracy in Taiwan? The clearest impression one derives from Wachman's in terviews is that "the quest for democracy and the quest for consensus about national identity cannot be disentangled." From a historical perspective, Wachman sees Taiwan as a place where contending "foreign powers" have constantly attempted to rule. His approach assumes that "Taiwanese" and "Mainlanders" I have distinct historical origins and, hence, political dispositions. The Taiwanese are endowed with a "Taiwanese consciousness" that has developed into a Taiwanese national identity and a desire for a sovereign state. They tend to support democratization and the major opposition party in Taiwan, the Democratic Progres sive Party (the DPP). The Mainlanders comprise Chinese nation alists who seek the unification of Taiwan and China. They are likely to be loyalists in favor of the nationalistic Kuomintang (the KMT), accepting the regime's rationale and supporting the re pressive measures that the KMT has used to suppress Taiwanese consciousness and the Taiwan independence movement. Wachman argues that national identity is both "a product of reform and a spur to democratization." He concludes that in Taiwan, democracy is more often a means to an end-in deciding the power struggle, Taiwan's future political status, and the definition of what it means to be nationalistic Chinese vis-Ii-vis Taiwanese living on Taiwan. Attempting to present a full range
of perspectives on Taiwan based on his interviews, Wachman is a sensitive observer who does not hide his sympathy (a self-con fessed "bias") for democratic transition from authoritarianism; neither does he think that the Taiwanese should be deprived of the "privilege" of having a say in their future. Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization is a colJec tion of different narratives, solicited from different types of the elites, on Taiwan's history, culture, politics, and future status. Wachman wants to present the narratives fairly, but he did not seem to question his interviewees in any depth. (perhaps he selected only what seemed to be the most valid or most repre sentative arguments.) Only occasionaIIy does he analyze these narratives in their contexts and examine their origins. Instead he highlights and organizes them as a sequence of contrasting viewpoints, adding a touch of Huntington's conceptualization of "democratization" here and there. He reports and organizes the viewpoints of political and intellectual elites as if they were "facts"-unchanged, authoritative, coherent, and disinterested observations. As a result, "native" scholars may find the book somewhat superficial since the materials Wachman cites have been commented on repeatedly in Taiwan's mass media. His overlooking of current research on relevant topics by Taiwan scholars is also evidene When he does refer to it, he sometimes makes mistakes. 3 Those who lack a firsthand understanding of Taiwan's political situation may find the book persuasive in the beginning as Wachman explores the complexities of the relationship be tween democratization and national identity. The answers Wach man provides are simple and easily summarized: first, the deep rooted conflict is ethnic/national in essence-a "native" Taiwanese struggle for democracy and sovereignty and against the regime of Mainlanders; and second, democracy (and nationalism) is a political device and sometimes symbolic expression for power competition and sharing. I agree with Wachman when he suggests that democracy, nationalism, rhetoric, and cultural symbols are used as devices in the power struggle (it would be odd if they were not). But I find the way he presents this relationship in the book to be simplistic, if not problematic. First, although Wachman suspects
2. Just to name a few works that were published before Wachman's
Mau-kuei Michael Chang is a Research Fellow of Institute ofSociology at Academia of SinicR, and a Professor ofSociology at Taiwan Univer sity. His research interests are social movements and nationalism. I. Writing "mainlanders" with a capital M implies that the expression is either a fixed or a well-accepted ethnic/national category. It is some thing I think many serious English writers would hesitate to do. I don't know what Chinese wording the author would choose for its translation back into Chinese. A more common self-ascription for "mainlander" in Chinese (putonghua) would have been waisheng ren (people from outside of the province), or, as is much less frequently used (mainly among the aging first generation), dalu ren (people from the mainland).
book: Jenn-hwang Wang, "Taiwan de zhengzhi zhuanxing yu fandui yundong" (Political Transition and the Opposition Movement in Tai wan), Taiwan shehui yanjiu jiJran (Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies) 2, no. I (spring 1989): 71-116; Yun-han Chu, Crafting Democracy (Taipei: Institute for National Policy Research., 1993); and Mau-lruei Chang, Shehui yundongyu zhengzhi zhuanhua (Social Move ment and Political Transition) (Taipei: Institute for National Policy Research, 1989). Readers might fmd these more recent works of inter est: Mau-kuei Chang, "Toward an Understanding ofthe Sheng-ch i wenti in Taiwan: Focusing on Changes after Political Liberalization," in Ethnicity in Taiwan: Social, Historical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. C. M. Chen et al. (Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1994), pp. 93-150; Wu Nai-teh., "Shehui fenqi yu zhengdangjingzheng: Jieshi Guomindang weihe jixu zhizheng" (Social Cleavages and Politi cal Competition: Why Is There No "Stunt Election" in Taiwan?), in Bulletin of the Institute ofEthnology (Academia Sinica), no.78 (fall 1994): 101-130. 3. One mistake I noticed is found on pages 17 and 18 where the author misinterprets a question in a survey by Academia Sinica to read "Where do you come from?" instead of "Where is your native place?"
78
that culture, history, and a vision for the future of a country are sometimes invented and created for contemporary political pur poses (p. 26), he does not say when, how, and why these narra tives were invented and how they are tied to policy debates and power struggles. As a result, references to Taiwanese conscious ness, Taiwanese identity, and. Taiwanese nationalism, each of which is rife with different socio-political meanings dependent upon the context, flow from the mouths ofhis interviewees and are appropriated by Wachman throughout the book without proper analysis. He allows himself and his readers to be im mersed in political rhetoric as he takes his interviewees' perspec tives on Taiwan's political struggle and ethnolnational conflicts as amatteroffact, as ifthese conflicts were "destined" from some a priori "Taiwanese versus Mainlander" dichotomization. For instance, Wachman's use of "Mainlander" as a distinct ethnic/national group prompts questions about the origin of the term. Wachman never delves into the history of mainlanders or their consciousness-formation process, except for a cursory ex amination of the "public" presentations of mainlander officials such as Hao Pei-tsun, Chiang Yen-hsi, and Shao Yu-ming. One must ask how one million people who fled to Taiwan in 1949 from all parts of China can be considered a separate, homogene ous ethnic/national group with "shared sentiments." The forma tion process of a mainlander ethno/national group must be ex plained. And their "becoming" one ethno-national group would have to be accounted for, given their presence in Taiwan for about forty years, and the prevalence of mixed Taiwanese-mainlander marriages in recent times. 4 The formation of Taiwanese national identity and of Tai wanese consciousness also need more thorough exploration. They are better looked upon as long historical and ongoing processes, a fact that contemporary political actors, and people who quote from them, tend to forget. These processes, and their relation to power competition, the development of political op position and the democratization movement, need to be exam ined carefully, to be the target of research, instead ofjust presup positions of the research. In short, when it comes to Taiwan's history and its relation to the process of general public conscious ness over different eras, including how one becomes a Taiwanese or a mainlander, the author has not much to say. Furthermore, although the beginning of modern Taiwanese consciousness can be traced back at least to 1895, when Taiwan was ceded to Japan, Taiwanese consciousness has been changing and has meant different things in different periods.' The rise of the Taiwanese independence movement is definitely a post-World War II phe
yu shelmi yixiang diaocha de jiguan yu jiaoyu chengdu /enxi" (The
4. Statisticsindicatetbat12.28 percentofthepopulationinTaiwan (ages 2~) have spouses who belong to another "ethnic" category. The percentage ofinter-group marriages by mainlanders has reached a high of47.8pe:rcent This1rend has increasedover the genemtions, especially among the mainlanders. See Hong Yongtai et aI., "Lid shehui bianqian
nomenon fJrSt and a post-liberalization (1987) phenomenon sec ond. Wachman simply overlooks this fact. Wachman also alleges that the New Tide (or, the "Move ment") faction of the DPP concerns itself more with Taiwanese independence/nationalism than with only democratization and hence is the "more radical" Taiwanese faction ofthe DPP (pp.19 20,43-44). In fact, one finds that during the New Tide's forma tion stage (roughly between 1983 and 1986), it gave only secon dary attention to Taiwan independence partly because of the high risk associated with being an advocate of the movement. It advocates Taiwan independet1ce, still today, in the name of "self-determination" through plebiscite. Moreover, the New Tide actually originated from the younger generation among'the op position movement, who were excited by democratic movements in other places, such as Nicaragua, Iran, and the Philippines, in the early eighties, and thus attempted to build a strong opposition movement with solid grass-roots support or social movements built on democratic principles. Though now the New Tide seems to be one of the major proponents of Taiwanese consciousness and of the sovereignty of the DPP, its course was not dictated by some a priori ethnic/national consciousness, as Wachman im plies.' In any case, advocating for Taiwan's independence (or, "self-determination" through plebiscite) in public by the New Tide, or the opposition movement in general, began no earlier than 1984, and its growing into a viable political choice for the general public in the electoral process is defmitely a post-liber alization phenomenon. One can argue that the growth and change of Taiwanese nationalism indeed have gone through a long germination period, but this cannot be taken for granted as if it were some kind of an innate political consciousness that has just unfolded by itself onto the stage ofcontemporary political strug gle.' The book can also be faulted for overlooking the external factors that have contributed to Taiwan's present status, includ ing the changing of the regional geopolitical situation and its relation to Taiwan's domestic political scene. For instance, the author should perhaps examine Taiwan's loss of diplomatic recognition and the legitimization problem of the Republic of China beginning from the late 1960s. The expansion of political participation initiated by the authoritarian state to mitigate the crisis since the early 1970s and its unintended consequences of the growth of Taiwanese identity among the Taiwanese populace (which is not always equivalent to the Taiwan independence movement) should also be examined. Another overlooked factor is the changing relationship across the Taiwan Strait and its impact on the national identity conflict in Taiwan. From 1991 through 1993, about US$3.5
Study of Origins and Education from Consecutive Reports on Social Change Studies and Social Inclination Studies) in Yi Qingchun, ed, Taiwan minzhong de shehui yixiang (Taipei: Soo Yat-S\D1lnstitute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, 1994), pp. 333-362. 5. For instance, see Hui-Yu Caroline Tsai, "Taiwan Identity as Recol lected, Reinvoked, and Reinvented: Findings ofQuestionnaire Investi gation on Taiwan Elders, 1992-94," inXingda lishi xuebao. no. 5 (JWle 1995): 153-179.
6. In the beginning, the New TIde differentiated itself from other opposition factions by emphasizing the importance ofsocial refonn and social movements versus mere political gains in the electoml process. After 1987, the group began to develop an ideology inclined toward social democracy, along with a quest for nation-state building. 7. Wachman contends in various places that the New Tide Faction represents the Taiwan independence wing and the Meilidao faction representsthe democratization wing within theDPP. This is asuperficial and simplistic characterization. To point to just one difference, the New Tide is inclined toward "social democracy," while theMeilidao faction is more oriented toward middle-class and business interests.
VoL 28, NOI. 3-4 (1996)

79
Public Opinion toward "unification versus independence" in Taiwan

Prounification Maintaining Status Quo ProDon't Knowl inde endence Other Total
By origin:
Mainlander Taiwanese 8/94 By self-identification Chinese Taiwanese Both Total
38.3 18.6 34.1 8.7 20.9 (20.7) 54.1 52.7 50.2 48.1 58.4 (52.1) 3.4 12.5 6.9 25.9 9.6 (11.6) 4.1 15.9 8.8 17.4 11.2 (15.6) (12.5) (87.5) (28.5) (21.6) (49.9) (100.)
By origin:
Mainlander Taiwanese 7/95 By self-identification: Chinese Taiwanese Both Total
46.1 18.7 39.9 8.6 24.3 (22.7) 38.2 39.8 39.1 32.1 45.7 (39.3) 4.7 13.3 5.4 25.5 8.9 (11.9) 10.9 28.3 15.7 33.8 21.1 (26.2) (14.7) (85.3) (23.0) (26.1) (51.0) (100.)
Sources: Minzhong dui wei/ai /iangan guanxi de kanfs (Public Opinion Concerning Future Relations across the Straits. A Survey Report), August 1984 and October 1995, Committee on Mainland Affairs, Executive Yuan, R.O.C.
billion was recorded by Taiwan's Economic Ministry as Taiwan ese investment in China, 8 and from 1987 to mid-1992, an esti mated 3.75 million visits were made by residents of Taiwan to China. People in Taiwan actually experienced a booming and friendly relationship with China until early 1995. 9 Until then, Beijing kept a peaceful tone and a relatively low profile vis-a-vis Taiwan's politics while maintaining its threat to attack Taiwan with force should Taiwan declare independence. If we take
8. This figure does not include inves1ment that went unreported to the government. See Yil-shan Wu, "Liang an guanxi dui Taiwan jingji chengzlumg moushi de yingxiang" (The Effects of Cross-Strait Rela tions on the Pattern of Taiwan's Economic Growth), in Wenti yu Yanji (Issues and Studies) 34, no. 2 (February 1995): 1-22. 9. See page 17 in the September 1992 edition of Statistics on Cross Strait Exchanges, published by the Committee on Mainland Affairs, Executive Yuan of the Republic of China. 10. The People's Republic of China (PRC) resorted to much harsher actions and stepped up its rhetoric against Taiwan after the "unofficial" visit of Taiwan's president Lee Teng-hui to the United States in May 1995. These measures included military exercises in waters near Taiwan and abusive verbal attacks against Lee and against Taiwan indepen dence. (See Far Eastern Economic Review, September 14, 1995, pp. 20-26.)
China's intensification of its military threat against Taiwan's increasing demand for international recognition (deemed as a move toward independence) since July 1995,10 we fmd that the relatively peaceful cross-strait relationship of earlier times defi nitely helped, at least by not hindering, the expansion of democ racy and the relatively "safer" pursuit of Taiwan's independence by the opposition camp. And now, after July 1995, the DPP has demonstrated more self-restraint in promoting a "hasty" inde pendent movement to avoid provoking the Chinese. This can be attributed, at least indirectly, to the new invasion threat that has been played up in recent times by Beijing. Lastly, Wachman can be criticized for generating stereo typical images of Taiwan by emphasizing the dichotomization of the people, although this, perhaps, is unintentional. Wachman is not the only political observer who has rightly found that the origin ofpeople has been an important factor in dividing Taiwan. Opinion studies in Taiwan do show a consistent pattern that the mainlander group leans toward national unification than the Taiwanese group, which leans towards Taiwan independence. The table above demonstrates this. In August 1994, before China intensified its threat against Taiwan, the odds ratio for a mainlander to be pro-unification instead of pro-independence was about 11.26 to 1, while that for a Taiwanese was about 1.49 to 1. 11 These ratios remained about the same in July 1995, after China launched its military exercises against Taiwan.
80
Despite these group tendencies, the majority of people about 52 percent of the population, or about half of each group lean toward "maintaining the status-quo," a middle ground be tween unification and independence. In other words, most of the people in Taiwan, regardless of their origins, do not accept the simplified dichotomization of "unification versus indepen dence."ll Although some do feel a strong solidarity with their own "ethno/national" group, as was the case with many ofthe political elites Wachman interviewed, most of the populace cannot be categorically grouped under between Wachman's construction of "Chinese" vis-a.-vis "Taiwanese" typology. In fact, the major ity of the people of Taiwan embrace both identities in different sociopolitical contexts. The table on page 80 (above) shows that, if given a choice regarding self-identification, about 50 percent ofthe population would opt for being "both Chinese and Taiwan ese." By comparison only about one-fourth would choose "Chi nese" (note the subtle difference in meaning between "Mainlan der" and "Chinese"), and one-fourth, "Taiwanese." Of course, the self-identified "Taiwanese" are much more likely to favor independence than the self-identified "Chinese." But on the whole, even the "Taiwanese" group is likely to take the middle ground when presented with the "unification vs. independence" choice (48.1 percent in August 1994 and 32.1 percent in July 1995). Wachman clearly notes in the book that the dichotomiza tion he uses is too simplistic to capture the complexities of the intergroup processes in Taiwan. But if Wachman had devoted a separate chapter to a discussion of these complexities, he might have avoided appearing to make such a stereotypical generaliza tion. Will the trend toward globalization and the emergence of a putative New World Order put an end to the nation-state and hence to nationalism? Many places in the world-from former socialist countries, like the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, to Quebec, Belfast, and Jerusalem, and from the Korean Penin sula to Taiwan-show that this is not yet so. Although each of the places or countries has its own particular trajectory, we see that globalization comes in company with the quest of the populace to organize into collectives that are larger than their own communities and beyond parochial or religious boundaries. This quest helps them position themselves strategically in an international system made up of competitive, sometime hostile
sovereign states, and it empowers them to "control their own fate" (an illusion, perhaps) by controlling their "own country." New and embracing identity categories-nationalistic or ethnio-are emerging, whether through invention or reconstruc tion, whether in struggles to change the system or efforts to legitimize the status quo. The "Taiwanese vs. Mainlander" case is grounded in this global reality. Wachman is successful in situating this issue in Taiwan, but he fails to chart its changes adequately or to provide an in-depth explanation for its broader significance.
'1
II. The results ofpolls fluctuate and are affected by cross-strait relations to a certain degree. Some people think that pro-independence estimates may be \Ulderco\Ulted by one-half. Many in the DPP, for instance, believe that as much as 20 percent of the population are "die-hard" followers of the DPP during election periods. These must also be supporters ofTaiwan independence. Moreover, since being pro Taiwan independence is seen to be a political stigma that can jeopardize a person's safety and well-being for a very long period of time, its supporters tend to hide their real opinions during surveys. 12. Comparing the two polls, one can hypothesize that the effect of China's intensified threats against Taiwan is not so much on those who hold firm positions regarding unification versus independence (since the percentages for these two positions vary insignificantly between the two polls), but on those who take the middle-gro\Uld ("maintaining status-quo") or who have adopted a wait-and-see position. People who stand in the middle refrained from making a clear choice by responding "don't know" or "refuse to answer" in the July 1995 poll.
The only publication of its kind Dedicated to assisting school teachers and college and university instructors in teaching aboutAsia Contempormy topics that will stimulate lively classroom
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Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
81
Frederic Wakeman Jr. Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 507 pp. by Richard Lufrano
Upon taking power in 1927, the Nationalists chose Shang hai to showcase their ability to govern and thus undercut the premise of foreign privilege in China. Bringing order to this famed metropolis with modern, professional policing would lend the new regime both domestic and international legitimacy. Frederic Wakeman's Policing Shanghai demonstrates the diffi cuIty ofundertaking such a task in a city as complex as Shanghai, with its heavy foreign and communist presence, permeable in ternational port, and vulnerability to outside attack. An obsession with eliminating the communists (distracting police from normal police duties), the constant threat of the Japanese armed forces (leading to the militarization ofthe police), the corrosive partici pation in the opium trade and cooperation with criminal organi zations (destroying the regime's domestic legitimization) sabo taged this effort. The Nationalists, Wakeman persuasively argues, failed by the standards they set for themselves. Policing Shanghai. however, is more than another testi mony to the failure of the Nationalists. Wakeman signals the book's greater importance by noting that it is intended to bring out continuity rather than disjunction. It thus fits comfortably into the revisionist picture of the Republican era (1912-1949), which goes beyond viewing the Nationalists and Communists as foes on opposite ideological poles. Instead, revisionist historians look at the structural similarities between the two organizations and governments allowing us to see the Nationalists as the precursors of the communists. Wakeman, more specifically, seeks to use the Nationalist police force to demonstrate the "purposeful growth" of autocratic power in twentieth-century China, from the New Laws of the Late Qing, through the Nan king Decade (1927 -37), and into the communist period. As such, this book fleshes out Wakeman's larger view of an autocratic China, previously suggested in his critique of other scholars' work, and here, I believe, lies the real significance of his new work. In an otherwise laudatory consideration of Soulstealers by Philip Kuhn (like Wakeman, a prominent U.S. historian of mod ern China), Wakeman castigates Kuhn for arguing that high Han Chinese officials during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), inspired by a Confucian moral code and sense of duty, could mitigate the power of an emperor, what Kuhn calls a "cautious, pervasive resistance to autocratic pressure." Wakeman claims that he can 0", Iv find three examples ofthis "pervasive resistance" in Kuhn's book and argues that Kuhn's thesis "reflects his will to believe that Confucian literati were somehow able to defend themselves quite readily against aroused imperial authority" and exemplifies
Richard Lufrano teaches modern Chinese history ~t Barnard College and is the author of Honorable Merchants: Commerce and Self-Culti vation in Late Imperial China. He is currently doing research on elite families during the Cultural Revolution. 1. Frederic Wakeman Jr. Review of Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768, by Philip A. Kuhn, in The New York Review ofBooks, no. 9 (May 16, 1991): 22.
"the functionalist" school "of eighteenth century studies, which Philip Kuhn has come to lead in American Sinology, and which stands opposed to an earlier historiography that stresses "the overwhelmingly despotic nature of High Ch'ing rule." 1 Wake man, moreover, is clearly concerned about the elitist implications of the argument. "When the Confucian tradition foundered, the self-confidence of the elite sank; and-so we read by implica tion-the Chinese people lost their higher political guardians and face the present dictators defenselessly on their own." He goes on to liken Kuhn's eighteenth-century sorcery craze to the popu larity of qigong in the 1980s and stresses that the PRC made the national qigong association illegal. "China's present leaders have no tolerance at all for even the faintest specter of an autonomous sphere of public life." 2 Two years later Wakeman took on "a rising generation of social historians" who "fundamentally challenged the assertion of Max Weber that China's failure to develop capitalism was owing to the absence of urban political autonomy and to the dominance ofparticularistic attachments to native-place kith and kin." 3 According to Wakeman, this generation, like contempo rary Western social scientists, identified pre-modem Chinese civil society with the corporate groups and voluntary associa tions ofthe late Qing and Republican periods. Wakeman focuses his analysis on William Rowe's two books on Hankou, which he believes are the most extreme examples of the work of this generation. Ironically, Rowe's views of Chinese social history were originally inspired by Wakeman's emphasis on "adminis trative and political changes that continued to develop over the course of the Ch'ing and in some ways culminated in the social history of the early twentieth century."4 After closely critiquing Rowe as well as the work of Philip Kuhn, Mary Rankin, and David Strand, fmding fault with either the amount or quality of their evidence, Wakeman writes "Like Philip Huang, I find 'poignant' the effort to apply Habermas's concepts to China because, although there has been a continuing expansion of the public realm since 1900, this has not led to the habituated assertion of civic power against the state .... Instead, state coercive power has continually grown, and most Chinese citizens appear to conceive of social existence mainly in terms of obligation and interdependence rather than rights and respon sibilities." ~ It is thus not surprising that rather than searching for evidence of civil society or the public sphere, Wakeman, in PoliCing Shanghai, examines "the lamentable durability of gov ernmental autocracy" and "the staying power of bureaucratic instruments of control and coercion that are institutionalized-in the modem police state" (p. xvii). He sees in the Shanghai Public Security Bureau created by the Nationalists the victory of admin istrative authority over civil society and municipal autocracy over municipal democracy. Wakeman shows that even earlier in
2. Ibid. 3. Frederic Wakeman Jr. ''The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," Modem China, no.
2 (April 1993): 113.
4. William T. Rowe, "Approaches to Modern Chinese Social History," in Olivier Zunz, ed, Reliving the Past: The Worlds ofSocial History. (Chape1Hi11: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 240. 5. Frederic Wakeman Jr. "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate,"
pp.133-134.
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Bulletin ofConcerned A sian Scholars
the twentieth century Yuan Shikai's regime viewed a modern police force as a way to counterbalance the growing power of the elite. Although the Nationalists did not ignore the local elite,. especially the powerful Jiang-Zhe financial elite, the municipal administration they set up in Shanghai was autocratic and not responsive to the needs of the local elite. Local elites learned to accept a limited role in the face of central authority. Looking at the successful police states ofthe world, Germany and Japan, the Nationalist mayor of Shanghai saw a strong police system as the way to save China (achieve wealth and power) and impose discipline on a chaotic and therefore weak society. And what was not accomplished by the Nationalists was taken care of by the Communist Public Security Bureau, initially employing Nation alist police officers and penetrating Chinese society further than the Nationalists.
Can scholars in China or the West instead create con structs based on the Chinese or East A sian experience and intellectual tradition?
The debate on civil society vs. autocracy has been engaged for several years now and seems to have reached its saturation point. It remains to be seen whether the publication of Wake man's Policing Shanghai will renew it. Wakeman's position, nevertheless, brings us back to the traditional Western view of a despotic and politically stagnant China. Just as the work of the new generation ofsocial historians coincided with the revisionist atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s, Wakeman's coincides with the more negative view of China that enveloped the West in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. And just as the new generation's views coincided with Chinese and Japanese schol arship, so Wakeman's meshes with the views of a younger group of Chinese scholars who are more impressed by the continuity of despotism than the "sprouts" of civil society or public sphere and look to the outside world as the source of change in China. In my view, the argument for the tentative growth of a public sphere/civil society resembles arguments for the "sprouts of capitalism." At some point you need a fully developed public sphere or capitalism for the argument to make sense. Maybe that
point for a public sphere is around the comer and maybe not. But on a deeper level, the scholars who decry the dragging out ofyet another tired European theoretical construct to impose upon China have a point as well. Developed from the European experience, these constructs may obscure as much as they reveal about China. Can scholars in China or the West instead create constructs based on the Chinese or East Asian experience and intellectual tradition? And why, we might wonder, have we not seen more developments along these lines since Edward Said's original challenge to orientalism in 1978? Yet, if the public sphere/civil society model has its limits, so too does the autocracy model. Without denying the real sufft;ring caused by despotic governments in China, what I fmd striking about autocracy in modern China is that the will to impose it has always been stronger than the ability. Rampant corruption and pervasive inefficiency from the late eighteenth century onward, for example, often defeated autocratic designs. Periods of effective, sustained autocracy are the exception rather than the rule. After all, the Nationalists Wakeman writes about are the same Nationalists who censored their own press releases. Similarly, autocracy in contemporary China has always looked more impressive from afar than from close-up. Even in the immediate years after the Tiananmen massacre, for instance, a surprisingly varied selection of literature was still available to the reading pUblic. Although China may lack the coffee houses of early modern Europe, the private restaurants that have sprung up in the last several years have provided forums for lively, even boisterous conversation. Finally, to take Wakeman's own exam ple, the government may have made qigong associations illegal, but the tapes of the qigong masters' lectures had already been passed along to an urban people convinced of the discipline's efficacy. Once government control slackens, these associations are likely to appear again just as popular religion re-emerged in the countryside after the Cultural Revolution. All of this is not to argue for a public sphere or civil society in China, but to urge caution before dressing China in the armor of autocracy supplied by Frederic Wakeman. After all, the popular expression "You have your measures, I have my countermeasures" suggests that the Chinese people themselves believe that autocracy too can be a paper tiger.
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Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

83
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Newman, and Alvin Rabushka. Red Flag over Hong Kong. Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House Publishers, 1996. ix + 189 pp. by Nick Thomas
The body ofliterature dealing with the retrocession ofHong Kong is growing rapidly as the changeover draws nearer. Red Flag over Hong Kong distinguishes itself by going beyond what is happening or what has happened to predict what will happen after 1 July 1997. To give their analysis of the future credence the authors rely on a scientific "model of decision making, not on access to insiders or the divination of tea leaves" (p. xii). The utility model the authors use is a tool designed for the practical application of "explaining how policy positions evolve over time" (p. 165). Essentially it is a complex mathematicat model that describes any situation in which a number of actors attempt to resolve policy issues. The model relies on just three variables for each actor: the outcome desired, the capabilities of the actor, and the prominence the actor gives to the policy issue. As such the model has no place for historical trends or relations among the various actors. The authors divide the book into two sections with two appendixes. The four chapters in the first section give an over view of developments in the territory, citing reasons behind the economic success ofHong Kong. Also covered are Hong Kong's reiationsrup with ChIna and the etficacy of the territory's politi cal-legal system. The second section offers an analysis of how each of the "stakeholders" (individuals or groups who have a role in the decision-making process) is going to act after July 1st. The three chapters in this section are divided between political and policy analysis. They include "China after Deng, " "The Future of Hong Kong" (how post-Deng developments will be received, inter preted and responded to in Hong Kong), and "Fortune Cookies" (analyzing possible flashpoints in post-July 1st relations between Hong Kong and China). Appendix A is a selection from various treaties that have been signed throughout the transition period. Appendix B is a description of the Forecasting Model, including a mathematical breakdown of the different components of the model (what the variables represent and how they relate to the other variables) and a note about its accuracy. Despite its unique approach, Red Flag over Hong Kong poses a number of problems for both the academic and the lay reader. The first is the rampant anti-China bias. The authors go beyond attacks on the intentions of China's policy makers and impugn their honor. They do this directly and by voicing rhetori cal questions, neither of which is appropriate in a "scientific work." For example, in discussing the "one country, two sys tems". concept as it relates to Hong Kong, the authors write, "If China'sJeaders are honourable men, why Was the future ofHong Kong so contentious?" And further on, "China's post-1949 con stitutional promises have not been worth the paper they are printed on, and this reality does not instill confidence among the Hong Kong people" (p. 30). Although many works on the transition question the validity ofthe "one country, two systems" model the queries raised have, in the main, examined structural
inequalities in post-1997 China or its changing internal political lan~cape. The authors go beyond this type of critical inquiry, ~tatmg m ~ffect that ~hina's leaders have deliberately engaged m a campaIgn of deceIt. The second problem is that, without denying the impor tance o~ analyzing all evolv~g political situations as rigorously as pOSSIble, I am not convmced that the model used is more accurate than the non-positivist approaches that the authors criticize. This is most obvious with the material dealt with in chapters 6 and 7 where the data used and the conclusions reached have been discussed in the discipline for several years. Relying on the model-driven approach means that the out come is dependent not only upon the data that is selectively entered but also on the interpretation of the data. In the case of Red Flag the authors skew their interpretation with the notion that development~ in H~n.g Kong are [by implication entirely] deJ?~dent on po~cy d~C~SIOns made by the Chinese leadership. This IS grossly SImplistIc and does not take into account the influence local elites will have on decision-making processes in Hong Kong. It also ignores aspects of the Basic Law regarding the autonomy ofHong Kong, which have been consistently stressed by both sides.' . The third pr?blem stems from the authors' belief that they hav~ no need to CIte from the vast body of literature they have so ObVIOusly drawn on. This is an unacceptable practice in an academic work. There are, nevertheless, some interesting concepts in Red Flag. The forecasting model itself is a brilliantly complex tool that would aid any political policy analysis. The manner in which the authors describe its workings is enlightening and easy to comprehend. .Re.d.Fla? is also the first book to address thoroughly the pesSlffiIstlc SIde of the coming transition and, as such is an important addition to studies ofHong Kong. As the autho;s state "Hong Kong is in for a rocky road in the years ahead.... Th~ politi~al and economic landscape will be filled with uncertainty, cronYIsm, lost freedoms, and more corruption than has been known in the recent past. It is a bleak picture indeed" (pp. 118-119). To reiterate an earlier point, however, the authors are out of line when they let their pessimism translate into biased judgments or personal attacks. In short, this book broadens the field of literature available to academic and lay readers alike. Problems inherent in the structure of the work, however, add up to the book's failure to fulflll the potential that is evident in its analytical framework. Had the authors suppressed their anti-China biases and utilized some ofthe non-mathematical analyses contained in other works on Hong Kong, they could have made a more substantial contri bution to the field.
*
Nick ~omas is a doctoral candidate at the University of Tasmania and a tutor m the Department of Political Science. He is writing on the ~yelo~ent of democratic institutions in Hong Kong during the tran SItion penod. 1. For a good analysis of the Basic Law and the way it has been interpreted by all sides see M Chan and D. Clark, eds. The Hongkong Basic Law: Blueprint/or "Stability and Prosperity" under Chinese Sovereignty? Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1991.
84
David Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa. Jews in
the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses ofa Cul tural Stereotype. New York: The Free Press. 1995. xi +360 pp.
By Noriko Aso
The virulent anti-Semitism that characterizes many of the books found in the "Jewish" comer in Japanese bookstores bewilders the casual browser. Instead of dismissing these texts as hallucinogenic ravings, however, David Goodman and Masa nori Miyazawa offer a welcome historical analysis of the ways in which Jews have figured in Japanese ideology. As the authors emphasize, their work "is not about Jews or about the Jewish experiences in the Far Fast; nor, while it touches on them, is it a history of actual Japanese-Jewish relations. This book is about the Japanese construct of the Jews, its origins, evolution, and meaning" (p. 12). By focusing on discur sive constructs, the authors are, among other things, able to demonstrate that Japanese anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism are flip sides of the same coin. Without such an insight, it would be difficult to understand the metamorphosis of such wartime Japa nese militarists as Inuzuka Koreshige from anti-Semites to self proclaimed "friends of the Jews." Goodman and Miyazawa trace the roots of contemporary Jewish stereotypes back to mid-nineteenth century xenophobia expressed in theories regarding a Christian conspiracy to infil trate Japan and dominate the world. Christianity served as a metonym for a foreign threat, but as the numbers of Japanese educated in Christian institutions grew, the demonization of Christianity became increasingly problematic. Its place was tak en by Judaism. As Japan experienced repeated political and fmancial crises in the course of modernization, anti-Semitism, defmed by the authors as "the persistent, chimerical belief in a global Jewish conspiracy" (p. II), thrived in the absence ofactual contact with Jewish people.
of Japanese writers, from prewar Christian-Shinto syncretist Sakai Katsuisa to recent best-selling author Uno Masami. Auto mobile manufacturer Henry Ford, for his part, had the Protocols translated into English as The International Jew, which then entered the Nazi canon. This international context is vital in order to interpret Japanese versions of "common ancestry" theories. Goodman and Miyazawa ascribe the motive behind claims of Jewish de scent put forth by Japanese, American Black Hebrews, and other non-white groups in the first decades of the twentieth century to the need to contest white supremacism. "When they identify with the Jews, their distinctive racial identity ceases to be a liability and becomes a mark of superiority that they believe even white Christians must respect" (p. 63). Yamamoto Shichihei under the pseudonym Isaiah Ben-Dasan puts a postwar spin on this strat egy by drawing parallels between Japanese and Jews in order to "establish Japan's 'chosenness' " (p. 181) in his The Japanese and the Jews (Nihonjin to yudayajin).
"The" Japanese Mind?

