Ohio University Press

The benefits of famine; a political economy of famine and relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983-1989.

The famine that spread among the Dinka people of Sudan in 1985-1989 was of benefit to those at the local level and in the central government who were able and permitted to manipulate famine relief for their own purposes. So argues Keen (London School of Economics, UK), who examines the causes of the famine, conceiving of it as an extended economic and political process, which leads to a focus on the political and economic incentives for withholding relief among a complex group of actors. He finds the famine to have been caused by the combination of loss of assets and production (primarily because of raiding) among the politically powerless Dinka; the failure of market strategies; the failure of nonmarket survival strategies; and the inadequacy of relief — all processes that yielded benefits for a loose and shifting coalition of politically powerful groups within Sudan, who helped promote these processes. This paperbound edition includes a new introduction placing the current crisis in Darfur and other more recent events within the context of the analytical framework of the earlier study. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

BitterSweet; the memoir of a Chinese Indonesian family in the twentieth century.

The story of the Tan family and their journey over five generations and 170 years from China to Indonesia and eventually to Australia is told through the memory of the oldest surviving descent, Tan Sian Nio, who is now 95 and has been known as An Sudibjo for the past 60 years. During celebrations of her 90th birthday, her family realized that almost nothing was written down of the rich oral and anecdotal history that she and her husband Eddie had shared with them. Pearson, their son in law, anchored the process of creating a memoir, consulting a historian of Indonesia on how to structure interviews and interpret the material. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Cast out; vagrancy and homelessness in global and historical perspective.

Historians look at poor, unemployed, and highly mobile people around the world and in various periods, and how authorities and public opinion have categorized, usually criminalized, and attempted to reform or punish them. Their topics include the neglected soldier as vagrant, revenger, tyrant slayer in early modern England; famine, poverty, and welfare in India under colonial rule; official responses to beggars and vagrants in 19th-century Rio de Janeiro; disciplinary modernism in tsarist Russia; vagrancy and colonial control in British East Africa; imposing vagrancy legislation in contemporary Papua New Guinea; and doing homeless in Tokyo's Ueno Park. Many of the 13 papers were presented to a conference at Princeton University at an undisclosed date. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The demon and the damozel; dynamics of desire in the works of Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Waldman (English, Carleton U., Canada) argues that the psychoanalytic account of the subject divided against him/herself, as developed by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Julia Kristeva, was prefigured in the Victorian poems and artworks of the Rossetti siblings, Christina and Dante Gabriel. This is no historical accident, she argues, suggesting that psychoanalysis and the productions of the Rossettis were both products of the same 19th century conflicts and frustrations. She also explores the relationship of the Rossettis' and psychoanalysis's treatment of inner disharmony to legacies of Christian metaphysics and Romantic literature. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Landmarked; land claims and land restitution in South Africa.

Walker (sociology and social anthropology, U. of Stellenbosch) describes the government programs of land restitution that occurred in South Africa after the end of apartheid, and has written this book to explain why these reforms still remain controversial 15 years after they were first implemented. The author uses both her own experiences as a Regional Land Claims Commissioner and case studies to show a wide variety of outcomes as displaced people returned to their homelands. Appendices include a list of the land claims that were lodged and settled as well as maps that show distribution and reform by province. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Land, power & custom; controversies generated by South Africa's communal land rights act. (DVD-ROM included)

Claassens (land rights activist, researcher, writer) and Cousins (development management, U. of the Western Cape) and 11 co- contributors offer a study and critique of South Africa's recently- enacted laws that outline authority over land and land rights for 21 million people living in the poorest areas of the region. The book focuses on the issues relating to the interpretation and development of customary law and intends to contribute to public debate on land reform and the controversial legislation. An included DVD contains both current and older legislation affecting communal land and affidavits on pending legal action on land rights and authority. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Myth of iron; Shaka in history. (reprint, 2006)

In his 2000 Savage Delight: White Myths of Shaka, Wylie (English, Rhodes U., South Africa) set out the elements that have made the famous Zulu leader a legend in both African and Western realms. Here he digs beneath that glamor to piece together from disparate sources Shaka's (1787-1828) actual life. He begins with the question of Zulu origins, then moves to the situation in southeastern Africa just before he (maybe) was born, and progresses to his death and legacy. The 2006 cloth edition was published by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Scottsville, South Africa. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A necessary luxury; tea in Victorian England.

The drinking of tea is intrinsically bound up in the English national identity. Fromer (English, Corning Community College, Corning, NY) studies how this cup of boiled leaves came to assume so much importance. She begins with the early tea trade and the ways in which non-fiction publications helped to defend the immoral practices of the British trading companies in procuring the tea from China. She then moves to the ways in which the rituals surrounding tea drinking were portrayed in novels throughout the nineteenth century. Authors use the ubiquitousness of tea-time to comment on the establishment of "middle class" values that actually were agreed upon in all levels of society. Her inclusion of the mad tea party from Alice in Wonderland emphasizes the underside of this pleasant lie. She also discusses the gender roles inherent in Mother pouring the tea and Father being at the table to share it. The tea party as a symbol of female entrapment in societal expectations is also addressed. In her conclusion, Fromer brings the tea mystic to the present, with the new gourmet teas and the popularity of Indian/southeast Asian chai. From a symbol of British domesticity, tea has once again become an exotic foreign beverage. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

New South African keywords.

With the end of apartheid in the country, previously little-used terms have assumed a new prominence, and some existing terms have been renegotiated and assumed new meanings. Scholars of history, politics, language, social sciences, and other fields survey the new significance and meaning of some common terms, and in the process shed considerable light on the nature of post-apartheid South African society. Among the loaded words are development, indigenous knowledge, rights, tradition, truth and reconciliation, and xenophobia. Published in North and South America and the Pacific Rim by Ohio University Press, and in the rest of the world by Jacana Media with the ISBN 978-1-7700-9546-5. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Silenced voices; uncovering a family's colonial history in Indonesia.

Hollander (Dutch studies, U. of California-Berkeley) has pieced together most of the story about how members of her grandfather's generation, colonialists in Indonesia, were swept up in the Japanese occupation in 1942, the Allied invasion in 1945, and the 1945 revolution that led to Indonesian independence. A mother and son survived to return to the Netherlands, but spoke little about their traumatic experiences until now. Hollander says she does not intend to vilify revolutionaries, nor to excuse colonization, only to fill in gaps in the history of the time and place. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Unconquerable spirit; George Stow's history paintings of the San.

Skotnes (fine art and literature, U. of Cape Town, South Africa) presents approximately 250 selections from the recently restored body of work by 19th century geologist George Stow, who painstakingly copied the rock paintings of the San in South Africa in collaboration with linguist-ethnographer Lucy Lloyd and philologist Wilhelm Bleek. The text describes the efforts of that team to record the San's disappearing way of life and artistic signature, including poems by Stow and notes from the project. The book was co-published with Jacana, Johannesburg. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)