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Book reviews

Sarah Broadie (also Waterlow) is a respected commentator on Aristotle’s philosophy of nature and on his ethics. The present volume consists of twelve papers, nine of which are reprinted almost unchanged from the journals and collections in which they first appeared, while a tenth is adapted from published work. That leaves two that are new for this volume; both are concerned with issues in ethics. The first six papers are focused on time and change, what they are and how they happen. The drive of an Aristotelian agenda is discernable but not overwhelming. One leading theme is final causation; this is Aristotle’s idea that how something ends up by becoming it, is the cause of its becoming that way. Teleology, according to a battery of supporting and dialectical arguments in Aristotle, gives the deepest insight into why natural things produce and undergo their changes; and while this approach has found favour with few ancient and even fewer modern philosophers, Broadie is prepared give serious consideration to its implications. She examines the idea of causation from later to earlier time, and concludes that we cannot make sense of such a process; but this is only because causation depends on an event’s now continuing between different times, and that process must depend on the relation of the times only being the asymmetrical one of earlier to later. In another paper she considers the reactions to the so-called Lazy Argument of participants, whether ancient or modern, in the debate about determinism; this argument holds that if some future event E has to happen, it has to happen whatever we might try to do about it beforehand. While most philosophers have dismissed this argument, Broadie follows Alexander of Aphrodisias and perhaps Aristotle in treating it with more respect. She argues that Aristotle’s teleological causation can only accommodate the invariant necessity of celestial motion if something like the Lazy Argument is endorsed. As a third example of work in this area, she considers Aristotelian teleology from the viewpoint of the analogy between nature and craft to which Aristotle often appeals. The analogy causes trouble, because craft involves the operation of purposive intelligence, which Aristotle does not attribute to nature. However Broadie is able to show that the analogy with craft illuminates the workings of nature without the need to attribute British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17(4) 2009: 859–892

Within this conceptual context, Chappell explores the similarities and differences in the strategies and structures that feminists in each country have embraced. Both women's movements have taken a pragmatic position on the value of engaging with the state, although in recent years Canadian feminists have become less enamoured with the outcomes (or lack thereof) emerging from such a position. As a result, while feminists in both countries have lobbied governments, in Canada this strategy has been more militant and high profile compared to the tactics used by feminists in Australia. By contrast, and related to this difference, is the way in which Australian feminists have been highly successful in mobilising around the presence of feminists strategically located within the bureaucracy. In Canada the 'femocrat' strategy has been less desirable and less fruitful. In both countries, Chappell highlights how parliament and, more specifically, executive dominance, has drowned out any possibility for feminist-inspired legislation from within, and has undermined lobbying from without. While the Australian Labor Party has been important in supporting many feminist initiatives at various times over the past 30 years (as distinct from Canada), in the main Chappell finds that in both countries parliament and political parties have been the least receptive to women's demands. Feminist activists have recognised this and, for the most part, have directed their energies towards other political opportunity structures.
The chapters on law and federalism are the best features of this book. There is indeed, as the author argues, very little comparative feminist research in these areas and, as such, Chappell's work provides a valuable and original analysis. She examines in detail how the entrenchment of a Charter of Rights has provided Canadian feminists with an alternative avenue through which to pursue their women's rights agenda, which has been a highly successful strategy even when a Conservative Government has been in power. Australian feminists have, until recently, found the legal-constitutional arena less open, but have instead exposed the advantages of Australia's brand of federalism, pursuing reforms at state level with considerable success, despite the presence of a central conservative government.
This book is a significant contribution to research on feminist politics, neoinstitutionalism and comparative public policy. It is of no surprise, then, that Chappell won the 2003 Victoria Shuck Award for the best book published on women and politics. She writes clearly and concisely, her argument is convincing and her findings insightful for those wanting to undertake further research or action in the area of state feminism. press has also been intimidated through restrictions on visas for journalists, periodic limitations on circulation and occasional prosecutions and libel cases. Self-censorship has become the rule. But controls have not always been complete, at least in Malaysia. Of particular interest is Rodan's description of how Singapore has prevented the internet from being used to oppose the state while the Malaysian government has been less successful.
Rodan concludes, therefore, that the concepts of 'transparency' and 'information' need to be disaggregated. The concerns of international business are narrow and focus primarily on information of direct relevance to business activities. As Rodan puts it, 'a free market in business does not automatically equate to a free market in politics or in ideas and information ' (p.178). Governments wanting to attract investment have been under pressure to improve the provision of information that enables companies to be confident about their commercial decisions, but they have not been urged to uphold freedom of the press, let alone embark on full democratisation.
This book provides a welcome sceptical analysis of how integration into the global economic system relates to political change. Foreign investment is unlikely to bring about fundamental political change in 'successful' nondemocratic countries like Singapore and Malaysia. However, this conclusion does not necessarily apply to other authoritarian countries where political instability and the lack of rule of law deter investment. In these countries the unwillingness of investors to risk their capital can add to the pressure for political change.
This stimulating book, unfortunately, is marred by a mistake in reporting the results of the 1999 election in Malaysia (p.155) and the identification of the Barisan Nasional as an opposition party in Singapore (p.19). Rai's starting point is to criticise several recent publications which try to locate the 'Kashmir tangle' as a postcolonial problem arising primarily from the partition of the Indian subcontinent. Such studies, Rai contends, fail to take account of the historical experience of Muslims as subjects under the earlier and longer duration of Dogras from 1846 to 1947. She offers a framework which emphasises the Muslim -Hindu relations formed during colonial rule. These took a characteristic route towards antagonism when the state instituted a new notion of the obligation of rulers and the 132 rights of subjects. She suggests that the roots of current Kashmiri Muslims' demand for autonomy and large-scale mobilisation against the Indian state lie in the 1930s, especially when the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim (later National) Conference took full advantage of the narrow space for 'public' discourse created by the Dogra rulers under the colonial state's prompting. The Kashmiri Muslim experience under the Dogra state, which allowed a small number of Kashmiri Hindus to exclude the majority population of Muslims from much of the symbolic and material resources of the state, was a decisive factor in the evolution of Muslims' mobilisation and confrontation against Dogra rule in the 1940s. It has since continued, albeit with periods of accommodation against the postcolonial Indian rulers.