Goodman and Miyazawa draw on an impressive array of sources in this well-written intellectual history. The powerful narrative of this work, however, on occasion overwhelms the authors' more subtle points. Particularly in the chapters dealing with the postwar period, the indignation that builds up upon exposure to gross misrepresentations of Jews obscures alterna tive interpretations of certain wolks, such as Dazai Osamu's The Setting Sun, which can be read very differently outside the framework given us by the authors. Similarly, their writing takes on an acerbic tone when discussing the anti-Zionist rhetoric of leftists from the 1960s and 1970s. Support for the Palestinians is attributed to a need to vicariously experience "real" politics, something, by implication, lacking in Japan. However, the quo tations the authors use from leftist journalists and intellectuals are filled with much of the same imagery seen in Japanese reflections on the Holocaust right after the war. This suggests the possibility that a continuing search for a "pure victim" with whom to identify (and all the unresolved issues this implies) rather than vacuity led to the shift in position. The title, while provocative, opens up questions as to what exactly is "the" Japanese mind. (An alternative title might have been "Jews in Japanese Ideology.") While a great number of different voices contesting as well as contributing to Japanese stereotypes of Jews are presented in this book, in the end, the reader is left with a fairly monolithic picture of "the" discourse on Jews in Japan. Moreover, the final chapters depart somewhat from the earlier exploration of this discourse as a marginal phenomenon shedding light on a complex whole. Japanese attitudes toward Jews assume the character of a touchstone: "Japanese anti-Semitism and the refusal to acknow ledge the history it represents hobble Japan's efforts to playa constructive role in the world community" (p. 262). Few would disagree with the basic premise that prejudice should be done away with wherever it exists. However, anti-Semitism in con temporary Japan seems best considered as simply one among many interconnected issues. Nevertheless, Goodman and Miyazawa offer a fascinating and instructive account of a phenomenon that has until now been merely a puzzling anecdote.
International Context
One of the strengths of this work is the care taken by the authors to locate the Japanese case within an international con text. Close readings of the works of Christian nationalist Nakada Juji and others illuminate the historical partiCUlarities of Japa nese imaginings of Jews, while the paper trail tracked by Good man and Miyazawa reveals their place in an international circuit of anti-Semitism. For example, The Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion, a document fabricated and disseminated by Russian secret police during the Dreyfus Affair in order to "prove" theories concerning an international Jewish conspiracy, first entered Ja panese hands courtesy of White Russians during a joint venture to intervene after the Russian Revolution. The racist document has since been cited as "evidence" ofJewish ambitions by a range
Noriko Aso is doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago and teaches at Portland State University. Her research interests include modem Japanese intellectual, social, and cultural history, and modem Japanese literature. Her Ph.D. thesis deals with the part played by Japanese cultural institutions such as expositions, musemns and depart ment stores in the construction ofnational identity in the prewar period.
85
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

Kayano Shigeru. Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir. Translated from the Japanese by Kyoko Selden and Lili Selden. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994. 172 pp. by Gerald Figal
In an Asahi Shimbun interview (31 May 1994) Kayano Shigeru (1923- ), author of Ainu no ishibumi (An Ainu Memoir, 1980), recalls the fireside uwepe/rere or folktales told to him in the Ainu language by his grandmother and remarks that "since there's no written Ainu language, it's only the ear, not the eye, that matters." Our Land Was a Forest, Kayano's autobiographi cal memoir, impresses the ear as well as the eye of the reader, as Ainu voices-seldom listened to in the past-reverberate be tween the lines of the original Japanese version and this English language translation by Kyoko Selden and Lili Selden. The consciousness of Kayano's preservationist project is clear by the end of his personal narrative, as he reflects upon the five-year process of writing it: "Even so, this book, written in Japanese by a man of the Ainu people, who have no writing system oftheir own, may be considered a monument to the Ainu" (p. 157). With this book Kayano, in a form appropriate to his contemporary condition, joins his grandmother in creating a sympathetic understanding of an indigenous ethnic minority whose history, lore, language, and culture have "under the euphe mism of assimilation" (p. 153) been systematically driven to near extinction by 125 years of the usurpative and exploitative devel opment policies of a modem Japanese state hungry for the salmon and lumber of "Ainu Mosir" (the "Peaceful Land of Humans" that shamo [Japanese] designated "Hokkaido," the "Northern Sea Circuit)." It is with some irony-orperhaps poetic justice-that Kayano's memoir, this monument to Ainu culture, is printed on paper like that made from the forest that was on the Ainu land. The specific land that constitutes the principle setting for Kayano's narrative of growing up Ainu in the twentieth century is the relatively temperate Nibutani Valley, located along the once salmon-rich Saru River of southern Hokkaido. Until the Meiji state's encroachment upon this region in the late nineteenth century, the Ainu, Kayano tells us, fished salmon, hunted deer, and cut wood according to the "laws of nature," never taking more than immediately necessary for sustenance. Japanese com mercial logging and fishing-sustained in large measure by virtual slave labor extracted from Ainu, including Kayano's grandfather--changed all of that. Cycles of capitalism, not na ture, began to dominate the area. The "laws of shamo," such as the Former Hokkaido Aborigine Protection Act of 1899, at tempted to force Ainu-first and foremost a hunting people into farming, while wresting away from them choice forests and fishing areas. Kayano indignantly and ironically recounts the arrest of his father in the 1930s for fishing salmon out of season:
"The decrease of salmon around that time was, in fact, caused by the shamo 's indiscriminate fishing. The shamo were in essence blaming the Ainu for a problem they themselves had created" (p. 59). This historically conscious and actively critical attitude with respect to the plight of the Ainu at the hands of the Japanese is strong (yet not overbearing) from the very beginning of this e~sentially chronological account of both Kayano's personal hIstOry and that of the Ainu as he knows it. This attitude, however, did not develop until later in life when a consciousness of Ainu ethnicity blossomed. In fact, one could argue that the overarching topic of Kayano 's book-up to and including the act of its writing-is the coming-of-ethnic-consciousness of one Ainu man living in an era of Japanese modernity. It is only through this developed consciousness that Kayano becomes the ar?ent collector, preserver, propagator, and active supporter of Amu culture, as well as the author of this book. Early in the book his grand~other, simultaneously weaving thread and tales, fig ures prommently as the young Shigeru's Ainu cultural liaison, teaching him the Ainu language and ancestral wisdom. However, a~ he admits in his 1994 Asahi Shim bun interview (cited above), hIS young adulthood in the late 1930s and 1940s was a time during which he was "escaping Ainu," being more concerned with practical matters such as how someone with his back ground-an iI?poverished family and a less-than-impressive formal educahon--could make a living within the capitalist economy of a modem Japanized Hokkaido. Becoming a foreman on a logging crew in the late 1940s and marrying in 1951 may have fulfilled Kayano's "childhood dream" of coming of age as a man, but it was his second coming of age as an Ainu in the 1950s that led him to the life's work for which he is now well known. Beyond the mere content of Ainu practices, language, and material culture, which are lovingly described, amply glossed and beautifully illustrated throughout this text, Kay ano' s account of the process by which he mentally becomes an Ainu holds-in this reviewer's mind-the book's greatest interest, as well as its most pressing lessons for anyone concerned with issues of mi nority ethnic identity and of preservation of indigenous cultural resources in a late capitalist society. Brought about largely by an ambiguous relationship with professional-and usually well meaning albeit obtrusive-scholars of Ainu culture, Kayano's ethnic consciousness is depicted as something that was never a given; it had to be worked through both in relation with the ~ommunity -binding ~ords of village elders and under the prob mg gaze of metropolItan scholars alike. In the beginning there was nothing ambiguous about Kayano's feelings toward "shamo scholars": In those days I despised scholars ofAinu culture from the bottom of my heart.... There were a number ofreasons I hated them. Each time they came to Nibutani, they left with folk utensils. They dug up our sacred tombs and carried away ancestral bones. Under the pretext of research, they took blood from villagers and, in order to examine how hairy we were, rolled up our sleeves, then lowered our collars to check our backs, and so on.... There was also portrait photogmphy. People not only were photographed from the front, the side, and an assortment of angles but induced to wear large nllluber plates such as criminals wear in mug shots. Among the photographs of my mother is one in which a number plate hangs from her neck. After ha~ing her ~lood ~en, her back checked, and being photographed while wearmg this label, how much money did she receive, I
Gerald Figal teaches Modem Japanese History in the History Depart ment of the University of Delaware. He taught for four years at Lewis and ClaIk College following the completion of his doctoral studies at the University ofChicago in March 1992. The title ofhis doctoral thesis is "The Folk and the Fantastic in Japanese Modernity."
86
Bulleti" o/Co"cerned Asian Scholars
wonder? My mother's pained expression in the photo always stings me to the qUlCk. (pp, 98-99)
Witnessing such actions and learning of the past history of cultures m modern capitalist societies, but, for him more offen shamo exploitation of Ainu finally galvanized Kayano by the sive possibilities were conceivable. ' mid-l 950s to reevaluate his roots and take action in the collection Kayano has far better outcomes in mind when it comes to and preservation of Ainu material culture, language, tales, and q~es~ons of political and social discrimination against Ainu. In customs, Although in later life he would overcome his initial hl~ ~mal chapter and .in the epilogue written for the English outrigh~ hatred o~ non-Ainu scholars ofAinu culture and actually edItIon, Kayano descnbes his direct political involvement fol work WIth them, It took the example of an Ainu scholar of Ainu, lowing his popular election to the town assembly of Biratori in ~hiri Mashiho, to inspire Kayano to take his collecting seriously 1975. (He resigned this position in 1992 in order to run-unsuc m the late 1950s. He had the consciousness and the will; what he ces~fu!ly-for the ~ational. Diet as a candidate for the Japan lacked was the money to sustain his work. Soclahst Party,) WhIle makmg appeals to the Hokkaido legisla The story of Kayano 's pursuit of financial support for his ture for greater affIrmative action toward Ainu and awaiting collection projects and for the realization of his "Ainu adult another chance to run for public office, Kayano has continued dream" of building the Museum of Ainu Cultural Resources ~is promoti~n of Ainu language-learning and cultural preserva takes up the final quarter of his book and aptly depicts the tlon/productlon, These consciousness-raising cultural activities problems and compromises faced by indigenous ethnic minori -:-m~dele.rl after Kay ano 's own personal experience ofrecogniz ties who have such aspirations for themselves within modernized mg. hIS Amu roots-seem to be the mode of political action at s~ieties. Cheated by a Japanese entrepreneur, who absconded whIch he e~cels. Indeed, Kayano's "Ainu memoir" displays and WIth money earned by Kayano and others who were touring ~nacts the mseparable relationship between culture and politics northern Honshu in an effort to introduce Ainu culture to main m Japan and teaches as much about majority Japanese notions landers, Kayano learned the harsh realities of being a neophyte of ethnos and nation as it does about the minority Ainu whose in the Japanese business world. He opted instead for a safer labor and land have been exploited in the building of that nation. method of raising funds-a method that was as distasteful as it . That o.ur Land Was a Forest is now available to an English was lucrative for him. Kayano became a "display Ainu" at tourist readmg audience cannot but help raise a global consciousness traps during the domestic tourist boom ofthe 1960s. "It is bey ond for the cultural and political cause that Kayano Shigeru has been words for me to explain to others how miserable it made us feel leading. to sing and dance-albeit for money-in front of curious tourists from throughout Japan when we weren't even happy or excited" (pp. 118-119). Like his photographed mother , - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . , a generation earlier, Kayano became the sub ject of an oppressive metropolitan gaze, the only difference being that he was getting paid for it. The experience of alienation generated by tourists querying him as they would a for ~~_. rrug~les for a nuclear free an~ independenr Pacific, eigner- " 'You speak Japanese well. Where ,the Imp,act of global warmIng on small islands, did you learn it?' 'What do you eat?' 'Do you unsustaInable loggIng, economic globalization versus grassroots go to school like Japanese do?' 'Do you pay people-cenrred devclopmenr and more. taxes?' "~atalyzed Kayano's determination Tok Blong Pasifik is ~he premi~r inrernational magazine focusing on social justice, to explain the content and fate of Ainu culture developmenr and envlronmenr Issues in the Pacific Islands. to the Japanese. Ultimately, his decision to Publis.hed, quarterly. Canadian subscriptions are C$25 for individuals, C$40 for market Ainu culture in order to ensure its sur organizatIons and C$15 for studenrs, Non-Canadian subscriptions are vival-a compromise that was offensive to respectIvely: U5$25, U5$40 or U5$15. many of his fellow Ainu-paid off. After seven years as a "display Ainu" and then a To subscribe: successful carver and independent gift shop owner, Kayano had attracted enough attention NAME: and support from local officials to build the ORGANIZATION:-----------_ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Museum of Ainu Cultural Resources, which opened on 23 June 1972. National recognition ADDRESS:--------------------_____________________ came in 1978 from the National Ethnological Museum in Osaka with a formal order for the production of artifacts for its Ainu display Type of Subscription: - - - - - - - - A m o u n t enclosed:------ room. Such demands for display objects, Kay ano asserts, create a practical viability for Ainu culture in the capitalist economy of modern South Pacific Peoples Foundation
Japan. In this context, these demands go be 1921 Fernwood Road Victoria, Be, V8T 2Y6 CANADA
yond the passive and objectifying practices of TEL: 250-381-4131' FAX: 250-388-5258' EMAIL: sppf@sppf,org
"display Ainu," since Ainu are actively en-
gag~ in the revival and production of forgotten crafts and in deClslO~s about .how t? display them. One can still argue that Kayano ~ expenence lliustrates the cooptation of indigenous
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Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)

87
Germaine A. Hoston. The State, Identity, and the Na tional Question in China and Japan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. 628 pp.
by Joan Judge
This very dense book represents a significant effort to come to terms with the "national question" in radical discourse-the meaning of the nation in relation to, or in opposition to, the state-through the prism of the adoption of Marxist ideas in China and Japan in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a critical problem inasmuch as issues of state-building in China and of state hegemony in Japan have dominated the recent histories of those two countries. Germaine Hoston's book is also significant in that it at tempts to come to terms with Chinese and Japanese efforts to adopt, assimilate, mobilize, and, in some cases, reject Western political ideas that were crucial to the formation of a variety of schools of thought in East Asia from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. One of the central themes of Hoston's book is the "tension between the aspiration to socialist internationalism and the per sistence offierce nationalist sentiment" (p. 3) in Marxist doctrine and in its various incarnations in Russia and the Soviet Union, China, and Japan. Hoston confronts questions such as whether or not nationalism could playa progressive role in the liberation or development of "later-industrializing nations." She also ar ticulates the paradoxes involved in the appropriation ofMarxism by the Chinese and the Japanese. These non-Western thinkers adopted Marxism, which advocated the dissolution of the state, while continuing to uphold the idea of the state as a means of opposing the West; and, although Chinese and Japanese radicals viewed Marxism as a model of national development, it was a Western import and, as such, undermined the radicals' desire to assert their own contributions to human history.
Complex Tensions and Contradictions

Hoston traces the complexities of these various tensions and contradictions with reference to Marxist theory (chapters I and 2), philosophical and cultural traditions in China (Confucian ism, Daoism, Legalism) and Japan (NeoConfucianism, Koku gaku, Mitogaku, Shinto) (chapter 3), anarchism and bolshevism (chapters 4 and 5), the debate on Japanese capitalism (chapter 6), and the controversy over Chinese social history (chapter 7). Her argument culminates in what she sees as the resolution of these tensions through tenko in Japan, the renunciation of the anti-im perial claims of Marxism, and the embrace of the emperor-based system (chapter 8), and through Mao's Sinification of Marxism in China, the application of the universalities of Marxism to the particularities of China (chapter 9). Hoston marshals an overwhelming amount of evidence to make her argument. For a reader looking for specific details on
the evolution ofMarxist, anarchist, or socialist ideas in Germany, Russia, China, and Japan-through the plethora of groups and tendencies that emerged in these various settings, Hoston's book is very rich. A reader looking for a cogent argument that makes a specific point, however, will become bogged down in details and in descriptions of historical moments that have been well narrated elsewhere. Because the approach is more descriptive than analytical, material is repeated in different sections in the book (from larger issues, such as the Asiatic Mode ofProduction, which is described in chapters 2,6, and 7, to details that recur in different sections, including, for example, the issue of Chinese students in Japan, pp. 113 and 190, and references to F eng Ziyou and Henry George, pp. 117 and 152). The argument is not strengthened by continual references to secondary materials that have long been outdated or tran scended (for example, the use of Levenson's theory to describe the Chinese polity) while ignoring much recent scholarship. A book concerned with identity, as the title indicates, should not ignore the growing Western and Asian literature on race (for example, Frank Dikotter's The Discourse of Race in Modern China [London: C. Hurst]). And a book that focuses on Chinese Marxism should do more than re-emphasize the roles of Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. It must also address the complex picture of early communist thought that emerges out of recent scholar ship based on newly uncovered materials. A few examples are Vera Schwarcz's book on Zhang Shenfu, Marilyn Levine's ex amination of the role of overseas students in France, and Hans van de Ven's analysis of early radical political formations. (These works are not even cited in the bibliography.) In a study of Marxism in China and Japan, some discussion of the interaction between individual Marxists in those two countries would have been illuminating. As an example of this interaction, Hoston could have used the story of the Japanese journalist/spy Ozaki Hotsumi's involvement in China in the 1930s, a story already well-documented by Chalmers Johnson. Hoston makes a number of ahistorical and ungeographical connections that do little to bolster her argument. She writes, for instance, that while the work of contemporary critical Marxists such as Jurgen Habermas "was not available to Chinese and Japanese Marxists in the prewar period ... [their] contributions do help to elucidate what many might have felt [emphasis added] was missing from the account of society and the state offered to them" (p. 67). Is taking as a point of departure contemporary developments in Marxism in Europe to postulate on thinking in China and Japan earlier in the century a scholarly or productive way to proceed? Other spurious equiValences between Western and Eastern figures and time periods (i.e., between Plato and the anarchists, p.166) are sprinkled throughout the text.
Nation and State

