Book Notes
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343304041781 |
| Subject Matter | Notes |
233
Barnes, Matt; Christopher Heady, Sue Mid-
dleton, Jane Millar, Fotis Papadopoulos, Graham
Room & Panos Tsakloglou, 2002. Poverty and
Social Exclusion in Europe. Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar. 164 pp. ISBN 1840643757.
This book describes results of a research project
funded by the European Union under its
Targeted Socio-Economic Research Pro-
gramme. The project explored the nature and
processes of social exclusion in six European
countries in the 1990s: Austria, Germany,
Greece, Norway, Portugal and the United
Kingdom. The research was based on data
drawn from the European Community House-
hold Panel (ECHP) survey and, in the case of
Norway, the Norwegian Living Standards
Survey. The countries were chosen to reflect
different configurations of public and private
welfare, to make comparisons of the impact of
government policy on levels and durations of
poverty and social exclusion. In this book, the
first of two volumes presenting results of the
research, four ‘risk groups’ are examined in
detail: young adults, lone parents, sick and
disabled people, and the retired. The study
compares the incidence of poverty and non-
monetary deprivation of people in these four
groups with the rest of the population. The
report argues that although monetary measures
of poverty are most susceptible to government
policies, non-monetary material deprivation,
measured here in terms of lack of consumer
durables, is regarded as more relevant to the
concept of social exclusion. Deprivation is seen
as a dynamic process that does not necessarily
correlate with poverty. As pointed out in the
conclusion, there are a number of important
questions about social exclusion that the ECHP
dataset cannot tell us about, including ques-
tions about the role of education, parental
support, social relationships and neighbour-
hood effects. Frankly, maybe we should rethink
the meaning of not having a microwave oven?
Are there better ways of measuring social
exclusion or inclusion?
Åshild Kolås
Bingying, Xie, 2001. A Woman’s Soldier’s
Own Story: The Autobiography of Xie Bingying.
Translated by Lily Chia Brissman & Barry
Brissman. New York: Berkley. 281 pp. ISBN
0425188507 (paperback).
Despite its unacademic title, this book offers
interesting insights into women in military
settings. Xie Bingying was a soldier in the
National Resistance Army against the Japanese in
China in 1926. She was overjoyed when she was
allowed to join the men and go to war. In her
opinion, Chinese women ‘repressed by ancient
customs for thousands of years’ were finally
freeing themselves. Now they were going to
change the social order! After the war, she was
ostracized by much of society. While she had been
supported when she marched off to war, the times
and the needs of society had changed, and she was
criticized for not living according to traditional
roles for women. This book adds to literature on
women’s unique position in militaries and in
revolutionary movements. It explains in what
ways the female soldiers were useful to the army,
doing jobs that the men could not. In the field,
Xie Bingying and other female soldiers were
responsible for contact with ordinary village
people. The army depended on these people, but
when approached by male soldiers, they usually
hid. For example, when arriving at each new des-
tination, tasks like hiring boats, finding lodgings
and borrowing necessary items were easily accom-
plished after the women had explained the situ-
ation to the local people. Most of all, this book
describes the high spirit and energy some women
express when they are admitted into the male
bastion of the military. For Bingying, working at
the front was her only opportunity to abandon
her predestined role as a mother and wife and
dedicate herself to the revolution.
Elise Fredrikke Barth
© 2004 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 41, no. 2, 2004, pp. 233–238
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/0022343304041781 ISSN 0022-3433
BOOK
NOTES
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