Jonathan Culler

If for the moment we eschew the larger questions, Jonathan Culler’s critical biography of Barthes ought to be exemplary. Culler moves through the awk¬ward restrictions on style and length imposed by the Modern Masters Series with an ease all the more remarkable given a subject as mobile, contempo¬raneous, still warm as it were, from the fires of several con-troversies as Roland Barthes. Piquant summaries of the major projects provide a clearly signposted route for a quick journey through Barthesian country.


Reviewed by: Susie Tharu
David McLellan

Authors are usually care¬fully revived from collective forgetfulness for ritual anniver¬saries. In that sense it is ironi¬cal to commemorate Marx, for he has never been forgotten in the first place. It is exactly a hundred years since Marx died—as good a time as any to see how his doctrine has done in the face of history.


Reviewed by: Sudipto Kaviraj
Ashis Nandy

The book under review is an extremely important one, cap¬able of being read and res¬ponded to at many levels. It can be seen as a professional psychological/ psychoanalytical treatise on how two civiliza¬tions reacted and responded to modern colonialism and im¬perialism. It is simultaneously a major attack on the dichoto¬mizing nature of the current forms of analysis. To put it simply, Ashis Nandy challenges the naive notion of colonialism as an unmitigated victory for the West and by the same token a defeat of the East.


Reviewed by: Harsh Sethi
Gopal Kadekodi

The study by Professor Kade¬kodi fills an important gap in the existing literature on Indian planning. While there are a large number of studies on the industrial and agricul-tural sectors, extractive indus¬tries like iron ore, coal, man¬ganese, bauxite, etc have receiv-ed but scant attention from economists. Given the import¬ance of these industries as primary resources for the domestic industry and as ex¬port-earners in their own right, rigorous quantitative studies of the type undertaken here are essential inputs for plan¬ning and policy making.


Reviewed by: Rajiv Kumar
Amartya Sen

The standard economic text¬book is based on the concept that every man is a ‘rational economic being’. The ‘rational economic being’ is defined as one who assiduously pursues his self-interest. These atoms (individuals) constituting society, together influence the economic variables at the macro level. Based on this assumption, the free market mechanism leads to a socially desirable situation (including the corresponding price struc-ture).


Reviewed by: Ravindra R. Ranade
By P. Chandrasekhara Rao

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea which concluded its eleventh and final session in April last year, ranks in the history of the United Nations as the longest and most widely represented conference. The ‘III UNCLOS’ adopted the new convention on the Law of the Sea, which was formally opened for signature at Montego Bay, Jamaica in December 1982.


Reviewed by: H.P. Rajan