Significant conceptual problems also mar Hoston's analy sis. In a book that places so much emphasis on distinguishing between the nation and the state, it is disconcerting to find that China-the nation with the longest history of a civil service bureaucracy in the world-is represented as completely lacking in the political notion of state (p. 95). While the understanding of the state in early and modem China is not directly equivalent to Western defmitions, it might have been more fruitful to articulate the nuanced differences between these understandings rather than to dismiss China as "stateless." Political thinkers in the late Qing and Republican eras voiced concerns about the state
Joan Judge is currently a Japan Foundation fellow at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. Her fIrst book, Print and Politics: "Shibao" and the Culture o/Re/o"" in Late Qing China. was published in December 1996 by Stanford University Press. In the 1997-98 academic year she will be a fellow at the Interdisciplinary Hwnanites Center, University of Cali fornia, Santa Barbara, and an instructor in the history department
88
being weak not just because of their fear of invasion by foreign nowers. but also because they believed that the Chinese state had been stronger in the past. And does not the theory ot onental despotism, to which Hoston gives so much attention, emphasize the fact that in China there was a "preponderance ofthe state over society" (p. 57)?
Marilyn Ivy. Discourses ofthe Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. xi + 270 pp. by Stefan Tanaka
Discourses ofthe Vanishing has been anticipated for sev eral years now; it won't disappoint. Despite the rising num ber of authors who seek to "explain" Japan or attack its essentialism, Ivy is one of the few who have the understanding of modernity and the methodological tools to excavate the celebration (Japa nese and American) of Japan's "uniqueness." Discourses is by far one of the most sophisticated inquiries into what Ivy calls properly I believe-the "Japanese thing." The juxtaposition be tween the singular, thing, and plural, discourses, suggests her overall theme: to discuss the always incomplete reconfigurations of the many pasts that have existed within the archipelago into a singular ideology of Japan. Although all interested in modem Japan would benefit from a careful reading of this book, not everyone (possibly those who would benefit most) will follow the author's unpacking of both the object of Japanese studies-Japan-as well as the conceptual tools used to naturalize that object. For the reader, this book is a sojourn in two senses. On the first level we learn about the margins of modem Japan through travels and travellers: rural sites that have become the object of media campaigns to promote domestic tourism; tourists (usually young women) who were targets of the Discover Japan media campaign and travel to the periphery to discover something about their past, thus present; folklore studies, especially through Yanagida Kunio's celebra tion of Tono as the quintessential site of the Japanese "folk"; the itako (blind female mediums) on Mount Osore; and taishu enge ki, the mass/popular itinerant theater that had virtually died out by the 1970s. As nostalgia these objects serve as the past, yet are divorced from history; the past becomes a style, absent of mean ing, which enables a sojourn backward to some originary (au thentically Japanese) moment in which the present-the ration ality and materialism of the modem-is displaced and, in the case of Japan, is relocated in the United States. On the second level we discover that the productions of those pasts that have come to reinforce the "Japanese thing." These sites/sights-Tono, Mt. Osore, and theater-are but mar ginal, Ivy uses them to discuss one of the central paradoxes of modern nation-states: that the creation of a modern place neces sitates the obliteration the past (traditions), even as the nation requires their celebration. The reader is challenged to question received categories of knowledge both about the nation-state as well as about the academic reinforcement of those constructs. Ivy writes:
there is widespread recognition in Japan today that the destabiliza tions of capitalist modernity have decreed the loss of much of the past, a past sometimes troped as ''traditional''; at the same time, there is a disavowal of this recognition through massive inves1ment in representative survivals refIgured as elegiac resources. Through tourism, folklore studies, education, and mass media-and through everyday moments ofnational-cultural interpellation and identificaStefan Tanaka is Associate Professor ofHistory, University ofCalifor nia, San Diego.
Confucian and Daoist Traditions Sweeping statements about large and very complex sys tems of thought are also unsatisfactory. Hoston contradicts her self, for example, in discussing the role of Confucianism in the adaptation of Marxism and in the development of radical ideas in twentieth-century China. She states that "[little] remained from the Confucian philosophical tradition to be blended crea tively with Western elements" (p. 103), but elsewhere she con tends that radicals were inspired in their anarchism by Confucian and Daoist traditions (p.155) and that the socialist revolutionar ies relied on the logic of Confucian thought (p. 168). Hoston's treatment of Daoism is also conceptually confused. It is not accurate to say, for instance, that Daoism was "an integral part of the official ideological corpus" in the late Qing (p.171).
The theoretical controversies that Hoston describes, as weU as her own treatment ofthem, are generaUy self contained and self-referentiaL
Hoston states that a major premise of the book is that "political thought as ideology is a significant force shaping revolutionary movements" (p. 11) and that perspectives on the national question, in particular, were of consequence for the Marxist revolutionary movements in East Asia. Laying out her argument, Hoston juxtaposes the importance of ideology against the approaches of structuralists and functionalists. Postulating that revolUuonary thought can help turn mere social and political instability into a revolutionary crisis (p. 15) is a point well taken, but the book does not sufficiently prove this premise. Hoston's narrative is one of what the French sociologist and cultural critic Pierre Bourdieu would call "esoteric culture," which is com prised of problems that are alien or inaccessible to ordinary people, and distinctions and nuances that have little more raison d' etre than the conflicts or competitions between self-defmed groups. The inaccessibility of this political culture is due not only to the complexity of the language used by the initiated, but also to the complexity of the social relations that constitute the political field that the thinkers are narrowly commenting on. The theoretical controversies that Hoston describes, as well as her own treatment of them, are generally self-contained and self-referential. In her discussion of the debates on Japanese capitalism between the Koza-ha and Rono-ha, for example, there is no mention ofnon-Marxist or unaffiliated Japanese or Western scholarship on the subject. This results in a treatment that is almost completely uncritical. Furthermore, the debates were conducted and are analyzed with little reference to the political forces-the working class movement, labor unions, and the purported actors in the coming socialist struggle-that played an important role in the unfolding of Japan's interwar history. These, it seems, should have been integral to any analysis of the national question and the socialist movement in East Asia.
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
89
tion-:-Japan~e of all. g~erations seek a recognition of continuity that IS cotennmous With Its negation." (pp. 9-10)
Importantly, this is not a book about the "invention" of traditions. Hobsbawm and Ranger's The Invention o/Tradition ~as. be~n important in forcing many people to recognize the hmltatlOn of the modem/tradition dichotomy (still a dominant trope). Yet too many scholars have used the notion of invention to describe the codification ofnational categories (a stabilization of the object of critique), rather than to see the processual nature of traditions. As Ivy points out, "traditions" are not to be under stood in contrast to modernity or regarded as some modem invention. They are concepts that possess a timefulness and a !imelessness, an e~o~ic (past) and an origin (a "Japanese" qual Ity). They are vanlshmg yet celebrated. Ivy describes this inter relation through Tono, "it could both represent origins available for nostalgic recuperation and appeal to curiosity about the exotic, unknown, and strange aspects of yet another Japan" (p. 101). I.VY's use of phantasm is important to this processual for mulatIOn of "tradition." It is a concept that recognizes the occur rence of an event, but whose significance emerges subsequently, as "deferred action" (p. 22). Phantasm brings up the relation between pasts and present in a more sophisticated manner than do most historical narratives. For example, Ivy's discussion of the transformation of pasts that occurs from the nostalgia of the Discover Japan campaign, to the foreignness ofthe Exotic Japan ~d ~e .codification in the academic neo-Japanesque shows th~ hlstonclty of pasts and of their uses. Unlike most histories that elide such historicity of symbols of identity, Ivy demonstrates how the past is both exotic (a confirmation of the modem self) and also-through the emplotment of the "West"-/oreign and originary (the beginning "real" moment of a national essence). !n other words, Ivy is unpacking the object of Japanese stud les-Japan-as well as the conceptual tools used to naturalize that object as a vague Japaneseness-the Japanese thing. Finally, just as Ivy does not separate culture from nation capitalism is integral to the articulations ofJapaneseness. Indeed: o~e wonderos ~hether Tono, for example, would be significant Without capitalism: from Yanagida's search for purity in the face ?f socio-~onomic changes in the 191 Os to the centrality of Tono 10 ~~ Discover J~pan t~urism campaign and the planning and bulldmg of Tonopla, a high-technology presentation/restoration
of rustic Tono. As in the revival of the taiahu engeki Ivy shows that such traditions, selected for the absence of modern materi alism, are themselves preserved through their commodification. Albough Iyr ~tates it in a di~erent way, this assignment of value and meanmg IS one ofthose mversions that the nation-state depends on to hide the inherent contradictions of modem nation states. It is the domestication of pasts into the "stable" framework of !he nation-~tate, a remapping of parts and pasts, thus their mamtenance, mto generalized notions of essence that can be re-called to support different parts of that discourse, the modern (a~ the unexpect~, that which is repressed as irrational by sCience), orthe nation (as nostalgic past, the authentic beginning, and measure of progress). It is the formulation of a collective memory, where the mnemonic is not some object (usually an event .or.monument that embodies that memory), but a shifting matenallty, where a certain past, for example, Tono, becomes an archetype or semiotic symbol for a nostalgic homeland. As an arche~pe To~o gain~ a stabili~ ~ the originary Japanese home land Irrespective of. ItS ~atenallty-:-the shift from a repository of the past to a utopian village. While Tono becomes a reminder ?f the. past, its his~oricity is elided. More generally, it is this ll;tV~lOn of pasts ~nto archetypes, the use of pasts as floating slgmflers of both historical and ahistorical essence, that so often confuses observers and reinforces the Japanese thing. For many, th~ ~ethodology 1h,a~ Ivy employs provides ho~. I:Iope that Within the homogenlZlng forces of nation and capltahsm, the excesses are marginalized, not fully eradicated as alwa~s "vanishing"-both on the precipice of disappearan~ ~d as Simultaneously preserved because they are vanishing. In this spa~e, there ~s a heter~geneity; for example, taiahu engeki, through Its theatncal parodies, might overturn middle-class sen sibilities and simultaneously provide its new (young) middle class television audience alternatives to the stricti1res of good t~te and normalcy. Our possibilities lie in recognizing what Michel ~e. Certeau calls "ways of operating," these multiple temporahties. Ivy concludes: "the very gap between concurrent forms ~f mod~ty and their associated modes of production lends differ~tial ener~ to the possibility ofworking through (if not redeemmg) the national-cultural past in Japan, as elsewhere" (p.246).
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90
Byron K. Marshall. Learning to Be Modern: Japanese Political Discourse on Education. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994. 320 pp. New Perspectives on Asian History Series.
by Kevin M. Doak
One of the characteristics of modern societies is that power is often sublimated, diffused through social structures and insti tutions to the degree that its effects seem all but effaced. The paradoxical nature of power in modem societies suggests that power-to be effective-must seem non-coercive, invisible as it were. This concealment of power gives rise to yei another irony. As modem societies define themselves in historically progres sive stages, moments of self-consciously enlightened attitudes ofhuman (and humane) considerations rather than murky myths centered on the divine, knowledge must be represented as fur thering the interests of freedom against arbitrary power, the rights of the individual against the idols of tribe or even of marketplace. And yet, modem societies have also harnessed and deployed power with an unprecedented level of skill, as Michel Foucault and others have pointed out, through the use of highly advanced forms ofknowledge. They reach a near totalitarian type of social control that premodern societies could only have dreamed about. This modern dilemma-knowledge as freedom versus knowledge as social constramt, or "the nghts ofman" and "the rights of citizen" as the French declared it-flits about the surface of Byron K. Marshall's remarkable study on politics and education in modem Japan. Few books in any field ever achieve both a learned synthe sis of a subj ect matter and a systematic development of a focused thematic structure with the grace and persuasion that Marshall does in this book. This is an especially laudable accomplishment since Learning to Be Modern is written primarily for the under graduate classroom and the educated, generalist reader. Marshall does not set out to expand the frontiers of knowledge but "to synthesize a great deal of scholarship by others" (p. xv). Those familiar with Marshall's previous work know that he has person ally contributed a great deal of what we know about the history of higher education in modem Japan. With this book, he demon strates not only that he is a first-rate researcher but also that he can effectively summarize what is most important about modem Japanese formal education, relate it to major developments in Japanese history and society, and do so in a coherent and stimu lating manner. Learning to Be Modern opens with "two primary proposi tions": that "Japan is not a single, monolithic culture persistently characterized by harmony and consensus" and that "nowhere is this better seen than in the repeated controversies about school ing ~v~ the past 150 years." One is tempted to quibble that, as SpeCIalists on Japan all know, the "conflict thesis" has been around for over ten years (see, for example, Tetsuo Najita and J. ~ctor Koschmann, eds., Conflict in Modern Japanese History [pnnceton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982], and Ellis S.
K~~ M Doak teaches ~dem ~apanese history at the University of IllinoIS at Urbana-ChampaIgn. He IS the author ofDreams ofDifforence: The Japan Romantic School and the Crisis o/Modernity and is currently writing a book on ethnic nationalism in modern Japan.
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Krauss, Thomas P. RohIen, Patricia G. Steinhoff, eds., Conflict in Japan [Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984]). Yet, I sense that there are still many classrooms in which the view of Japan as a consensus-oriented culture still predominates. Thus Marshall. is pro~ding us all a valuable service by incorporating the COnflIct theSIS mto thIS textbook on the politics of education. This is a particularly welcome approach smce, as Marshall's second proposition suggests, it is education itself that played an important role in convincing some Japanese people that they are uruqu.e, homogeneous, and nationally united. In this sense, by f~cusmg on debates over educational policy, Marshall situates hIS study not so much within or against claims of Japanese uniqueness as outside them. His purpose is to show how such claims of uniqueness result not from culture itself or from cognitive errors, but from specific political interests that are the result of certain political values. Where better than in education to stress the role of conflict and contestation? Conflict is central to education in any society, and Japan seems to have as much open conflict over educational matters as anywhere else. Specifically, Marshall informs us that he will focus on conflict around three problems that U.S. reform ers .identified as the most i~portant areas of concern during the ~eno~ of post-war occupatIOn: centralization, elitism, and na tIonalIsm. Marshall demonstrates quite convincingly that these were not merely present concerns projected backwards on earlier Japanese educational policies by unwelcome foreign invaders. Centralization, elitism, and nationalism were indeed critical as pects in the earliest attempts by the new Meiji state to institute an educational policy for the new nation. The "revolutionary nature of the Meiji reforms" (p. 5) is underscored by the fIrst chapter ("Clarifying Loyalty and Filial Pietr: 1800-18?Os") which accepts the Tokugawa period as the traditIonal basIS for modem Japanese policies on education but which emphasizes the reworking of that tradition in light the modem requirements of the new state. Tokugawa Japan was too decentralized, its elitism was too ascriptive rather than achieve me~t-oriented, and the proto-nationalism of the early modem penod was too amorphous for the needs of the centralized "me~toc~ati~" Meiji s~ate. ~oul.d ~at Marshall had developed the ImplIcatIOns of hIS tellmg mSIght that "in few industrial societies is the tradition of ascribing traditional origins to modem p.henomena more ingrained than in Japan" (p. 23). I think he is nght, but the point is often buried in all the historical detail from the To~gawa period, with less attention given to the Meiji ~e~toratIOn that encapsulated the modernizing impulses in tra dItIonal decor. Passages in later chapters reinforce this point. Marshall.cautions ~at "it should be remembered that emphasis on moralIty and ethICS was also an integral part of contemporary Western educational systems and was thus 'modern'" (p. 31). I fear, however, that this point may be lost on many ofthose whom the book is designed to reach. Marshall's.point, as I understand it, is not to deprive the Japanese of theIr own autonomous culture by smearing them WIth tJ:te sam~ess of mod~ation theory, but to explode myths of natIve punty by revealmg how multifaceted and constructed the first moments in modern Japanese culture were. The fIrst major governmental plan on modern Japanese education, the 18~2 "Gakusei" (the School System), was a remarkably cosmo polItan attempt to use centralized power, elitism, and nationalism to envision an educational system that would reach "all of the nation's youth, regardless of former social rank, geographic
of
VoL 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
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region, or even gender ... [and that would] be based on ability, not socioeconomic class" (p. 40). It was only later, especially with the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education, that education was more closely wedded to conservative notions of the Japanese as culturally homogeneous and harmonious. The Imperial Rescript would remain the linchpin in the bureaucracy's attempt to retain control over education and to reinforce the notion that the pur pose of education was to inculcate notions of imperial loyalty, a project that characterized much of the debate on education until the Occupation and the arrival of the U.S. reformers. Along the way, one is struck by further ironies in the interplay between centralization, elitism, and nationalism as they related to debates on education. Let us begin with "elitism," perhaps the most troublesome of the three. "Elitism" is Mar shall's way of referring to two quite separate social issues: "privileging academic merit at the expense of egalitarianism" and "discriminating openly on the basis of gender" in formal education (p. 2). In the first sense, the description "elitism" is an implicit critique of equal opportunity of education rather than equal outcome, but such a critique does not lead naturally to a critique of nationalism or centralization, although that is what I believe Marshall hopes it will do. It should be pointed out that equal opportunity of education theoretically provides more re sistance to nationalism and homogeneity than does equal out come by encouraging competition among individuals and weak ening collectivity, but neither educational philosophy is ever perfectly realized in practice. If one is dismayed by the homoge neous outcome of Japan's equal opportunity education, just imagine the results of an education system in Japan that produced equal outcome! Advocates for equal outcome stress that this means that each individual will receive equal attention commen surate with the needs of that individual, but someone (presum ably in a national bureaucracy) will have to decide standards of equal attention and equal needs, thus furthering the potential for such an educational policy to serve the needs of nationalism. After all, why should anyone tolerate a "separate but equal" school system that allowed for different standards of equality in Tochigi and Tokyo? But is nationalism always incompatible with the individ ual's own perceptions of self-interest? Further troubles with that assumption arise when close historical attention is given to the impact of gender in education. The assumption that women have fared worse as nationalism grew stronger is undercut by the disclosure that "the number of female students [in higher educa tion] increased from just 15,500 in 1935 to over 58,500 in 1945. Approximately 10,000 were in medical schools by the end of the war" (p. 138). In fact, educational opportunity for all Japanese improved during the "dark valley" ofnationalism and militarism. The number of Japanese enrolled in colleges and universities nearly doubled from 1930 to 1945, and by the mid-1930s Japan had a higher proportion of its popUlation enrolled in higher education than either Britain or France. Expansion of education also continued at precollegiate levels during the 1930s and 1940s. While such data suggest the need to look at more quali tative issues than simply who gets how much education, they also indicate the complex relationship between centralization, nation alism, and the problem of "elitism" in education. Things get even more complicated after the war. Although the Americans came to Japan with the assumption that de-cen tralization was good for Japan generally and for education spe cifically, the cold war quickly chilled those plans andre-centrali
zation of education, often under the same prewar educational bureaucrats, was the result. Thereafter, beginning from around the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, educational policy was fought out in the "entrenchment" of two camps, what Marshall calls the "conservatives" (the Liberal Democratic Party) and the "progressives" Gust about everybody else, but especially the Socialist Party). Marshall's depiction of the education struggles between the progressives and the conservatives during the 1950s recalls "the good old days," when battIe lines were clearly drawn and one generally knew who "the enemy" was. Or thought one did. Of course, things never were so simple, and the "conserva tives" included prewar liberals, such as Abe Yoshishige and Nanbara Shigeru, who criticized Hirohito for his war responsi bility. Another "conservative," Royama Masamichi, is presented as a victim of the prewar government (along with Kawai Eijiro, who was a true democratic socialist). This presents a somewhat misleading image ofRoyama as "moderately conservative" or as a liberal. In fact, he was a well-known advocate of fascist programs in the prewar period and supported the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The progressives, for their part, included many "elite" intellectuals such as Yanaihara Tadao, who maintained his strong ethnic nationalist convictions while serving as the President of Tokyo University during much of the I 950s. Finally, in a tantalizingly brief conclusion, Marshall shows himself to be a sure guide through and beyond the morass of recent decades over what is certain to become the central issue of educational debate in Japan in the years ahead: "our national identity as Japanese." The evidence does not always support Marshall's belief that "any governrnent dominated by the Con servatives is ipso facto at odds with the true will of the people" (p. 253), a sweeping statement that would require more attention to either the effects of ideology or the role of progressive elitism than the author provides. Students report higher levels of satis faction than ever before (87 percent of 1990 high school students versus 69 percent of 1970 high school students) and the animos ity between teachers and the Education Ministry appears to be weakening. (Marshall neglects to say anything, however, about the serious social concern in Japan with the problem of school "bullying" [ijime].) I believe there are reasons to expect a greater sense of national integration in the coming years, even while the chal lenges posed by women, Okinawa, Ainu, Burakumin, and resi dent Chinese and Koreans remain serious. But as the recent allegations by Asahara Shoko, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, against the Japanese state reveal (or, the phobias of the anti-state camp involved in the Oklahoma bombing, if you wish), anti-statism is neither always a sign of progressive politics nor always incompatible with popular nationalism. Even as Japanese "progressives" indict the postwar demo cratic state and struggle over national educational policy whether in the name ofgreater local control or a more progressive use ofthe mechanisms of central government- the challenge of nationalism, not merely statism, remains as troubling for the Left as for the Right. As we all continue to learn to be modem, we may find grounds for optimism in John Breuilly's reminder that "nationalism may be modern but modernity is not nationalism" (Nationalism and the State, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. ix).
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Tanaka Yuki. Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996. 267 pp. Foreword by John W. Dower. by Wesley Sasaki-Uemura
In Hidden Horrors Tanaka Yuki undertakes the ambitious project of trying to show the connections among the many examples of Japanese war crimes during World War II, specifi cally, the maltreatment and killing of prisoners of war, the abuse and rape ofwomen, cannibalism by Japanese soldiers, biological warfare experiments, and civilian massacres. But rather than examine the most infamous examples of these war crimes, he focuses on little-known incidents that occurred in Borneo, Indo nesia, and New Guinea. Tanaka's detailed narratives show that these incidents, although smaller in scale, were equally horrific and, in his analysis, manifestations of a broad systemic problem rather than isolated cases of madness. He looks flI"St at the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) who were forced to construct a military airfield at Sandakan in Borneo and at the subsequent death marches across the island that only six prisoners survived (a minuscule survival rate com pared to that of POWs forced to build the Burma-Thailand railway). He then describes the fate ofAustralian nurses detained at Palembang on Sumatra and sets it against the background of mass rapes such as those at Nanjing and the military's institution of "comfort women" in the war theater. Chapter 4 examines evidence of cannibalism by Japanese soldiers in New Guinea, something made famous by Hara Kazuo's documentary film "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On" and alluded to in the case ofthe Philippines in Ooka Shohei's novel Fires on the Plain. The next chapter turns to biological warfare experiments carried out in Rabaul, New Britain, just off the coast of New Guinea, in which POWs were tested on starvation diets, injected with malaria, and given various poisons to gauge their effectiveness. These experiments had a direct relationship to the infamous Unit 731 in Manchuria, which trained doctors and taught techniques used throughout the Pacific theater. Finally, Tanaka investigates two instances ofcivilian massacres, one at Kavieng, New Ireland and another on board a ship sailing between Kavieng and Rabaul. Tanaka's primary goal is to understand how ordinary sol diers could commit such atrocities. He specifically challenges the notion that Japanese war crimes derived from unique cultural propensities. He presents examples in each chapter of similar acts committed by other peoples in modern wars. For Tanaka, the problem with theories of Japanese cultural uniqueness is that these theories only defer explanation to another level without making the reasons for the atrocities any clearer. He looks instead to historical developments in military training and command structures and to specific conditions and events in Southeast Asia in order to comprehend (but not forgive) these war crimes. Each chapter concludes with an analysis ofthe reasons why that type of crime was committed. Tanaka tends toward psycho logical explanations, employing Robert Jay Lifton's notion of "doubling" by which the victimizer-in all ofthese cases decid edly male-is able to separate his inhuman actions from his ordinary life. The victimizer needs to dehumanize his victims in order to avoid any personal attachment and feelings of guilt that might develop. In the case of doctors performing biological
warfare experiments, they referred to their subjects as "logs" (maruta) and treated them as soulless, inanimate objects. Simi larly, Japanese soldiers who cannibalized both enemy soldiers, local people, and even their own comrades had to dehumanize their victims as "white meat," "black pigs," and so on. Tanaka focuses on such psychological explanations in order to stress the universality of the problem, and he asserts that any doctor or soldier has the potential for "doubling" and committing atroci ties. 1 But while this explanation provides some of the psycho logical mechanics for these inhuman acts, the question still remains as to what finally moves a person to do these things. Tanaka argues that part ofthe reason for the cruelty towards POWs was that Japan did not adopt all the international accords regarding prisoners. Furthermore there had been a significant decline in the amount of attention given to the teaching of intemationallaw in the military academies in the decades leading up to the outbreak of the war. During the Meiji period Japan's naval college made a great effort to educate officers about intemationallaw, but Tanaka states that by 1941 it was estimated that naval college officer-candidates "received only one hour of teaching on intemationallaw." (p. 194) Respect for international law had been supplanted by the ideology of the emperor system in which one's value was determined by one's relative proximity to the emperor. Officers were closer to the emperor and had to be treated as superior to rank-and-fIle soldiers, who in turn felt superior to colonial subjects and prisoners ofwarbecause oftheir special relationship to the emperor. Tanaka takes this notion of value according to relative proxi.-nity from Maruyama Masao's early postwar essay "Theory and Psychology of Ultra-National ism." 2 He combines this with Maruyama's idea of "transfer of oppression" from the same essay to explain how ordinary sol diers could commit these war crimes. Tanaka asserts that "Japa nese forces were unusual in the extent to which they undervalued their soldiers." 3 Rank-and-file soldiers often came from the bottom of the social order and had no outlet for the oppression they suffered at the hands of superior officers. Thus, when they went overseas to the colonies or the war zones, they transferred that Qppression to colonial subjects and indigenous peoples. Like Maruyama, Tanaka seems to see this transfer as manifesting itself in "an explosive impulse to free themselves at a stroke from the pressure that has been hanging over them." Tanaka emphasizes in a nUmber of places that the cruelty of Japanese soldiers towards POWs, women, and civilians radi cally increased as their situation became more desperate and they had to confront their imminent self-destruction. Gang rapes and cannibalism affirmed a twisted sense of group solidarity through
Wesley Sasaki-Uemura teaches Japanese history at the University of Utah. He is currently working on social movements in the early postwar period. 1. Tanaka YUki, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder, Colo.: WestviewPress, 1996), p. 165. 2. Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behaviour in Modem Japanese Politics. edited by IV8IlMoIris (London: Oxford University Press, 1969. Revised and expanded edition.). This essay originally appearedinSekai. May 1946. 3. TIIDIIka, p. 199. 4. Maruyama, "Theory and Psychology of Ultra-Nationalism," in Thought and Behaviour in Modem Japanese Politics. p. 19.
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aggression against scapegoats. Tanaka .ascribes civili~ ~ass~ cres to the notion of gyokusai or glonous self-anmhilatIon m which soldiers were taught that their deaths would achieve meaning through inflicting as much damage as possible on the enemy. Interestingly, Tanaka claims that wartime crimes were not a reflection of bushido or code of military honor but resulted instead from its corruption during the 1910s and 1920s as actions were justified solely in tenns of maintaining imperial authority.'
John Clammer. Difference and Modernity: Social The ory and Contemporary Japanese Society. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1995. 144 pp. Japanese Studies Series. by Sonia Ryang
Difference and Modernity consists of essays on various themes such as urban lifestyle and city, self and society, indige nous epistemology and ontology, modernity and postmodernity. Author John Clammer's ambitious discussion of "theorizing Japanese society" opens with a claim that "in Japan ~e.have the only major case of a non-western country that has [jomed] the front ranks of the modern'developed' capitalist societies" (p. 1). Clammer's text is consistent in suggesting that Japan's develop ment is based on "very different principles" from those of the West, but Japan's development principles "work equally well" (p. 119). Because he feels that the Japanese model "works well" (without Western intervention), Clammer directs his pol~ic against so-called Western social theory that falls short of explam ingthe Japanese case. He divides existing English-language studies of Japan into political economy and Nihonjinron, the former concentrating on systemic analysis and the latter on cultural debate. The former are too rigidly institution-bound, Clammer contends, while the latter consist of heated, almost conspiracy-like attempts to construct Japan as a unique cultural entity-one that is implicitly superior to other "cultures." N~i ther is satisfactory in Clammer's judgment. In Nihonjinron lIt erature, a description ofthe oft-depicted group model of Japanese society is substituted for analysis. Since this sort of a critique of Nihonjinron has been around for some time and since there is a virtually endless list of Nihonjinron books written in Japanese by Japanese authors, Clammer concentrates his critique on the political economy approach that relies heavily on Western social scientific para digms. Without giving us a comprehensive survey of such stud ies (except for a mention of Chalmers Johnson and a few others) and without offering a careful critical assessment of them, Clam mer attacks Western social theory itself, which, he believes, is the basis of the political economy approach to Japan. Existing Western social theories advanced by theorists such as Anthony Giddens largely ignore Japan and miss the point that the Japanese sociology of knowledge has an epistemological basis that is entirely different from the Western one (pp. 29-30):
When tlte issue becomes "I feel" rather than ''I think" [as in Japan] the whole intellectual foundations of Cartesianism., and with it its intellectual successors such as structuralism, are undennined in a radical way.... A challenge comes from the viewthat "I feel tlterefore I am" which is potentially the starting point for an alternative theory of knowledge, and with it a fresh vision of social theory. (pp. 9-10)
Prisoners of War
Tanaka is most convincing when discussing the treatment of POWs. Although not emphasized in his conclusion, the nar ratives describe how military officers used vaguely stated but clearly understood orders to claim they were not responsible for actions carried out by their soldiers. Taiwanese and Korean guards were used in this manner. He als~ r~ises. c~cial ~ssues about the "conventions" of war and the diffIcultIes m trymg to enforce humane treatment in wartime. Tanaka is less effective in trying to relate the situation of the Australian nurses to the issue of comfort women. Colonial ism was key to the institution of the comfort women; the vast majority of those forced to become comfort women were Korean colonial subjects over whom the soldiers felt inherently supenor. While the psychology of "punishing the enemy" may have been applicable in the treatJ.nent of the Australian nurses, this expla nation is problematic when applied to the comfort women. Tanaka's claim that they were viewed as part of the "spoils of war" also seems off base. The civilian massacres at Kavieng are also difficult to compare to the Rape of Nanjing, which was a sustained action ofboth rape and genocide that lasted for months; it was not a single outburst. Generally, the analysis would have benefited from more mention of hierarchic class structures. For example, it is highly doubtful that Japanese victims of cannibal ism were officers, given the way in which discipline was main tained in the units that practiced it. This book makes an important contribution to the literature by trying to grasp the significance and relevance of these events. The purpose of Tanaka's account is to build what. Maruyama called a "community of contrition." We should bear m mmd that Maruyama's book was first published in Japan and directed at a Japanese audience. 6 Tanaka responds to the question, why dredge up these terrible events from long ago? His answer is that the Japanese must "master the past" and "exercise moral imagination" 7 by taking responsibility for past wrongdoings and realizing their position as victimizers rather than victims. He argues that t~ese events are still relevant today because the people who commItted these crimes "were in reality mostly ordinary Japanese men. They were our fathers and grandfathers. We need to face up !o the fact that we could easily become this 'other' ourselves m changed circumstances." 8 The point should be made for non Japanese as well.
*
5. Tanaka, pp. 198,206-207.
6. The book was entitled Shirarezaru Senso Hanzai and was published by Otsuki Shoten (Tokyo) in 1993. 7. Tanaka, p.l. 8. Ibid., p.6.
Sonia Ryang, a Japan-born Korean, studied anthropology at tlte Univer sity of Cambridge. She was a professor in tlte Department of Anthro pology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The ~ustralian National University, at the time this review was written. She IS now an assistant professor ofanthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She is tlte authorofNorth Koreans inJapan: Language, Ideology. and Identity (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997).
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BuUettn o/Concerned Asian Scholars
Clammer is not putting forward the Japan case as an open ing to a new social theory, but as something that existed for centuries prior to Giddens's academic career. Referring to the Japanese idea of the relationship between self and modernity which, according to Clammer, has proved to be as valid as the Western equivalent-he expresses his disappointment with the recent work of Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (1991). Clammer writes: The recent fashionableness of this theme in the West and the fact that most of the major Western literature makes no reference at all to Japan or to Japanese social theory is an interesting comment on the parochialism of much We~iem theory. It is not only interesting that Giddens, who, for all his prolific production, has hitherto stayed well away from this trendy subject, has suddenly felt the urge to make a contribution, but that in doing so he has discovered that modernity alters everyday experience. An insight that has been around in Japan for a century has evidently only just arrived in Cambridge (pp. 84-85). Clammer appears to be charging that such a "big-name" as Anthony Giddens should have been examining the universe of trendy subjects and that, as a modem social theorist, Giddens would have benefited particularly from studying Japan. Western Sociology It is true that Western sociology is "Western" (whatever that may be) in all its aspects. It is equally true that, empirically speaking, many non-Western societies (wherever they, too, may be) find Western sociology difficult to identify with or to relate directly to their socio-historical experiences. Nevertheless, if Giddens, as Clammer himself claims, is a social theorist of the West, why should he write about Japan in the first place? Does Clammer know that Giddens's social theory is widely studied in Japan-in Japanese and in English? Does Clammerregard Japan as an isolated loner that has succeeded in producing its own "sociology of knowledge" (or at least a theory of self and moder nity) without any Western influence? Clammer steers away from this dead end and answers in the negative. According to him, Japan has an alternative postmoder nity-a tradition that it has preserved in a unique manner. He writes: "Japanese handling of postmodernism-the adoption of many Western/arms, the aesthetics of technology and lifesty les superficially (and in public) at least like those ofthe West-while actually creating ever new mediating structures to allow the cultural and psychological bases to remain relatively untouched [by the West]" (p. 58; emphasis added). In other words, even if the form is Western, there is a structure (or structures) that enables Japan to keep its psychology and culture purely Japa nese. It is this combination that enables Japan to be "a highly workable, pacifist, virtually crime-free and economically dy namic society" (p. 120). Clammer's study is not free of constraints (due chiefly to its ambitious scope). Clammer's analysis of Japanese urban life is relevant; he struggles with this difficult reality right from the start. Referring to indigenous theorists such as Maruyama and Ashihara, Clammer suggests that the Japanese cities have a high degree of "monotony" compared to those in other industrialized counties. This, according to him, is "a clue to why in Japan there is [a] curious uncertainty as to whether one is living in a 'first' or 'third' world country" (p. 58). This uncertainty is created by the situation in which "Japanese urban lifestyles are bound to
develop according to their own cultural logic and that there will be distinctive problems in relating what has been described to me (by Japanese themselves) as a 'feudal' or 'tribal' society of huge scale, to technology, bureaucratic institutions and the whole range of things that Weber understood as falling within his concept of 'rationalization'" (p. 57). Although it is difficult to determine just what kind of reference source Clammer is dealing with (since he does not cite many indigenous discursive materi als), one wonders if he is exaggerating Japanese exoticness? How about the Kennedy dynasty in the United States or the royal family in the United Kingdom? Are they not "feudal" in both real and metaphorical senses? No society is completely "feudalism free," true? Furthermore, what kind of "feudalism" is Clammer (and presumably his informants) talking about? If, as Clammer postulates earlier in the book, the epistemological basis of Japa nese social scientific knowledge is different from that of the (so-called) West, should Clammer not be treating concepts such as "feudalism" carefully? If I may push further and level at Clammer the charge he voices against Giddens, should he not be more sensitive to the socio-historical contexts in which the discursive data he is deal ing with developed? He is, after all, arguing in English that "Japanese epistemology is different," relying on etymological and socio-historical values invested in the corpus of language called English? If we agree with Clammer's claim that the Japanese epistemological basis is entirely different from the "Western" one, then it may not be appropriate to call Tokyo and Osaka "cities" in English. This is no small point. Rather than deciding that Japanese epistemology (or class conflict or hierar chy or social structure, for that matter) is different from the Western model, Clammer should clarify what and which "West" he is trying to engage in dialogue and what and which "Japan" is he talking about?
The simple dichotomy that Clammer posits between Ja pan and the West does not serve him well, since it ob scures the book~ soundgoals ofputting indigenous discourse on a social scientifIC foundation and trying to explain Japan using sociological concepts available to us.
Despite his insistence on Japanese uniqueness, Clammer denies that his book is a Nihonjinron. He cites a number of points to explain his contention. Among them is his insistence that his book is not about groupism as advanced by Nakane Chie or Doi Takeo. He refuses, however, to indulge in class analysis, which he takes to be a Western explanation equivalent to the group model used in Japan; Japan lacks a hostile and rigid hierarchy as class system, since in Japan class hierarchy is indigenized and naturalized by unique "mediating structures." He further com ments that such a modification (or subversion?) of class theory in Japan may be "just another case of the reality of Japanese society being ahead of the most 'advanced' western social the ory" (p. 119). The "naturalness of hierarchy" found in Japan allows Clammer to claim that "paradoxically Japan may in some senses be closer to the ideals of a Marxist society than anything yet achieved in the formerly socialist bloc" (p. 122). In conjunc tion with this statement (although it is not clear which Marxism he is talking about-Althusserian or orthodox, for example), he
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suggests that "non-class forms of hierarchy, and of conflict and struggle, are possible" to understand by way of studying Japan (p. 122). Here one wonders, for instance, if anthropology, which has its origin in Western cultural and colonial domination of the rest of the world, has not dealt with non-class forms of power relations (such as kinship and mysticism) for some time; one wonders if Western feminism has not argued for decades that gender inequality and other asymmetrical relations of power cannot be exhaustively explained by using class as a yardstick; one also wonders ifrecent cultural studies theorists have not been debating ethnic absolutism and intra-ethnic power relations of gender and seniority, and so forth. Again, just what "West" is Clammer arguing against so as to validate Japan's naturalized hierarchy (if there is such a thing)? The "West" is not one and united. The simple dichotomy that Clammer posits between Japan and the West does not serve him well, since it obscures the book's sound goals of putting indigenous discourse on a social scientific foundation and trying to explain Japan using sociological concepts available to us. Clammer's desire to demonstrate the shortcomings of social theory and to argue for concrete anthropological study (p. 123) is well-grounded, given that there have been so many single-vol ume attempts at explaining Japanese society without careful clarifications and analysis. Clammer's efforts to portray Japan as a site for the development of an alternative epistemology-with a potential for fundamentally subverting existing "Western" social theoretical notions-is too strained. The unfortunate result is that his attempt to criticize Nihonjinron yields yet another instance of an insistance on Japan's cultural uniqueness.
Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, eds. Women ofJa pan and Korea: Continuity and Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. ix + 308 pp. by Chunghee Sarah Soh
Japan and Korea as neighboring countries share some basic similarities in their cultural heritage. Their languages, which belong to the Altaic family, exhibit a striking resemblance in grammatical structure. Yet their writing systems, the kana sylla baries and the han 'gul alphabets, are distinct. Both societies have been influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism, but the place ofBuddhism in contemporary Japan and Korea is quite different, and the Confucian legacy is believed to be much stronger in Korea than in Japan. The traditional family systems of Japan and Korea were both patrilineally organized, but the details of the descent rules differ markedly. In short, Japan and Korea share the general traits of East Asian civilization, but diverge in the details of their cultural traditions. How, then, have these sociocultural similarities and differ ences affected the roles of women of Japan and Korea? Further more, now that Japan and Korea! rank as industrial nations, what transformations have occurred in the roles of women and how do the situations in each country compare?
Changing Roles of Women of Japan and Korea

Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, political scientists, edited Women ofJapan andKorea: Continuity andChange after conducting field research on women's rights movements in Japan and Korea, respectively, during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The stated focus of their book is "the changing role of women" (p. 1) in "two strikingly similar but clearly distinct Asian industrial nations" (p. vii). The volume consists ofthirteen chapters written by women from Japan, Korea, and North Amer ica. Despite the editors' disclaimer about any particular perspec tive on behavioral adaptation to modernization (p. vii), the voices in this volume are predominantly those of elite feminist women who advocate individualistic, egalitarian values. In the introductory chapter Gelb and Palley provide an overview of the context for continuity and change in women's roles and status in Japan and Korea and compare women's experiences in social, economic, and political life. The introduc tion is followed by six essays on Japanese women in Part 1 and another six on Korean women in Part 2. Most of the eight contributors to Part 1 are native Japanese women, while the contributors in Part 2 are composed of three native-born Koreans and three non-Koreans (Americans).
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Chunghee Sarah Soh is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University. Herpublicationsinclude Women in Korean Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993) and three articles in The Asian American Encyclopedia: ''Christianity in Korea," "Korean Churches in the United States," and "Korean War Brides." Hcr current research interest is the "comfort women" issue. See her article, ''The Korean 'Comfort Women' Movement for Redress: From a Bilateral Compensation Dispute to a Human Rights Issue," in the December 1996 issue of Asian Survey. 1. All references to Korea are to South Korea, the Republic ofKorea.
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Bulletin ofConcernedAstan Scholars
Overall, the quality of the chapters on Japanese women is consistently high with detailed references to both Japanese and English-language materials. The chapters on Korean women, however, are uneven. The space allocation is also lopsided in favor of the material on Japan: 164 versus 106 pages. The imbalance is most conspicuous in the essays on the women's movements in Japan and Korea, 37 versus 21 pages. While quantity does not necessarily translate into quality, the unequal treatment may negatively affect the impact of the Korea section. The topics of the two sets of essays on Japanese and Korean women are as follows: family life (by Ueno Chizuko and Eliza beth Choi), education (by Fujimura-Fanselow Kumiko and Ka meda Atsuko, with Cho Kyung Won), health care (by Ogino Miho and Lisa Kim Davis), labor force participation (by Shinot suka Eiko and Roh Mihye), political representation (by Kubo Kimiko and Joyce Gelb, with Sohn Bong Scuk), and the feminist movement (by Sandra Buckley and Marian Palley). Women ofJapan and Korea is, to my knowledge, the first book that brings together materials on Japanese and Korean women for comparative purposes, and the editors should be commended for their pioneering endeavor. The Korea section is especially welcome since materials on Korean women in English are few and far between. What leaves me disappointed, however, is the lack of analytical insights in the comparative project of Women in Japan and Korea.
in both Japan and Korea middle-aged and older housewives tend to work at part-time employment and the burden ofcontraception use is placed mainly on women. The ratios in both countries for female enrollment at the higher levels ofeducation are lower than those for males. Yet, in Korea, parental attitudes toward the education of girls seem to be changing in favor of gender equality. "Korean parents," Cho states, "now want to send to college their high-achieving child, regardless of sex" (p. 216). (Cho does not reveal her source1 nor attempt to explain this difference.) The only difference the editors note in their introduction is in electoral politics, where Japanese women are "making more headway ... than Korean women" (p. 16), but the reasons for this difference are not explored. Although Pak Sun-ch'on did precede Doi Takako by 23 years in achieving the leadership position of a major opposition party, the progress of women in Korean politics has been undeniably slow.
Political Participation of Women

