BRIEF REVIEWS

Korea and its Futures, The Dispossessed, and Gaviotas
John Feffer and Karin Lee staff the AFSC office in Tokyo. They periodically send a newsletter including field reports and brief reviews. They can be reached at <eaqiar@aol.com>

Korea and its Futures, Roy Richard Grinker (St. Martin's Press, 1998)

If you have to read one recent book on Korea, it should be Bruce Cumings' Korea's Place in the Sun, a well-written survey of Korean history, north and south. For those interested in a more diplomatic cut at the issue, Don Oberdorfer's The Two Koreas is useful. Third place, however, should go to Roy Richard Grinker's book, a fascinating exploration of how Koreans, north and south, view the issue of unification. An anthropologist by training, Grinker argues that while unification is the stated goal of so many Koreans, division has shaped the culture to such an extent that unification is in effect a threat to identity.

Grinker examines several fascinating facets of Korean culture to buttress his argument: South Korean textbooks and their depiction of the North; television shows and exhibitions; North Korean defectors' experiences of life in the south; South Korean student demonstrators. The book includes many extracts from his interviews.

North Korea, from the viewpoint of the South, is stuck in the past, which has a two-edged quality. On the one hand, the North is a purer Korea, untainted by commercialism and global culture, an object of idealistic longing; in the reverse view, the North is backwards, a younger brother to the South, an object of paternalism at best and derision at worst. Grinker notes further that South Koreans have concentrated their attention by and large on the North Korean state. "South Koreans have been able to emphasize the unity of the people by stressing the differences between the states and by assuming that in north Korea the state neither constructs nor is constructed by the people. As a result, the north Korean people have been virtually erased from south Korean discourse on the north." {It would seem, after our first trip to Pyongyang, that the same dynamic operates north of the DMZ.}

Grinker tries to give voice to North Koreans by including interviews with defectors. Despite recognizing the many shortcomings of North Korea, many defectors compare the social solidarity in the north favorably with the individualism of the south. "They fear that the 50-year history of nearly 30 million people will be discarded after unification, and yet, while loyal to the south, they are privately proud of many of the north's achievements, especially in education." As another defector notes, "The north is neither a pack of wolves nor a socialist paradise; it is a place where human beings carry on their lives as best they can."

The Dispossessed, ed. by Vinod Raina et al. (ARENA Press, December 1997, 468 pages)

Giving voice to people who are ordinarily forgotten is precisely the aim of this book published by the Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives, based in Hong Kong. It is a detailed and thoroughly sobering account of the ecological and industrial catastrophes of Asia, told from the point of the view of the victims. It covers East Asia (Japan, South Korea), South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal), and Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines). Each country chapter has an overview, several case studies, and a wealth of statistical information in graphs and charts. The headline disasters are all included--Three Gorges Dam, Bhopal, Minamata, the Kader Factory Fire--as well as dozens of less publicized tragedies. This is a necessary book for anyone doing work in the region; it can be ordered directly from ARENA for $28 plus shipping. You can reach ARENA at arena@hk.net

Gaviotas, Alan Weisman (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1998)

Gaviotas is an ecotopia, a living example of the successful marriage between nature and technology. Located in the remote savannah region of eastern Colombia (the llanos), Gaviotas was created in the early 1970s by a small band of visionary engineers, students, and discontents. In the words of founder Paolo Lugari, "They always put social experiments in the easiest, most fertile places. We wanted the hardest place. We figured if we could do it here, we could do it anywhere."

In Gaviotas, the engineers and scientists and architects created a dizzying range of new inventions, all of them "appropriate technology," all of them designed to be both ecologically sound, wonderfully efficient, and easy to replicate in Third World countries. They pioneered solar technology, developed an efficient water pump that could be connected to a seesaw, and managed to recreate a tropical rainforest in an area that hadn't seen such for thousands of years. Several hundred people--including indigenous Guahibo Indians and urban street kids--live in Gaviotas in harmony with the environment.