HAROLD CROUCH
She elaborates her thesis through a longer historical account. Accordingly, her first chapter introduces Dogra rule in Kashmir in 1846 in the aftermath of first Anglo-Sikh war, when Gulab Singh was rewarded with Kashmir as a trophy for his collusion with the East India Company. Gulab Singh (1846 -56) was followed by Ranbir Singh (1856 -85) as the Dogras emerged sovereign Hindu rulers of Kashmir, thanks to the colonial state's policy of buttressing local chiefs instead of direct rule. The next chapter describes the reign of Maharajah Pratap Singh (1885 -1925), when the colonial state insisted on the accountability of princely states to its subjects generally, but from Dogra rulers in particular. Seeking this new form of legitimacy was a new and innovatory requirement, as older forms of despotic rulers largely sought legitimacy through multiple ties and what Rai terms 'layered sovereignties'. That is, such rulers would offer cross-cutting patronage to various religious sects and shrines, win aristocratic families through marriage alliances and offer exchanges of turbans and expensive gifts. The colonial authority could not imagine how a Dogra head of a state who sought legitimacy through his Hindu-ness would be able to control subjects who professed Islamic faith. It was inevitable that as Kashmiri Muslims became aware of their rights through exclusion in various public spheres they would eventually challenge such rules and ultimately the state itself.
Chapter four is a case study of how such a contest over the 'public space' took place. Here Rai focuses on an innocuous Archaeological Department's provision for the preservation of historical monuments. The government of India had laid down the principle of preserving and preparing list of monuments and this applied equally to princely states too. While the colonial state could claim indifference to religion, the Dogras could hardly afford this privilege. Their legitimacy drew from a narrow segment of Hindus. But when the Archaeological Department listed the historical monuments, 11 were Hindu shrines and only two were Muslim. Gradually, however, the Dogra state started looking after many of the Hindu shrines while the new Muslim leaders, especially in the 1930s, utilised the state's neglect of Muslim shrines as a major issue of mobilisation. The Department of Archaeology's patronage of Hindu shrines and its interference in disputed shrines became a point of contention between the two communities.
Rai goes on to discuss the Dogra state's preferential policies towards its Hindu subjects. The Archaeological Department's listings were just one aspect. There was also the predominant employment of Hindus in its administration; various forms of patronage to Hindu shrines and leading families; the compulsion of Muslim organisations and influential individuals to forge new alliances and mobilisation on the basis of 'religion'; and seeking the direct intervention of the colonial state. Rai offers evidence of how the Hindu rulers used the colonial state's imperative for its own purposes while its Muslim subjects were forced to challenge such policies by using religious rhetoric and the language of rights. This contest turned into a 'freedom struggle' on 13 July 1931 when National Conference, led by Abdullah, for the first time openly questioned the Dogra state's legitimacy. Rai takes the story to 1947under Maharajah Hari Singh (1925 by narrating the rise of Muslim mobilisation, its patterns of emasculation of religious vocabulary in favour of the regional phrase of Kashmiriyat, and how religion and politics became inextricably mixed in defining Kashmiri Muslims' grievances both under the Dogras and have since continued against the Indian state in the postcolonial era Hostilities have continued, threatening a full-scale war between India and Pakistan. Instead of creating a highly centralised and integrated Indian state, as Rai's study points out, the state ought to offer 'layered sovereignties' to satisfy various regional aspirations. Rai points to the danger of labelling such regional struggles for autonomy as terrorist campaigns. With this study, Rai is ideally placed to extend her analysis to the postcolonial period and analyse why Kashmiri Muslims are willing to suffer for a cause that could decouple the precarious geography of South Asia.
Democracy is the best known political trademark of India. With its regular, free and fair elections which lead to orderly governmental change, democracy in India shines in broad, cross-cultural comparison and not just in the poor man's world. Against this background, the fact that some of the best known indigenous scholars of politics in India, which this volume has brought together, should claim India's democracy to be a façade, underpinned by antipeople policies, feudal loyalties and corruption, is puzzling. Is this merely a case of the glass being half full?
The main strength of the 16 original essays in this volume is to pose the question of the 'quality' of political life, a concept that has gone out of political analysis. In their editorial introduction, Vora and Palshikar describe the distinction between quantity and quality of democracy in terms of 'procedural' and 'substantive' democracy. The Indian case, they assert, is studded with ironies and paradoxes. While India is set on a course of moving beyond the merely procedural towards the substantive, its public policies still contain vast chunks that can be called 'anti-people'. The public arena has inelegant scenes of 'feudal submissiveness'. Most important of all, they argue, with reference to right-wing political mobilisation on the basis of Hindu political symbols, that 'Political mobilisation which we regarded as one of the most significant factors contributing to the vitality of Indian democracy could also be undertaken for the purposes which are not necessarily democratic' (p.28).
The chapters in part two, covering the wide-ranging issues of the crisis of secularism, political assertion of marginal social groups, volatility of political institutions and the decline of social movements, provide variations on the main theme. They draw our attention to the hiatus between procedural and substantive democracy across the whole spectrum of Indian politics. However, the essays in the first section, meant to serve as a theoretical and methodological guide to the question of 'how do we go from here to there', do not offer a clear definition of what is substantive democracy, or any evidence of the social reverberation of the values that the authors hold as desirable. In taking this position, I am not suggesting that a book which provides such succinct empirical evidences of the achievements and failings of Indian democracy must also present a code of desirable conduct, derive it theoretically and provide a rigorous, empirical measurement to act as a benchmark of progress. That would be a tall order, well beyond the remit of this book. But, its rich, empirically grounded analysis points in this direction and thereby helps stretch the agenda of new research on democracy. This, by itself, is a significant contribution.
Context matters. The history of democratic transition in rich, Western, liberal societies helps us appreciate the brutality of the process that had pulverised the poor, weak, vulnerable and socially marginal. Enfranchisement followed the social dislocation of the industrial revolution and the formation of the nation state, rather than preceding both, as in India. Therein lies the essence of India's relatively peaceful, orderly and paradoxical transition to procedural and substantive democracy. This is eloquently argued in the chapter on 'The Crisis of Political Authority' by D.L. Sheth. Through meticulous analysis of demographic and attitudinal data, Sheth shows how India's political system has coped with the arrival of new political actors on the Indian scene whose social origins and instincts are not bound to the traditional social system and thus lends credibility to the main argument of this book, namely how, in spite of the absence of the classic preconditions of democracy, India has generated the necessary institutional resources to help it find its way from procedural to substantive democracy, and, as the parliamentary elections of 2004 show, systemic stability in spite of governmental change.