The virtual male monopoly in electoral politics, I suggest, cannot be understood without reference to Korea's modem po litical history and the central role of the military in the divided nation throughout the cold war era. Unfortunately, Sohn's essay, "Agenda for social reform: Women's political participation in South Korea," fails to quote any Korean women politicians. Furthermore, it does not provide a historical perspective that would help our understanding of women's struggles and victo ries in the turbulent political events in twentieth-century Korea.! In her zeal to promote social reform for women's increased participation in politics, Sohn suggests an essentialist feminist view of women leaders as capable of making the world more democratic than male politicians have (p. 270). Several essays on Korea overemphasize the conservative influence of Confucianism, without exploring adaptive behav ioral patterns that deal with the contradictions of the democratic principle of sexual equality and the traditional ideology of male superiority. 4 For instance, the report that the teenage pregnancy rate in Korea in 1985 was almost nine times as high as that in Japan (p. 74), is a startling puzzle that appears to fly in the face of claims that "Confucianism has a stronger hold in Korea than any other nation in the world" (p. 3) and that Koreans exhibit "the strictest adherence to the Confucian ethical heritage" (p.
Comparative Insights
Despite the comparative structure of the collection, few of the comparative essays offer the promised "new insights into the clashes that have arisen between tradition and change" or "new perspectives applicable to women's lives and experiences in other nations as well" (p. vii). For example, Ueno Chizuko presents a comprehensive analysis of the changing patterns ofmarried women's labor force participation in the past two decades in terms of the diversifica tion of women's lifestyles in postindustrial Japan. Ueno asserts that the variable for married women's different lifesty les in Japan is the woman's class position, determined not only by her hus band's income but also by her own income and the wealth of the parents of both husband and wife (p. 39). Elizabeth Choi, in contrast, examines the sociocultural "burdens" affecting women's lives since the early history of the Korean nation. When Choi discusses family life in modem Korea, herfocus is on the role of motherhood and she emphasizes the continuity of women's lifestyles "based on the values of the patriarchal society" (p. 196). (Choi's analysis is based on her field research on the mother-infant interaction among middle class women who are, for the most part, highly educated.) Thus, the two essays that apparently deal with the same topic ofwomen and the family in Japan and Korea do not, in fact, lead to a meaningful comparison or to new insights into the changing role of women. Neither do the essays on health care allow for systematic comparisons. Ogino Miho presents a well documented, critical probe into the issues involved in abortion and women's reproductive rights in modem Japan, while Lisa Kim Davis provides a more general survey of health issues for Korean women since the 1960s. Gelb and Palley's introduction underlines the similar pat terns of Japanese and Korean women's experiences. Indeed, the essays in this volume do reveal some similarities. For example,
190).
Further, despite the widening gap between the rich and the poor and between the young and the old in Korean society, some contributors pay scant heed to the dynamic interplay of gender, class, and age in the newly industrialized country. For instance, Roh's chapter, "Women workers in a changing Korean society," conveys no sense of the struggles waged by female workers
2. SevemJ. other contributors in this collection also frequently fail to cite their sources of infonnation. 3. For an in-depth study of Korean women legislators, see my Women in Korean Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), which is the second edition of The Chosen Women in Korean Politics: AnAnthropo logical Study (New York: Praeger, 1991), reviewed in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 25, no. 1 (1993). 4. See, for example, my ''Compartmentalized Gender Schema: A Model ofChanging Male-Female Relations in Korean Society," Korea Journal 33, no. 4 (1993): 34-48.
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against the repressive labor policy of an authoritarian state intent on achieving the Korean economic "miracle" at any cost.' Nei ther Roh nor Palley reports on the courageous actions taken by women factory workers to improve their working conditions, the legal battles initiated by individual women workers to help bring about gender equality in the Korean workplace, and the suppor tive activities by various small groups of intellectuals and relig ious (particularly, Christian) leaders of both sexes"
History and the Politics ofthe Women's Movement

A lack of historical perspective is most glaring in the account ofthe Korean women's movement, especially in contrast to Buckley's comprehensive essay on the history of the feminist movement in Japan. Palley's essay, which is in essence a reprint of her article published in Asian Survey in 1990 with the addition of a section on sexual violence, presents an overview of the Korean women's movement since the 1980s. Palley states that "prior to the mid 1980s, these [women's] groups were not particularly concerned with issues relating women's rights and equality" (p. 282). She is apparently unaware of the persistent struggles of Korean women's groups, from the 1950s to the 1970s, to obtain two major revisions of the Family Law for more egalitarian gender relationships in family life. 7 Palley's important report on sexual violence as an issue cutting across all types of women's organizations does not mention the "comfort women" problem and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. 8 The majority of the "comfort women" were abducted from colonial Korea by Imperial Japan. It is ironic that Buckley's essay on Japan should link the "comfort women" issue to the growth of new levels of cooperation between Japanese and Korean women's groups (pp. 171-172). Binational cooperation between women's groups actually began in the 1970s in order to deal with increasing sex tourism of Japanese men in Korea. 9 In fact, it was not until a 1988 international conference on sex tourism held in Korea that Yun Chong-ok, a co-chair ofthe Chongdaehyop, gave a paper on her research on the "comfort women" issue, and the rest, as they say, is history.lo Palley's oversightll is regrettable since the "comfort women" issue has served as a pivotal water shed in the Korean women's movement of the 1990s on such feminist issues as sexual violence against women and women's human rights. 12
Some chapters in Women Roles in Japan and Korea contain overlapping materials'3 and references to sources are spotty in several essays.14 The editorial negligence encountered throughout the book is appalling. Not a single chapter is free from errors. The collection is fraught with typographical errors,IS careless omissions of words,16 various kinds of inaccuracies,17 and confusing inconsistencies. 18 Despite these shortcomings, the collection does provide useful information on women's experi ences in contemporary Japan and Korea. Provided the publisher furnishes a complete list of errata, the book should serve as a valuable text for undergraduate courses in East Asian as well as women's studies.
*
11. When a scholar conducts research in a largely unfamiliar land without the requisite area specialization, collaborative work, as exem plified by Kubo and Gelb in this collection, seems one solution to prevent this type oferror. In contrast with Buckley's or Kubo and Gelb's abundant citations of Japanese sources of references, Palley's less than a dozen references include no materials published in the Korean lan guage. 12. See my "Korean 'Military Comfort Women': Gender, Class, Eth nicity, and the State in Sexual Slavery,"paperpresented at the American Anthropological Association meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, November 30-December 4, 1994. 13. Materials on labor force participation, for example, overlap in the chapters by Ueno and Shinotsuka, and the flI'St halfofBuckley ,s chapter includes much information presented in preceding chapters. 14. For example, in contrast to the richly footnoted essay by Kubo and Gelb on Japanese women's experiences in political participation, Sohn's counterpart chapter cites only six references, three of which are publi cations from her own organization and the remaining three from official pUblications of statistical data. 15. Misspelled words and names are too numerous to list. Because most East Asian personal names are composed of meaningful sound units based on the Chinese characters, some spelling errors render the recog nition ofidentities difficult and sometimes impossible. Cho "Haehong" (p. 205) forCho Haejoang, a Korean anthropologist, is suchan example. 16. For example, the word woman orfemale is preswnably missing in the reference to Takako Doi as ''the fIrst speaker of the Lower House" (p. 146). 17. Inaccuracies range from wrong dates (pp. 11-12; p. 31; p. 191; p. 211) and outdated information (pp. 286-287), to misinformation, such as stating that Takako Doi is speaker ofthe ''Upper''House (p. 16) rather than the Lower House, "Rubenstein" is Bernstein (p. 183), and the "Korean Center for Family Law" is the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations (pp. 283-284). The institutional affiliation of Fu jimura-Fanselow is given erroneously as "Tokyo Ewha Woman's" University (p. 297). Ewha is the name ofa women's university in Seoul, whose English name is spelled Ewba Womans University, without an apostrophe. 18. For example, "Congress" (p. 258) and the "House ofDelegates" (p. 277) are used to refer to the National Assembly. Asian personal names are inconsistently presented (even within the same chapter), resulting in confusion and in the misplacement of Korean names in the list of contributors (pp. 297-298). In the case of"Hee Lo Youn" (p. 287), no one would guess that Lo is the family name. The romanized Korean words are inconsistently transliterated. The style for references inAsian languages also lacks consistency.
5. For a concise, critical assessment of the role of the state in Korea's economic development, see John Lie, "Review: Rethinking the 'Mir acle'-Economic Growth and Political Struggles in South Korea," Bulletin ofConcemedAsianScholars 23, no. 4 (1991). 6. See Lee Hyo-chae,Han 'guk-ui yosong undang (Women's Movement in Korea) (Seoul: Chongwu-sa, 1989). 7. Ibid. 8. Its name is incorrectly translated in this collection as the "COlUlcil for the Reconciliation of Korean Women Drafted into Sexual Slavery" (p. 236). 9. See Lee Hyo-chae, Han 'guk-ui yosang undong. 10. See Alice Y Chai, "Asian-Pacific Feminist Coalition Politics: The Changsindae/Jugunianfo (comfort women) Movement," Korean Stud ies 17 (1993): 67-91.
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William Stueck. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. xii + 484 pp.
1
by Jonathan Soffer
William Stueck's The KOrf!an War: An International His tory will be required reading for all scholars of the war for some time to come. Intensively researched, the book is a readable, but detailed account of Korean War diplomacy accompanied by nearly twenty pages of bibliography. Stueck has travelled widely, doing research in archives in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and the United States. Though the new archival sources he uses in this book are mostly from the Commonwealth, The Korean War is an interna tional history. The useful details the author was able to wring from the archives he visited-demonstrating, for example, the degree to which u.s. policy was shaped by its allies, rather than vice versa-are perhaps the most fascinating aspects ofthe work. Also remarkable is the collaborative nature ofhis effort, which among other benefits-gave Stueck access to documents in languages he does not read. (In U.S. academic institutions, which tend to stress individualism and lonely scholarship as virtues, such group efforts seldom are-but should be-encouraged) With the help of historians including Zhai Qiang, Chen Jian, and Zhang Shughang, Stueck has been able to explain the "calculations" of the Chinese leadership in convincing detail. Mao Zedong is rightly portrayed as a policymaker, rather than as an all-powerful totalitarian demigod. For example, the author shows how hard Mao had to argue with the politburo in favor of Chinese intervention in the war in Korea. When Premier Zhou Enlai, General Lin Biao, and others registered their objections, "Mao countered that it would be a disgrace not to assist their neighbor at a time of mortal peril." He also believed, Stueck reveals, that "a direct clash with the United States was inevita ble." Mirroring U.S. General Omar Bradley's later dictum that Korea was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the United States," Mao (as reported by Zhou) argued that Kurea PW\ idcd "the most favorable terrain, the closest commu nications to China, the most convenient material and manpower backup and the most convenient way for us to get indirect Soviet support"(p. 98). Intriguing, at least to the non-China specialist, is the suggestion that the Chinese decision to intervene in Korea caused the Chinese Communist Party to shift from a popular front program of redevelopment, with the cooperation of the bourgeoisie, to the embrace of Stalinist models of development (p.363). Without underestimating Stueck's significant contribution to scholarship, the book still has several important weaknesses, some of which stem from its high ambitions. Its treatment of Soviet diplomacy, for example, is very one-dimensional com pared to the material it presents on China. The author relies predominantly on secondary sources from the seventies and eighties for his analysis of internal Soviet politics.
I
I
l
Jonathan Soffer is assistant professor ofbistory at Bilkent University in

Ankara, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in
1992. His biography ofMatthew Ridgway will be published by Praeger early in 1998.
Perhaps the author's greatest difficulty is in trying to prove his broadest thesis: that the Korean War "contributed signifi cantly to the evolution of an order that escaped the ultimate horror of a direct clash of superpowers" and "served in many ways as a substitute for World War III." This claim echoes post-revisionist scholar John Gaddis, who views the cold war as a "long peace"-a period of relative stability threatened by the increasing nationalism and fragmentation that has followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet little evidence in the book suggests that the war was, in fact, a safety valve for tensions that might otherwise have led to atomic war. The author rightly points to the caution of the major powers, especially, the Soviets before, during, and after the Korean War. While many U.S. security managers at the time were convinced that Korea was the opening shot in a global conflict, Stueck follows the lines of more recent scholarship in arguing that North Korea's armored movement southward on 5 June 1950 was at their own initiative, albeit with Stalin and Mao's blessing; it was not part of a coordinated communist plan to seize Western. Europe (as some analysts have asserted). Stueck contends that the Korean War, by demonstrating U.S. determination to contain communism, provided the excuse for an unprecedented peacetime buildup of armed forces in both Europe and the Far East. By increasing Soviet caution-and thus preventing miscalculations-the war caused Stalin and his suc cessors to overcommit their own economic resources to milita rization. At the same time, the war made the Soviets more cautious about using those resources in Europe (p. 351-352). But all the evidence indicates that Stalin's pre-Korea conduct was already extremely cautious. He had little desire to provoke another war that he had little chance of winning. The best example the author can offer is that the deterrent effect of the Korean era buildup may have forestalled a Soviet conflict with Yugoslavia'S Marshall Tito-a conflict, he claims vaguely, that "could have been even more difficult than Korea to contain." Can a legion ofhistorians really be expected to cross a bridge oflogic suspended from these two debatable assertions: (1) the U.S. buildup gave the Soviets pause in Yugoslavia, and (2) the Korean War prevented World War III? This is surely a bridge too shaky. The weakness in Stueck's "long peace" theory becomes apparent when he extrapolates from the period of his historical expertise to more recent events. In his fmal chapter, for example, he writes: "It was not until 1979 in Afghanistan that the Soviets embarked on a military venture comparable to the one in Korea" (p. 353). It is hard to appreciate how Stueck can equate a situation in which the Soviets merely "gave the green light" to their North Korean allies, with the massive deployment of Red Army coun terinsurgency forces in Afghanistan in the late 1970s. Stueck evidences a curious amnesia about the Indochina wars, for which the Korean conflict was more a paradigm than a substitute. Despite the strategic benefits he cites as offshoots of the war in Korea, Stueck is much too good a historian not to recognize also its negative aspects. These he tends to identify as results of"tragedy" and "miscalculation" rather than as decisions deliber~tely made. One such ~'tragedy" was the truce talks. Stueck strangely leaves aside two of the central questions about the truce talks: Why were such crucial negotiations left to mili tary men, who were deliberately deprived of on-site political advisors, and did Far East Commander General Matthew B. Ridgway urge too inflexible a course in the negotiations? Ridg way is criticized especially for his handling of prisoner-of-war
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issues and for allowing his anger at the enemy to break down "his sensitivity to 'face' " (p. 272). Stueck ignores the allegations made by other scholars, such as Rosemary Foot, who suggest that Ridgway and the other officers who served as negotiators in the Korean truce talks were isolated from the very international pressures that Stueck identi fies as crucial factors in limiting the war. Though he rightly puts Ridgway's concern about "face" in quotation marks, unproble matized orientalist quotations from Admiral C. Turner Joy's account of the truce talks-about how he was made to sit in small chairs to make him appear shorter, and that the u.S. negotiators
were facing south because "in oriental cultures the victor faced south" (p. 222)-may make many readers cringe. One wishes for some verification that Joy's statement about "oriental cultures" is in fact true. Stueck has written one of the most valuable one-volume histories of the Korean War to date, but much more work needs to be done, for example, on the Soviet role in the war, and on the actions of non-Anglophone UN allies, such as Turkey. In the difficult field of international history Stueck's study is unlikely to be the last word on the Korean War.
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Reviews: South/Southeast Asia
The reason is simple: In spite of tremendous industrializa tion, the largest section of exploited toilers in the world still live and work on the land The rural areas of the third world have the greatest poverty in the world today, with an estimated one billion Walter Hauser, eel Sahajanand on Agricultural La rural poor (633 million of them in Asia), according to the bour and the Rural Poor. New Delhi: Manohar, 1994. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).l These are marginal farmers and agricultural laborers, herders and fish . Swami Sahojanand and the Peasants ofJhark workers, indigenous people, and ethnic minorities or low castes. hand: A Jiew from 1941. New Delhi: Manohar, 1995. In spite of the often impressive economic advances of many of these countries after World War II, poverty continues to be a by Gail Omvedt troubling problem. And movements ofthe rural poor continue to be at the forefront of struggles for social change-although the The prime movers ofthese movements do not ~ their hearts desire struggles often take new and controversial forms, from cam that the agriculturalJabourers should get real relief. They seek only paigns against eviction and environmental destruction to those their own ends. Then how will the poor be benefited? They will be for higher crop prices in state-controlled markets. benefited in the long nut because despite the determined efforts of Debates about the causes of rural poverty rage as before. these false leaders to the con1raty, this movement will gradually All will agree that landless agricultural laborers and marginal cause the oppteSSed to awaken. And when they begin to understand poor peasants, along with special occupational groups such as therealityofwhatishappeningandwhoisattherootofth~sorrows fish workers, herding communities, and indigenous peoples, and sufferings, their dishonour, disgrace, hunger and disease, and represent the main section of the rural poor, but there is still no when they also understand how to eradicate them, then their ,goals consensus on the reasons for their ongoing Poverty. Two major are certain to be realized. (Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Cen1ral Jail positions in the debate can be identified: the "exploi~ peas Hazaribagh, 1941) antI)''' position, which sees the rural poor as impoverished due Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, born in 1889.to a poor Brah to forces external to agriculture, and the "peasants as exploiters" man rural family in the tumultuous Indian state ofBihar, became position, which sees the rural poor as exploited primarily by the the most famous peasant leader in pre-independence India. rural rich. The "exploited peasantI)''' paradigm argues that rural Working in an era of nationalist upsurge and of struggle for poverty is primarily caused by the extraction of surpluses from hegemony over the peasant movement among socialists, com agriculture; thus not only full control over land and its products munists, and left nationalists, Swami Sahajanand became en but also higher prices for the produce of agriculture are key; in gaged in debates and clashes over the causes of rural poverty, the spite of often considerable hierarchy and internal differences, nature of class divisions among the peasantI)', and the role of the there is still a commonality of interest among all rural sections peasantI)' in revolutionary change-issues that remain contro in resisting this exploitation. The growth mod.ellinked with this versial into the 1990s. He wrote and campaigned in Hindi, paradigm stresses a balanced agro-industrial development fo without formal education in English. Yet, as this collection ofhis cused on support for small producers (for example, see the IFAD writings from jail demonstrates, the views of this "organic intel report cited above). lectual" of one of the largest mass movements of the world are In contrast, the "peasants as exploiters" position sees elites relevant today. within agriculture-traditionally landlords but now more and more the rich peasants or capitalist farmers-as the main enemy. This takes off from the ''traditional Marxist" view of classes among the peasantry: the rural poor are primarily those who are Gail Omvedt is a citizen of India with a permanent home in Kasegaon, Maharash1ra, where she writes, teaches, and worlcs with social move ments, particularly among rural women. Recently she has also been teaching, doing research, and wodcing on training and publishing pr0 1. See Idriss Jazairy et al., The State ofWorld Rural Poverty (New York: jects concerning Dalits and tribals at an institute in Orissa. Her most New York University PresslIntemational Fund for Agricultural Devel recent books are RBinventing Revolution and Da/it VISions. opment, 1993).
Peasants and Their Leaders
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proletarians and who are exploited as agricultural laborers. They may have small plots ofland, but these are not their main source ofincome. Furthermore, peasants are continually at risk oflosing their land. 2 This paradigm has been used to justify a larger state-guided industrialist developmental model that assumes the necessity of extracting surpluses from agriculture. The role of agriculture, according to this model, is to provide cheap food and other inputs for industry, including sometimes cheap labor. In tum, industrial growth will dynamize the economy and generate the resources to help the rural poor. Walter Hauser's publications of the jail writings of Swami Sahajanand Sarasvati show us that these debates are not new. The question of "classes among the peasantry"-who .were ~e ~e mies and who the friends of the rural poor'?-had Its begmrungs in the third world before countries like India gained their inde pendence. Peasants in this period were beginning to mobilize with a new awareness of possibilities for fundamental change and leaders of diverging ideologies confronted and joined their organizations. Many leaders of people's struggles imprisoned in British India engaged in study and writing. But while Nehru, the aristo crat used his time in prison to "discover India" (writing the hist~ry of the subcontinent from a rather brahmanic Fabian socialist perspective), and the communist leader Dange used his prison time attempting to apply Stalin's ''five stages" to an interpretation of Indian history (f~~ing. on the V~c .Aryans and leaving out the Indus Valley clVlhzation and DaVldian cul ture entirely), the peasant leader Swami Sahajanand focused on two major groups of the rural poor-agricultural laborers and tribal peoples. In both these books, Swami Sahajanand defends an "ex ploited peasant" position. But the two books are quite different. Jharkand Ire Adivasi (peasants of Jharkhand) is a political tract written in simple Hindi, descriptive of the miseries and exploi tation in an area that is today the center of one of the most vigorous tribal autonomy movements in India; th~ book avoids radical demands or discussion of structural solutions (whether regional autonomy or abolition of landlordism) and suggests reform. Nevertheless, there is a focus on the "looting" of Jhark hand-the exploitation of peasants primarily by outsiders-and a stress on unity. In contrast, Khetmajdur (the Hindi term, more literally translated as ''field laborer," does not have a necessary connota tion ofwage laborer, and Hauser is true to Sahajanand's perspec tive in using the compound "Agricultural Labour and the Rural Poor" in his title) is a theoretical book, an intervention that argues strongly for unity in exploitation and in the struggle of agricul tural laborers and the peasantry as a whole: in other words, a defense of the "exploited peasantry" paradigm. To understand the debate, and to discern the targets of Swami's arguments, some historical background will be useful.
Historical Background
"Today in all parts of the world, we are witness to move ments for justice and change among the downtrodden and ex ploited masses of the people," Swami Sahajanand begins his work on laborers (p. 10). The Kisan (peasant) movement, which was crucial in the India of the Swami's time, involved at various times and in various ways, middle and low-caste cultivators, landowning peasants, tenants, agricultural laborers, tribals fight ing the economic exploitation of landlords and the British colo nial state, and the social exploitation of the upper castes. By the late 1920s many ofthese struggles were producing organizations known usually as kisan sabhas or "peasant leagues"; by the latter part of the 1930s these organizations were beginning to unite at an all-India level to form the All-India Kisan Sabha, which included among its activists, communists, socialists, and inde pendents like Swami Sahajanand. He took vows of renunciation in 1907, but moved to a life of social activism only a few years later. He began his activist involvement with the ritual sanskriti zation concerns ofthe Bhumihars, a group ofpeasant cultivators in Bihar who claimed (and eventually won) brahman status, then moved into Gandhian freedom struggle politics, and from there, in the late 1920s, into the growing peasant movement. India's elite-led Indian National Congress, poised to be come the ruling party after independence, was beginning to fear this challenge to its hegemony. By the 1930s a strategy for counteracting the growing movements of caste- and class-op pressed sections was emerging. On its own, the Congress never did organize peasants independently, but it sponsored organiza tions of the poorest rural sections, as agricultural laborers and as untouchables, began to defme themselves as "dalits," or the "downtrodden." Gandhi has become famous for his work on the "untouchables," describing them as "Harijans" or "children of God." His movement linked them to paternalistic organizations usually run by brahman reformers and focused on schemes of "uplift." But "Harijan" organizing was only part of the Congress strategy. The other was to form agricultural laborer organiza tions--most notably in Bihar, where the Kisiln Sabha was the strongest. The leader there was the Congress-affiliated ''untouch able" Jagjivan Ram, then a young protege ofthe Birlas, the main nationalist capitalist family of India. Swami denounced leaders like Jagjivan Ram as "misleaders" of the rural poor and charged that Ram's agricultural laborer organizations were nothing but a divide-and-rule maneuver initiated by the Indian upper-caste elite. Congressmen formulated arguments in the 1930s that are used against peasants and united low caste movements even today: rich peasants are the main oppressors of agricultural laborerS, "dominant castes" (peasants) are the ones who commit atrocities against dalits. It was primarily against these that Swami insisted so strongly that the rural poor were a part of a broader peasant section.
2. A more recent version of this position, linked with environmentalism more than with Marxism, sees poor peasants as subsistence producers who lose in every marlcet transaction. The main cause ofhunger, then, is the use of land for commercial production of cash crops, something from which only the rural rich benefit
Debates with the CommUDists This theme of peasant-agricultural laborer unity brought Swami Sahajanand into debate with his main "internal" oppo nents, the communists. The communists saw the peasantry as a crucial ally ofthe working class, but one that needed the direction of the Party. Thus, they fought for control of the Kisan Sabha. Political differences were coming to a peak in 1941. The com munists found themselves opposed not only by socialists but also by Swami and other independent Kisan leaders (N. C. Ranga in
102
Bulktin oj'ConcernedAlian Scholar.
Andhra, Indulal Yagnik in Gujarat). On the one hand, the com munists were being isolated from other radicals in the movement because this was the period when the communists were support-. ing the British as part of an "anti-fascist united front." On the other hand, the fact that their independent and socialist oppo nents were jailed by the British helped them manage an organ izational takeover of the Kisan Sabha. However, behind the strategic differences-and behind communist resistance to such slogans as "peasant-worker rule" put forward by independent peasant leaders-was the forceful class analysis of the Marxists, one which was ultimately and profoundly anti-peasant. Peasants, the communists maintained, were a backward and dying class; they were doomed as an independent petty bourgeoisie and could only split into capitalistically defined classes, polarized between the "rich" (bourgeois) kulaks, who were employers of agricul turallaborers, and poor peasants and agricultural laborers, who gained their livelihood by working on the land of others. Such divisions were thought to provide the basis for organizing. The "nonproletarian" nature of the peasants meant they could not organize or lead themselves. Against both Congress and communist efforts to lead the peasantry and rural poor from outside, Swami Sahaj anand in sisted on autonomous movements. Against the theories and slogans of a class-divided village, he argued for the broad unity of rural producers. The poverty of agricultural laborers, he claimed, was part of the impoverishment of agriculture as such and its roots lay outside agriculture-as shown in the failure to provide employment in nonagricultural manufacturing and in the growing numbers of people being thrown back on agriculture. Further, agricultural laborers were not a radically separate sec tion, but (except for plantation workers) part of the peasantry as a whole. They were quite different from factory wage workers, dispersed, often small landholders themselves and heirs of a long process of development of relations of production in agriculture that included serfdom (serfs were seen as agricultural laborers) and other forms ofunfree labor. They were sarvohara, the totally deprived (a word usually used to translate "proletariat" in India), but this was a different "proletariat" from that conceived of by Marxism. The main dividing line of antagonism in rural areas was, Swami argued, between noncultivating (and outsider, in the case of Jharkhand) landlords and peasants as a whole, not between kulak rich peasants and agricultural laborers.
today), very often sold some cash crops such as tobacco and sugarcane. The difference was in their relation to the money economy: they sold their crops "not to become rich but primarily for their own subsistence" (p. 56). The middle peasantry, in his definition, could include both cash crop producers and small scale hirers of labor-in effect, those who owned their means of production and ran small rural "microenterprises. " They were the numerically and socially dominant group in agriculture; the "rich peasants" were unimportant.
The main dividing line ofantagonism in rural areas was, he argued, between noncultivating (and outsider, in the case ofJharkhand) landlords andpeasants as a whole, not between kulak rich peasants and agricul turallaborers.
This class analysis influenced the solutions that Swami Sahaj anand recommended to end the poverty of the rural poor, namely, the provision of land and the growth of nonagricultural employment. But land is not sufficient in and ofitself; agriculture had to be modernized Ilnd developed-with the use of fertilizers and machinery. This "industrialization" of agricultural inputs did not necessarily mean a large-scale "industrial agriCUlture" (which the radicals of his time thought of in terms of collectivi zation) but could be done within an economy of smallholders. Although he quoted Lenin and Stalin and discussed rural soviets in Russia, the Swami was notably unenthusiastic about collective farms. He mentions cooperatives with some approval at one point, but in the tract on Jharkhand he is quite scornful of the actual working of some ofthese both in tribal and nontribal areas of Bihar. It is also noteworthy that he saw wage struggles as secondary-a logical outcome of viewing the rural poor primar ily as "landless peasants" rather than as "wage laborers." Kisans must indeed pay good wages, but he constantly argued that it was the poverty of most Kisans that kept wages low, and while the Kisan Sabha would take up wage struggles, it should at the same time seek compromises, especially with middle peasants. These same issues are very much alive today. The debates rage over "urban bias" and the question of prices for agricultural products; over whether economic development requires an ex traction of agricultural surplus for industry; whether third world agriculture should be market oriented and/or "export oriented," over assessing the "Green Revolution." An extreme and appar ently "radical" position on these issues has argued that only capitalist farmers benefit from higher prices and the market, that integration into a world market economy will necessarily destroy food subsistence production, and that this is a basic cause of the crisis for the rural poor. Applying the perspective of this indigenous peasant leader, I question these themes. By Swami's definition we would distin guish only the very richest capitalist farmers-:those oriented to accumulation, not even to running a farming "microenterprise" -as an agrarian bourgeoisie. The large mass of rural producers wouuld be peasants/farmers (Indian languages do not distinguish between the two) who sell in the market-not for profit-making capital-accumulating business purposes, but in order to earn a livelihood. Since "subsistence" does not just mean the minimum of food and clothing (and no one uses it in that way injustifying workers' demands for higher wages), demands for higher prices
"Class" Divisions
Swami Sahajanand did not deny the existence of "class" divisions among the peasantry. Indeed he argued his points with reference to Lenin. What he did deny was their antagonistic nature. He made two important modifications to Lenin's analy sis. One was to note that in India middle peasants, for cultural religious reasons, often employed laborers; thus the "middle peasant" core of the Kisan Sabhas could not be considered exploiters. Many of the employers of agricultural laborers were in fact very poor themselves. Second, he radically modified the traditional Marxist interpretation that the "rich peasants" and agricultural laborers were proto-capitalist classes, while the mid dle peasants were really feudal survivals, producing only for their own subsistence. Middle peasants in India, including those Swami Sahajanand organized in Bihar (which was one of the least capitalistically developed agricultural areas then and is still
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for crops are not necessarily efforts by "surplus producers" to engage in exploitation. Rather the demands of subsistence pro ducers are an attempt to increase the value of their labor power, that is, their living standard. This position is contrary to tradi tional "class analysis'" (and Indian government definitions) that treats farmers who sell for the market and who manage to produce a "surplus" above the minimal level of living of an agricultural laborer as "surplus producers" and "rich peasants." But it fits, interestingly enough, the legal and tax distinction drawn in the United States between "investment farms" and "family farms." (The farm, in the latter case, is the permanent residence of its owners and the owners "materially participate in its operation.") This position does not reject class analysis, but it modifies it for a society in which farmers, as well as workers, are immersed in a market economy. In Swami's view, then, market production by itself is not harmful nor is it in contradiction with producing food for subsis tence; peasant entrepreneurs (family farmers) have to be distin guished from agrarian capitalists; and technological advance is necessary to raise production. He might be faulted for having a naive faith in Green Revolution prescriptions for the application of industrial inputs to agriculture, but this view was shared by many of his tinle. Even today, sustainable agriculture does not mean a rej ection oftechnology but rather the use of a better form of technology, one that relies more on "low input" production while upgrading and not just reproducing traditional practices.
Caste and Gender