Weisman's book is certainly not the first attention that has been paid to Gaviotas. In 1976, the UNDP designated it a "model community." Accolades have poured in from around the world; movies have been made; a 1989 UN-sponsored compendium of appropriate technology included 50 Gaviotas inventions. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, Gaviotas was an oft-cited alternative. It is disheartening that this community, which was designed to be replicated, has received such attention and yet remains so singular. During our current ecological sensitivity, perhaps Gaviotas will have more permanent and widespread impact.

Over the years, Gaviotas has adapted to "market realities." It has grown huge stands of pine and is harvesting the resin--again, in a ecological and efficient manner--to sell in Colombia and abroad. Unfortunately, Weisman doesn't say much about how this accommodation to market forces is transforming social relations in Gaviotas. Still, his book is short, elegant, and inspiring, quite a rarity in the literature on "sustainable development."

Divided Planet, Tom Athanasiou (University of Georgia, 1998)

"Sustainable development," meanwhile, is not a word Tom Athanasiou has much affection for. According to this proponent of social ecology, sustainable development is a nebulous concept that allows market-oriented ecologists and eco-friendly business types to come to an easy consensus on how to combine growth and Green. What they're missing--and what Athanasiou provides in rich detail--is an analysis of power, of politics, of the mechanisms by which the world is sullied at the same time that the rich get richer and the poor poorer.

Divided Planet, is a corrosive critique of "third wave" environmentalists, like Paul Hawken (TheEcology of Commerce), who believe that businesses are waking up to an impending ecological crisis. But, as Athanasiou points out, even eminently sensible and very mainstream reforms such as green taxes (penalizing polluters) have encountered stiff resistance from manufacturers in the United States. "A green economy will come, if it comes at all," Athansiou maintains, "only after long and bitter confrontation."

Athanasiou has some excellent chapters on the environmental effects of market reforms in the former communist world, on the woes of free trade, and on the plagues of "greenwashing" (the public relations campaigns run by corporations to seduce people into thinking that Dupont or Union Carbide are helping rather than harming the environment). Originally published in 1996 and now in paperback, Divided Planet, cuts through the smog that hangs suspended over much of the environmental debate.

Failure to Quit
Justin Jackson is a sophomore at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and editor of The Pine Tree Progressive.

For many people history can be quite boring summer reading. History books are often old like their topics, perhaps; yellow pages captured by a crusty bind, covered with a fine film of dust from years of disuse. For others the study of events and people in the past might embody the very things that they tire of and wish to elude in the present: aged tradition, custom, and thought that, in Marx's words, "weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." And for activists, history may seem unnecessary and ultimately uninteresting. It concerns itself with past problems, past struggles, heroes and losers who had relevance generations ago but have little to contribute to the present engagements in the fight for social justice.

If you sound like one of those described above, then Howard Zinn's Failure to Quit (Common Courage Press, 1993) is the right book to fill part of your summer with. A handy little volume that would fit into your coat pocket, this collection of thirteen essays and one interview accurately represents the influential thought of Howard Zinn, activist and scholar for many years. This book intertwines his ruminations on history and politics in a style that is easily digestible and candid. Several of the essays are developed from talks and lectures that Professor Zinn has given, and they reflect his engaging humor and lightheartedness.

Many themes that are apparent in his other work appear in Failure to Quit. Zinn demands in his essay "Objections to Objectivity" that historians may lay claim to being, but rarely are, "objective" in their selections, their treatment, and their appraisal of past events. In several essays he clearly criticizes such honored American institutions as the judicial system and the Supreme Court, the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment, pointing to their failings and limited ability to effect social change. And in one essay, written a year after the ignominious celebration of the quincentennial of Columbus, Zinn seeks to complement the existing American history that captures dominant figures in colonial domination with a skeptical and ethical look at the real nature of their misdeeds and conquests.

At this time of war in Yugoslavia, when the US is once again using its considerable force for evil rather than for good, I find especially comforting Zinn's consistently defiant stance against militarism. It seems that many on the left have included their normal inhibitions against US war enterprises with their spring cleaning this year, and Zinn challenges this position in "Just and Unjust Wars." He strongly suggests that no war can be just, no matter how just the cause may be (opposing a tyrant like Milosevic), and that war only multiplies any problems that already exist.