The concept of values, in many ways reminiscent of the politics of evolutionism and idealism, is seldom present on the agenda of contemporary political analysts. This is particularly true for those of the quantitative persuasion. Though measuring quality carries the potential danger of analysts substituting the value preferences of the world in question with their own subjective preferences, not taking the question of quality of political life into account altogether makes political analysis vulnerable to the implicit intrusion of dominant values from powerful societies that constitute the exogenous environment for democracy and development in the local context. This is the sad lesson one learns from the rise and fall of the modernisation paradigm and the current controversy over the international rules of good conduct being promoted by the advocates of 'good' governance. By venturing into this challenging and controversial area, the volume makes a useful and substantial contribution to the understanding of democracy in India.

University of Heidelberg
The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa since the Boer War by Ronald Hyam and Peter Henshaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp.xv þ 379, £45.00 hb).
There is a certain sweetness about a pair of historians asking wistfully of two countries, like Chandler of Ross and Rachel, 'I just don't see why those two can't work things out!' That is the central question in The Lion and the Springbok, which examines the 'special relationship' between Britain and South Africa in order to understand 'the tragedy' of how 'this "special relationship" was compromised, first by jingoistic Britain, then by Afrikaner nationalist South Africa' (p.xi).
The book explores the relationship from the build-up to the second Anglo-Boer War (1899 -1902), to South Africa's departure from the Commonwealth in 1961; the authors discuss the socio-political and geo-strategic aspects of this diplomatic association. Key areas of conflict are discussed thematically, rather than merely chronicled, which allows for deeper case studies. There are, for example, interesting analyses of the role of the Simon's Town naval base and the perceived importance of defensive cooperation during the Cold War; a new assessment of the struggle for the High Commission Territories, and a compelling discussion of the international (and badly handled) crisis over Seretse Khama's marriage to a white woman.
The authors sketch a tempestuous relationship between the two countries, exacerbated, they argue, by the solidification of the Afrikaner nationalist position and the entrenchment of Apartheid. By the final chapters the book becomes, as the authors admit, a record of public opinion expressed through the press (South Africans on Britain from 1945 to 1961 and vice versa from 1948 to 1994) rather than an examination of manuscript material. The study ends with an optimistic epilogue, upbeat about the return of South Africa into the Commonwealth and prospects of the diplomatic relationship.
The book is not a narrowly diplomatic history; cognisance is taken of public attitudes and the role of the media (indeed, perforce in the final chapters, where the official records are still closed). It also illustrates the powerful, and often underestimated, role of the man-on-the-spot. Moreover, the authors make several excursions into cultural history in, for example, describing reactions to the British Royal visit, the Lions rugby tour of 1955 and the politics of sport in the 1970s.
The authorial voice is witty, confident, lucid and amiable. Wry observations -like who slipped 'Land of Hope and Glory' into the programme of music played at Mandela's inauguration? -make the text highly readable. Although they necessarily have to paint in broad brush strokes, the authors have an eye for illuminating detail: for example, they observed that the 1994 presidential inauguration was cast in the English social tradition ('a day in the stewards' enclosure at the Henley royal regatta', p.343) and note, in a fascinating, if contentious, aside, that 'this resurgent Englishness effortlessly supplied alternative rituals long suppressed', much as did 'the Russian Orthodoxy . . . after the collapse of communism'.
There are, however, points of contention. The sub-title is rather misleading. The use of 'Boer War', instead of 'Anglo-Boer War' (or 'South African War' as it is increasingly labelled), strikes an incongruous note. Perhaps it serves to reinforce that the authors' emphasis is principally on the British side of the equation, based, as the authors themselves concede, overwhelmingly on research in British government archives. Further, the discussion of the Transvaal English during the 1890s reveals little of the political shifts in the Uitlander reform movement. Equally, the authors have perhaps not taken sufficient notice of the work of Charles van Onselen, among others, as they dismiss the pre-war Transvaal Boers as simply 'highly conservative' and 'essentially unsophisticated Calvinist farmers' (p.2). The Anglo-Boer war itself and the socio-psychological legacy of the concentration camps required analysis. Equally, an analysis of pre-war black-white race relations lacks attention to the legacy of the Shepstone system. The home the anti-Apartheid movement found in Britain requires further explication (and sources other than the press and Parliamentary Papers), along with the oddly unexamined British training of South Africa's current leadership.
Perhaps one neglected area of increasing intimacy that could open new research directions lies in the Diaspora of young South Africans, both English-and Afrikaans-speaking, who from the early 1990s have migrated in annual flocks to spend two years working in Britain and often settle there permanently. This could be explored in future post-1994 discussions, especially as Hyam and Henshaw's epilogue is a trifle abrupt and already dated, to a degree, ending on the note of reconciliation, of the 'relationship restored'. In this on-again-off-again liaison, there has of course been a recent move towards a trial separation between the Mbeki and Blair governments. Perhaps Hyam and Henshaw would argue that the two countries are simply 'on a break'. Ten years ago Hermann Giliomee undertook the massive project of researching, evaluating and narrating the 350-year history (1652 -2002) of the Afrikaner people of South Africa 'with empathy but without partisanship' (p.xiii). In this monumental book, primary research, interviews and the wide use of doctoral dissertations and articles enhance the material, and the usage of Afrikaans, Dutch and German sources will enrich the knowledge of English-speaking readers.