What of "nonclass" issues such as caste and gender? Here lies a genuine weakness. Swami Sahajanand is silent on gender -as were nearly all theorists and activists of the peasant move ment of his time (the one exception was in nearby Uttar Pradesh, where a remarkable peasant women's organization was linked to the "Oudh Kisan Sabha").4 On caste, also, and, as we have seen, on issues oftribal autonomy, he was not very different from other radical activists who came only slowly to admit the crucial nature of these issues. Like all semi-Marxists of the time, like left nationalists such as Nehru, Swami saw economic issues as the core of the superexploitation of the dalits, or ex-untouchable groups, who in some areas were nearly coextensive with an "agricultural laborer class." It is a position on which the dalit movement of his time would have profoundly disagreed, for it saw the fight against caste discrimination to be as central as that against economic exploitation. Yet, strikingly, the leader of the independent dalit move ment saw his potential ally in Swami Sahajanand, and not in Jagjivan Ram, the "Congress untouchable," who was organizing agricultural laborers and the "Harijan movement." This leader
was Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who was himself involved in radical organizing in the 1930s, on caste and economic issues, including organizing a peasant movement from about 1930 to 1938 that united dalits and caste Hindu tenants in the Konkan region of Maharashtra against their landlords. It was after a climactic march of these tenants in 1938 to Bombay (perhaps one of the largest demonstrations of its time) that Ambedkar met Saha janand. In this historic talk he did not question Sahajanand's neglect of caste issues or of organizing agricultural laborers; he did not challenge the thesis ofpeasant unity (in fact, Ambedkar's own position was for uniting workers and peasants, dalits and non-Brahmans as a whole)-what he disputed was the fact Sahajanand at the time still had faith in Congress political leader ship. S The meeting failed to produce an agreement, and the various popular movements resistant to Congress leadership-of peasants, of non-Brahmans and dalits, of communist-led union organizing- failed to come together. Swami was in a sense a historical loser: his "external" enemy, the Congress came to power in India, his "internal foes," the Communists, captured the All India Kisan Sabha-and their analytical framework, which characterized peasants as class-di vided and at best ambivalently revolutionary and recognized only the rural proletariat as a fmn ally of the working class, remains largely hegemonic today. Swami Sahjanand is revered still in Bihar as a heroic forerunner, but the fact that he is often characterized as a leader of a "middle and rich peasant" move ment and that his editor and biographer Walter Hauser has to defend him from thlS charge shows that the "peasant exploiter" framework is hegemonic. This makes his work all the more important because Swami Sahajanand is an "organic intellec tual" of one of the most important mass movements in the third world today.
*
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3. For the classic example in relation to India, see Ashok Mitra, Tenns o/Trade and Class Relations; An Essay in Political Economy (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1977). For a discussion by an eminent and icono clastic Indian economist, see V. M Dandekar,Peasant-WorkerAlliance: Its Basis in the Indian Ec81lOmy (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1981). 4. See Kapil Kumar, "Rural Women in Oudh 1917-1947," inKumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds., Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History (New Delhi: Kali for Women Press, 1989). 5. For a discussion ofthis, see my Dalits and the Democratic Revolution (New Delhi: Sage, 1994), chapter 6.
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104
Bullettn o[ConcernedAs;an Scholars
Nick Cullather, ed. IUusions ofInfluence: The Politi cal Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942-1960. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. xiv + 263 pp. (Cited as II below.)
_ _. Managing Nationalism: United States National Security Council Documents on the Philippines, 1953 1960. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992. viii + 198 pp. (Cited as MN below.)
by Stephen R. Shalom
Nick Cull ather has mined archives in the United States and the Philippines, many of them recently opened, to produce these two books. 1 Both volwnes provide much new evidence on and many important insights into the U.S.-Philippine relationship, but Cullather aspires to do more than this; he claims to offer an alternative interpretation of that relationship, challenging the view shared by dependency theorists in the United States and nationalist historians in the Philippines. Cull ather advances three argwnents. First, he disputes eco nomic explanations for U.S. policy in the Philippines. Second, he maintains that U.S. influence on the Philippines was much less than commonly believed. And, third, he advances a new view of Philippine nationalism. Some of what Cullather has to say makes sense, but in many respects his interpretation is unconvincing, and in some other respects it is actually no differ ent from that of the historians he criticizes.
Economic Motives and U.S. Policy
I
I
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I
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I
I
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I
1
Cullather claims that "[n]ationalist historians in the Philip pines accept the conventional dependency analysis that the rela tionship [between the United States and the Philippines] consti
tuted a pact of domination between elites in both countries bent
on exploiting Philippine land and labor." In particular, he argues,
"An economic interpretation ofU S. motives fails to comprehend
the multiplicity ofinterests at stake in the Philippines and South
east Asia" (II, p. 3), especially the U.S. interest in its military
bases in the Philippines.
But in fact none of the authors that Cull ather criticizes (this
reviewer among them) so narrowly defines the implicit pact
between the elites in both countries. The US. military bases have
been a major component of the analyses of US.-Philippine
relations by left and nationalist commentators, whether one focuses on the turn of the century, the Marcos years, or the time between. In 1898 U.S. policy makers saw the Philippines as far more than an object of direct economic exploitation: it was to serve as well as the "gateway" to what was anticipated to be the great market ofChina, and this fact has been a truism among Philippine nationalist historians. 2 That U.S. support for the Marcos dictator ship was motivated to a considerable degree by a desire to preserve the Pentagon's military base rights has also been a staple ofleft and nationalist analyses. And certainly the U. S. bases were a major focus of nationalist criticisms during the 1950s and I 960s. In any event the importance of the bases does not detract from the basic argwnent that U.S. policy has been economically driven. A banker acts on the basis of the profit motive even though some of his or her money is not lent out at interest but spent instead on security guards and steel vaults. Cullathermakes much of the fact that the United States spent more on aid to the Philippines than the value of its investments in that country. Leaving aside the fact that the benefits from the investments go to a small stratwn of U.S. society, while the costs of the aid are paid for by the society as a whole, what would it prove ifCitibank spent more on purchases from the Ace Vault Company than it lent to that company for a mortgage. The bases were a "bad investment" only iftheir mission involved no more than protect ing US. business in the Philippines. But every nation that has dominated the Philippines has viewed the nation's strategic value in larger terms. The Spanish used the Philippines as the crucial link in their trade with China; was Spain's colonial policy thereby not economically motivated? When U.S. imperialists like Alfred J. Beveridge declared that the "Philippines give us a base at the . door of all the East," 3 were their motives for urging annexation of the archipelago any less commercial? And in the post-World War II years, when the United States sought to protect and expand a system of global capitalism that it would dominate, the Philippines played a strategic role, both militarily and as Wash ington's most reliable ally in Asia. So even ifU.S. policy makers
Stephen R Shalom is the author of The United States and the Philip pines: A Study if Neocolonialism (Philadelphia: ISH!, 1981) and co editor (with Daniel B. Schirmer) of The Philippines Reader (Boston: South End Press, 1987). He teaches in the Department of Political Science, William Paterson College (Wayne, N.J.). 1. Managing Nationalism, an annotated compendium of U.S. National Security Council documents, is a valuable resource for students in the Philippines, where collections of primary source materials tend to be scant. Many of the documents appear in the State Department's Foreign Relations ofthe United States series (1952-54, vol. 12, part 2; 1955-57, vol. 22; 1958-60, vol. 15), but the latter often omits, while Cullather includes, the annexes, which contain much valuable information. The State Department series is cited hereafter as FR plus the year, volume, and page number. Cullather's books will be cited as II (Illusions of Influence) or MN (Managing Nationalism) plus the page number.
2. For example, Renata Constantino, The Philippines: A PastRevisited (Quezon City, Philippines: Tala Publishing, 1975), pp. 282-84. CuI lather states that "[t]he United States annexed the Philippines to gain a haven for naval forces patrolling the Chinacoast. to assure access to the lucrative China trade, and to fulfill an imagined obligation to 'uplift and civilize' Filipinos" (II, p. 7). That the fll'St two of these motives were operative and crucial all historians agree. The quoted phrase in the third motive is not from the source Cullather cites (Kamow's In Our Image) but from McKinley's famous statement to a group of Methodist minis ters, in which he told them that divine guidance convinced him to annex the Philippines in order to-among other reasons-''uplift and civilize and Christianize" the already 90 percent Christian Filipinos. There is some dispute whether McKinley actually uttered these words, but it is hard to see why anyone would take them as a serious statement of McKinley's motives. In the same statement, McKinley noted that to turn the Philippines over to France and Gennany, "our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable," showing that, even On High, economic motivation is a major factor. McKinley's statement is reprinted in Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen R Shalom, eds., The Philippines Reader (Boston: South End Press, 1987), pp.
22-23.
3. Schirmer and Shalom, eds., The Philippines Reader, p. 24.
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105
cared not a whit about U.S. business interests in the Philippines, this would not refute an economic interpretation of u.s. policy. But was it the case that U.s. policy makers "betrayed American business interests in order to protect" the U. S. military bases, as Cullather charges? (II, p. 5). Cullather notes that U.S. policy makers were aware that the Philippine government was discriminating against u.s. business. Yet, argues Cull ather, Wash ington did not use the leverage it had at its disposal to ensure nondiscriminatory treatment, fearing that this might risk its bases (II, p. 173, II, p. 183). It must be noted first, however, that the Philippines was discriminating against U.S. business only in the sense that u.s. firms were not always given the treatment to which Filipino-but no other foreign-firms were entitled. This special treatment for U.S. capital was mandated by the "parity" amendment to the Philippine constitution, forced on Manila after World War II as a precondition for full payment of war damage claims. Second, the evidence shows that a major motive for Washington's reluctance to go all-out in behalf of U.S. business interests was a desire to avoid inflaming Philippine national ism-which pressing too hard on parity might do- thereby endangering those very business interests. As Cull ather notes, For that matter, American businesses seldom wanted pressure ex erted on their behalf. Big manufacturers recognized that their surest chance of success lay in cooperating, turning over more authority to Philippine managers, going along with the Central Bank. Filipinos made it possible for cooperative ftnns to earn handsome returns. (II, p. 175) Established ftnns like Goodyear, International Harvester, and First National City Bank regarded Philippine regulations as both a nui sance and an opportwllty. A f1I1Il with the right connections in the Philippine elite could prodlice for a protected market, and enjoy low or no taxes. "Despite the frustmtions and irritations," one manager told an embassy official, "it's the pay-off that counts and the pay-off is good." ... Although they complained about dollar allocations, American f1I1IlS seldom took legal action to enforce the parity clause or sought redress from the embassy. (II, pp. 172-73)
It is often the case that Washington must carefully weigh costs and benefits when trying to protect U. S. business. Consider its recent hesitation in imposing economic sanctions on Beijing for copyright and licensing infringement: protecting some sec tors of U.S. capital might endanger the very lucrative profits of other sectors. But there is no mystery here, nor any lack of concern for U.S. business. Even on the question of the bases themselves, policy mak ers worried that pushing too hard for U.S. rights might provoke a backlash that would render the bases worthless in the long run.4 Here again, a reluctance to exert too much pressure does not indicate indifference, but an appreciation of how best to promote U.S. interests. Cullather states that the National Security Council (NSC) worried about the discriminatory treatment against U.S. inves tors only because "diminished capital flows would impair the
4. Forexarnple, Stump to Duncan, 26 June 1955, FR, 1955-57, vol. 22, p. 595, n. 5; comments of Acting Secretary of State Hoover, 24 Oct. 1955, FR, 1955-57, vol. 22, p. 618; Brand to Walker, 30 Nov. 1955, FR, 1955-57, vol. 22, pp. 626--27; Bendetsen and Nufer to Dept. of State, 22 Aug. 1955, vol. 22, p. 671,673; Bendetsen to Dept. ofState, 27 Aug. 1955, FR, vol. 22, p. 678; Embassy in the Philippines to Dept. of State, 20 Oct. 1956, FR, 1955-57, vol. 22, p. 695.
Filipinos' ability to support their military establishment" (II, pp. 173-74). He cites a 21 August 1957 NSC document that does refer to the less attractive environment for foreign investment as one of four factors limiting development and hindering the support of the military establishment. But the next paragraph of the document states: The United States is concerned at what appears to be a trend towards Philippine preference for complete protection which seriously af fects our export trade by eliminating all outside competition. A comprehensive tariff act, effective 1 July 1957, also contains many protective [that is, protectionist] features, although current tariff preferences for U.S. products afford U.S. traders a temporary advan tage vis-A-vis third country suppliers.' And another NSC document begins by listing the impor tance ofthe Philippines to the United States "and the Free World" as consisting of a political and strategic component and "[e]co nomically, the Philippines is one of the most important areas of U.S. commercial activity in Asia, both as a market and as a field for investment." 6 These quotes do not suggest that U. S. government concern for economic interests was simply a function of its concern for the bases. Other references in the NSC documents confirm that U.S. policy makers considered the protection and promotion of U.S. trade and investment among their goals. 7 To be sure, despite the glorious profits, the Philippines did not become the paradise for U.S. investors that some hoped it would become. However, the U.S. government was not omnipotent; the question is whether Washington "betrayed" U.S. business interests as Cullather al leges or whether, given the need to avoid provoking a backlash, U.S. officials followed the course of action they believed most likely to promote those interests. When Cullather tells us that the United States responded to the demands of Philippine nationalists "by conceding to them, and by attempting to remove nationalist leaders from govern ment" (MN, p. 10), this is not evidence of betrayal. That Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations designed "to reduce the power of the nationalist elite" had "little effect" (II, p. 176) refutes the claim-advanced by no serious scholar-that Wash ington was all-powerful. But it does not show that Washington was indifferent to business interests. In November 1958 the NSC reported the following: The Philippine government began negotiations with the Interna tional Monetary Fund to send an IMF Missionto study the Philippine economic situation and to make recommendations regarding a pro gram of economic stabilization. The United States considers this a
5. OCB Progress Report, 21 Aug. 1957, in MN, pp. 100--101. (Typo graphical error corrected.) 6. National Security Council (NSC) 581311,4 June 1958, MN, p. 130. Cullather is certainly aware of this point, since he appends a footnote saying that it constitutes a change from a 1954 policy paper that identified the economic value ofthe Philippines only in terms ofits raw materials (MN, p. 160, n. 1). 7. NSC 5413/l, 5 Apr. 1954,MN, p. 20; NSC 581311,4 June 1958,MN, p. 142; OCB Progress Report, 26 Nov. 1958, Annex A, MN, p. 176. 8. OCB Progress Report, 26 Nov. 1958, MN, pp. 166--67; typographical error corrected.
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Bulletin a/Concerned Asian Scholars
very constructive step, since direct U.S. pressure on the Filipinos to develop such a program would probably be counter-productive. 8
~he I~ mission was unsuccessful in obtaining Philippine compliance m 1959 from President Carlos Garia (II, p. 171), but his successor, Diosdado Macapagal-elected with CIA back ing9-came to office on a platform pledged to eliminating the exchange and import controls that so disturbed U.S. business interests. Washington offered nearly $100 million in aid to cushion the effects of the decontrol on one condition: IMF participation. And the U.S. State Department then pressured the IMF to impose a series of specific conditions favored by foreign investors. 10 U. S. firms did not speak with one voice on many Philippine questions, and so often when Washington appeared to be failing to support business, it was in fact supporting one sector of business over another. Thus Cullather states that parity was "resented by U.S. businessmen" (II, p. 191), revealing "how few constraints domestic economic interests placed on foreign pol icy" (II, p. 190). But earlier Cull ather noted that parity
avoid the fate of China, and so they approved the controls as a temporary, emergency measure. The controls lasted longer than U.S. officials anticipated, but their judgment was still better than that of the business community, which might have lost its Phil ippine stake for good.
helped ftnns with potential rather than actual investments in the P~ppin~. The American Chamber of Commerce of the Philip pmes, which represented the prominent trading fInns in the islands, strongly opposed special privileges for Americans, believing nation alist resentment would counteract any putative benefits; but busi nesses anticipating future investments in the Philippines lobbied for parity and other investment incentives. In October 1945, the Stand ard Vacuum Oil Company proposed a clause exempting American ftnns from Philippine constitutional restrictions on foreign business. The Philippine-American Chamber of Commerce, a New York based group ofindustrial and banking giants, most ofwhich had only "nominal or indirect connections" to Philippine business, persuaded [High Commissioner Paul V] McNutt to include it in [Rep. C. Jasper] Bell's [Philippine trade] legislation. (II, pp. 37-38) "Pressure from industries and agricultural groups," says Cullather, "played only a minor role in the debate on the Bell bill ..." (II, p. 37). But aside from parity and a clause tying the value of the peso to the dollar, the Bell bill also set absolute quotas on most of the Philippines' main exports, among them sugar, cord age, and coconut oil. As a member ofthe House Ways and Means Committee explained, "I am telling you we know we are going to have the quotas because this is the kind of protection our domestic producers will want and will get." II A few years later Washington, fearing Philippine economic collapse, permitted Manila to impose import and exchange con trols. The latter were opposed by the U.S. business community, so here is an instance in which US. policy and the wishes of business interests diverged. From the perspective of US. policy makers, however, there was no choice if the Philippines was to
D1usion of Influence? The second part of Cullather's thesis is that U.S. influence in the Philippines was far less than US. policy makers believed and less as well than Philippine nationalist historians have taken it to be. Nationalist historians, for example, have viewed the 1947 U.S.-Philippine military bases agreement (MBA) as an agree ment neg~t1at~d be~ween .vastly unequal parties, with Washing ton 1mposmg Its WIll on Its weaker and economically prostrate ally. Analysts on the left, in both the United States and the Philippines, would add that the Philippine elite accepted the U.S. bases m return for U.S. assistance in maintaining themselves in ~eir elite positions. Cullather argues, however, that the Philip pmes got a pretty good deal on the bases. It is incorrect to compare the MBA to the bases agreements with NATO coun tries, he notes, because the former was concluded in 1947, while the latter were not signed until the 1950s. The "relevant stand ard," he says, is ''treaties in force in 1947," and, compared to these, Filipino negotiators "obtained substantial improvements" (II, pp. 205--6, n. 38). The treaty in force in 1947 was the British bases agreement of 1941. But this agreement was signed under the duress ofworld war, and in any event did not deal with the stationing of US. troops ~ Great Britain, but with granting the U. S. military bases on non-mdependent territories of the British empire ("our trans ~tlantic possessions," as Churchill called them12 ), thus hardly an unpress1ve precedent for the independent Philippines. Cullather says that the US. negotiators presented a draft agreen~~t to th.e Filip!n0s t;no~eled on the British treaty but that the Flhpmos rejected It, obJectmg to the jurisdiction provisions, among others (II, p. 54). In fact, however, the first U.S. draft agr~ement went .well beyond the British treaty, granting the Umted States-m the State Department's view-rights that smacked of the extraterritoriality so resented by Asians. It was the Philippine redraft that used language "exactly paralleling" the Anglo-U.S .. agreemc:nt of 1941. The US. War and Navy Departments rejected this provision as not giving the United St~tes wide enough jurisdiction, and the State Department also obJect~, ~ecause the provision in the British Base Agreement on whICh It was modeled had not worked well in practice and was to be revised.13 Talks on revisions of the British treaty began
9. Raymond Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator (New York: TimesBooks 1987), p. 43, citing interviews with CIA officers and the memoirs of CIA operative Joseph B. Smith (Portrait ofa Cold Warrior [New York: Ballantine Books, 1976]). 10. Robin Broad, Unequal Alliance: The World Bank. the International MonetaryFund. and the Philippines (Berkeley: University ofCalifomia Press, 1988), p. 33. 11. Quoted in Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, The United States and the Philippines: A Study ofNeocolonialism (Philadelphia: ISH!, 1981), p. 44.
12. Par!iamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 364, col. 1170, quoted m Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspon dence, ed. Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1975), p. Ill, n 4. 13. "Memorandwn Prepared in the Department of State, Outline of Course of Informal Discussions with Philippine Representatives Con cerning the Provision on Jurisdiction to be Included in the Agreement ~oncerning Military Bases in the Philippines," Washington, May 1946, mFR, 1946, vol. 8, pp. 885-86; Division ofHistorical Policy Research, Off!ce of Public Affairs, Department of State, "The Negotiation ofthe Uruted S~tes-Philippines Military Bases Agreement of 1947," Re search PrOject No. 319, Confidential Security Information, p. 34. 14. Research Project No. 319 (see previous note), p. 43.
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before the Philippine agreement was concluded, meaning that Cullather's "relevant standard" was known to be outmoded while the MBA was being negotiated. 14 U.S. officials, says Cullather, rather than thinking they had imposed onerous conditions on the Philippines, "worried that the treaty terms were so generous that 'stronger' countries like Australia and Britain would seek similar concessions" (II, p. 206, n. 38). But this is a misreading of the record. The reference to "stronger" countries actually occurs in an internal State Depart ment memorandum objecting to the U.S. military's extreme demands regarding jurisdiction. These demands would be re garded by Asians as a revival of extraterritoriality which would harm U.S. good will "without commensurate advantage to this country." Why would there be no commensurate advantage? The Philippine agreement would be oflittle worth as a precedent in attempting to obtain similar grants from stronger cmmtries; and it is believed to be highly unlikely that British, Australian or other authorities will be willing to grant to the United States comparable jurisdiction throughout a prolonged period of peace in any future agreements that may be reached. 15 The jurisdiction provision in the final agreement was not nearly as objectionable as the military's preferred version, but it still was the case that "stronger" nations would not accept comparable terms. 16 As Cullather finally acknowledges, the jurisdiction issue was itself"peripheral" to U.S. policy makers (II, p. 59). Even the fact that the MBA gave the United States authority over the Philippine municipality of Olongapo, with its 50,000 residents, although unprecedented and an outrageous vestige of colonial ism, was not crucial from Washington's point of view. The real question was whether the U.S. government would have unham pered use of the bases to further its foreign policy objectives. And this was never in serious doubt. Incidentally, one of the reasons why it took as long as it did for the bases agreement to be concluded was that Philippine president Manuel Roxas had already used up much of his politi cal capital getting the parity amendment through Congress.17 So here was a case in which Washington's economic agenda took precedence over its strategic one. For Cullather the decisive proof that U.S. influence in the Philippines was illusory was embodied in the activities of the Magsaysay administration. Whereas left and nationalist crit ics-and U.S. officials-viewed U.S. support for Magsaysay as crucial and Magsaysay's allegiance to the United States as un swexving, Cullather claims both were less than is often supposed.
How did Magsaysay become president? Cullather is quite right that Magsaysay shrewdly played the game of Philippine politics, attaching himself to this or that elite political patron as conditions warranted. But the U.S. role was hardly inconsequen tial. As Cullathernotes, in 1942 U.S. general Douglas MacArthur made Magsaysay a captain in the pro-U.S. guerrillas, "a promo tion that made his career." His status as a "recognized" guerrilla leader (as opposed to leaders of the radical Hukbalahap guerril las) "conferred substantial political benefits." In 1945 Mac Arthur appointed him a provisional governor. And in 1946 Magsaysay used his discretionary power over U.S.-provided veterans benefits to win himself a congressional seat (II, p.l 00). In 1950 Magsaysay again used his connections-among Philip pine politicians and U.S. officials-to get himself appointed Secretary of National Defense. In that post Magsaysay led the campaign to defeat the communist-led Huk guerrilla movement, though Cullather notes that it was "U.S. economic and military aid" and the Korean War-induced spur to the economy that were the decisive factors. II Magsaysay could not run for the presidency on his own Liberal Party ticket, for the incumbent Elpidio Quirino was determined to seek reelection. Magsaysay struck a deal with the opposition Nacionalista Party-just as much elite-dominated as the Liberals-in the negotiation of which U.S. officials "played a small but melodramatic part" (II, p. 107). U.S. funds for the Magsaysay campaign were not very large, but coming as they did during the early days of his campaign before the sugar bloc joined his camp. they were critical (II. p. 112). Obviously the United States did not create Magsaysay out of whole cloth. But it is clear that without U.S. backing over many years Magsaysay would never have become president. In office, says Cullather, Magsaysay was not nearly as supportive of the United States as generally believed. Again. Cullather is right that Magsaysay had elite political allies who were much less pro-United States than he, but he also claims that Magsaysay was much closer politically to these allies than U.S. officials thought. To prove the latter point. Cullather uses some evidence that is in error and some that misinterprets U.S. motives. Cullather states that "[u]ntillate 1956. [Claro M.] Recto exerted a strong influence on foreign affairs. advising the presi dent and steering the administration away from active support for U.S. policies in Asia." On Recto's advice, "the Magsaysay administration, over U.S. objections. refused to extend diplo 18. MN,p. 3; II.p. 91. See also MN,p. 48.n. 16;NSC 541311. 5April 1954. StaffStudy. MN. pp. 30-31. Not all analysts agree that the U.S. role in defeating the Huks was decisive. D. Michael Shafer, for example (Deadly Paradigms: The Failure 0/ U.S. Counterinswgency Policy [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988], pp. 231-32) says U.S. militaIy aid deliveries lagged seriously, the equipment was inappropri ate. and the advice of the U.S. military advisors was ignored. But the delays in militaIy deliveries did not mean that no U.S. aid was arriving (see Terry to Cowen. 3May 1951.FR. 1951, vol. 6,p. 1541; Cowen to Acheson, 25 Oct. 1951. FR, 1951, vol. 6, pp. 1573-74; Smith to Lay, 16 July 1953.FR, 1952-54. vol. 1212,pp. 539. 543), and certainly many Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group recommendations were followed (see, for example, Shalom, United States and the Philippines. p. 81). In any event, however. Cullather accepts that the U.S. con1ribution to defeating theHuks was decisive, so he can't very well d.iscountthe U.S. role in Magsaysay's CIIIeer. 19. II, p. 218. n. 61. Cullather also gives the 1956 date in MN, p. 14.
IS. John Carter Vmcent to the SecretaIy ofState, 6June 1946, FR, 1946, vol. 8, p. 881. 16. William E. Berry Jr., U.S. Bases in the Philippines: The Evolution o/the Special Relationship (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989), pp. 55, 57; Bohlen to Dept. of State, 10 April 1958, FR, 1958-60, vol. 15, p. 844.
17. Lockhart to Vincent, 25 Sept. 1946, cited in Research Report No. 319 (see note 13), p. 50; McNutt to Secretary of State, 30 Sept. 1946, FR, 1946, vol. 8, p. 920. For details of Roxas's manipulations, see Stephen R. Shalom, "Philippine Acceptance of the Bell Trade Act of 1946: A Study ofManipulatory Democracy," Pacific Historical Review 49,no. 3 (Aug. 1980): 499-517.
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Bulletin ofConcernedAlian Scholarl
matic recognition to South Vietnam" (II, p. 120). In a footnote Cull ather adds that "the Philippines recognized South Vietnam in late 1956, when Recto announced he would challenge Mag saysay for the presidency." 19 In fact, however, Cullather is off by more than a year. In March 1955, after a conference with U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Magsaysay declared that he favored recognizing South Vietnam.20 Formal recognition was extended on 15 July 1955. Recto denounced the action and also attacked Magsaysay for having taken CIA money in 1953, and on 26 July 1955 Magsaysay announced that he would oppose Recto's nomination for the Senate on his party ticket. 21 Philippine recognition of South Vietnam thus preceded such events as the departure of the French high commissioner from Vietnam, or the (rigged) refer endum replacing the former French-sponsored emperor, Bao Dai, with Ngo Dinh Diem. 22 So instead of being under the thumb of Recto for most of his presidency, as Cullather claims, Magsaysay dumped Recto a year and a half after having come to office with Recto's help. In addition, it should be noted that Recto's outlook was itself evolving in these years, becoming more avowedly nationalistic over time,23 so even when he had the president's ear it was not in behalf of unabashed anti-Americanism. Cull ather quotes a November 1953 statement by Dulles to the effect that Magsaysay's election gave the United States an "opportunity to bring to the forefront in the Western Pacific non-Western leadership which is respected and competent and which can invigorate and unify non-communist Asian forces." But, says CUllather, by April 1954 "the [U.S.] National Security Council saw Magsaysay 's government as unfit for the role Dulles had envisioned. "Radical ultra-nationalism" and the failure of land reform severely limited Magsaysay's usefulness as a sym bol of pro-Western nationalism. The NSC laid part of the blame on Magsaysay (II, pp. 116-17). Cullather has clearly made an error here, because the NSC document he cites does not refer to the failure of land reform (the Magsaysay administration's land reform bill was "being studied"
20. In August 1954, the National Security Council reported.: "Mag saysay has recently indicated to our Charge that he contemplates recog nition ofthe AssociatedStates in the near future. (The Philippine attitude may be changed., however, by recent developments in Indo-China.) Pending clarification of the situation in Vietnam, we are not pressing the point" (OCB Progress Report, 11 Aug. 1954, Annex A, para. 18, MN,p.57). 21. Renato Constantino, The Making ofa Filipino (Quezon City: Malaya Books, 1969), pp. 231-35. On the recognition date, see Benjamin B. Domingo, The Making of Filipino Foreign Policy (Manila: Foreign Service Institute, 1983), p. 167. 22. See the chronology in U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Background Information Relating to Southeast Asia and Vietnam, July 1967. 3d rev. ed., p. 3. Earlier Philippine recognition really would have been incredible: according to Dulles, in May 1954 he had suggested. to Carlos P. Romulo, the Philippine ambassador, that Philippine recogni tion of the Associated. States would be helpful. ''Romulo said that his government would like to see French-Viet-Nam treaty before making decision. I stated treaty was presently secret" (Dulles to Embassy in the Philippines, 10 May 1954, FR, 1952-54, voL 1212, p. 606). 23. Constantino, Making ofa Filipino, pp. 180-240. 24. NSC 5413/1, 5 April 1954, MN, pp. 13-46, esp. Staff Study, p. 34.
by U.S. specialists, it says), does not use the phrase "radical ultra-nationalism," and, though in passing mentions Magsay say's "impetuosity," does not blame him for anything. 24 InAugust 1954 the NSC noted that the mutual good feeling that had been anticipated with Magsaysay's election had not come to pass: Magsaysay was being attacked by ultranationalists for being too close to U.S. officials. In its only criticism of Magsaysay, the NSC went on to say that the Philippine president "himself has lent credence to these charges by seeking aid and advice from American officials which he properly should obtain from leaders within his administration" 2!I-hardly evidence of Magsaysay's affinity for the nationalists. Cullather says that Magsaysay gave strong support to U.S. foreign policy, but suggests that this was only in ways that involved tangible rewards for and low political cost to the Philippine president (II, p. 141). But if so, this does not show that Magsaysay was closer to the nationalists than generally believed, only that he had to take into account their political clout-some thing no analyst has disputed. And in fact, Magsaysay often backed U.S. interests even when it involved clashing with the nationalists--on Formosa, on Vietnam, and on foreign invest ment, among other issues.2<I The Philippine president proclaimed his commitment to foreign investment, and many nationalist and left analysts, my self included, have cited these statements as evidence of Mag saysay's service to U.S. interests. But, says Cullather, the "U.S. Commerce Department warned investors in 1956 not to be deceived by pronouncements welcoming capital into a seem ingly open, competitive system." 27 The Commerce Department study Cull ather cites (it was actually a 1955 report) does discuss both favorable and "less favorable" aspects of the investment climate, but does not come out with an overall negative assess ment: "the general investment climate" was said to show "some signs of improvement"; although much remained to be done to live up to the rhetoric, "steps have been taken that indicate new efforts on the part ofthe Philippine Government to attract foreign investment"; and "[o]n balance, present conditions in the Philip pines, although not exceedingly attractive for American inves tors, are better than they were a few years ago and better than in many other foreign countries." 28 The issue on which the United States had the greatest difficulty under Magsaysay was that concerning the military
25. OCB Progress Report, 11 Aug. 1954, MN, p. 53. To give one example, in May 1954, the head of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in the Philippines attended a meeting of the Philippines' National Security Council at the invitation of Magsaysay. Lacy to Dept. ofState, 21 May 1954, FR, 1952-54, vol. 1212, pp. 606-8. 26. Constantino, Making ofa Filipino, pp. 218-20, 227-28, 231-34. 27. II, p. 166. See also II, p. 173. 28. U.S. Department of Commerce, Investment in the Philippines: Conditions and Outlookfor United States Investors (Washington: U.S. General Publications Office, 1955), pp. 3, 6. Among the favorable aspects was that the "generalleve1 ofprofits accruing to foreign inves tors in the Philippines is high, usually higher than on comparable investments in the United States. Taxes, although increased consider ably in recent years, are not exceptionally high as compared with those ofmany othercountries. Remittance ofprofits and repatriation ofcapital seem not to have caused. major difficulties despite a tight foreign exchange position in part of the postwar period" (p. 4).
Vol. 28, Nos. 34 (1996)
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bases, a difficulty largely precipitated by extreme U.S. demands. In March 1954 the u.s. attorney general announced that Wash ington held title to the military bases in the Philippines, that these were not simply Philippine lands leased for ninety -nine years to the United States. The reaction in the Philippines, reported the State Department, "has bordered on the hysterical": "With the exception of one member of Congress (who does not enjoy an admirable reputation) every public figure in the Philippines .. . is in agreement that our position is completely unacceptable ... . Newspaper editorials and news writers and columnists have been even more violent in their reactions." A "not unfriendly colum nist" wondered whether this was the price demanded of Magsay say in exchange for U.S. support during his election campaign. 29 In this atmosphere-the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs reported that "according to his sources the Phil ippine people were psychopathic on the subject of base negotia tions" 3D_it is no wonder that Magsaysay was unable to satisfy U.S. demands, either on the question of title to the bases or on other sensitive issues. One concession that the Pentagon was eager to obtain was blanket Philippine agreement for the United States to have full authority to grant third countries access to the bases. The State Department noted, however, that "if President Magsaysay were to agree ... , we would expose him to the most vicious sort of attack," and that it was preferable to deal with the situation on an ad hoc basis, which had proven "quite workable and satisfactory." Admittedly the Pentagon might be trying to assure U.S. rights during some future period "when a govern ment perhaps not so friendly was in power," but, pointed out the State Department, "an unfriendly government could find many other ways, if it wanted to be technical, to harass us in the operation of our bases." 31 Cull ather says that State Department officials "imagined a power struggle" between Magsaysay and leading nationalists, but he gives no evidence to show that the officials were wrong.32 Ultimately, U.S. officials believed they would have to wait until after the 1957 election-when Mag saysay could decisively defeat the nationalists-before Mag saysay could resolve the bases problem.'3 But Magsaysay died in a plane crash on 17 March 1957, and what he would have been able to do remains a matter of conjecture. Cullather is no doubt correct to draw our attention to imperial arrogance that assumes Washington to be the center of the universe, and thus the tendency in the internal record to overstate U.S. influence. On the other hand, imperial arrogance
sometimes shows up the other way, considering the slightest hint of independence as a blow to U.S. influence. For example, a U.S. official complained in 1956 that Magsaysay "sees very few Americans and apparently has no American friends of any inti macy" 34_as if this were outrageous behavior for a Philippine president. Cullather discusses one other area in which he claims U.S. influence proved illusory: promoting reforms. U.S. officials, Cullather states, "overestimated" Magsaysay's commitment to reform. Magsaysay "did not challenge" the status quo, "he prof ited from it." The Magsay say administrati on did not become "the reformist government Dulles wanted" (II, p. 99, II, p. 104, II, p. 119). But why assume that Washington cared about reform 7" To be sure U.S. officials supported those social reforms that were necessary to undercut pressure for even more radical social change. But whatever interest the United States had in Philippine land reform in 1950, when the Huks threatened the survival of the Philippine state, dissipated by 1954 when the Huks were quiescent. 36 So Magsaysay's non accomplishments in the area of serious social reform hardly prove the illusory nature of U.S. influence. Likewise, Cullather seems to consider it ironic that U.S. policies during the Quirino years did not undermine the power of the Philippine elite: By helping to defeat the Huks, guaranteeing external security, and promoting industrialization, the United States protected the oligar chy and helped it modernize. (II, p. 89) Rather than undermining cacique [local political] power, oversight by the United States in many ways reinforced it (II, p. 91). U.S. policies strengthened not only Quirino's regime, but the entire patrimonial structure, allowing caciques to transform themselves into crony capitalists. (II, p. 95) But there is no reason to think that these developments were contrary to U.S. intentions. U.S. policy makers did not favor economic democracy for the Philippines any more than they did for the United States. So while Washington opposed members of the elite who blocked U.S. goals or who were so corrupt or repressive that they incited rebellion, it certainly did not oppose the elite as a whole; indeed, its members were its closest allies.
Philippine Nationalism
Cullather has some valuable things to say about Philippine nationalism. He notes that Philippine nationalism was combined with an anti-Chinese prejudice. This prejudice was aimed pri
29. Bell to Bonsal,25 March 1954,FR, 1952-54, vol. 1212,pp. 586-87. U.S. officials asserted that while claiming title, the United States made no claim of sovereignty, a distinction not understood in the Philippines "because ofpopular confusion" (see Robertson to Dulles, 12 Feb. 1955, FR, 1955-57, vol. 22,pp. 583,and583,n. 2). But at a minimum veteran diplomat and ambassador to the Philippines Charles E. Bohlen shared this confusion (see Bohlen to Dept. of State, 10 April 1958, FR, I 958-{)0, vol. 15,p. 844). 30. Memorandum of Discussion, Dept. of State-Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting, 14 Jan. 1955, FR, 1955-57, vol. 22, p. 580. 31. Robertson to Davis, 10 Apr. 1954, FR, 1952-54, vol. 1212, pp. 601-3. Cullather notes that the "Americans worked around the obstacle" (MN, p. 65, n. 9). 32. II, p. 139. Also II, pp. 119-20. 33. NSC Meeting, 22 Feb. 1957, MN, p. 94.
34. Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson, memorandum of Discussion, Dept. of State-Joint Chiefs of Staff, 30 Mar. 1956, FR, 1955-57, vol. 22, p. 644. 35. Cullather makes this very point when talking of "development": it is unwarranted to assume that the United States sought Philippine development and failed; rather development failed because the United States viewed development as secondary to its military bases (II, p. 152). The relation between "reform" and "development" in Cullather's analy sis is unclear. 36. II,pp. 125-26. The new U.S. "land reform" adviser in 1954 reported that minor reforms could keep dissent under control, thus no land redistribution was necessary. See Al McCoy, "Land Reform as Counter Revolution," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 3, no. I, (win ter-spring 1971): 29.
110
marily at "resident" Chinese who were not Philippine citizens, but many of these individuals were denied citizenship on a discriminatory basis. As residents the Chinese were less likely than foreign investors to take their capital out of the Philippines, yet they suffered the brunt of the country's "nationalization" decrees, a term that in the language of Philippine elite national ism meant not a taking over by the government for the benefit of the people, but rather assuring that key sectors of the economy were in the hands of private, wealthy, non-Chinese Filipinos. With this sort of nationalist agenda, Cullather points out, parity could playa useful role, for it allowed the elite to discrimi nate against the Chinese without unduly worrying U. S. investors, a source ofneeded capital. Thus the elite railed against parity for years, but when it came time to renegotiate the Trade Act, after getting all the mileage they could out of it in terms of trade concessions.. they actually extended it in return for a cosmetic reciprocity.37 As members ofthe Philippine elite moved into manufactur ing in the 1950s their previous congruence of interests with the United States declined. Their profits no longer depended solely on access to the subsidized U. S. market, but on being able as well to manipulate and monopolize a protected domestic market. Cullather is right to identifY this as a source of elite nationalism: under the guise of protecting the national interest the elite wanted to continue enriching itself, while the great mass of the Philippine population languished in abject poverty. One cannot overstate the greed and opportunism of the elite. Nevertheless, to say that Philippine nationalism was "pri marily a nationalism of the elite" (MN, p. 194) or that discrimi nation against the Chinese "was nationalism" (II, p. 187) is overly simplistic. For example, Cullather states: "Outrage against the military basesfastened on issues related to money-mineral rights, wages, land title, and compensation-issues incomprehensible to most Filipinos but of immediate and understandable concern to those whose power rested on controlling land and other sources of wealth" (MN, p. 190). But in fact the criminal jurisdiction issue was much more divisive than any of these other issues-and the Filipinos likely to be shot while scavenging on the bases were unlikely to be well-heeled caciques. Likewise, there was discord over third country use, medium-range missiles, and which flag should fly where: again, not of unique interest to the elite. Even the issue of land title can scarcely be seen as of immediate economic concern to the oligarchy, given that the alternative to Philippine title was a ninety-nine-year lease. Finally, the wages issue was probably contrary to elite interests, for high base wages probably had the effect ofraising wages off the bases, and it was the elite who paid these.
In his account of the parity renegotiation, Cullather quotes a telegram from Recto to the head ofthe Philippine panel calling parity "our trump card." And, comments Cullather, "neither Recto nor any of the members ofthe Philippine mission had any intention ofeliminating parity" (II, p. 147). Recto's telegram was actually rather ambiguous, for he also congratulated the head of the mission (on the basis of erroneous press reports) for his "uncompromising stand for the abolition of parity." 38 In any event, in January 1955 Recto publicly called for the outright abrogation ofparity, in February he denounceQ the revised parity provision (negotiated by his longtime political allies), and in April he spoke out against and voted against the new trade agreement. 39 It is hard to see this as simply a reflection ofnarrow self-interest, either economic or political (Recto had not yet split with Magsaysay). To say, as Cullather does, that Recto "advocated national dignity and a neutralist foreign policy, but as his positions on the Southeast Asian Treaty and the 1955 trade agreement revealed, he readily sacrificed those goals to his primary aim ofadvancing Philippine economic interests" (II, p. 139), seems rather unfair given that Recto voted against the trade agreement. Cullather is right that Recto's criticism of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organi zation was not really on grounds ofneutralism (since he preferred strengthening the bilateral mutual-defense treaty with the United States to make U.S. intervention automatic in the event that the Philippines was attacked," but the economic motive here is remote. Recto was a conservative, and his opposition to things like land reform was no doubt a reflection of his self-interest. But to dismiss the nationalist awakening of these years as nothing but elite greed is to miss the growing nationalist sentiment in nonelite circles. It is to resort to an economic determinism far more simplistic than that Cullather claims to fmd in other historians. And it makes incomprehensible the nationalist upsurge of the 1960s and beyond that drew inspiration from Recto, while tran scending him, developing into a mass movement both for genu ine independence and social justice.
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37. IT, pp. 130-31, IT, p. 147, MN, p. 11. n. 13. This would seem to suggest another criticism of parity: it enabled Filipinos to discriminate agajnst the Chinese with either U.S. encouragement (MN, pp. 160-61) or indifference (IT, p. 131). 38. Quoted in Aurelio B. Calderon, The Laurel-LangleyAgreement: A CriticallyAnnotatedandSelectedBibliogmphy(Mani1a:ResearchCoun cil, De La Salle University, 1979), p. 58. 39. ConstBntinD, Making ofa Filipino, pp. 221-24. 40. Ibid., pp. 214-15.
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VoL 28, NOI. 3-4 (1996)

