104 Book Reviews
Bearing in mind this one reservation, these books are recommended to
Zimbabweans, and others involved in small economic projects.
Reviewed by Kathy Bond-Stewart, Harare.
Women in the Third World. A Directory of Resources, Thomas P Fenton and Mary
J Heffron (eds), Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 1987 (US$9,95, Hipp).
This directory of resources relating to women in the Third World includes lists of
organisations, books, periodicals, pamphlets and articles, and audiovisual and other
resources which in one way or another relate to, serve, work for, or bring together
women in the Third World. The Third World in this case includes people and
countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Carribean, and the
Middle East — but not 'third world' elements in the industrialised nations of the First
World. This publication updates the chapter on women from an earlier publication
Third World Resource Directory (Orbis: 1984). It is one of a number of resource
books published by Orbis Books, for Maryknoll, which have been compiled by
Thomas Fenton and Mary Heffron of the Third World Resources project of the Data
Centre, a public-interest information library.
Marilee Karl, ISIS International Coordinator, writes very positively about this
publication in the Foreword (vii):
"Leafing through the pages of this directory gives a feeling for the breadth, depth,
and dynamism of women's consciousness-raising and organisational efforts in the
Third World. Here are the voices of Central American women, suffering in strifetorn
situations, of women from rural villages in Asia drawn by poverty into the
sex-tourism industry in the capital cities or around US military bases, of Mexican
women working in US owned border industries, or Third World women explaining
just what the world economic crisis means to the survival chances of millions of
families like their own."
In addition to indicating how much material of value there is in this publication,
Marilee Karl's comments point also to the statement of political orientation made by
the editors, who indicate that the resource directories are partisan and biased in
favour of a radical analysis of Third World affairs. This political orientation is
reflected in the objectives of the Data Centre for its series of publications on Third
World issues, as stated in the Preface (xf):
1. to strengthen the ties among organisations diat oppose the injustices in foreign
military and economic intervention in the Third World by helping to dismantle the
institutional, issue-related, and regional barriers that now divide these groups.
2. to legitimise and give equal time to alternative points of view on Third World
affairs in general and on the involvement of the United States and other major powers
in the Third World in particular.
3. to promote the education/action resources of Third World-related organisations
in a sustained, focused, and professional manner.
4. to put in the hands of researchers and organisers in the Third World
comprehensive guides to Third World-related organisations and educational
resources in other parts of the world.
5. to direct concerned citizens in First World countries to the books, periodicals,
audiovisuals, and other resources they need to study in order to take informed and
Book Reviews 105
effective action to correct injustices in the ways their governments and business treat
Thirld World nations and peoples.
An enormous amount of work has obviously gone into the development of this
directory. Particularly useful are the large number of annotated entries, many
presented in some detail, and the format and presentation of the information. Where
possible addresses, contact information, costs, and so on are also given. The indexing
and contents pages in this publication, as is necessary in a resource directory, are very
thorough. The information is indexed by organisations, individuals, titles,
geographical areas and subjects, and the geographical spread of information is fairly
impressive. As a directory this publication appears to serve its purpose very well, and
is to be recommended.
However, a directory of resources such as this one can rarely be exhaustive, as is
recognised by the editors in their introduction. But, even more importantly, it is also
likely to reflect the most available resources. In this sense a reader could expect to
find a large proportion of the resources listed actually originating from outside the
Third World, from the First World, or from the more accessible and 'fluent' Third
World countries. This of course is a reflection of the current world information order
and the lack of publishing resources in the Thirld World. Even when Third World
writers are published this tends to be through publishers in the First World. And,
indeed, a large proportion of the resources in this directory, especially those on which
some detailed information is given, are based in First World countries. While the
production of this resource directory on Women in the Third World is laudatory, it
seems a great pity that we in the Third World can't take responsibility for this kind of
data collection and presentation ourselves.
In this respect I wonder if the presentation of information could be altered to
focus first on the resources originating from organisations based in the Third World,
and then move onto the First World support groups and publications. This emphasis
would I think show up more sharply the need to deliberately seek information
'owned' by the Third World, highlight the relative paucity of published information
of this kind, and be in keeping with the stated political bias of this series of Third
World Resource books.
This directory of resources is a valuable catalogue of existing resources and
publications relating to women in the Third World and should prove to be a useful
resource for organisations in both the first and third worlds who are interested in
issues relating to women, and to justice.
Reviewed by Brigid Willmore, Harare, Zimbabwe.
The Woman's Question and The Modes of Human Reproduction. An Analysis of
a Tanzanian Village, by Ulla Vuorela, The Finnish Society for Development Studies
and the Finnish Anthropological Society in cooperation with the Scandinavian
Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, 1987 (284pp, SEK 120).
The author puts forward a theory of modes of human reproduction, in an attempt to
illuminate and explain the role of gender in materialist analyses of modes of
production. She points out that the relations of mating and those of filiation are
important for ordering power relations in all activities in which different generations
are involved. Vuorela holds that the modes of human reproduction are constituted
by relations and forces of human reproduction.