SANDRA SWART
Though this is the sixth book in the past century to use The Afrikaners as title, the subtitle A Biography of a People sets it apart and is well-founded. He traces the origin of the Afrikaners from their 'Humble beginnings' to 'The New South Africa'. Giliomee contextualises his overview of Afrikaner history within South African history and he explores major themes such as black-white relationships. The racial tension that shaped the rigid structure of the early Cape society was, according to him, 'a tale of processes rather than decrees and social institutions (particularly the family and church) rather than the political institutions' (p.35). In the eighteenth century he sees racial fluidity in Cape Town as a key factor in the economy. He notes that 'The transfer of power from Dutch to British hands in 1795, and more permanently in 1806 revived the institution of slavery bringing much-expanded markets, far stronger international linkages, and a voracious demand for slave labor' (p.90), as slaves boosted production levels. Giliomee also discusses in depth the manner in which the Khoisan were treated by the colonisers. He points out that 'The burghers' criticism focused on the application, not the principle, of Ordinance 50 which put the Khoisan on an equal footing with the free burghers. The assumption that the settlement at the Cape did not exist for the benefit of the burghers but for that of the VOC, was challenged by the so-called Cape Patriots (1778 -1787). He notes that ambitious political and economic demands were made by these 'patriots' who complained of the lack of free trade, and that they were arrested by black slaves who served as policemen. Of historical significance to Giliomee was the document written by these patriots in which they addressed the question of their survival 'in a way that transcended the immediate self-interest of the authors' (pp.54 -5).
In his discussion of the nineteenth century, Giliomee speaks of the Great Trek as contact between the Boers and indigenous people, and of the British colonisers' involvement as taking place against the context of 'fragile new democracies' and republics that struggled to come into existence. He takes a fresh look at the Cape Afrikaners or 'the queen's Afrikaners' and links this to the language debate -which can be perceived as one of the central themes in the development of Afrikaner nationalism. Giliomee quotes the Cape Argus of 19 September 1857, which stated that the Cape Afrikaners should: 'Let your language and your nationality go, and you need not fear for your religion' (p.203). For Afrikaners this interrelationship of language, nationality and religion has survived into twenty-first century debates.
Giliomee summarises the relationship between English South Africans and Afrikaners as follows: 'Afrikaners dominated politics, but in the economic, social and cultural spheres had to take a backseat to the Englishspeakers, who were better educated, better skilled and spoke what was virtually the only language in use in industry and commerce' (p.xv). Thus, Afrikaners struggling to overcome a feeling of inferiority in their own country of birth felt politically vindicated when South Africa became a republic in 1961. After the poverty of the first half of the twentieth century, following on the Anglo-Boer War and two world wars, Giliomee notes that the sudden wealth of the prosperous 1970s, with the Afrikaners filling the top ranks in government, led to a certain arrogance and corruption of power.
Giliomee gives some attention to previously neglected groups such as Afrikaner women and their contribution to South Africa in a wide variety of fields. As full partners on the farms, he notes, girls had the same education as boys, in contrast to the British system. He stresses the role of Roman Dutch Law during the eighteenth century in empowering Afrikaner women as equal economic partners of their spouses, entitled to half of the husbands' estate in case of divorce or widowhood (pp.37 -8) and the way in which this contributed to the self-confidence these women displayed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries during the epic Great Trek, the Anglo-Boer War and the hard times of urban impoverishment. In the 1920s, for Giliomee, Afrikaner women became captive in the furthering of nationalism and suspended their own struggle for the greater cause, only coming into their own as leaders after 1990.
A contentious matter in the book is the history of apartheid. Giliomee's voice as a political scientist can be heard on topics such as the evaluation of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Professor Bill Freund links the Afrikaners' development of nationalism to racialism and argues that Giliomee equates twentieth century survival 'for most Afrikaners with taking and retaining control of a state and its apparatus'. Freund poses the question whether the end of apartheid could be ascribed to 'moral failure and exhaustion' or to 'demographics', and he feels that the demise of apartheid should be set 'against broader cultural and social changes internationally'. The stimulation of debate and discussion following on the publication of this book will be a major contribution to South African historiography. Robben Island is home to probably one of the most famous prisons (now a museum) in the world. It was one of the prisons in which a significant number of black male political activists, representing a variety of resistance movements, were incarcerated during the last three decades of apartheid rule in South Africa. While the apartheid government probably thought, or at least hoped, that these prisoners, together with their political ideas and ideals, would soon be forgotten, the exact opposite has happened. Prison bars could not prevent these men from inspiring the oppressed to continue the struggle against apartheid. In the end, Robben Island delivered Nelson Mandela as one of the most famous and respected political leaders to the world. A book covering and analysing the experiences, actions and reactions of the political prisoners on Robben Island during one of the most crucial periods in South African history (1962 -91), should be welcomed.

DIONE PRINSLOO
The main objective of the book is to analyse and describe the nature of resistance among political prisoners on Robben Island, as well as the impact thereof on the struggle against apartheid. The author focuses on four key concerns in the book. Firstly, the transformation by the political prisoners of the prison 'from a brutal "hell-hole" to a "university" for activists and political leaders' (p.5). Secondly, the way in which Robben Island sheds light on political processes and the effect prisoner resistance had on South African politics. Thirdly, the inadequate theorising in the literature on the notion of resistance. Fourthly, the author addresses the question of how the incarceration of political prisoners affects liberation struggles, social movements and their members.
The author researched these foci by mainly making use of primary sources. These consisted, in particular, of oral testimonies obtained from former Robben Island inmates, a number of government officials, public servants such as warders, and members of the apartheid government. Archival material, including a variety of prison records, was also used. The author is fully aware of the problematic nature of the primary sources in terms of accuracy and objectivity. A deliberate effort was made to reconcile the content of various testimonies and other sources. Where this was not possible, for example in the case of the date of a visit by a former Minister of Police to Robben Island, it is often explicitly mentioned. In other instances, variations were used in order to discuss differences in the experiences of individual inmates, as well as their interpretation of those experiences.
In the description and analysis of prison life on Robben Island, the reader is skilfully provided access to a world unfamiliar to most ordinary citizens. Several pages of photos are included to illustrate life in prison. Various topics are of particular importance. There is the problem of distinguishing between political prisoners and ordinary criminal inmates. The physical and institutional conditions at Robben Island and changes thereof are analysed. Central to the purpose of the book is an analysis of the interactions of the political prisoners among themselves and in particular with those from different political backgrounds. Interactions with the ordinary criminal inmates, as well as the prison warders and their superiors, are likewise important. The contact political prisoners had with the world beyond Robben Island, including members of the apartheid government, is also discussed.