111
David M. Kummer. Deforestation in the Postwar Phil ippines. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992. 177 pp. Marites Danguilan Vitul. Powerfrom the Forest. Ma nila: Philippine Center for Investilative Journalism, 1993.274 pp. Vmcent Busch. Hope for the Seeds. Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1989. 84 pp. by Brendan J. Luyt
During the second half of the twentieth century, the forests of the Philippines have been destroyed at an unprecedented rate. In 1934, 57.3 percent of the total land area of the Philippines was classified as forest land. Sixty years later that figure had dropped to only 13.5 percent. 1 Many observers believe that parts ~f the country are on the brink of ecological collapse and that, if the country is to remain habitable, drastic action is needed to protect the remaining forests and rehabilitate the ones that have been destroyed. Furthermore, the destruction of the forests has been highly detrimental to many of the country's indigenous people, whose way of life depends on access to forest resources. While many agree that action needs to be taken soon, there is a great deal of debate on just what that action should be. Some see a complete ban on logging as the answer, others see no reason why controlled logging should not continue. So~e see the solu tion in terms of company-owned forest plantations. Others be lieve that only local communities have the interest and the right to re-establish forests. Where one stands on this issue depends on who one be lieves is responsible for the destruction. On one side are the logging companies and then: ~ends in the governme~t, on the other, upland migrants practicmg slash-and-bum farmmg tech niques. The first two books under review, Deforestation in the Postwar Philippines and Powerfrom the Forest attempt to ~ed light on the conflicting standpoints. The last book under reVlew, . Hope for the Seeds, starts from ~e p~se that only ~ocal communities can control the destruction and 1t hopes to motivate them to find solutions. David Kummer's book, Deforestation in the Postwar Phil ippines, is a quantitative study of deforestation in the countIy. Kummer has as his goal the elaboration of a model of deforesta tion, an effort he hopes will result in a more thorough under standing of the process. Kummer examines the literature dealing with tropical de forestation, categorizing it first by geographical region and then by whether or not it is quantitative or descriptive. His exhaustive search clearly shows that there are very few quantitative studies, regardless of the geographical area under consideration. As
Kummer examines the world of Philippine statistics we can begin to understand why this so. In the case of the Philippines, Kummer explains, whatever data the Spanish collected on forests were bumed in a fire in 1897. The data prior to 1945 were destroyed during the Japanese occupation. Data gathered after 1945 are thought to he: unreli able. Taking road statistics as an example, Kummer wntes that a number of researchers told him that "changes ... from year to year may represent nothing [more] than the whims of provincial highway engineers" (p. 109). In another case, Kummer relat~s how it was only by lucky coincidence that he was able to obtam a copy of the government's 1973 PFS (phili~ine Forestry ~ta tistics) yearbook. Anonymous sources had m1Sled Kummer mto thinking that the yearbook had been withdrawn soon after pub lication because its estimation of forest cover would have caused a great deal of embarrassment to the government (p. 49). . With problems such as these, what does Kummer achieve with his quantitative study of the disappearing Philippine for ests? His ftrst contribution is the elaboration of a two-stage model for the deforestation process at the national level. In the first stage, logging removes the original forest cover. In the second, human agricultural settlements encroach on the recen~y cleared land. This stage is made possible by the access roads bUllt by the loggers, and it is made inevitable by the increasing poverty of the majority of the population in the face of a political and economic system that benefits only the elite. The second achievement of Kummer's work is the collec tion of relatively good provincial-level data for a number of socioeconomic and physical variables for three years: 1957, 1970, and 1980. Using the absolute amount of forest cover as a dependent variable, he does a cross-sectional analysis for the three years, and using the amount of deforestation in each pro~ ince as a dependent variable, he does a panel and path analys1s for the years 1970 and 1980. Rate of Deforestation From these analyses he is able to draw a number of conclu sions about the factors affecting the rate of deforestation. Ac cording to his study, road density and increases in agricultural land are such factors. Although expansion of agricultural land is positively related to deforestation, Kummer also notes, through his interpretation of a regression analysis, that the change in agricultural land is somewhat a ~ction. of the previous ~stoty of logging. He concludes that certam vanables are not so mpor tant in explaining deforestation. One ofthese is the price of forest products. For the Philippines at least, the political dimensions surrounding access to forest land have a ~ater effect on the amount of timber harvested. Similarly, his Study makes him conclude that population growth is not an important explanatoty variable for deforestation. According to him, it is more useful to understand the wider socio-economic context in which defores tation takes place and in which population growth may or may not be occurring. Kummer also analyzes the existing quantitative literature on deforestation, lamenting the lack of quantitative national studies of the deforestation process. His reading of the available material, which consists mostly of cross..,national statistical stud ies, leads him to conclude that these studies cannot be directly compared. This is not only because the definitions and proce dures that they use are different, but also because the social, economic, and political contexts in which deforestation occurs
Brendan J. Luyt teaches at Seibudai Senior High School in Sai~ Japan. He is interested in the political history of the environment m Southeast Asia and is the author of ''The Politics of the Japan Interna tional Cooperation Agency in the Philippines." Journal ofContempo mryAsia (Manila) 25, no. 3 (1995). 1. "A Nation's Lifeblood," Ibon Facta and Figures 18, no. 19: 2.
112
Bulkttn o[ConcrnedAstan Scholars
around the world vary tremendously and preclude wide-ranging generalizations. As an example, Kummer's studies found that deforestation increases the farther from Manila the area is. How ever, a study ofdeforestation in Thailand found that forest cover decreased the closer one got to Bangkok. This example illustrates not only the confusion around the terms forest cover and defor estation, but also the problem of context. In the Philippines, timber exports are not necessarily channeled through Manila.
There are many islands with many ports and these ports may be used for direct transport to the pmchasing country. The opposite is the case in Thailand, where export through Bangkok is the only option. Kummer compares his work to other, more theoretical approaches to deforestation. Four approaches are examined: the political economy approach of Guppy, the regional political ecology approach of Blaikie and Brookfield, the model ofdeforestation developed by Grainger, and the more orthodox economic ap proach of Walker, Panayotou, and Sungsuwan. Guppy explains defores tation by reference to four factors: rapid population growth and land hunger, inequitable access to re somces, the political motivations of local elites, and the active support these elites are able to solicit from the West. Blaikie and Brookfield look at deforestation from the perspective of "Constancio is a hero
the land manager who is either a This book is a searing
farmer or a logger. Farmers do not indictment not only of the
invest in land improvement or con servation because they usually do not Indonesian dictatorship,
have title to the land, whereas loggers but of the United States'
have little incentive to practice con government, which arms
servation since negative sanctions are and funds it."
rarely applied. Walker, Panayotou, and Sungsuwan believe that defores -Amy Goodman,
tation is a problem because govern WBAI/pacifica Radio
ments have not implemented the proper policies; they have failed to "get the prices right." Furthermore, the insecurities oftenure and short term leases that loggers face serve as BY CONSTANCIO PINTO AND MATTHEW JARDINE disincentives for forest conservation. This last approach Kummer FORWARD BY ALLAN NAIRN frods to be unconvincing because it ignores the politica1and class aspects "The struggle of the Timorese for freedom and justice
of access to land in the Philippines. He favors-and sees his own work as is one of the most inspiring of the modern era,
a contribution to-the approach of vividly depicted here through participant eyes ... Their resistance is a tribute
Guppy, Blaikie, and Brookfield since to what the human spirit can achieve, even in the face of awesome
these approaches allow a central resources of violence and unimaginable horror. It teaches many lessons, and
place for politics and class. Kummer wants to clarify the should serve as a call to action on many fronts, not least to help the people
role that remote sensing can play in ofTimor achieve the right of self-determination that they so richly deserve."
evaluating the state of the forests, -Noam Chomsky both in the Philippines and elsewhere. From a scientific point of view, he $16,0-89608-541-4
believes that the utility of remote sensing efforts to date has been inef South End Press books are available at independent bookstores.
fective. His own examination of this data clearly shows that the different Or call 1-800-533-8478 to order.
researchers responsible for collecting the data over the years have, each time, used different forest/vegetation SOUTH END PRESS
categories. This has made a compari son between the studies impossible. He also notes that if the goal of the
EAST TIMOR'S UNFINISHED STRUGGLE:
INSIDE THE TIMORESE
RESISTANCE
VoL 28, NOI. 3-4 (1996)
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sensing is to integrate this data with policies to control defores tation then it has been a complete failure. Politics has consistently proven to be more important in determining the rate of defores tation. This conclusion makes one wonder about the entire utility of the statistical approach to explaining and devising solutions to deforestation. Has Kummer wasted his time? This reviewer believes that he has not. Instead Kummer's work could serve as a bridge between those who believe that quantitative studies are a necessary part of social science and those who do not. By presenting a statistical analysis, and at the same time stressing the primacy of politics he puts the issue of deforestation on a new and clearer level. The kind of politics that Kummer considers to be of the utmost importance in the explanation ofPhilippine deforestation is the center ofattention ofthe second book under review, Power from the Forest. The author, Marites Danguilan Vitug, is a Philippine journalist who has devoted considerable attention to the issue ofdeforestation in her country. She states that her goals are to provide details of the politics surrounding forestry issues in an easy-to-read way and, in the process, to fill a gap in the research on Philippine forests. The author's attention to detail is evident throughout the book. Names are named and companies are described in exacting detail. At times, this interferes with the easy reading promised in the Introduction, but the detail forms a useful composite portrait of the nature of the Philippine political process and its relation to the forests. The rising and falling fortunes of individual politicians are documented in the context of their ability-and thal uf ili~ir allies-to exploit the forests. The centrality offorests to the fortunes, both political and economic, of the Philippine politicians validates Kummer's claim that a solution to the con tinuing deforestation of the country must include a political component.
Power from the Forest Vitug begins her book with a detailed description of the flood in Ormoc and the damage it caused in 1991. The tragedy of Ormoc was a direct result of the conversion of forested mountain slopes to sugar land combined with widespread pov erty in the area. Many of those killed were extremely poor and had nowhere else to live but in areas prone to flooding. This tragic event-combined with ample evidence of the negative effects of deforestation in the rest of the country-has helped to mobilize popular opinion on the issue of environmental protec tion in the Philippines. Demonstrating her concern for detail, Vitug explains that five families (the Larrazabals, Seraficas, Pongos, Torres, and Torrevillas) have long owned most ofthe agricultural land in the Ormoc watershed. These families, she notes, also profited from the logging of the forests that were originally on these lands, and they entered local politics to protect and extend their wealth. The Larrazabals initially dominated the local industry, but recently a new wealthy family, the Codillas, has emerged. Interestingly, the new family made its fortune selling lumber, a reminder of the importance of the forests for the elite. Vitugnext discusses deforestation during the Spanish, U.S., and early independent periods in l'hilippine history. The Marcos years receive the most attention. During these years the Philip pines became the leader in tropical lumber exports, and the country's forestry companies were regarded as expert consult
ants in places like Indonesia. Also during the Marcos period, corruption became firmly entrenched as part of the system of doing business. Vitug quotes a command issued by Marcos to Director Cortes, the crnef of the Bureau of Forest Development, on 17 July 1984. In the margin of a letter sent to Marcos by a loggmg company, requesting rights to a timber harvesting area, Marcos wrote: "Approved for one half of the area and the export of one half requested" (p. 20). Marcos himself made national forest policy, ignoring his own forest adminstrators! The Marcos policy was not based on any form ofscience, but only on relations of patronage between the president and the owners of logging companies. While such evidence paints a powerful image of how forestry policy was actually conducted, one wishes that Vitug had supplied clear and full documentation to support her claims. Vitug groups her sources at the end of the book, in sections that correspond to each of her chapters. She does not present precise reference citations. What impact did the Aquino administration have on for estry policy? This question occupies Vitug's next several chap ters. In general, Vitug gives the impression that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has gradually become more "green" despite Aquino's wish to reward whose who had helped her during her cam.paigns and despite the oppo sition from Congress. Vitug presents Congress in quite a bad light indeed; given its history on other social issues, this is perhaps understandable. Much of this book makes for depressing reading. The ninth chapter, by contrast, presents some ofthe success stories that are grounds for hope for the future. Among these is the local admini stration of the town of Nagtipunan in Quirino Province, whose mayor (at the time of publication) appeared to be sincerely interested in preserving the remaining forests and organizing community forest projects to replant deforested areas. The Kala han Educational Foundation (KEF) of San Nicolas in Pangasinan is also highlighted as an example of the possibilities that may be achieved when local communities take charge of their resources in a responsible manner. The KEF controls 14,730 hectares of land, some agricultural and some forested, and the forested areas are apparently being preserved in good condition. And what of the present national administration? Fidel Ramos's ::onnections to logging companies and the campaign contributions he has received from logging interests are revealed in the last chapter. It appears that the Philippine president has been noncommittal about environmental concerns, but public concern did force him to appoint Angel Alcala, an academic with good environmental credentials, as Secretary of DENR. Vitug notes, however, that pressures from all sides-both in and out side the DENR-have kept Alcala from instituting many of the changes that nongovernmental organizations expected. Vitug adds that Alcala's move to decentralization also seems to be a mixed blessing. "So much depends on the elected officials, their honesty and integrity," Vitug notes. But she is also careful to add: "Their constituents are also just as important if they remain alert to manipulations and cry foul" (p. 189).
Hope/or the Seeds
Getting constituents to be alelt and to cry foul is the goal set by Vmcent Busch in his book Hope for the Seeds. Busch is a missionary who has worked in Mindanao since 1975. Taking the Pastoral Letter on Ecology written by the Roman Catholic
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Bulletin ofConcernedAItan Scholarl
bishops of the Philippines as a starting point, Busch has devel oped an educational tool that may be used to help empower rural communities in the areas that are in the front line of the environ mental battIe. Wanting his book to be interesting as well as informative, Busch chose a comic book format fIlled with capti vating images. But images alone are not sufficient; people need to be motivated so that they involve themselves in the author's project. Busch uses two stories to motivate and involve his audience. The fIrst tale, originally told by Bishop Benny Tudtud, is about the mango seed. Briefly, the story is as follows.
For the Philippines at least, the political dimensions sllrrollnding access to forest /imd have a greater ejJect on the amollnt oftimber harvested....lt is more IIseflll to IInderstand the wider socio-economic context in which deforestation takes place and in which pOpll1a tion growth may or may not be occlU7'ing.
The children of Diwata and Mahusay (the fIrst people to live on Mindanao) find a mango tree in the forest. Worried that animals would eat all the fruit, the children decide to harvest the fruit right away, even if some of the fruit is not yet ripe. The children strip the tree, leaving only one mango on the tree. When their parents arrive on the scene, the children flee because they had been warned before not to take unripe fruit off the tree. Only the two youngest of Diwata and Mahusay's children, Adam and Eve, remained behind. Their parents explain to Adam and Eve that when fruits are unripe, their seeds are also unripe, and they will not grow into new trees. Diwata and Mahusay instruct their children to protect the last mango on the tree and to safeguard its unripe seed. Busch fIrst links this story to the culture of the indigenous people ofthe Philippines who have continued to keep the promise made to Diwata and Mahusay. He then observes that the present destruction of the natural world goes against that promise. The story blends Christian and indigenous themes. Many of the main characters in the story are taken from local legends, but references to the bible are present, as inthe reference to Adam and Eve being the youngest children of Diwata and Mahusay. The beginning of the story refers to the creator of the world as the "living God," a common term used to describe the Christian God. And of course the mango tree reflects the tree of good and evil in the Book of Genesis. The story does not portray the indigenous people as living in a natural paradise free ofwant or safe from threats from nature. Busch acknowledges, in fact, that the early inhabitants of the Philippines "endured typhoons, volcanic eruptions, disease and even tribal wars." It is commendable that Busch makes this admission and does not ignore the negative side of nature's impact. A second story follows, and through it Busch hopes that people will be galvanized into acting to preserve and reclaim the natural world. This story, like the fIrst, is taken from tribal legend. Many years ago, the story goes, the world had eight suns and eight moons and night never fell on the earth. All the light made it difficult for Boi Henwu, a T'boli princess, to sleep. Her pet python decided to eat all the suns in order to help her. He would have succeeded had not the singing and dancing of the
worried people alerted N ga Bal, the protector of the suns, to the situation. Warned, he was able to save the last sun fromdestruc tion. The message is clear: people need to act in order to save themselves. While these stories do convey a powerful message, and the artwork that accompanies them is colorful and full ofvitality, the decision to write them in English must be questioned. It would seem that a local language would have been more suitable for the book's intended audience. Hope for the Seeds also contains the complete text of the Pastoral LetteronEcology, the document that is the foundational structure for the book. This church document grounds the con cern for the environment in a context familiar to Catholics, that is, one based on the bible. In the same spirit as liberation theology in the Latin American church, this letter calls on the church to take an active role in solving the pressing problems confronting society. The book also includes an educational activity that is de signed to help the participants understand what it feels like to be part of a web of life, and a copy of the address that Native American Chief Seattle supposedly gave to an agent of the U. S. government. Hope for the Seeds represents an extension of liberation theology to environmental issues. The attainment of social jus tice, the aim of liberation theology, is seen as requiring a stable and sound ecology. An interesting and important question arises from this: how far do the ideas expressed in Hopefor the Seeds reflect overall church opinion? While the divisions within the Philippine church caused by traditional liberation theology indi cate that uniformity of thinking is unlikely, it also shows that enough support exists for the church to be a significant actor in efforts to halt environmental destruction in the country. RoBert Youngblood, in a 1979 survey, classifIed only 19 percent of the members of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines as progressive, but another 23 percent of the bishops were labeled as moderates. This amounts to almost half of the total. It should also be remembered that the lower levels of the church hierarchy are generally considered to be more progressive in outlook. 2 Therefore Hope for the Seeds should be seen, not as an aberration, but as part of a movement with a significant base of support within the church. These three books focus on varied aspects of the problem of deforestation. Kummer looks at the actual process of defores tation, especially the relationship between logging and agricul ture. Vitug examines the political and social systems that give a green light to the loggers and force farmers to exploit the forests in order to survive. Busch's effort is directed toward rmding an alternative to the present destruction. These books share a com mon set of assumptions and beliefs. At the most general level, all are a reflection oftheir authors' concern with the plight ofthe Philippine people and their ravished land. More specifIcally, the authors share a belief that the root cause of deforestation is a social structure that allows politics to be dominated by the wealthy. From this it follows that only a political solution will save the Philippine forests and the people who depend on them.
*
2. Robert L. Youngblood, Marcos Against the Church (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 66-76.
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Vo Nhan Tri. Vietnam's Economic Policy since 1975. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990. xii + 253 pp. Tran Khanh. The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993. xii + 126 pp. Dang T. Tran. Vietnam: Socialist Economic Develop ment, 1955-1992. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1994. ix + 91 pp. International Center for Economic Growth, Country Studies, no. 12. Dean K. Forbes, Terence H. Hull, David G. Marr, and Brian Brogan, eds. Doi Moi: Vietnam's Renova tion Policy and Performance. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, 1991. xiv + 263 pp. Political and Social Change Monograph, no. 14. Vu Tuan Anh. Development in Vietnam: Policy Reforms and Economic Growth. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1994. 69 pp. Mya Than and Joseph L. H. Tan, eds. Vietnam's Dilemmas and Options: The Challenge ofEconomic Transition in the 1990s. Singapore: Institute of South east Asian Studies, 1993. xvi + 306 pp. Borje Ljunggren, ed. The Challenge ofReform in Indochina. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. xvii + 396 pp. by Ronald Bruce St John
With the collapse of the Saigon regime and the end of the war, the Vietnamese government inherited a legacy of foreign occupation, wartime destruction, underdevelopment, foreign aid dependency, and high popular expectations. The orthodox eco nomic policies followed by Hanoi in the immediate post-unifi cation period, together with the economic and political isolation that followed Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea, China's inva sion of Vietnam, and the U.S.-led economic embargo, caused economic conditions to worsen. As a result, Vietnam failed in the half decade after unification to match revolutionary gains with economic gains. Tentative steps initiated in 1979 towards an open market economy followed the resounding failure of the headlong rush to socialism in the immediate postwar period. The pace of change accelerated over the next two decades until Vietnam, by the early 1990s, had in place an impressive and effective package of economic reforms. The basic elements of the Vietnamese story are well known and generally agreed upon. The North Vietnamese government, before the collapse of South Vietnam, hinted that unification of the country would take place in stages over a 10- to IS-year
period. Hanoi subsequently decidc:d, within a few months after the fall of Saigon, to proceed to an immediate unification of Vietnam. The leaders of the Provisional Revolutionary Govern ment and the National Liberation Front, separate communist organizations established in South Vietnam during the war, were obliged in November 1975 to vote themselves out of existence. Elections in April 1976 selected a National Assembly that quickly approved a new government for the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In the same year, the Fourth Party Congress laid out ambitious goals for the complete socialist transformation of the South by 1980. 1 The economy deteriorated steadily over the next three years, and the Vietnamese government responded in 1979 with a limited program of market-oriented reforms that it greatly expanded and enhanced after 1986. By the early 1990s, most observers agreed that the total reform package in place or coming into place in Vietnam represented the most comprehensive and radical set of reform measures adopted by any socialist country up to that time. These reforms conltributed to an impressive and sustained recovery of the Vietnamese economy in the first half of the 1990s. 2 The complex interplay of forces and policies that caused the Vietnamese first to initiate and later to accelerate the reform process is not totally clear. What motivated the timing and content of the economic reforms enacted? How effective are the reforms in place and what more needs to be done to produce sustainable economic development? What has been the role of the state in facilitating a process of economic reform and devel opment? Is the reform process simply an interim step on the road to socialism or has it become an irreversible process leading to a new economic order in Vietnam? Are there limits to an eco nomic reform program not supported by accompanying political reforms? What are the social, environmental, and other conse quences of economic reform? In addressing these issues and more, the books under review reflect the ongoing ideological debate over who won the war-find the peace-in Vietnam. Covering the post-unification period, some of the books focus on the first stage of reform (1979-1986), the others concentrate on the second (1986-present). First Stage of Reform Vo Nhan Tri, author of Vietnam s Economic Policy since 1975, was head of the World Economy Department at the Insti tute of Economics in Hanoi from 1960 to 1975. He was then Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City from 1976 to 1984. From these unique vantage
Ronald Bruce St John completed his doctorate at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. He WOIXs as an inde pendent scholar specializing in the pcllitical economy of developing states. He was last resident in Southeast Asia from 1987 to 1992 and is a frequent visitor to Vietnam. The author would like to thank the editors and five anonymous BCAS readers for their valuable and helpful comments and suggestions. I. Vo Nhan Tri, "Party Policies and Economic Performance: The Second and Third Five-Year Plans Examined," in Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas in Socialist Development. ed. David G. Marr and Christine P. White, (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1988), pp. 77-82; Stefan de Vylder and Adam Fforde, Vietnam: An Economy in Transition (Stockholm: SIDA, 1988), pp. 59-62.
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points, Tri observed and participated in the creation and imple mentation of Vietnamese economic policies before and after unification. He writes that the present work provides him an opportunity to revisit and revise assessments completed earlier in Vietnam when his work was subjected to the test of political orthodoxy. To set the stage for his discussion of post-197 5 Vietnamese economic policy, the author embarks on a lengthy discussion of Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRY) economic policy in the two decades after 1955. His analysis highlights the influence of the People's Republic of China on early DRV economic policies, particularly in the areas of agricultural reform and collectiviza tion. Tri is harshly critical of the DRV approach to economic refoml, especially what he views as an unfortunate overemphasis on heavy industry at the expense of agriculture and light industry. He feels this strategy led to an irrational economic structure that resulted in low economic efficiency and labor productivity when a more balanced approach would have enabled agriculture and light industry to develop more rapidly. 3 Tri's assessment of early DRV economic policies sets the stage for his analysis of postwar economic policies. He argues forcefully that the main cause for the rapidly deteriorating eco nomic situation in Vietnam after 1975 was the decision to impose the economic development strategy followed in the North after 1954 on the South in a wholesale, precipitate manner: "The fact remains that immediately after the communist military victory in the South (April 1975), the Party leadership tried to impose at all costs the Northern model ofdevelopment upon the South, and this 'northemization' of a restive South brought about disastrous results" (p. 46). In particular, he cites the overemphasis on heavy industry and the strong opposition to agricultural collectivization in the South in support of his position. 4 The Sixth Plenum of the Central Committee (Fourth Con gress, September 1979) marked a major turning point in postwar Vietnamese economic policy. The Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) recognized the country's growing economic problems and initiated selected, tentative reform measures. The ensuing five-year period (1981-85) was characterized by stop-and-go policies in which limited economic reforms were initiated but then offset by counterproductive, reactionary policies. Agricul tural collectivization was reemphasized, but heavy industry con tinued to receive the major portion of state investments. Consumer goods industries were neglected. Overall, the living standards of working people deteriorated significantly after 1981; they experienced another sharp decline after the ill-con ceived price-wage-currency reforms in September 1985. Tri describes the first round of economic reforms as largely piecemeal, makeshift measures-in effect, minor surgery where major surgery was required. Throughout the 1981-85 period, much of the Party leadership resided in a halfway house between growing disillusionment with the development strategy in place and true commitment to a dramatic new approach. In fact, the
most significant development throughout the period was the growing appreciation in Hanoi that the old policies were bank rupt and more significant reforms were required. The meeting of the Politburo in August 1986 was followed four months later by the Sixth Party Congress, which endorsed the Politburo's stand and thus marked a second major turning point in the Party's post-unification strategy of economic devel opment. The package of reform measures adopted by the Sixth Party Congress focused on six policy areas in an effort to quicken the pace of what the Vietnamese government termed do; rno; or renovation. First, Hanoi established the independent status of public enterprises with the objective that they operate according to so-called socialist accounting principles, a concept that called for their economic and financial independence. Second, price liberalization policies moved the entire economic system in the direction ofmarket-determined prices. Third, reforms in the area of ownership diversification encouraged non-state ownership and provided for a partnership between the state, cooperative, and private sectors. Fourth, significant segments ofthe economy opened their external commercial relations in an effort to gener ate foreign investment. Fifth, the congress strengthened agricul tural incentives as well as institutional support for agriculture. Finally, the government initiated a fundamental reform of the financial system, which separated central banking functions from those of newly created commercial banks. S Tri characterizes do; mo;, the policy of economic renova tion endorsed by the Party in December 1986, as a dialectical unity of continuity and change. Although many authors have considered do; rno; a totally new policy direction, the author rightly emphasizes the high degree of continuity with post~1979 reforms, citing various examples like the encouragement of the household economy and the generalization of the end-product system to make his point. He also stresses the limits ofrenovation policy, arguing that do; rno; is only a temporary policy, a devia tion on the path to socialism. An implicit theme throughout Tri's book is the unwilling ness of the Party to follow its words with actions. The Party's questionable performance in this regard poses significant impli cations for the future. If an entrenched and resistant state bu reaucracy, driven by vested interests, is able to frustrate a mean ingful reallocation of scarce national resources, it may prove difficult for the state to sustain economic progress. "The harsh reality concerning the country's economy and the working peo ple's living conditions mentioned in the preceding pages has categorically refuted the demagogic promises of the Party lead ers. Instead of a 'modem' and 'prosperous' economy, one wit nesses, thirteen years after reunification, a moribund economy" (p.228). 4. On agrarian reform in Vietnam after 1975, see Jayne Werner, "So cialist Development: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Vietnam," Bulletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars 16, no. 2 (April-June 1984): 48-55. 5. "Vo Van Kiet's Economic Report at CPV Congress," U.S. Govern ment, Foreign Broadcast Information Se1Vice, Daily Reporl: Asia and Pacific 86, no. 246 (23 December 1986): K8-K24; William S. Turley and Mark Selden, eds., Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), especially the articles by Le Due Thuy, "Economic Doi Moi in Vietnam: Content, Achievements, and Prospects," pp. 97-106; and David Wwfel, ''DoiMoi in Comparative Perspective," pp. 19-52.
2. Ronald Bruce St John, "The Vietnamese Economy in Transition: Trends and Prospects," Asian Affairs (London) 24, no. 3 (October 1993): 304-314. 3. For overviews ofthe economic policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, see Marie-Sybille de Vienne,L 'economiedu Viet-Nam (1955 1995): bilan et prospective (paris: CREAM, 1994), pp. 41-68; and de VYlder and Fforde, Vietnam, pp. 25-35.
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It is therefore disappointing that Tri, given his unique perspective, does not explore in more detail the reasons behind the obvious gap between the Party's rhetoric and its actions. Additional analysis of the impact that key external events like the U.S.-led economic embargo and the Kampuchean and Chi nese conflicts had on economic planning and development in the 1980s would have rounded out Tri's presentation. The strength of Vietnam:S Economic Policy since 1975 lies in its assessment of the legacy of the development model of North Vietnam together with its discussion of the unification and socialist trans fonnation periods through 1985.
Ethnic Chinese
The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Viet nam, by Dr. Tran Khanh, a researcher with the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies in Hanoi, is a specialized study that focuses on the Chinese community of Vietnam. The author defines his subject as "a person or a group who are of Chinese racial origin or who identify themselves as being of Chinese ethnicity but who live permanently in Vietnam, regardless of their citizenship and level of integration into Vietnamese soci ety" (p. 9). This subject is not a new area of scholarly inquiry, as can be seen from the substantial bibliography provided, but only limited research has been published in the last two decades. The author draws on Western, Soviet, and Vietnamese sources; many of the data tables are based on the Statistical Yearbook of Viet
nam.
As Khanh points out, the situation of the ethnic Chinese community in Vietnam is "a sensitive issue raising complex questions about ethnic relations, national policy on minorities and citizenship, economic domination of the local economy, and larger strategic interests" (p. 13). By the time the Europeans arrived, the Chinese in Vietnam were playing an active and significant role in several sectors of the Vietnamese economy, including commerce, mining, and handicraft. The French colo nial administration practiced a policy of "divide and rule" in which they promoted a separate status for the Chinese commu nity, a discriminatory practice that sparked envy and animosity among the Vietnamese (p. 28). The French welcomed this fric tion between the Chinese and the Vietnamese as it reduced the antagonism of the two peoples towards the French and allowed the latter to play the role of peacemaker. 6 After independence, the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, in an effort to break what it considered to be a Chinese stranglehold on the economy, attempted in 1956 to extend its control over the Chinese and to integrate them into the Vietnamese community. Vietnamese citizenship was automatically conferred on all Chi nese born in Vietnam, and the latter were required to take
Vietnamese names. At the same time, non-Vietnamese nationals were forbidden to engage in eleven occupations, all of which were Chinese-dominated and most of which related to retail trade. Taken together, the impact of the two measures was contradictory as the government seemed to push the Chinese out on the one hand and welcome them in on the other. Predictably, the government measures failed to please anyone. The Chinese refused to believe that they would be treated on an equal footing with the Vietnamese in trade, and they were furious with having what they considered to be an inferior nationality thrust upon them. Vietnamese businessmen, in tum, grumbled that the Chi nese stranglehold had been confirmed instead of broken. After a period of internal resistance and ill will, most Chinese complied with the citizenship requirement. Through acceptance of Viet namese citizenship, the Chinese community has retained its traditional position in Vietnam's economy.7 Khanh focuses on the changing patterns of Chinese in volvement in the economy of Vietnam. After providing an over view of the formation and evolution of the Chinese community in Vietnam, he explores the position of ethnic Chinese in key economic sectors of southern Vietnam before 1975. Much of the analysis here centers on the Republic of Vietnam, during a period in which the Chinese community, especially after 1964, flour ished and prospered. Chinese businesses, traditionally centered on commerce and banking, diversified and expanded during the American buildup in the second half of the 1960s. The commer cial success of ethnic Chinese in the years leading to the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam heightened their vulnerability to a new government intent on a rapid transfonnation to socialism. The prosperous business community of the South, as a whole, was affected; but the Chinese contingent, as both Vo Nhan Tri and Tran Khanh point out, suffered the most. At the same time, the international situation aggravated local conditions. China became involved in the dispute between Vietnam and Kam puchea, and this conjunction of economic and political factors led to an exodus of refugees from Vietnam in the second half of the 1970s, a large number of whom were ethnic Chinese. 8 Implementation of the policy of doi moi, with its endorse ment of a multisector economy, gave the private sector in Viet nam in general and ethnic Chinese businessmen in particular new room for maneuver. On the basis of limited statistical evidence, which stops with the year 1990, Khanh suggests that the ethnic Chinese community responded after 1986 by expanding the number and scale of trade and services undertaken. In addition, Chinese businessmen diverted some of their limited capital into handicraft enterprises and small-scale industrial production. Others moved from trade to establish medium and large-scale manufacturing enterprises, often with the help of capital from relatives who had fled overseas after 1975.
The Ethnic Chinese andEconomic Development in Vietnam
6. Vrrginia Thompson, French Indo-China (New York: Octagon Books, 1968),pp. 127-128, 136-137, and 141; MartinJ. Murray, The Develop ment ofCapitalism in Colonia/Indochina (1870-1940) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 220-222 and 449-453; Charles Robequain, The Economic Development ofFrench IndoChina (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 32-44. 7. Bernard B. Fall, "Viet-Nom's Chinese Problem," Far Eastern Survey (May 1958): 65-72; Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. 2d ed.), pp. 215-216; Robert Scigliano, South Vietnam: Nation Under Stress (Bos ton: HoughtonMiftlin, 1963),pp. 4-5 and 118-119.
lays the groundwork for a more detailed study of the impact of postwar economic refonns on ethnic Chinese and their ensuing participation in the economic development of Vietnam. A more comprehensive study of the impact of doi mo; on investment and
8. The ethnic Chinese in Vietnam were victims of the restructuring of the Vietnamese economy, but they were victimized even more by the conflict between China and Vietnam. Gareth Porter, ''Vietnam's Ethnic Chinese and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 12, no. 4 (October-Dec:ember 1980): 55-59.
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commercial practices of ethnic Chinese would be of particular interest. Additional work also needs to be done on the relation ship between the ethnic Chinese who remaiped in Vietnam after 1975 and those who emigrated, as well as with the Chinese communities in neighboring states like Singapore and Taiwan who are now investing in Vietnam. Socialist Economic Development Dang T. Tran served as director of research and planning and as chief economist at the Ministry of National Planning and Development, Republic of South Vietnam, in 1971-72. In Viet nam: Socialist Economic Development, 1955-1992, Tran fo cuses on the New Economic Management Mechanism (NEMM) implemented during the first reform period. He characterizes the implementation of NEMM as somewhat slow and spasmodic, largely because it was left to the provinces and cities to carry out. Attempts at reform encountered real resistance at these levels from conservative leaders and middle-ranking Vietnamese Com munist Party (VCP) members who remained committed to state control of the market. On the other hand, the Vietnamese economy did pick up slightly after the introduction of limited liberalization measures in late 1979. Growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rose from 1980 to 1985. Improvement in agricultural production was immediate, but the industrial sector was slower to respond. On the negative side of the ledger, export growth remained essentially unchanged. Annual inflation rates, which continued at high levels, reflected the absence of either a coher ent macroeconomic policy or an independent monetary author ity. Abortive efforts to achieve the collectivization of agriculture continued, and a new currency reform was introduced in late 1985. Tran concludes that the overall impact on the economy of the reforms introduced after 1979 was positive. Steps in the direction of economic liberalization promoted market processes and competition, rewarded the private sector for its efficiency, and penalized the state sector for its rigidity, inefficiency, and wastefulness. At the same time, structural changes intended to raise productivity did not go far enough. The administrative supply system remained largely intact. The government failed to eliminate either the multitier price system or the multiple ex change rate system, and ideological checks also remained in place. 9 The treatment of the second reform period by Tran is less detailed and lacks the crispness of his earlier and longer section on post-l 979 reforms. He describes the early implementation of doi moi as slow and incomplete, with Party bureaucrats often hesitant to make the tough decisions required to make the policy work. As a result, the reform movement did not really gain momentum until early 1988. Tran does feel that reform towards a market economy has produced positive results. He cautions, however, that there are still many obstacles to reform. Examples of obstacles include the lack of a uniform commercial code,
9. Concerning political obstacles to economic refonn from 1975 to 1979, Tran elsewhere has described the Vielnamese leadership as doc trinaire Marxist-Leninists who were lUlable or IUlwilling to compromise as problems developed. Dang T. Tran,SocialistEconomicDevelopment andthe Prospectsfor Economic Refonn in Vietnam, Indochinalnitiative Working Paper Series, no. 2 (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1991), p. 24.
fragmented political structures that give the provinces too much discretionary power, and limited economic and managerial skills among key cadre. Tran closes with a cautionary note that the enactment of economic reforms has not modified in any fundamental way the worldview of VCP leaders. Like Vo Nhan Tri, he argues that the leadership of Vietnam continues to view the economic reforms implemented after 1979 as simply a period of transition to socialism. "The bottom line, in my view, is that one should look at the leadership's long-term objectives. And here one can say with confidence that the more things change the more they remain the same. In the meantime, however, as tPe reform will probably last as long as the production forces remain underde veloped and this may be for years yet, if not decades, and as the government is learning to rule by law, the socialist system in Vietnam, barring some catastrophic external shocks, will be come less rigid, less totalitarian, and more open for many years to come" (p. 80).
Doi Moi and the Second Stage of Reform

