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.
106 Book Reviews
Vuorela holds that productive and reproductive relationships both appropriate
labour within a given social formation. Although the two types of relationships are
interdependent, they may be in opposition when one undercuts the other. For
example, the mode of production may use and subordinate the mode of human
reproduction in marriage in a way that generates conflicts between the two modes.
Msoga village in Tanzania is used to illustrate and validate the author's theory. The
fact that the Kwere people in Msoga are matrilineal is interesting because it enables
her to elaborate her theory. She points out that matrilineal and patrilineal systems
both exist within patrilineal modes of human reproduction.
The theory is interesting and fairly well presented. Vuorela indicates that the
discovery of the male role in paternity does not necessarily lead to the supercession of
matrilineality by patrilineality. Her approach enables us to analyse human
reproduction without accepting the contours imposed by androcentric assumptions.
What could be better explained is the process by which fraternal interest groups
make the mode of production into a patriarchal one. It is important to note that the
strategies that are used by Kwere women have also been noted amongst women in
patrilineal societies. Factually, it should be pointed out that it is the sperm that
fertilise ova and not the semen. These observations do not detract from the merit of
the theory presented by the author in her attempt to elaborate a materialist theory of
modes of human reproduction.
Reviewed by Rudo Gaidzanwa, Dept of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe.
Financing Education in Developing Countries — An Exploration of Policy
Options, World Bank, Washington DC 1986. Higher Education in Sub-Saharan
Africa, Keith Hinchliffe, Croom Helm Ltd, 1987 (189pp, £19,95 hbk).
These two books were written at more or less the same time, during the height of
Thatcherite and Reaganite economics, with their emphasis on cutting public
expenditure in the social services, including education, and on the deregulation and
privatisation of state run institutions, especially those engaged in production. This
kind of thinking is being exported to developing countries by Thatcherite and
Reaganite intellectuals and the official aid agencies of these countries. It is this
philosophy which informs the World Bank Report and to some extent Keith's report,
although he takes a more balanced view and questions some of the assumptions
that underlie die recommendations made by the World Bank Report.
These two books have also come out during a period of extreme economic
hardship in most African countries. During this period both the World Bank and the
IMF were pressurising beleagured African governments into restructuring their
economies by cutting down on public expenditure and increasing the privatisation of
paras tatals.
Basically the two books are saying that:
(a) Education, especially university education, has become very expensive. The latter
in some cases consumes as much as 20 per cent of the total Education budget,
while only benefiting a small elite.
(b) The Public cost of higher education should be recovered through making the
student pay an economic fee, by reducing subsidies given to students in the form
of grants, and by cutting down on non-teaching staff expenditure.