Zambezia (1978), VI (i)ESSAY REVIEWRESEARCH WITHOUT PROGRESSTHIS VOLUME BEARS evidence of a very active editor's role on the part ofDonald Baker, who was Senior Research Fellow at the University of Rho-desia's Centre for Inter-Racial Studies.1 At one level, this is entirely welcome,for his honourable attempt to create a roughly common format for the indivi-dual contributions both provides a much more useful basis for meaningfulcomparisons than similar collections and also gives the book acohesion often lacking in enterprises involving several scholars from differentacademic disciplines. Seeking to rescue the study of race relations from whatPierre van den Berghe called a 'theoretical non-man's land', Baker has con-sciously focused on six geographic areas where the superordinate racial groupcame primarily from the same metropolitan state and, within these sixcountries (United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, SouthAfrica and Rhodesia), he has largely persuaded his colleagues to examine thepolitical relationships between the racial groups in terms of each group'sresources, broadly defined, and each group's prospensity to mobilize itsresources. An Introduction establishes this framework, with greater linguisticcomplexity than the simple truths require, and a Conclusion draw? ihe threadstogether, again concentrating somewhat laboriously on groups' differentialaccess to, and propensity to use, significant resources. Sandwiched betweenBakers' multi-annotated general contribution are ten case studies, of whichAdam's chapter on South Africa and Murphree's on Rhodesia are obviouslyof prime interest to readers of Zambezia. There are no startling interpretiveinsights to be found, but the contributions are scholarly, somewhat pedestrianas they follow Baker's integrating framework, and conceivably of value tothose with very limited knowledge of Southern Africa. It is doubtful, how-ever, whether this volume has rescued the study of race relations from thetheoretical no-man's land, although it does provide in part a framework withinwhich race relations Š or any other group relations for the matter Š mightbe usefully studied.This long introductory paragraph would normally suffice as a reviewof this book, but I think it is worth examining more closely some of its defects,for it is profoundly unsatisfactory in a number of fundamental ways. At onelevel, I noted initially, Baker's editorship is refreshingly successful; at others,however, it seems to me to have been unfortunate, since the general princi-ples around which the essays have been constructed appear to me to be mis-guided. One of the difficulties in formulating my disquiet precisely is remini-scent of Herbert Wehner's problems in the West German Election of 1965»D.G. Baker (ed.)price indicated.of Race (Farnborough, D.C. Heath, 1975;, 312 pp., no96ESSAY REVIEWwhen he was asked by a supporter why he had not cut Chancellor Frhnrddown to size: 'It is hard', he said, 'to nail a blancmange to the wall'. Toillustrate what I mean, let us start right at "the beginning with the very firstsentence of Baker's Introduction: 'Race, as ethnicity and culture, is a funda-mental factor of polities'. First of all, its meaning is dangerously unclear; israce being defined as ethnicity and culture or merely being compared withethnicity and culture as three separate fundamental factors of politics, thefirst alternative ignoring the relevant literature, the second being logicallyodd? Apart from that initial concern its main assertion is so unexceptionablethat it hardly requires annotation, let alone to the three sources in fact cited.One of the characteristics of Baker's writing, and Adam's and Murphrce's to alesser extent, is precisely a similar profusion of statements that arc so obviousas to be virtually truisms together with copious footnoting Š the material ofa decent third-year student married to the referential apparatus of an estab-lished scholar.The blancmange quality of much of the book shows esneciaMy in areaswhere ;t book of -his title really ought to be substarmiiiy stiffcr. Two theore-tical issues come immediately to mind. To start with, there is virtually noallusion to, or discussion of, the current debase on the respective significanceof race and class as explanatory forces or Tundnnont;i! factors of polities'.It may be obiected that the book's focus is intentionally limited to the roleof race and therefore does not need to address itself to the role of otherfactors. But this is not a satisfactory riposte at all, since any appreciation ofthe role of race necessitates some discussion of its relative importancevis-a-vis other potentially important factors, especially when one of the majorcurrent academic debates is centred precisely on this issue. In this context,om must reailv a:;k under what conditions, if any, the salieiicy of r?ce isoverborne by other factors. The second glaring omission is any sophisticatedrorsidcru'on of the nature of uower. The first question to which contribu-tors were asked to address themselves was this: 'What role has powerplayed as a determinant of race relations, historically and more re-cently?' But the definition of power, such as it is, transforms the ques-tion into o single request for an explanation of the outcome of politicalconflict between races. The Marxist implications in the not'on of de-terminism are not explored; the sorts of power to which Fachraeh ir.idLukes, for cvample, draw attention are again glossed over. For the mos.iprn. it is the overt face of power which predominates in these essays, thephysical, technical and legal resources available to racial groups, butthe introduction of the idea of 'propensity to mobilize' surely requiic;:.<";"sV'^-'ii'on o< what may be termed the indirect fnce of power, the norn-s;i-;(l vph'rs wHrh can delineate what is possible by distorting 'reality' throughihe iiviposjJ dominance of one vision of power relations to the exclusion ofc-^*r<. P.':kcr':> framework, then, holds the possibility of incisive rnalysijwith its call to explore the factors affecting the propensity to mobilize ob-jective resources, but this challenge is not taken up. Relations between theraces tend, therefore, to decline into rather crude historical examples of verysimple power relations.The lack of conceptual precision seems to affect also the use of 'race',whose very status in this book remains unclear to me. It has been said \v4iimuch truth that almost any classification is better than none, but the natureand purpose of the classification, if it is to be useful, must be crystal clear.At some stages race is defined wholly in terms of pigmentation, but whenquite properly French practices are differentiated en passant from BritishR. HODDER-W1LLIAMS97colonial practices, race per se clearly ceases to be envisaged as the funda-mental factor. Differentiation