According to the author, political prisoners deliberately chose the political route of resistance and not the military route as in the case of political prisoners in Northern Ireland. Several manifestations of prisoner resistance are identified. Particularly important is the institution of norms and rules for self-discipline and prisoners' control over each other in order to dilute the power of the authorities. Practical skills and ideas with regard to the exercise of legitimate government were developed as a result. There was the need for survival and self-improvement in order to resist victory by the oppressor. This was accomplished by the cultivation of 'a hyper-political social order to oppose the state inside and outside the prison' (p.271).
This is a valuable book which accomplishes what the author intended. The last chapter, in which the author looks at prisoner resistance beyond Robben Island in a comparative way, is unfortunately less successful. This does not, though, detract from the value of the book in general. In a world where inmates that regard themselves as political prisoners abound, it is necessary to take cognisance of the content of this book. It should be important to politicians, bureaucrats, political scientists, policy analysts, sociologists, criminologists and historians. The detailed content is easily accessible and would even be of interest to the ordinary reader. World of Power explores the relationship between religion and political power in Africa. Using sources in both French and English, and writings by a plethora of African scholars, the book has managed to articulate a fair account of African religious worldview, in so far as popular opinion and practice is concerned. Although it is surprising that some towering specialists of African religions, such as John Mbiti and Vincent Mulago, are overlooked. This is an intriguing and thoughtful analysis of the complexity of the religious phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa. The novelty of its method, which explores African thought from the standpoint of 'radio-trottoir', is extremely insightful. This is a new way of doing scholarship and understanding 'African theology' from below. By showing through numerous behavioural examples a parallel between Africa and the rest of the world, the book manages to overcome the colonial binary 'Us versus Them' civilising dogmatism that Western politicians have reintroduced into the current politics of war on terror.
Yet although there is much that is inspiring in this book, there are also some discomforting views. The fundamental question to be addressed is that of the nature of the African people that the book offers, and the quality of African religion itself. It is unfortunate that the authors open their crucial chapter on morality and justice with the statement of a dictator (Charles Taylor) who misrepresented African tradition. Despite oblique references to Mandela, the book uses the statements of African dictators in an ambiguous fashion which leaves an uninformed reader with the impression that these abusers of power represent the real 'African tradition' or 'African values'.
Likewise, in chapter six, which implicitly suggests that African traditional religion is largely about magical practices to get money, the authors begin with a charlatan that they cast as a spiritual man well initiated in the mysteries of African traditional religions. This man, Iyke Nathan Uzorma, after years of practices referred to as demonic, converts to Christianity, which finally transforms him into a decent being. The question that arises is whether African traditional religions are a valid path to becoming humane. This is a question that the book does not address properly, after having implicitly suggested the opposite in many ways.
Further, the authors leave the impression that African religions are a dangerous breeding ground for terrorism. The fact that a society maintains an interaction between religion and politics does not necessarily mean that religion is merely a political instrument. Throughout history, religion has also served as a major counterpower to tyranny. The investiture speeches of the Asante or Luba kingdom, to name but a few, show that in some traditional societies religion constituted a kind of oral constitution that functioned as checks and balances to the power of the kings. In recent years, it is religion that has been at the forefront in the struggle of African people against dictators as the history of national conferences in Benin, Zaire and Congo-Brazzaville shows. Religion is indeed a double-edged sword. But in Africa, as elsewhere, the impact of religion on politics could also have the positive effect of curbing terrorist ways of thinking.
Finally the book is highly ambiguous on the nature of religion. While religion remains a complex phenomenon, it is well known that magical and superstitious elements often coexist with highly ethical systems. But there is a tendency in Worlds of Power to privilege a selective gathering of the exotic and the bizarre as the essence of African religion. In Africa, as elsewhere, people do make a distinction between good religion and bad religion, authentic moral values and the pseudo-religiosity of murderers and robbers. Indeed, in the Bantu worldview there is a clear distinction between a Muntu (genuine human being) characterised by right thought or good heart (Mucima muyampe), right speech (Ludimi luyampe), and good deeds (Bilongwa biyampe) and a Kintu (a thing, an evil person) characterised by evil thought (Mucima mubi), evil tongue (ludimi lubi), and evil actions (bilongwa bibi). This philosophical anthropology is also the regulatory criterion of distinction between good religion and pseudo-religiosity.
While the need to avoid value-judgements on the part of the authors is understandable, the unilateral selection of problematic individuals who claim to follow the values of African religions leaves the reader with a distorted picture of African people and African spirituality. At stake here is the very definition of religion that the book leaves in a clever obscurity. The reader is left to believe that Africa remains the land of problematic creatures with bizarre moral and religious views. The question that ought to be asked is whether Africa always brings to the world only violence, disease, problems. In this sense, Worlds of Power seems to remain rooted in that long problematic anthropological tradition of the perception of otherness. The study of Christian missions sprawls across several fields of scholarly inquiry. As a topic in the fields of imperial history and postcolonial studies, however, it has been marginalised. Imperial history was shaped initially by historians who shared the view of imperial governors, merchants and military officers that missionaries were marginal characters in the imperial enterprise. Postcolonial studies have been obsessively secular in their concern with race, class, gender, sexuality and nationalism. The neglect of mission studies by mainstream scholars in history, literature and the social sciences is largely because of their historical association with the missionary enterprise itself, and the celebratory tone of some of its practitioners. That is all changing for the better. Postcolonial scholars such as Catherine Hall are taking notice of the missionary enterprise as a fertile field for the examination of issues of race, class and gender. Andrew Porter's collection represents another example of conversation across scholarly barriers, although a rather different one from Hall's. It contains papers from a conference organised by the North Atlantic Missiology Project (now known as the Currents in World Christianity Project) which is part of a broader effort by the Pew Charitable Trust to stimulate scholarly interest in the history of missions. Although some of the contributors come from the field of imperial history, the majority represent ecclesiastical history or mission studies.
These well written articles contain much of interest on the topics of race, gender and nationality, and almost all of them conclude with an important revisionist point of one kind or another. John MacKenzie, for instance, re-inscribes in the historical record the very close association of the missionary enterprise with the promotion of science and engineering in Africa. David Bebbington documents the ways that English religious Nonconformists were caught up in the growth of imperial enthusiasm in the late nineteenth century, while Steven Maughan chronicles another story, the utter failure of Bishop H.H. Montgomery of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to rally the early twentieth century Church of England around a programme of missionary/imperial expansion. Chandra Mallampalli and Lauren F. Pfister challenge accepted theories of the impact of missionary argument on the nationalist movements in India and China, respectively.