Doi Mo;: Vietnam s Renovation Policy and Performance, edited by Dean K. Forbes, Terence H. Hull, David G. Marr, and Brian Brogan, is the product of a late-l 990 conference on Viet nam convened by the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University (AND). Many of the seventeen papers included in this volume have been overtaken by events in and outside of Vietnam. A few of them, however, especially those dealing with socioeconomic change and its impact on the revolution, are noteworthy. In an early chapter, David G. Marr, a senior fellow at AND's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, adds perspective to Vietnamese reform policies in a brief historical survey that draws attention to long-term issues that challenge the govern ment and people. First, he points out that the VCP has yet to redefine its concept of socialism or alter its modus operandi to foreshadow a multiparty system or significant pluralism. The contradictions apparent in this dual commitment to economic reform and political dogma constitute a major imponderable in any assessment of the future direction of economic reform in Vietnam. Second, Marr emphasizes the social consequences of the upheavals after 1975 in areas such as the provision of education and health care. Finally, he draws attention to the serious demographic and environmental problems challenging Vietnam. Marr refuses to end on a pessimistic note, but the limited progress Vietnam has made in these areas since this book was published gives cause for reflection. In a short essay on the media and society, Esta Ungar, who teaches in the Department ofHistory at the University ofWestern Australia, looks at the generally ignored question of sociocultu ral change in Vietnam. Liberalization in this area has proceeded in starts and stops, but the author rightly concludes that the sphere of public debate on cultural affairs has broadened considerably since the introduction of do; mo; in 1986. The Vietnamese are justifiably proud oftheir cultural heritage, and artists and writers in Vietnam have been increasingly free in recent years to create what they want as long as their work is not critical of the government or its policies. Expecting this process of liberaliza tion to continue- and it has-Ungar concludes on a pessimistic note, predicting a continuing cycle of crackdown and an easing off in cultural affairs.
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Until the nineteenth century the Vietnamese addressed their demographic problems largely by moving southward down the coast. In the French colonial period, there was further settlement of the Mekong Delta, but this did not relieve growing population pressures in the Red River Delta and elsewhere. More recently, governments in both Hanoi and Saigon, in the two decades after 1955, urged people to migrate to the upland regions, previously the domain of ethnic minorities. With the end of the war, an ambitious plan to resettle several million people from north to south and from lowlands to uplands was announced, but only a fraction of the plan was realized. On the contrary, demographic issues continue to bedevil the Vietnamese government and to pose a real threat to the successful achievement of any long-term economic development program. Vu Qui Nhan ofthe National Committee for Population and Family Planning in Hanoi and Stewart Fraser of the Center for Comparative and International Studies in Education at La Trobe University in Melbourne discuss in separate chapters the related issues of fertility, family planning, and maternal health care. Nhan, looking at fertility and family planning in Vietnam, con cludes that fertility is decreasing but remains at high levels compared to other states in the region. Arguing that the national family planning program needs to be reoriented towards a wider range of contraceptive methods, the author recognizes, like Kaufman and Sen, who are mentioned below, that any such reorientation will require additional resources to be successful. Fraser focuses on the related questions ofmaternal child care and education in Vietnam. Emphasizing the importance of Vietnam ese youth to the development of the country, the author expresses concern at the quality of maternal and child health care services as reflected in morbidity and mortality rates. The statistics pre sented on school attendance suggest otlly a 1 percent difference in boys versus girls in the 5 to 9 year-old group attending school; unfortunately, gender bias increases with age as there is a 9 percent difference in favor ofboys for the 15 to 19 year-old group. A rural-urban comparison suggests a slightly worsening position for females in the countryside especially in the 15 to 19 year-old group. Available space does not permit a more lengthy summary of the arguments presented, but the lively treatment of important issues serves as a good introduction to more recent publications on related subjects. lo Development in Vietnam Vu Tuan Anh was the director of the Vietnam Institute of Economics in Hanoi from 1989 to 1993. He is now a senior researcher at the institute. He completed Development in Viet nam: Policy Reforms and Economic Growth in mid-l 993 when
10. On the issues of population growth and sustainable development, see Stephanie B. Sige1man, "Population, Environment, and Policy Interactions in Vietnam: Issues for Sustainable Development," unpub lished paper presen~4 at Jhe Conference of the Northwest Regional Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies, Seattle, 1994; Judith Banister, Vietnam Population Dynamics and Prospects, Indochina Research Monograph, no. 6 (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993); Nguyen Minh Thang and Vu Thu Huong, "Popu lation Growth and Sustainable Development: Challenges During Socio economic Transition in Vietnam," unpublished paper presented at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, April 1995, Washington, D.C.
he was a research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. In the introduction to the book, he promises an insider's view of the economic reform process. Anh divides his book into three chapters that review the proc.ess of economic reform, economic growth during the reform period, and the challenges and perspectives ofeconomic development. The most interesting material is found in chapter two in a section entitled "Switchoverto the Market Economy." Here the author provides a clear, concise summary of the e(:onomic reforms implemented in Vietnam since 1986. After a brief review ofthe role ofthe state, he analyzes price reform, monetary policy and counter-inflation measures, finan cial reform, reform of the banking system, legal reform, and the reorganization of the management apparatus. In each case, Anh highlights what has been accomplished as well as what remains to be done. In the process, he sketches a fascinating portrait of the complexities involved in transforming a centrally planned system to a market-oriented, mixed economy. Along the way, Anh makes some interesting observations about selected aspects of the economic reform process. At the outset, he stresses that Vietnam has not followed other models in charting its reform process; instead, it has slowly worked out its own reform scenario. "The nature of Vietnam's reforms was not merely one of switching from an old model that no longer worked to one borrowed from another country. In fact, elements of the old model were discarded and replaced by elements deemed to be more suited to Vietnam's circumstances, and this it did by trial and error" (p. 9). He also emphasizes, and rightly so, that the related problems of job creation and job retraining are major obstacles to a speedy reform of the public sector. Most analysts focus on the ideological problems surrounding the re structuring of public sector companies, but there are also very real practical problems. Anh stresses the rural foundation ofVietnamese society and underscores the radical nature ofthe economic revolution occur ring at the village level. "Going by the new policy, the household is a self-governing economic unit; previously, however, only agricultural co-operatives were regarded as self-governing eco nomic units. This change has given rise to a series of major socioeconomic transformations in rural areas" (p. 17). He returns to this theme in the final chapter in which he discusses the social aspects of economic development. Economic restructuring is having a widespread, albeit not well understood, impact on the social structure in terms of trades, professions, and incomes. Increasing differentiation in incomes, for example, has weak ened formerly close-knit communal relations, particularly in rural areas. Similarly, the switch to a market economy has vastly increased the level of risk-and stress-in many economic un dertakings. Anh also notes the radical shift in direction that Vietnamese trade has taken in recent years. In the 1980s Vietnam's exports and imports were largely tied to the: Soviet trade system. In 1992, Anh notes that almost 80 percent of Vietnamese exports went to Asian countries and more than 77 percent of its imports came from the same region. He suggests that Vietnam looks forward to extending its trade relations with the former Soviet Union and East European countries, but he later takes what this reviewer considers to be a more realistic view when he stresses that Vietnam's future lies with the world economy and the economies of Asia. "The future is bright for Vietnam, especially if it builds
120
closer economic ties with the world economy and with countries in the Southeast Asian region in particular" (p. 58). In the end, Vu Tuan Anh does an excellent job ofproviding a succinct overview of the policy reforms and economic growth experienced by Vietnam over the last decade and a half. The process has been protracted and difficult, as he points out, but the changes that have been made are fundamental and have far-reaching consequences. This book represents one insider's view of the process of economic reform in Vietnam.
Dilemmas and Options

