Quote of the week
'..The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground...they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us...'- Alexandre Dumas - Diaspora

March 2018 issue

We provide a rich stream of reviews with this issue.

 

  1.  Poor Numbers by Morton Jevern- A critical review
    We review this work on data on Africa. It reminds me of a day at SOAS listening to Paul Collier. He claimed to have put African conflicts into a regression and found no statistical relationship between them and any political issues. I simple-mindedly asked him if he had included the wars of national liberation in his sample. To my disbelief he answered barefacedly that he had excluded all the wars of national liberation from his sample. From Turok to Collier  we note a consistent disregard for the data when it comes to Western ‘experts’ peddling their prejudices about Africa. Jevern claims to be addressing the data issue but exhibits quite similar failings as is detailed.
  2. Review of Gannibal_ The Moor of Petersburg’ by Hugh Barnes
    Pushkin’s ancestor is a topical person in the year of the Royal Wedding.  We look critically at Barnes recasting of Gannibal which we hope to show acts like a Rorschach test telling us a great deal about contemporary English literary culture.
  3.   ‘Poverty in America’ or poverty in American sociology_ 
    This is an unusual review  in that we look at how a standard sociological text violates all the standard tenets of sociology in order to evade the issue of social stratification of Afro-Americans in US society.  According to his view the position of Afro-Americans in US society is a random result of individual actions of Afro-Americans themselves. If the authors could establish that they really believed what they were writing I would seek their contact details as I have a bridge to sell.