Asia-Pacific: New Geographies of the Pacific Rim.

• Author: Perry, Peter

Editors: Ray Watters and Terry McGee with Ginny Sullivan Published by: Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1997, 362pp, $49.95.

This is a book written mainly by geographers but certainly not just for geographers. In essence it is a set of essays on the theme of the integration of Pacific Rim (especially Asian) economies organised, between editorial introduction and conclusion, in terms of globalisation, processes of change, national responses and local `resistance'. The book is not then a coherently argued statement of a particular position but a series of particular interpretations ranging from the sub-global to the local scale. Viewed simply as a series of expert essays (and opinions) on an area of crucial significance to New Zealand, and thus as a valuable teaching resource, the book is a success. Its very competitive price enhances that success by making it accessible to students.

Somewhat curiously the book comes close to self review in the first part of the final chapter, a position which enables the reviewer to eschew the inevitable tedium of recounting who said what (and how weld in the nineteen contributions, and licenses his preference to select what interested him most. In terms of intellectual and practical challenge the chapters by Tremewan on human rights, Franklin on consumption, Wade on industrial policy, and Armstrong on development head the list. Tremewan highlights the role of old elites; Franklin is characteristically witty, discursive and anecdotal; Wade briefly but cogently argues the case that `those who claim that East Asian experience is somehow "unrep-licable" have not done their homework'; and Armstrong is very very angry. Few such devastating evaluations of a development bureaucracy (in this case that of Canada) in action (or often inaction) at the local level have been written.

Among more conventional pieces three stand out: Lee on the urban environmental challenge (and it is interesting to note that the book's final paragraph shares his position that sustainability is the major challenge), Lin on the local scale transformation of the Chinese economy, and McKinnon on ethnicity and the inland borders of South-east Asia. Lee is as rich a source of information as analysis: between 25 and...