within races is alluded to but normally spiritedaway again, partly, I suspect, because the conceptual framework requiresthat the classification 'race' should be simplex. This seems a problematicassumption. Baker writes in his cautious and heavy way: 'In societies thatare multiracial, the racial factor, whether initially or subsequently, eitheropenly or more indirectly, almost invariably emerges as a major determinantof intergroup relations' (p.2). I have already referred to the unfortunate glossover the openly/indirectly dichotomy and would here point to the dominanceof group as the unit of analysis.Conceptually, it need hardly be said, groups can be classified in manyways other than that of pigmentation. Baker appears hardly aware of this.I have already mentioned the lack of class analysis and in the cocoon of myAnglo-centric subjectivity I may be forgiven for suggesting that Americansare peculiarly insensitive to notions of class. The Marxist definition is aliento the mainstream of American intellectual traditions and, despite Murphree'sspasmodic references to Arrighi, remains alien to this volume, while the Britishvariant (perhaps best encapsulated in the French term 'snobisme') is whollyabsent. Rhodesian politics cannot be comprehended, it seems to me, unlessthere is a genuine familiarity with the nuances of social stratification withinthe British middle-classes. L. Bowman's book on Rhodesia had the samefailing2 and he, like Baker is an American (as is Murphree partly by training).Baker seems to be unaware of the intra-class nuances of British society; fur-thermore, he even refers to the Anglo-fragment repeatedly as English, asthough the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh, great sources of immigrants, wereminor sub-categories of the English! The lack of differentiation within racialgroups struck me repeatedly; nowhere was this more evident than in thecursory treatment of Black group behaviour in Southern Africa, but it wasalso evidenced in the oversimple picture of homogeneity among the Whitesas well.Even if we allow that race, as used here, tends to refer to the pre-dominant group within the pigmentationally exclusive group, we are stillfaced with the problem of deciding the significance of such classification. Putcrudely, and ignoring the extremely thorny problem of the timing of parti-cular political demands for racially discriminatory legislation, it is not atall clear whether genetic attributes cause patterns of behaviour or whetherracial identity is used by politicians for their own purposes. The first alter-native is not considered and, as far as the second alternative is concerned,there is no discussion of who explicitly uses 'race'. The vast literature onethnicity in Africa might productively have been called into play, especiallyas pigmentation is conceived here, as tribe often is elsewhere, primarilyas a classificatory term designed to exaggerate differences between peopleliving within a single nation state. Yet this does not answer the morefundamental question of whether the racial classification predominates be-cause of populist pressures from below or because of an elite's calculation asto its own political advantage. Nor, indeed, does it leave much room forthe insights to be derived from the individual-centred psychologists likeMcEwan.These general comments scarcely scratch at the range of questions which2L.W. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: White Power in an African State (Cambridge,Mass,, Harvard Univ. Press, 1973).98ESSAY REVIEWseem unanswered. What we have in this volume Š and I am thinking inparticular of the general chapters and the southern African contributions Šare obvious observations dressed up as behavioural discoveries in often tor-tuously structured language. This is not to say that the individual contribu-tors are wrong (the most obvious are usually the most important points) somuch as incomplete, conceptually and empirically. Since much of the argu-ment appears in ex post facto rationalizations lacking detailed discussion ofthe precise processes and forms through which demands are articulated andintroduced into the political process, the end result is somewhat anaemic andcertainly left enough doubts in my mind to wonder whether the omissionswere so important that the picture painted here was almost sufficiently dis-torted as actually to qualify as false.There is, of course, at first sight a dilemma between the need to providedigestible comparative material and the scholar's duty to comment on materialincisively. But it is a dilemma akin to that facing a distinguished contractoror architect on a desert island; he can try and build a beautiful modern home,but the material and technology are simply not there. In other words, Baker'sobjective, which sounds so appealing and important, is an impracticability.A slim volume simply cannot both encompass the rich variety of analyticalinsights into the role of race and the form of power and also include at thesame time the raw material necessary to illustrate them in action. By attempt-ing both tasks, this volume fails in both. It neither provides the theoreticalunderpinning of a thorough analysis of race in politics nor the empiricalmaterial by which the theories could be tested. The level of analysis seemstoo low and the descriptive chapters too often a series of assertions ratherthan arguments. Given the enormous growth in published literature, academicpublishers have a greater responsibility than before to ensure that new booksgenuinely add to our knowledge or our understanding of the world. I readand then reread on several occasions the chapters by Baker, Adam, andMurphree (which accounts in part for the delay in reviewing the book), butI must confess that I become more and more convinced that behind thewords and the citations virtually nothing was added to the existing stock ofknowledge and, even as summaries, they seemed dangerously incomplete, Ifear that it may become a widely used book for courses in 'race relations',for which it has impeccable overt credentials, and D. C. Heath's decision topublish will be financially justified. But the students will miss the excite-ment of current intellectual debate and, more important, the detailed evidenceto comprehend the fascinating complexity of political relations in multiracialstates; the 'sensible' simplifications presented here may suggest that discri-minatory systems can be simply understood, but that would lead to a mis-understanding of the real complexities. Finishing on a more constructive, andexclusively Rhodesian, note, we still need a critique and updating of Arrighi's1966 analysis with its challenge to the centrality of race in Rhodesian poli-tics, particularly in the present turbulent times. Now, there is a real subject.University of BristolR. HODDER-WlLLIAMS