International Sociology

The article compares a study of Zimbabwean land reform with several others of the same individualised holdings type in Africa and elsewhere. It makes the point that land reform programmes should be analysed with regard both to gender and class relations among the peasantry. After discussing the historical background to Zimbabwean resettlement policies, the case study takes up topics such as the provision of services, community formation, class divisions, changes in family structure and division of labour and the impact of state officials. The Zimbabwean reform appears to have had more positive effects on women than have most of the others examined. This may be due to the recent prosperity of the Resettlement Areas studied, to the (mixed) impact of a nuclear family model, and to the influence of state officials in curbing male behaviour. However, as in other cases, since women are not granted land rights, they remain dependants of men.

The politicisation of gender and restrictive laws about women in Muslim countries have often been explained in terms of the ubiquity of Islam in politics and culture. This paper offers an alternative explanation, one focused on the dynamics of patriarchy and the contradictions of development and social change. Patriarchy is defined here as a kinship-ordered social structure with strictly defined sex roles in which women are subordinated to men. Patriarchy persists where there is limited industrialisation, urbanisation and proletarianisation, and may be legislated by the state. At the same time, the collision of tradition and modernity and unwanted changes, particularly in the status of women, may result in a preoccupation with cultural identity on the part of some social groups. In such a context, calls may be made and measures taken to restore women to their `proper place'. This framework is used to analyse the politics of gender in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan during the 1980s. The difference in the three cases is that the Afghan state sought to undermine patriarchal structures through land reform and changes in marriage and family law, whereas in Iran and Pakistan the states fostered patriarchal ideology and practices.

According to the semiotic approach to culture adopted by the author, the nation should be distinguished not only from the state and society but from national culture as well, even though the nation is a community of shared values and symbols. The symbolic culture encoded in enduring means of communication can transgress political and national frontiers. Its elements may be evaluated in part irrespective of the relations and attitudes to the national source of their origin.

The neighbourhood of nations gives rise to numerous conflicts of interest. The history of Germany and Poland serves as an example of this. However, even violent practical conflicts do not preclude the transmission of the symbolic culture beyond national frontiers. This is illustrated by the example of the attitudes of Polish intellectuals toward German culture during the last war. Results of opinion polls are also discussed. The author concludes that a symbolic culture cannot resolve practical conflicts of interests nor remove fears originating in such conflicts, but its influence can prevent the totalisation of conflicts and open a way to mutual understanding.

Since 1971 United Nations resolutions have referred to racism without distinguishing it from racial discrimination. Racism is presented as historically and geographically specific, and as pathological, whereas discrimination is universal and normal. The concept of racism has been of great rhetorical power in mobilising international action for political change in Southern Africa. It has helped induce more than three-quarters of UN member states to become parties to the `International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination'. Antidiscrimination laws are designed to protect particular classes of people in particular social spheres from actions which have either the purpose or the effect of impairing the exercise of their human rights. These laws have developed rapidly in the last twenty-five years, but their relevance to sociological analysis is not yet appreciated. Since policies to reduce discrimination are based on diagnoses, implicit or explicit, of the causes of the behaviour that is to be modified, it is important to improve communication between sociologists and human rights lawyers.

The objective of this paper was to test the veracity of the conventional wisdom of Lebanese Sunni perceptions which states that they perceive members of the other confessional groups negatively, avoid contact with them, and look with disfavour at the Lebanese state. The data, which were collected between November 1989 and April 1990, come from a nationwide survey that comprised 500 male Lebanese Sunnis. The findings disclose that, with the exception of Sunni negative views on the Shi'is, they are not markedly hostile to Lebanon's other major ethno-religious groups. The Sunni propensity for inter-group cooperation, while symmetrical with their inter-group perceptions, is conspicuously more positive in its intensity. Finally, and in sharp contrast with the conventional proposition, the Sunnis exhibit very strong support for an independent and centralised Lebanese state.