Although most of the contributors at least acknowledge that two-thirds of missionaries in this period were female, the discussion of gender is nonetheless largely confined to one article. Deborah Gaitskell examines South African examples of women's successes or failures, at battling their way into middle management in mission institutions. A very worthwhile discussion of race, on the other hand, sprawls across several articles. The question is this: why were mission institutions increasingly stratified along racial lines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite the undoubted universalist and anti-racialist attitudes of early nineteenth century pioneer missionaries?
Andrew C. Ross' article provides a disappointing answer to that question by recycling old theories that assert the universal triumph of scientific racism among all Europeans, including missionaries in the late nineteenth century. Ross then quotes the racist views of John Buchan, Julian Huxley and Rudyard Kipling, who had in common complete indifference to the missionary enterprise, in support of the view that all but a few exceptional missionaries were persuaded in the high imperial period that human racial differences were biological, hierarchical, and immutable.
Assertions that missionaries were motivated by scientific racism have never been plausible, since those ideas are incompatible with the fundamental principles of most late nineteenth century varieties of Protestant Christianity. Their adoption would in the long run undermine the entire missionary enterprise, based as it was on a commitment to create churches that were indigenous and self-governing. Ross' own article contains a considerable amount of evidence that mission institutions undermined racial difference in some ways, while reinforcing it in others. Other articles in the collection, especially those of John MacKenzie and Brian Stanley, appear to undermine Ross' argument even further. Of course, if scientific racism was not the basis for racial hierarchy in mission institutions, the question remains of sorting out the precise character of the protean phenomenon we call race. In articles published elsewhere, Andrew Porter has identified a strong theological dimension in racial controversies within missions. Other discussions are proceeding about the relative importance of medical and educational professionalism among missionary women, and clerical professionalism among missionary men, in shaping hierarchies of race and gender in mission institutions.
What this collection demonstrates is the fruitfulness of examining race and other imperial issues as they are worked out in mission institutions and missionary rhetoric.

University of Iowa
The New Regionalism in Africa edited by J. Andrew Grant and Fredrik Soderbaum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp.xxii þ 243, £49.95 hb). Studies of regional cooperation can conveniently be divided into two phases. During the first period, from the 1950s to the 1980s, the main focal point was Western Europe. The founding of the European Economic Community was explicitly linked to the conditions of the Cold War and the attendant rivalry between the USA and the USSR. After the Cold War ended in the late 1980s, there was a shift in analytical emphasis. Academic interest in regional cooperation acquired a new dynamism, captured in a novel term: the 'new regionalism approach' (NRA). The starting point for the NRA was an empirical development: regional cooperation appeared, for the first time, to be a significant phenomenon beyond Western Europe, including sub-Saharan Africa, the focus of this book. This was linked to what many of the book's contributors understand as a 'restructuring of the nation-state' in Africa, a result of increased interdependence, transnationalisation and globalisation. The main focus of the book is not on the delineation of Africa as a region per se, rather it is on the processes and consequences of regionalisation in various fields of activity and at various levels, both in terms of state and non-state actors.
As most of the contributors to this book emphasise, the NRA differs from the 'old' regionalism approach in two main ways. First, the latter was firmly linked to the circumstances of the Cold War, a time when around the world regional cooperation was said to be imposed, directly or indirectly, from outside and above, in line with the wishes of the superpowers. The NRA, on the other hand, is concerned with a range of processes whose genesis is within the regions themselves, both from 'above' and 'below' the level of the state. The analytical inclusion of various kinds of actors is seen to be characteristic of a wider process, a heterogeneous, comprehensive, multidimensional phenomenon linked to global structural change, especially to what is perhaps its dominating feature, globalisation. In this book, the focus of the different chapters is variously on state, market and society actors and economic, cultural, political, security and environmental aspects of regional integration. The chapters collectively exemplify and examine a key NRA presumption: the ending of the Cold War in the late 1980s had significant repercussions for regional cooperation in Africa. It led to new opportunities for regional states to cooperate in various areas, for example, trade and security, while encouraging non-state actors to try to influence regionalisation structures, processes and outcomes.
Several of the contributors suggest that the EU gave African regionalisation particular impetus, not least with the signing in 1992 of the Maastricht Treaty, which generated much interest in Africa. Partly as a result, the EU is said to have helped more widely to create -albeit unintentionallywhat is sometimes called the 'urge to merge' for other regions, including Africa, primarily as a result of competitive pressures exerted by the Single European Market (SEM).
A second key development associated with the NRA analytical framework is linked to what is seen as growing significance of various cross-border, especially non-state, actors. The NRA framework suggests that studies of regional cooperation should move beyond a focus on formal regional structures to include informal ones. Until now, studies of regional cooperation have tended to ignore or pay only scant attention to the role of agency, with little attention devoted to various domestic and transnational agents, including interest groups, such as civil society actors and business corporations. In the NRA focus, the emphasis extends from states to contemporary forms of transnational cooperation and cross-border flows through comparative, historical and multilevel perspectives. Thus the main analytical focus in this book is on African searches 'for relevant space for action', directing attention to both the spread of regionalism and the multiple dynamics at work, involving both state and non-state actors.
In sum, this is a high-quality collection of 12 chapters organised into three parts. The first part examines 'regional perspective', the second looks at 'national perspectives', while in the third the focus is on 'conclusions'. The focus of the book is on sub-Saharan Africa, although western and southern Africa get most attention. The book will be of interest to anyone who wants to learn about the forms and functions of regionalisation in contemporary Africa. Catherine Boone's intention is to utilise an 'institutional choice' framework to explain intra-country and cross-national variations in state strategies regarding institutional and political domination of differing rural societies. Her main point is that institutional 'choice' in West Africa is constrained by local economic production and marketing structures, the particular political-local forms of authority associated with those structures, and by regionally specific social and political histories. The study clarifies why states developed administrative policies in uneven patterns across their respective territorial domains during the colonial and postcolonial periods.