Overall, Failure to Quit is an enjoyable book that any lover of peace, whether a tired protester retiring to the Boston Common after a somber vigil or a vacationer enjoying an idyllic Maine lake on a hot day, will find provocative and inspiring. Howard Zinn's activist history will not put you to sleep with a morass of dead, white men and obscure facts and dates; rather, it will inspire you to make social change, and make the next century "not an American century, or western century, or a white century, or a male century, or any nation's, any group's century, but a century for the human race."

The Post Corporate World--Life after Capitalism
Peter Barrer, a long-time friend of Peacework, has an engineering practice in energy efficiency for buildings and industrial process.

Inspired by people's grassroots actions on their own behalf, informed by a career in development in the poor areas of the world, David C. Korten, the wise author of The Post-Corporate World--Life after Capitalism (Kumarian Press, Inc. West Hartford, CT, 1999), has knit a thoughtful view of the past, present, and potential future for life on Earth. Although Korten's primary topic is economics, the underlying theme is living life well, in spiritual harmony.

The book draws metaphors from advanced thinking about self-organizing biological systems to envision a future economy composed of individuals and communities who act for self-improvement while mindfully tending the well-being of the larger whole. The book is visionary: it sketches a future very far removed from present day dominance by corporate capitalism. However, the described future is surprisingly familiar, closely aligned with common notions of a good life and the results of surveys of individuals.

One chapter compiles a long "to do" list of personal actions that individuals in a wide variety of global circumstances can adopt. The actions are not theoretical constructs; there are precedents for, and existing organizations promoting, just about everything he recommends. One of the great values of this book is that such present activities are put into a unifying context.

Another chapter outlines a constitutional agenda for legislative change in the US. The agenda would erode the power of large corporations and create a "mindful" market-based economy to meet human needs. David Korten also applies his personal expertise in international development and finance to make the case for closely regulating the flows of financial resources across national borders, to create the possibility of local control of investment.

There are discussions of health care, spiritual life, transportation, energy, food production, and more. I found the book to be a useful synthesis of thought about our present economic world, and an insightful roadmap for improving that world for our children.

The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History
Betty Zisk is a Quaker and a political scientist who teaches at Boston University.

There are two reasons why this book, The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68, by Steven Kasher, (New York: Abbeville Press, 1996, 255 pp, $39.00), is one that most social justice activists will want to own, despite the high price. The photography is striking and far more inclusive than is the case for most such efforts: it includes movement photographers (for example, Danny Lyon), those whose images appeared in Life and other major chronicles of the times (Richard Avedon, Gordon Parks), and the unsung photojournalists who worked for the AP or for southern newspapers. The evocative pictures are all there--of the miseries (the jails, hosings, police dogs, bombings, and deaths) and the triumphs (the sit-ins, the March on Washington). In addition, there are many that are new to this reviewer (see, for example, Hiroji Kubota's stunning "Black Panthers, Chicago, 1969") and Kasher provides us as well with many glimpses of both ordinary civil rights workers and the major figures of the time.

The lively and inclusive text is the other major strength of this account. Most books on "the movement" focus almost exclusively on one brief period (for example, the struggles around Selma) or one major organization (most frequently on Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; sometimes on SNCC). I have long struggled to find just the right text on this movement for my college classes and seminars and have usually settled for either an incomplete account or an historian's long tome--which tells all, but in a boring and overly detailed way. Here finally is one book that spans the early years, the peak years, and the final period of movement decline; that brings the Black Panthers, the early work of CORE and the Highlander School, the Black Muslims, and other less known groups to our attention--in addition to the more familiar figures. The story is far from complete (how could it be in 255 pages, over half of which is given to the photography?) but it is balanced and inspiring. For those of us who believe that the visual arts can move us (to action, to thought, to a search for knowledge) in a way that the written word alone cannot, Kasher provides not only a wonderful and nostalgic panorama on the period he covers, but the answer we might give to our younger friends who ask: "what was it like to live in the '60s?" I hope that some day similar intensive work will appear on the other key movements of the time--especially those involving antiwar activists, students, women, and environmentalists.