As suggested by the title, the individual contributions to Vietnam s Dilemmas and Options: The Challenge ofEconomic Transition in the 1990s, center on the challenges and opportuni ties facing Vietnam as it broadens its reform process. In the introductory chapter, Mya Than, a fellow and the joint coordina tor of the Indochina Unit at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, and Joseph L. H. Tan, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and coordinator of the ASEAN Economic Research Unit in Singapore, argue that by 1993 Vietnam was in fact almost halfway down the road to becoming a market economy. They suggest that Vietnam may have reached a point of no return in terms of the reform process, although they also caution that the Vietnamese government could yet fall into what they term a reform trap in which partial reform programs generate more problems than solutions. In a chapter on the role of the state in economic develop ment, Dan Ton That argues cogently and persuasively that the Vietnamese government has a central role to play in the recon struction of Vietnam. But it is a new and far different role from the one the state played in the past. The economic measures put in place after the Sixth Party Congress provide the basic envi ronment for economic development to accelerate, but a success ful market economy also necessitates appropriate institutions, and these have been slow in developing. 11 As examples of what is required, That cites a new legal system together with credible independent law enforcement institutions and an efficient finan cial system. The Vietnamese leadership must create an optimal environment for domestic economic creativity, as well as for foreign investment, trade, and assistance, if it is to develop to its fullest potential. Concomitantly, the amount of state intervention in the economic process should be limited, simplified, and con sistent to minimize the cost to society of attaining a higher level of economic performance. With regards to human resource development, Geoffrey B. Hainsworth, a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of British Columbia, addresses some of the formida ble challenges facing Vietnam in areas such as demographics,
ethnicity, family planning, health, education, and productivity. As the Vietnamese populace undergoes a fundamental reorien tation in its value system, worldview, and ideological perspec tive, each citizen is also expected to become substantially more self-reliant in finding employment, acquiring skills, adjusting work habits, and providing for basic needs. Hainsworth argues that there is considerable scope for increasing productivity, na tional output, and per capita income while at the same time improving the quality of life. On the other hand, a successful strategy will necessitate progress in issue areas such as infant mortality, the provision of education, and the full exercise of human rights. He concludes that tackling these problems pre sents sizeable challenges; however, the payoff in terms ofhuman welfare and the enhancement of human capital would be enor mous. A final chapter of interest, in part because it expands on the analy sis of Vu Tuan Anh, was authored by one of the editors, Mya Than, and surveys Vietnam's external trade from 1975 to 1991. Vietnam through 1985 was an exporter of primary goods and depended heavily on foreign aid and loans from the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) countries to finance the import of goods essential to its industrial activities. Than argues that Vietnam's decision to pursue a socialist industriali zation policy, together with the U.S.-led embargo on trade and investment, combined to put the country in this trade position. In the doi moi period, Vietnam's trade policy began to change, especially after 1988, as major reforms in trade policies were introduced. The performance of the export sector was particu larly remarkable, and as exports increased substantially, the direction of trade shifted from the former socialist states to countries in Asia. While total imports increased at a rate much slower than total exports, imports also shifted in origin from the former CMEA(Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) coun tries to the convertible currency area. On the other hand, there was little change in the foreign trade structure and no significant export diversification was achieved.
Challenge of Reform
The Challenge ofReform in Indochina is the product of a series of seminars organized by the editor, BOIje Ljunggren of the Swedish International Development Authority, when he was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Institute for International De velopment. The scope of this book is broader than that of the others under review in that it also looks at reform in Cambodia and Laos, but the vast majority of the papers included by Ljung gren concentrate on the Vietnamese case. 12 The chapter by Nayan Chanda, then deputy editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, explores the challenges to devel opment policies and international relations that Vietnam and its neighbors faced as a result of the end of the cold war and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Not only were these states suddenly deprived of their principal source of extemal economic support, but they also faced a fundamental threat to their identity as countries committed to building socialism.
11. The laws passed by the Vietnamese National Assembly tend to be largely guiding principles and statements of intent when compared to laws passed by Western legislatures, which means Vietnamese laws continue to require implementing regulations to be effective. Therefore, the roles ofthe national government in issuing decrees and ordinances and of subordinate authorities in issuing decisions and circulars to implement laws passed by the National Assembly are very important Levien Do, "Vietnam's Revised Constitution: Impact on Foreign Invest ment," in Vietnam and the Rule ofLaw, ed. Carlyle A. Thayer and David G. Marr, Political and Social Change Monograph, no. 19 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1993), pp. 118-119.
12. For a comparative study of economic refonn in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, see Ronald Bruce St John, "New Economic Order in Indochina," Asian Affairs: An American Review 21, no. 4 (1995): 227-240.
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Chanda concludes that the conflict in Cambodia and the tension between Cambodia and Vietnam can be expected to continue in the post-cold war era as will the traditional rivalry between China and Vietnam. Ideology will play less of a role in the future; although disputes over political power, together with long-stand ing regional rivalries, will continue to be sources of instability. 13 C. Peter Timmer, the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Devel opment Studies at Harvard, argues that the rural economy in general and the agricultural sector in particular can and should provide the main impetus to short-term economic growth in Vietnam. Timmer does not challenge the arguments of other economists, including some represented in this book, that labor intensive manufactured goods will be the basis for medium to longer-term economic growth, but he echoes the argument of Vo Nhan Tri and others that agriculture is capable of stimulating accelerated short-term growth. This is a point that merits empha sis. Contemporary Vietnam remains primarily an agrarian soci ety; and the farm sector, together with related agricultural proc essing industries, can continue to playa central role in Vietnam's economic development. No modem nation has become rich by concentrating its resources on agriculture, but the farm sector in Vietnam can contribute significantly to the development of non agricultural sectors. In so doing, it will help to stabilize food prices, provide employment, generate exports, and develop ad ministrative capacity. Finally, Joan Kaufman, a senior analyst at Abt Associates (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and Gita Sen, a fellow at the Center for Development Studies (Trivandrum, India), discuss the crucial issues of health, population, and gender in Vietnam. They argue that three major developments in recent years have threatened health accomplishments in Vietnam. First, funds for develop ment in all areas have become scarce, especially in sectors like health care where the productive payoff may not be immediate. Second, as discussed by Dang T. Tran, relationships between the central and local governments have shifted in recent years. These shifts have included changes in responsibilites for financing investment and in the provision of supplies and services. The third development, the transformation of the food production and distribution systems, will likely have both positive and negative effects on health. On the one hand, it may improve the supply and variety of foods; on the other hand, it may produce inequities in which poorer regions and households are worse off in the future than they were under past food-subsidy arrangements. Kaufman and Sen emphasize that these three major develop ments in Vietnam carry implications for the gender dimensions of health and population because of their effects on environ mental sanitation and water supply, infrastructure for health and family-planning sevices, and nutrition. Specific gender dimen sions include (1) the degree to which changes in the health care system will affect women's access to health care and nutrition,
(2) the impact of these changes on work involved in health care provision, and (3) the health issues of special interest and concern to women and girls, such as reproductive health and maternal mortality. This excellent article contributes to the general litera ture on the gender implications of economic reform and devel opment planning and it also highlights the acute need for addi tional research on the Vietnamese case. 14
Outstanding Issues
All of the works under review agree that Vietnam has made enormous progress in the direction of a market economy, but it is still too early to say whether or not this will lead to a transition to some variant of capitalism. Some analysts suggest this is a likely, if not inevitable, result; others emphasize that capitalism is not, at this stage, a goal of the government. As the 1992 constitution makes clear, the state is promoting a multi compo nent commodity economy that will function in accordance with market mechanisms under the management of the state and following a socialist orientation. In other words, the VCP hopes to build a mixed economy in which the state will hold what has been described as the commanding heights. Exactly what this means is unclear and subject to much debate in and out of Vietnam. Many Party members envision a system in which only a small state-owned sector would survive although the state would continue to play a key role in directing economic life. Others prefer a model in which state-owned enterprises play a dominant role in production and distribution. None of the works reviewed has shed much light on this core issue, but this omission is understandable since the leadership of the VCP cannot agree among themselves. Another issue left unresolved is the appropriate interplay between economic and political reform in Vietnam. Western and Asian points ofview are far from uniform, but Western observers often argue that free markets and democracy are inextricably intertwined to the point that it is virtually impossible to have one without the other. This argument, when taken to the extreme, concludes that a failure to promote the democratic process will limit and finally defeat economic reform and economic develop ment. Many Asian observers, together with a growing number of Western colleagues, are baffled by such thoughts. The Asian experience suggests that central authority is as important as popular sentiment in governing a state; consequently, these ob servers argue that government intervention can be as important as free markets in stimulating economic growth. It is balance in both economic and political systems, as opposed to extremes, that characterizes the Asian approach to economic development.
13. For additional discussion ofVietnamese relations with its neighbors, see Frank Frost, Vietnam s Foreign Relations: Dynamics of Change (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), especially pp. 30-41 and 49-58; Steven J. Hood, Dragons Entangled: Indochina and the China-Vietnam War (Annonk, N.Y.: M. E. Slwpe, 1992); Anne Gilks, The Breakdown of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance, 1970-1979, China Research Monograph, no. 39, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1992; Nayan Chanda, Brother En emy: The War after the War (New York: Collier Books, 1986).
14. While little research has been published on the related issues of health, population, and gender in Vietnam, the following articles are reconunended: Kristin Pelzer, "Socio-Cultural Dimensions ofRenova tion in Vietnam: Doi Moi as Dialogue and Transformation in Gender Relations," in Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi in Com parativePerspective, ed. William S. Turley and Mark Selden., (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 309-336; Nguyen Huyen Chau, "Women and Family Planning Policies in Postwar Vietnam," inPostwar Vietnam: Dilemmas in Socialist Development, ed. David G. Man and Christine P. White, (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1988), pp. 61-73; Suki Allen, ''Health and the Current Situation and Recent Changes," in Vietnam and the Rule ofLaw. ed. Thayer and Marr, pp. 38-49.
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Bulletin ofConcerned ASian Scholars
The transition from a centrally planned system to a market oriented, mixed economy in Vietnam has been a step-by -step process that drew inspiration from a variety of sources and included painful setbacks as well as notable achievements. The overall results of the economIC reforms Implemented after 1'J7'J have been dramatic, with key economic indicators showing a favorable trend for most of the current decade. At the same time, the Vietnamese government and people face a variety of chal lenges and opportunities. The performance of the economy has been strikingly uneven; rural areas, in particular the poorer regions of the country, have not enjoyed the dramatic growth experienced in Ho Chi Minh City and other urban areas. In addition, the long-term social consequences of economic reform on the provision of education and health care remain uncertain. Most observers agree that higher levels of expenditure are re quired to improve the well-being of the population and enhance its skills. Economic restructuring has also had a serious, albeit not well understood, impact on Vietnamese social structures and relationships in terms of careers, work habits, incomes, and extended family relationships. Finally, serious demographic and environmental problems continue to challenge Vietnam and additional reforms are clearly necessary in the banking, legal, and financial systems to support and build upon the progress to date. That said, the Vietnamese government, staking its future on continuing economic success, has put Vietnam in a much better position than most developing countries to achieve sustained, balanced growth if it builds on the economic reforms now in place.
The book is more satisfactory when it examines recent political history. Based on archival research (albeit exclusively in France) and interviews, the book examines a number of important developments in post-World War II Cambodia, with in-depth attention given to the struggle for independence from 1945 to 1953, the Sihanouk period, the Khmer Republic, the Khmer Rouge genocide, and the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion in 1978 that drove the Khmer Rouge from power, a period that Martin describes as the "Vietnamese Occupation" (chapter 8).
In addition to its extended ana~sis ofSihanouk, the book contains ... the most thorough pubBshed study of the Cambodian community in France and it reveals and analyzes the divisions and conj1icting loyalties of the overseas Khmers.
The book's treatment of Sihanouk's checkered career is particularly thorough. Martin portrays Sihanouk as a benign but flawed ruler. He is pictured as being adored by the peasants, as courageous in his struggle to bring about independence without significant bloodshed, and as the source ofnumerous benefits for Cambodia. (Martin is rightly critical of French colonial rule, noting that France brought very few benefits to Cambodia while exploiting the people "beyond all limits," [po 39] as the minister of colonies put it in 1917.) Under Sihanouk, Martin contends, public health improved dramatically, as did education and the level of industrialization. Above all he was determined to defend Cambodia's territorial integrity, which he did by maneuvering adroitly between the U.S. and Chinese governments. For the most part Sihanouk kept Cambodia out of the war that was ravaging its neighbor, Vietnam, in part by making a secret agree ment with China that allowed the Vietcong to stay in the border areas and be supplied by China through Cambodia. He probably had no choice, Martin argues, and his tolerance ofthe sanctuaries was in any event preferable to his successor's decision to order the! Vietnamese out on 48 hours' notice-a move that plunged Cambodia into war. On the other side, Martin charges that Sihanouk was unable to tolerate much dissent. (He closed opposition newspapers from time to time. ) His "acceptance" of widespread corruption tumed the urban people against him and he squandered state funds to make his own feature films. Tragically, in the later 1940s and early 1950s he could not fmd common ground with the Demo crats, who were well-intentioned patriots seeking a parliamen tary form of government. Moreover, his repression of the Left left them little choice but underground, armed resistance. By 1967, Martin observes, only the peasants remained loyal to Sihanouk, and some of them would soon rise in rebellion. Si hanouk was increasingly isolated from reality. By 1969 the prince had lost the support of his own political organization, the Sangkum, and when he left Cambodia on a trip to Paris he was overthrown by his cousin Sirik Matak, who together with Lon Nol pursued an aggressively anti-Vietnamese policy. The U.S. government applauded the change of govern ment, but the result was tragic for Cambodia. "The inferno that Sihanouk had kept under control for fIfteen years violently exploded in the several days following his deposition," Martin writes (p. 6). Had Sihanouk returned immediately to Phnom
*
Marie Alexandrine Martin. Cambodia: A Shattered Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 398 pp. Translated by Mark W. McLeod. by Kenton Clymer
Written by the research director of the Centre national de la Recherche scientifique in Paris, Cambodia: A Shattered Soci ety is an updated and revised version of a book first published in France in 1989. The book's ftrst chapter, an overview of Cambodian society and culture, perpetuates Western stereotypes ofAsians. The very first sentence contains the doubtful, ifever popular, assertion that Cambodian society "seems to be unchanged by the centuries" (p. 7). This is followed by other questionable generalizations: Khmers "do not read" (p. 13). They have an "impetuous nature" (p. 14). They are passionate and deny scientific fact, are deeply vindictive, arrogant, and self-centered. Only the peasants are generous. Finally (this comes later in the book), Asians in general are addicted to gambling: they "can hardly resist games of chance" (p. 116). There may be a grain of truth in some of these stereotypical generalizations, but they are out of place in a scholarly account. Kenton 1. Clymer chairs the history department at the University of Texas at El Paso. His latest book is Quest for Freedom: The United States and India:r Independence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). He is currently writing a history of U.S.-Cambodian relations.
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Penh, he might have regained control ofthe situation. Instead the angry prince put himself in the service of his arch enemies, the Khmer Rouge, and allowed himself to be used to encourage the peasants to oppose the new government and rally to the guerril las. Despite her understanding of Sihanouk's shortcomings, Martin is clearly among the prince's admirers and sees him as the only person capable of saving Cambodia. Although she recounts at length the crimes of the Khmer Rouge who took over Cambodia in 1975 and criticizes the West for doing nothing to mitigate the horrors of their rule, Martin has nothing but con tempt for the Vietnamese who finally drove the Khmer Rouge from power. In her view, the Vietnamese imposed "a painful and complete protectorate, against the will of the entire population" (p. 215). The official Khmer leaders they installed were mere puppets. Vietnamese rule, she suggests, while initially wel comed, soon became oppressive and was nearly as harsh as that of the Khmer Rouge, partiCUlarly after 1982. Indeed, she claims that the Vietnamese treated the Khmer Rouge leniently and brought many of them back into the government. They forced the people to work in malarial jungles and attempted "ethno cide," that is, they tried to eliminate Khmer culture (p. 230). They also deliberately kept aid from reaching the people. They had plans to move millions of Vietnamese into Cambodia and in fact actually resettled about one million, Martin contends (p. 229).
Given these alleged conditions, it is no wonder that the Cambo dians supposedly "showed an exemplary unity in coming to getherto support the anti-Vietnamese resistance" once Sihanouk returned to the fray (p. 239). Martin contends that Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia as late as 1992 and dismisses the statement of UNTAC cornmander Yasushi Akashi, who denied such allegations as a fiction.
Questionable Assertions
All of these assertions are open to challenge. The Viet namese unquestionably liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge. To be sure this was not simply a humanitarian effort. The paranoid Khmer Rouge had attacked Vietnamese villages, killing as many as 30,000 people; and geopolitical concerns were not absent, as Vietnam felt threatened by the Khmer Rouge's only ally, China. Nevertheless it was the Vietnamese, and no one else, who finally intervened, and they did so at a time when the Khmer Rouge appeared ready to extend the purges and execute thou sands more of their own cadre and citizens. For this Martin extends only the faintest of praise. The Vietnamese doubtless exerted considerable control at first, but gradually the government they installed-the Peoples Republic ofKampuchea (pRK)-gained a certain credibility and independence. Furthermore, except for the resuscitated Khmer
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Race, Power, and Gentkide .~." in Cambodia under t~ ~g~' Nation Khmer Rouge, 1975-~
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' . o~the cpodlan
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Rouge-whom most Cambodians surely did not support-there was no strong opposition to the PRK. Sihanouk and Son Sann organized small groups lumped together as the "non-communist resistance," but by all accounts these groups were small and relatively ineffective, despite support from the United States, ASEAN, and other countries. Charges that the Vietnamese at tempted to eliminate Khmer culture seem exaggerated. It is highly unlikely that Vietnam resettled anything like a million Vietnamese in Cambodia. Finally, most observers agree that Vietnamese troops pulled out of Cambodia in 1989, though they returned briefly and temporarily toward the end of 1989 to stop a Khmer Rouge offensive. Despite shortcomings and corruption, the PRK leaders (running on the Peoples Party of Cambodia [pCC] ticket) re ceived a substantial vote (38 percent) in the UN-supervised elections of 1993-though they did not win as many as observers had predicted they would. Sihanouk, whose party actually re ceived a plurality of the vote (45 percent), then decided to seek a coalition with the former PRK leaders. Martin finds Sihanouk's decision baffling. Despite her con demnation of the Khmer Rouge crimes, she insists that they must have a part in the new government if peace is to be insured. In this Martin echoes the position of the major world powers who negotiated the peace settlement, but she incorrectly contends that almost all observers agreed that the Khmer Rouge should be included in the new government. Many in the NGO community, and some informed members of the U.S. Congress, for example, deplored efforts to include the Khmer Rouge in a settlement, arguing that it was akin to including Hitler in a settlement of the German question. Better, they said, to forge a coalition with Sihanouk and the PCC that would resist the Khmer Rouge which is about what happened in the end. In any event, Martin fails to point out that the Khmer Rouge, having initially agreed to take part in the elections, boycotted them, and warned Cambodians not to vote. Yet 90 percent of the people voted. It was a striking defeat for the Khmer Rouge. But Martin maintains that the people can have no confi dence in the elections, that the UN presence in Cambodia actually benefited the Khmer Rouge and worsened the lives of Cambo dia's peasants--truly remarkable and eccentric judgments. The book ends on an unnecessarily pessimistic note. The country, Martin contends, will soon be unofficially divided be tween Thailand and Vietnam-something that the French occu pation in the nineteenth century had prevented. In sum, Cambodia: A Shattered Society, contains useful information. In addition to its extended analysis of Sihanouk, the book contains (so far as I am aware) the most thorough published study of the Cambodian community in France and it reveals and analyzes the divisions and conflicting loyalties of the overseas Khmers. But many of its judgments and conclusions are open to serious challenge. Although it may supplement earlier works, the book certainly does not displace them. It is significant in this regard that Martin's bibliography includes none of Milton Os borne's works and omits reference to two of the most important and thoroughly researched works on recent Cambodian history, David P. Chandler's The Tragedy ofCambodian History: Poli tics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1991) and Ben Kiernan's, How Pol Pot Came to Power (London: Verso, 1985).
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Gerd Baumann. Contesting Culture: Discourses ofIdentity in Multi Ethnic London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lucy Carroll, Harsh Kapoor, eds. Talaq-i-Tafwid: The Muslim Woman s Contractual Access to Divorce. Grabels, France: Women Living Under Muslim Laws, 1996. Tom Engelhardt. The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning ofa Generation. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Mehrdad Haghayeghi. Islam and Politics in Central Asia. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch World Report 1996. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996. Ahmed Shafiqul Huque et aI., eds. Public Administration in the NICs: Challenges and Accomplishments. New York: St Martin's Press, 1996. Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh. The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Gary Klintworth, ed. Asia-Pacific Security: Less Uncertainty. New Opportunities? New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Jan Krancher, ed. The Defining Years ofthe Dutch East Indies, 1942-49. New York: McFarland, 1996. Shirley Geok-lin Lim. Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-Ameri can Memoir o/Homelands. New York: Feminist Press, 1996. Lisa Lowe. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. Saree Makdisi et aI., eds. Marxism BeyondMarxism. New York: Rout ledge, 1996. Hafeez Malik, ed. Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and Future Prospects. New York: St Martin's Press, 1996. James H. Mittehnan, ed Globalization: Critical Reflections. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996. Ramon H. Myers, ed. The Wealth o/Nations in the Twentieth Century:
The Policies and Institutional Detenninants ofEconomic Develop ment. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1996. Richard Robinson and David S. Goodman. New Rich in Asia. New York:
Routledge, 1996. William Tuttle Jr. Daddy sGone to War: The Second World War in the Lives 0/America Children. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
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Gregor Benton. China
s Urban Revolutionaries: Explorations in the History o/Chinese Trotskyism, 1921-52. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
Humanities Press International, 1996. Gregor Benton, ed.An Oppositionist/or Life: Memoirs ofthe Chinese Revolutionary ZhengChaolin. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1996.
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Li Boyuan. Modem Times: A BriefHistory ofEnlightenment. Hong Kong: Chinese University ofHong Kong, 1996. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Wenman, and Alvin Rabushka. Red Flag over Hong Kong. Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House Publishers, 1996. Guanlong Cao. The Attic: Memoir ofa Chinese Landlord s Son. Berke ley: University of California Press, 1996. Charles P. Cell. China s Drive to Modernize: The Success Story ofYing Hai Tt'illage. Madison, Wise.: Darwin-Hill, 1996. Iris Chang. Thread of the Silkworm: The Story of Tsien Hsue-shen, Father ofthe Chinese Missile Progrom. New York: Basic Books,
19%.
Pamela Logan. Among Warriors: A Martial Artist in Tibet. New York: Overlook Press, 1996. Brian G. Martin. The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919-1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. H. Lyman Miller. Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China: The Politics ofKnowledge. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. Janet Ng and Janice Wickeri, eds. May Fourth Women Writers: Mem oirs. Hongkong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996. Suzanne Pepper. Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Cen
turyChina:TheSearchforanIdeaIDevelopmentModel.NewYork:
Nicole Constable. Guest People: Hakka Identity in China and Abroad. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. John W. Dardess. A Ming Society: T'ai-ho County. Kiangsi, in the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: University of Cali fornia Press, 1996. Richard L. Davis. Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis ofPolitics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China. Cambridge, Mass.: Har vard University Press, 1996. Patricia Buckley Ebrey. The Cambridge Illustrated History ofChina. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Hill Gates. China s Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1996. Jacques Gernet. A History of Chinese Civilization. New York: Cam bridge University Press, 1996. Valerie Hansen. Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts 600-1400. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996. Stuart Harris and Gary Klintworth, eds. China as a GreatPower: Myths, Realities, and Challenges in the Asia-Pacific Region. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Gail Hershatter et al., eds. Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. D. R. Howland. Borders ofChinese Civilization: Geography and His tory at Empire s End. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1996. Ping-Chun Hsiung. Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite FactorySystem in Taiwan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Chin-Shing Huang. Philosophy, Phililogy, and Politics in Eighteenth
Century China: Li Fu and the Lu-Wang School under the Ch'ing.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Human Rights Watch/Asia. Death byDefault: A Policy ofFatal Neglect in China s State Orphanages. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996. Michael H. Hunt The Genesis ofChinese Communist Foreign Policy. New Yolk: Columbia University Press, 1996. Yanan Ju. Understanding China: Center Stage of the Fourth Power. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Nick Knight. Li Da and Marxist Philosophy in China. Boulder: West view Press, 1996. Jon Kowallis. The LyricalLuXun: A Study ofHis Classical-Style Verse. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. KwokNai-Wang.1997: HongKongsStruggleforSelfhood. Shatin,NT: Documentation for Action Groups in Asia, 1996. Chae-Jin Lee. China and Korea: Dynamic Relations. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1996. Constance Lever-Tracy, David Ip, Noel Tmcy. The Chinese Diaspora and Mainland China: An Emerging Economic Syne1X)1. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
Cambridge University Press, 1996. J. A. G. Roberts. A History ofChina. Vol. 1. Prehistory to c. 1800. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Kate Saunders. Eighteen Layers of Hell: Stories from the Chinese Gulag. New York: Cassell, 1996. Michael Schoenhals, ed. China s Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party. Annonk, N.Y: M E. Sharpe, 1996. Benjamin I. Schwartz. China and Other Matters. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Kuo-kang Shao. Zhou Enlai and the Foundations ofChinese Foreign Policy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Youli Sun. China and the Origins ofthe Pacific War, 1931-1941. New York: st. Martin's Press, 1996. Marina Svensson. The Chinese Conception of Human Rights: The Debate on Human Rights in China, 1898-1949. Lund, Sweden: Lund University, 1996. Xiaobing Tang and Stephen Snyder, eds. In Pursuit ofContemporary East Asian Culture. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. S. Bernard Thomas. Season ofHigh Adventure: Edgar Snow in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Richard Von Glahn. Fountain ofFortune: Money andMonetary Policy in China, 1000-1700. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Jing Wang. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Dengs China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Wang P.ing. Foreign Devil: A Novel. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1996. Robert Well. Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of 'Maricet Socialism. .. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1996. FmnkWelsh. A BonvwedPlace: The History ofHong Kong. New York: Kodansha Globe, 1996. Barbara-Sue White. Hong Kong: Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Gordon White, Jude Howell, and Shang Xiaoyuan. In Search ofCivil
Society: MarketReform andSocial Change in Contemporary China.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Helen Wolf. Observed, Lived, Experienced: A Year ofEveryday Life in China. New York: VantagePress, 1996. Sally Hovey Wriggins. Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Wu Hung. The Double Screen: Medium andRepresentation in Chinese Painting. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996. Xi Xi. A Girl Like Me and Other Stories. Hongkong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996. JlUl Xing. Baptized in the Fire ofRevolution: The American Social Gospel and the YMCA in China,1919-1937. Cranbury,N.J.: Lehigh University Press, 1996. Wen-Hsin Yeh. Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origins ofChinese Communism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996:
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Northeast Asia
Nancy Abelmann. Echoes ofthe Past. Epics ofDissent: A South Korean Social Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Seung-Joon Ahn. From State to Community: Rethinking South Korean Modernization. Littleton. Colo.: Aigis Publications, 1996. AMPO. Voicesfrom the Japanese WomensMovement. Annonk, N.Y.: M E. Sharpe, 1996. Michael H. Armacost Friends or Rivals? The Insider:' Account of U.S.-Japan Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Charles Danziger. Japan for Starlers: 52 Things You Need to Know AboutJapan. New York: Kodansha International, 1996. James Darby, ed. Japan and the European Periphery. New York: st. Martin's Press, 1996. Darrell William Davis. Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity. Japanese Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Reinhard Drifte. Japan:' Foreign Policy in the I990s: From Economic Superpower to What Power? New York: st. Martin's Press, 1996. Nonnan Eder. Poisoned Prosperity: Development, Modernization. and the Environment in South Korea. Armonk, N.Y.: M E. Shmpe, 1996. Edward Fowler. San Yo Blues: Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. T. Fujitani. Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modem Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Mikiso Hane. Eastern Phoenix: Japan since 1945. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Leon Hollerman and Ramon H. Myers, eds. The Effict ofJapanese Investment on the WoridEconomy: ASix-CountryStudy,1970-1991. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1996. Helen M Hopper. A New Woman ofJapan: A Political Biography of Kato Shidzue. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Peter J. Katzenstein. Cultural Nonna and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Donald Keene. On Familiar Tenna: To Japan and Back, A Lifetime Across Cultures. New York: Kodansha Glove, 1996. Kim Dae-jung. A New Beginning: A Collection ofEssays. Los Angeles:
Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies, USC, 1996.
Southeast Asia Kim Jung-Ik. The Future ofthe U.S.-Republic ofKorea Military Rela
tionship. New York: st. Martin's Press, 1996. Ramses Amer, Joban Saravanamuttu, Peter Wallensteen. The Cambo J. Victor Koschmann. Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan. dian Conflict. 1979-1991: From Inte",ention to Resolution. Pulau Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pinang, Malaysia: Universiti Sains Malaysia, 1996. Tae-Hwan Kwak and Edward A. Olsen, eds. The Major Powers of Milton J. Bates. The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Norlheast Asia: Seeking Peace and Security. Boulder: Lynne Rien Storytelling. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ner Publishers, 1996. Lady Borton. AfterSorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese. New Helie Lee. StillLifo with Rice: A YoungAmerican Woman Discovers the York: Kodansha Globe, 1996. Lifo and Legacy ofHer Korean Grandmother. New York: Scribner, Michael Buckley. Vietnam. Cambodia, and Laos Handbook. Chico, 1996. Calif.: Moon Travel Handbooks, 1996. Peter H. Lee, ed. Sourcebook ofKorean Civilization. Vol. 2. From the Carmel Budiardjo. Su",iving Indonesia:' Gulag: A Western Woman Seventeenth Century to the Modem Period. New York: Columbia Tells Her Story. New York: Cassell, 1996. University Press, 1996. Robert Buzzanco. Masters ofWar: Military Dissent and Politics in the Gary P. Leupp. Male Colors: The Construction ofHomosexuality in Vietnam Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. David Chanoffand Doan Van Tom. Vietnam: A Portrait ofits People at Xiaoyuan Liu. A Partnership for Disorder: China. the United States. War. New York and London: I.B. Tauris, 1996. and Their Policies for the Postwar Disposition of the Japanese MasudulAlam Choudhwy et al., eds. Alternative Perspectives in Third Empire. 1941-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. WorldDevelopment: The Case ofMalaysia. New York: St. Martin's W. J. Macpherson. The Economic Development ofJapan 1868-1941. Press, 1996. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. James W. Clinton. The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North Vietnam. KumazawaMakoto. Portraits oftheJapanese Workplace: LaborMove 1965-1972,Inte",iewswithLeadersoftheOppositiontothe Vietnam ments. Workers. and Managers. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. War. Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 1996.
Robert M March. Workingfor a Japanese Company: Insights into the Multicultural Workplace. New York: Kodansha International, 1996. Gordon Mathews. What Makes Lifo Worlh Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of their Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. David Matsmnoto. Unmasking Japan: Myths and Realities About the Emotions of the Japanese. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Gavan McConnack. The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence. Annonk, N.Y.: M .E. Sharpe, 1996. Carl Mosk. Making Health Work: Human Growth in Modem Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. John K. Nelson. A Year in the Life ofa Shinto Shrine. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. Herman Ooms. Tokugawa Village Practice: Class. Status, Power, Law. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. James B. Palais. Corifucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson D)nasty. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. Leslie Pincus. Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shuzo andthe Rise ofNational Aesthetics. Berkeley: University ofCalifor nia Press, 1996. David M. Potter. Japan s Foreign Aid to Thailand and the Philippines. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Mitziko Sawada. Tokyo Life. New York Dreams: Urban Japanese Vi sions of America. 1890-1924. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Hazel Smithet al., eds. North Korea in the New WorldOrder. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Hideko Tamura Snider. One Sunny Day: A Child:' Memories ofHi roshima. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1996. Robert Steven. Japan and the New World Order: Global Investments, Trade. and Finance. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. RobertM Uriu. Troubled Industries: Confronting Economic Change in Japan. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Brian Woodall. Japan under Construction: Conuption, Politics. and Public Work.!. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (1996)
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Maila Stivens. Matriliny and Modemity: Sexual Politics and Social

Harold Crouch. Govemment and Society in Malaysia. Ithaca, N.Y.: Change in RuralMalaySia. Concord, Mass.: Paul and Co., 1996.
Cornell University Press, 1996. Christopher Tremewan. The Political Economy ofSocial Control in
E. Paul Durrenberger, ed. State Power and Culture in Thailand. New Singapore. New York: st. Martin's Press, 1996. Haven, Conn.: Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1996. David Van Praagh. Thailand s Struggle for Democracy: The Lifo and AdamFfordeandStefandeVylder.FromPlantoMarket:TheEconomic Times ofM. R Seni Pramoj. New York: Holmes and Meier Publish Transition in Vietnam. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. ers,1996. Jane Hamilton-Merritt. Tragic Mountains: The Hmong. the Americans, Adrian Vickers, ed. Being Modem in Bali: Image and Change. New and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992. Bloomington, Ind.: Indi Haven, Conn.: Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1996. ana University Press, 1996. Jeffrey A. Wmters. Power in Motion: Capital Mobility and the Indone Steven Heder and Judy Ledgerwood, eds. Propaganda. Politics, and sian State. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition under United Nations Peace-keeping. Annonk, N.Y.: M E. Sharpe,1996. South Asia Carol J. Ireson. Field. Forest. and Family: Women s Work and Power in Rural Laos. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. R. K. Agnihotri and A. L. Khanna.EnglishLanguage Teaching in India: Cornelia Ann Kammerer, Nicola Tannenbaum, eds. Merit and Blessing Issues and Innovations. Newbmy Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, in Mainland Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective. New Ha 1996. ven, Conn.: Yale University, Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Lawrence A. Babb. Absent Lord: Ascetics and Kings in a Jain Ritual 1996. Culture. Berkeley: University ofCalifomiaPress, 1996. Ben Kiernan. The Pol Pot Regime: Race. Power, and Genocide in Jan Breman. Footloose Labour: Working in India sInformal Economy. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. 1975-79. New Haven, Conn.: New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Yale University Press, 1996. M. L. Dantwa1a. Dilemmas o/Growth: The Indian Experience. New Carl H. Lande. Post-Marcos Politics: A Geographical and Statistical bmy Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1996. Analysis ofthe 1992 Presidential Election. New York: St. Martin's DavidB. Edwards. Heroes ofthe Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Press, 1996. Frontier. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Glenn Anthony May. Inventing a Hero: The Posthumous Re-Creation Human Rights Watch, Children's Rights Project. Police Abuse and ofAndres Bonifocio. Madison: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Killings of Street Children in India. New York: Human Rights TTniversitv of Wisconsin. 1996. Watch, 1996. Anne Munro-Kua. Authoritarian Populism in Malaysia. New York: st. Ashok Kapur and A. Jeyara1nam Wilson. The Foreign Policy ofIndia Martin's Press, 1996. and Her Neighbours. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. David Murray. Angels and Devils: Thai Politics from February 1991 David Ludden, ed. Contesting the Nation: Religion. Community. and to September 1992. A Struggle for Democracy? Bangkok: White the Politics of Democracy in India. Philadelphia: University of Orchid Press, 1996. Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Clark D. Neher and Ross Marlay. Democracy and Development in Steven M. Parish. Hierarchy and its Discontents: Culture and the Southeast Asia: The Winds of Change. Boulder: Westview Press, Politics ofConsciousness in Caste Society. Philadelphia: University 1996. ofPennsylvania Press, 1996. Nico Schulte Nordholt and Leontine Visser. Social Science in Southeast William R. Pinch. Peasants and Monks in British India. Berkeley: Asia: FromParlicularism to Universalism. Amsterdam: VUUniver University ofCalifomiaPress, 1996. sity Press for the Centre for Asian Studies, 1996. Mushtaqur Rahman. Divided Kashmir: Old Problems, New Opportuni Carl Parkes. Thailand Handbook Chico, Calif.: Moon Publications, ties for India. Pakistan. and the Kashmiri People. Boulder: Lynne 1996. Rienner Publishers, 1996. Michael Pamwell and Raymond Bryant, eds. Environmental Change in C. H. Hanumantba Rao and Hans Linnemann, eds. Economic Reforms South-East Asia. New York: Routledge, 1996. and Poverty Alleviation in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, Jonathan R. Pincus. Class, Power, and Agrarian Change: Land and 1996. Labor in Rural West Java. New York: St Martin's Press, 1996. Stephen Peter Rosen. Societies and Military Power: India and its Constancio Pinto and Matthew Jardine. East Timor s Unfinished Strug Armies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. gle: Inside the Timorese Resistance, A Testimony. Boston: South End Satish Saberwal. Roots of Crisis: Interpreting Contemporary Indian Press, 1996. Society. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996. Richard Primack and Thomas Lovejoy, eds. Ecology, Conservation and Victoria Schofield. Kashmir in the Crossfire. New York and London: I. Management ofSoutheast Asian Rainforests. New Haven, Conn.: B. Tauris, 1996. Yale University Press, 1996. A. M Shah, B. S. Baviskar, E. A. Ramaswamy, eds. Social Structure Anthony Reid Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce. 1450-1680. andChange. Vol. 2. Women in Indian Society. Newbmy Park, Calif.: New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996. Sage Publications, 1996. E. San Juan Jr. The Philippine Temptation: Dialectics ofPhilippines Priyam Singh. Victims or Criminals? A Study o/Women in Colonial u.s. Literary Relations. PhiladeJ.phia: TempleUniversity Press, 1996. North-WestemProvinces and Oudh, India, 1870-1910. Middletown, Kim Scipes. KMu: Building Genuine Trade Unionism in the Philip N.J.: Caslon Company, 1996. pines. 1980-1994. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1996. Raju G. C. Thomas. Democracy. Security. and Development in India. A. M Shah, B. S. Baviskar, E. A. Ramaswamy, eds. Social Structure New York: St Martin's Press, 1996. and Change: Theory and Method. An Evaluation ofthe Work ofM. Habiba Zaman. Women and Work in a Bangladesh Village. Burnaby, N. Srinivas. Newbmy Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1996. British Columbia: Simon Fraser University, 1996.
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