JEFFREY HAYNES
Boone offers an eye-opening variant of historical-institutional choice theory, while at the same time serving as the single most intellectually sophisticated 'mode of production'-oriented theory of state -society relations that has yet been written in the study of African politics. She in effect shifts Barrington Moore and Robert Brenner's perspective to the local level by highlighting the impact of regional differences regarding economic structure and the variability in political institutions to which regionally specific modes of production give rise. This is then linked to institutional choice theory by emphasising that rural histories condition the options open to state decisionmakers on a region-by-region basis, depending on the specific political power framework that emerges from one economic zone to another.
Boone's analysis rests on the premise that states will opt for one of four general strategies: (1) usurpation: local political power is wrested from rural notables and is devolved to state-appointed officials; (2) power sharing: political notables retain their local power and are integrated into the party-state bureaucracy and into centrally anointed locally based political units; (3) administrative occupation: the state aims for political domination of local society by assuring that state-created political bodies monopolise local political power, but state agencies remain suspended 'above' society (as occupying agents) rather than woven into them; (4) non-incorporation: it is not worth it to the state to try to draw local peasant society into its commercial orbit because the economic benefits are low and/or collective resistance is too high. Implicit in Boone's argument is the fundamental fragility of contemporary African states -should state leaders make the wrong 'choice' in how they deal with a particular region, and not sufficiently take into account that region's history and organisation of local elites or its dominant economic structures, the state will ultimately fail to incorporate the region into its administrative domain and will fail to exploit that region for economic gain. Thus, there is little room for policy error. Where the social structure is coherently and solidly organised, as in the case of entrenched traditional leaderships -or is capable of collective action, as with interlinked horizontally structured village societies -the state's authority will be at risk if it seeks to impose by fiat a top-down bureaucracy through the 'administrative occupation' of rural localities. Thus the need for bargaining between state and local elites, and due to the differential levels of power held by elites in each region, the political outcome (type of political structure that predominates) will vary significantly, region by region, within the same country.
Boone examines six case studies grouped in two-case comparative sets: Senegal's groundnut basin and lower Casamance; southern Côte d'Ivoire and southern Ghana; Senegal's River Valley and Côte d'Ivoire's Korhogo region. An important component of Boone's overall argument is that the state's goals can change because the social structure itself changes or because the state 'corrects' its previous policy-making errors as leaders devise a strategy that more closely reflects local political and economic reality. Boone's third set of case studies illustrate this 'path-switching' potential.
These six empirical cases strongly support Boone's tightly woven set of arguments. Nonetheless, several critiques may be offered. The first is that the institutional choice framework itself, even with the extensive modification provided by Boone from the 'deep history' wing of that framework, encompasses Boone's rural societally centred analysis only in the broadest imaginable way. It does not appear that West African states ultimately have much policy 'choice'. Boone is convincing in arguing that the range of workable policy options is very narrow due to local-historical-social factors. Boone in fact calls this a 'constrained-choice model', and the fact that states can engage in 'path-switching' to avoid the political disasters that follow from wrong choices clearly suggests that leaders do have some policy leeway. Nonetheless, Boone's overriding logic in all six cases is that if their policies are to prove successful, then state rulers need to mesh their policies with local social and political structures. The approach at various points strains the fundamentally option-orientated premise of the institutional choice framework, although Boone is careful to provide 'off-the-path' caveats that both theoretically and empirically reassert the variability and unpredictability of choice patterns.
The treatment of path-switching also raises the query: Why do states sometimes challenge the structure of local society in strategies that seem doomed to fail? Here, Boone's analytic model could be expanded so as to incorporate more attention to the analysis of the policy-making process within the state. What is it about rulers' decision-making processes that motivate them to pursue particular strategies, especially if they are 'off the path' of historical predictability in a given region? Greater attention to the internal politics of choice-making might help to clarify why path-switching does not take place more frequently -why, for example, the Senegalese state has persisted for more than a century with policies that continually generate collective resistance in Casamance.
That said, it is my view that, overall, Boone's work theoretically surpasses in conceptual sophistication all previous studies of African state formation. This book innovatively magnifies important links between institution-based and mode-of-production-based conceptual frameworks. Boone offers a theory of comparative analysis that is of broad value within and beyond the field of political science. Indeed, Boone has convincingly demonstrated the overriding importance of localistic specificity for appreciating state -society relations in general and political outcomes in particular. She has helped to reshape and redirect the comparative study of state-building in multiple disciplines; it is difficult to imagine that future scholars, in any world area, would henceforth avoid incorporating the study of locality or region in researching state -society dynamics.
In every respect, Political Topographies of the African State is a major tour de force, and is likely to prove influential for decades to come. It is commonly accepted that without enduring peace there can be no meaningful development in Africa. Premised on this assertion, the 17 essays in this book reflect on the manifestation of conflict in Africa and present solutions for overcoming conflict and sustaining peace. The 17 chapters have been grouped into three sections: First, sources, management, resolution and prevention of conflicts; second, democracy and democratisation processes; and, thirdly, public policy. The first ten chapters suggest ways of restoring and building peace in Africa. They focus on the nature and sources of conflict, conflict management, resolution and prevention. They also attempt to analyse and assess some supranational strategies and mechanisms that have been employed to resolve conflict. More specifically, they deal with a variety of themes including interstate conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, conflict in East Africa and the Great Lakes region, child soldiering, peace building through truth commissions, and women's participation in the Mozambican peace process. Furthermore, international and especially (sub)regional role-players in Africa, such as the African Union, the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), are assessed insofar as they have been founded to prevent, manage and resolve conflict.
The rationale underlying these chapters is to be found in Nhema's introductory claim that one major task is to identify and understand the sources of conflict in Africa, and that most attempts are failing for want of authentic data. Moreover, it is asserted that those seeking solutions to conflicts do not always comprehend the socioeconomic and cultural settings of the conflicts, and that they sometimes deal with the symptoms or immediate causes, rather than the actual problems and their root causes.
The next four chapters are devoted to assessing the argument that social instability and armed conflict in Africa may often be ascribed to exclusionary political arrangements that do not guarantee or facilitate basic freedoms, accountability of leaders and institutional arrangements that encourage participatory democracy. Thus, when seeking solutions to conflict in Africa, one needs to take due cognisance of the type of governance in African states, and specifically the fact that popular aspirations sometimes sharply conflict with the interests of the ruling class. To this end, the chapters deal with the search for democratic rule, human rights, human security and social peace in Africa. The cases of Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia are specifically examined and assessed.
