Book Reviews 105
Many people who will find this book useful will no doubt be challenged to read
extensively because of the author's attempt to inter-weave perspectives of class,
gender, and ethnicity. A good example is shown in the discussion on connections.
Bottomley observes that political economists of migration simply identified
foremen and leading hands of the working class as "a labour aristocracy" but left
virtually unexplored statistical realities such as the implications of simple facts like
the Australian working class is mostly non-Anglophone.
The whole import of this account is to stress that assumptions that culture is coterminus
with ethnicity can prevent commentators from examining the processes
by which people are incorporated, subjected or mobilised to resist. Ethnicists, for
example, emphasise a kind of ahistorical and apolitical culturalism, while political
economists tend to deduce action and interactions from structures, under-estimating
the significance of pre-migration experience and continuing contact with, and
understanding of the world beyond a geographical area under study, in this book
Australia.
There is no doubt that this book is of great value to students and staff in institutes
of higher learning especially those in social studies and humanities. It is not the type
of book one expects to be a cover-to-cover fast reading material. One needs to take
their time in order to absorb its contents because the author challenges readers to
re-negotiate certain givens in the process of raising new questions.
Reviewed by Thomas Deve, Assistant Editor, Sapes Trust, Harare, Zimbabwe.
The Black Elderly: Satisfaction and Quality of Later Life, Marguerite Coke &
James A Twaite, The Haworth Press Inc. New York,1995, 126 pp with index,
ISBN: 1-56024-914-5 (h/b). Price: $14,95.
Coke and Twaite's findings present the practical situation in which the black
elderly in America live in the context of the conditions and factors that affect their
lives. Theirs is a comparative study of the experiences of black and white seniors
in the States. The findings are chronologically laid out so that the facts brought up
highlight the actual situations and life events of the black elderly. There is no
question that readers from developing countries will find the information brought
up in this book not only to be empirically valid but also a true presentation of what
is happening in America among the blacks, as well as in Africa and elsewhere.
Chapter One reflects the situation of the black elderly (referred to as senior
citizens in later chapters) in relation to the socioeconomic indicators that were used
to compare their lives with white senior citizens. The black elderly were found to
live in hardship because of lack of adequate income, poor health conditions, lower
levels of educational attainment and occupational status which is a result of the
106 Book Reviews
design of American policies. Their coping capacities depends greatly on the status
the society accorded them. The reason for carrying the study was that the number
of elderly are quite significant as the life expectancy rate has greatly improved;
another reasons being that attitudes are generally biased against the elderly as most
people regard old age as a form of illness; hence the need to exam ine their situation
in some detail.
In Chapter Two demographic factors as correlates of life satisfaction are discussed.
Respondents were asked to rate the degree of their distress, with health
problems ranking highest because most blacks voluntarily preferred to utilise their
traditional resources of support (families and kinship networks) to being bundled
in white nursing homes. This means that they do not have full access to the health
services. It is an interesting chapter in which researchers bring out views brought
by different sources on how blacks in America value their own elderly.
Glazer & Moynihan (1993) were referred to in Chapter Three as having
championed the debate on whether the African culture had an impact on blacks in
the United States. Their assertion that blacks in the United States are just
Americans were challenged by other authors like Herskovitz (19S8) and Billingsley
(1992) who catalogued elements like art, family roles, primacy of blood
ties, the importance of extended families and the value placed on children as
important when considering the influence of African culture. This is a crucial
chapter as it helps one to understand why after so many years the blacks and whites
in America have not been able to come up with a unique culture.
Chapter Four discusses the importance of the church since it had a great
influence on the style of life of most African Americans. An interested individual
examining how the church has had an influence on slavery would find this section
very valuable as it reveals how religion is rooted in the past when the slaves were
bound by the white man's catechism which made them accept that they were
inferior to whites whom God had given authority over them. The importance of the
existence of the black church is discussed here.
Chapters Five and Six are a revelation of the empirical investigation on
predictors of life satisfaction. Factors that predict life satisfaction are discussed
using dependent and independent variables in order to establish the needs in life of
the black senior citizens.
The last part of the book deals with additional findings which helped to
strengthen the research. This helped in concretising the recommendations in the
last chapter.
This is not only an important book to gerontologists and social workers but to
historians and researchers because facts and information brought up in the research
are laid out in a useful and academic way. The findings and recommendations are
important and could guide other researchers in the same area of study.
Book Reviews 107
Reviewed by Mrs Violet Matimba, Lecturer, School of Social Work, Harare,
Zimbabwe
Markets, Civil Society and Democracy in Kenya, Peter Gibbon (ed), Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet, The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, 1995,
283pp, ISBN: 91-7106-371-4. (p/b) Price: SEK140, £12,95 (p/b).
The struggle for democracy in Kenya has created a very polarised society in the
wake of demands for political and economic reform from both the donors and
Kenyan peoples. Pressures for demanding change are motivated by a variety of
reasons and at times conflicting interests. But the reality covered by contributions
in this book, generally capture the fact that major struggles have been seen around
the issues of economic and political reform, in a context of generally deteriorating
economic performance, heightened ethnic tension and often poor relations between
government and donors.
As noted by Peter Gibbon in his summary of the book, the studies deal with
central dimensions of grassroots development and change in Kenya over the last
decade and a half. The first concern covered by Gerrishon Ikiara, Mohamud Juma
and Justus Amadi concerns continuity and transformations in the cereals marketing
chain, the centrepiece of the World Bank, European Community and USAID
efforts during the 1980s and early 1990s to liberalise Kenyan economic institutions
on the basis of aid conditionality.
The second contribution by Karuti Kanyinge, examines development institutions,
before and after the re-emergence of multi-party politics in 1991-92. The
third, by Mutahi Ngunyi, examines the political developments and religious
organisations characterised elsewhere as the most important institutions in contemporary
Kenyan civil society.
In the development discourse, Kenya is now often seen as a problem child rather
than a success story, and from these accounts, ample evidence is provided which
allow us to reflect on the convincibility of the donor diagnosis of central policies
and practices which preceded economic liberalisation. Ironically, Kenya had been
eulogised for most of the 1980s by 'donor friendly' western academics who saw
it as one of the Africa's few economic and political ornaments, a country to be held
up, admired and analysed mainly in order to detect what might be transferable in
its "exceptional" performance.
In the chapter on "The Cereals Chain in Kenya: Actors, Reforms and Politics'
the reader is made to understand the politics surrounding cereals production and the
marketing chain. The chain as noted by the contributors, is extremely important to
the Kenya government since it is the main conduit for the country's food supplies
and also an activity which became central to the national political patronage system
developed since the death of President Kenyatta.