Nhema rightly contends in the introduction that not much has been done in Africa in utilising public policy as a means to promoting issues of democracy, human rights, social peace and development. In fact, it is asserted that not much debate has ensued between relevant role-players in this regard, and that public policy processes in Africa include little public involvement. Thus, in the last three chapters, public policy is considered as a systematic and deliberate means of intervention in social life for the purpose of ensuring the well-being of Africans. Again, specific cases are examined and assessed, namely social policy formulation in Tanzania, HIV/AIDS in Swaziland and sustainable agricultural development in Rwanda.
In common with many edited volumes, contributions vary in standard, depth and outline. From a purist point of view one may also contend that the book is lacking in terms of solid structure and fluent unfolding. A concluding section is also absent. Furthermore, although the reflections and insights presented in this work do not really bring new discoveries and insights to the existing body of knowledge, the book does offer some informative and meaningful interdisciplinary viewpoints and perspectives. Perhaps most important, it offers materials and accounts collected and analysed by African scholars from a distinct African perspective.
In sum, the book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on overcoming conflict and sustaining peace and development in Africa. Though it covers fairly well trodden territory, it offers a wide spectrum of African scholarly perspectives on pressing issues. Theory builders will perhaps find the book less useful, but those in search of a better and deeper understanding of Africa's problems with regard to much-needed conflict resolution, management and development will benefit from it.

THEO NEETHLING Stellenbosch University
Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America by I. Gough and G. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.xix þ 363, £50.00 hb).
This book is a collection of essays that seek to make connections between the concept of 'Welfare Regime' and developing countries. Comparative studies on social policy have tended to focus on the experiences of the advanced industrial economies and Esping Andersen's models of welfare were very much influenced by studies of the USA and Europe. Central to this book, therefore, is the question of how well do these models apply in the context of developing countries?
Models of welfare have taken as assumed the relationships between markets, politics and social policy. Social policy, according to Gough's essay, represents the outcome of struggles between demands that come from below and the concessions made from above. Social policy is, therefore, contextualised in histories of social movements, democracy and changing political landscapes. There are major problems in trying to utilise models derived and influenced in a Western philosophical countries in South America, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In his essay, therefore, Gough develops three possible regimes of welfare. First, there are the welfare state regimes that are founded on advanced economies with legitimate governments and formal markets. Second, there are the informal security regimes of peasant economies in South America and South Asia, where the state is described as weak, where politics is defined by clientelism and where those on the outside depend on families, tribes and communities. Third, there are the insecurity regimes that define sub-Saharan Africa countries, where people's lives are highly insecure, where the experience is the threat of famine, war, fleeing from war and military regimes.
The common theme to emerge in the study of developing countries has been the weaknesses and sometimes the absence of oppositions, social movements and collective action. Social policy reflects outcomes of struggles and compromises in the context of democracy. The corruption of public spaces and clientele politics make governments unsafe. The retreat from public spaces in the meantime allows for the continuity of existing political elites.
The authors of this book need to be commended for producing a coherent and thematic analysis of social policy in developing countries. I am sure it will be a benchmark for the further development and understanding of inequalities in the context of contemporary globalisation.

MAURICE MULLARD
The University of Hull Social Policy and the Commonwealth, especially with the subtitle Prospects for Social Inclusion, is an intriguing title that in principle offered a number of possibilities. A book with such a title might address the impact of British Imperialism on the development of social policies within the colonial countries; it might address the impact of the contemporary Commonwealth on country social policy; and it might even address the idea of the Commonwealth as a supranational organisation expounding views on national policy as well as engaging in supranational policies for the Commonwealth.
In fact there are elements of all of these approaches to be found in the differently authored chapters, but they have to be looked for and it is only the last theme that is explicitly pulled out for examination by the editorial opening and closing chapters. In terms of the first topic, the chapters on Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada remind us that Sri Lankan social policy in the 1950s was very much modelled on the British welfare state, that the Singaporean Provident Fund (CPF) was a British invention and that Canadian social policy borrowed also from the UK. Of course, these initial positive achievements have to be weighed against the divide and rule strategy used by the Empire that, as the chapter on Malaysia reminds us, exacerbated ethnic divisions and deliberately socially excluded certain sections of the population. In so far as the UK exported an efficient civil service and established a public sector of hospital care and education (albeit only for the elite), these were the very features of national social policy that the subsequent structural adjustment policies succeeded in undermining in the name of balancing budgets and focusing expenditure on the poor. The chapter on Sri Lanka documents this effectively.
The chapter by David McIntyre was for me the most interesting and documents the work of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and draws our attention to the way in which this conference gave rise to an effective lobby of international non-governmental organisations which helped shape the agenda of the CHOGMs towards social policy questions. Consequently, the Harare Commonwealth Declaration adopted at the 1991 CHOGM pledged to focus on five main areas that included democracy and the rule of law, equality for women, universal access to education, poverty alleviation and help for small states. Subsequent meetings of specialised ministries also generated effective lobbies from NGOs. The Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in London in 2002 generated a Commonwealth Foundation call for the Commonwealth to increase finance for the global fund to combat HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, for 'fair trade', for cheap drugs for the South and quicker debt relief.
McIntyre raises the case for the Commonwealth to be seen as a supranational body rather like a regional one that is not run by the USA. It is left to Catherine Jones Finer in her concluding chapter to spell out what this might mean when she urges the Commonwealth to develop a kind of supranational Provident Fund: 'why might not the expedient of the Provident Fund . . . serve as a trial model for a Commonwealth inter-state mechanism for communal financing -via the institution of compulsory state income-related contributions into a central Commonwealth trust fund, to be dedicated to Commonwealth social objectives'. This is a nice idea. The other aspect of the Commonwealth as a supranational body that it would have been interesting to read more about is its role, actual or potential, in diffusing or mediating the North -South conflict that has emerged in recent years with regard to the desirability of a global set of labour standards and a global set of social policy principles. While India and other Commonwealth countries have understandably been active in opposing such ideas for fear of Northern (USA and European) social protectionism, would a dialogue within the CHOGMS without the EU and USA present enable a meeting of minds to emerge on these issues?