Edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel. Bergin & Garvey, Connecticut, 2001. ISBN: 0897897153.

This book examines the clashes and complementarities between traditional therapies and biomedicine, which, in its many manifestations, is the dominant form of medicine supported by national governments, and is emblematic of the modernity to which they aspire.

By Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase. Orient Longman, New Dehli/Sangam, 2001. 279 pp. ISBN: 8125019871.

This book is an ethnographic study of a community of leather workers (the Rabi Das), and their transformations under global capitalism. The lived experiences of the Rabi Das are embedded within the broader context of India's economic liberalisation as well as in the local system of class and cultural relations in Bengali society.

In her richly textured narrative Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase uncovers the process of Rabi Das cultural and economic marginalisation despite more than four decades of efforts towards self-improvement. This book will be interest to readers in anthropology, comparative sociology, development studies and Asian Studies.

Edited by Nick Higginbotham, Glenn Albrecht and Linda Connor. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001. 408pp. ISBN: 0195511646 (PB).

Around the world, the need to find creative solutions to health problems has never been greater, and neither has the need to understand transdisciplinary research processes. Health Social Science: A Transdisciplinary and Complexity Perspective is an innovative text that defines and explains both the conceptual framework for transdisciplinary health research and its rationale, as well as presenting interesting examples of complex health problems to which the framework may be applied. In exploring detailed case studies of transdisciplinary teamwork in the areas of coronary heart disease and AIDS prevention, the book illustrates the barriers to be overcome and the opportunities provided by this type of research practice. It also instructs readers in the research tools required for transdisciplinary investigation.

Edited by Nick Higginbotham, Roberto Briceno-Leon and Nancy A. Johnson. Zed Books, London, 2001. 291pp. ISBN: 1842770519 (HB).

Health social science synthesizes diverse fields of knowledge in order to understand and solve complex health problems. This volume presents 10 case studies which reveal some of the best practice in health social science in developing countries. Each study addresses the critical question of how social and behavioral science approaches can make a difference in improving significant health problems. Examples drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific look at problems such as AIDS, people's reliance on traditional healers, STDs, smoking, heart disease, and psychological stress.

By Santi Rozario. The University Press Limited, Bangladesh, 2001. ISBN 9840516116.

This book explores the rich complexities of a central Bangladeshi village, populated by Muslims, Hindus and Christians. Santi Rozario demonstrates the ways in which class and communal domination reinforce gender inequality. The position of women is analysed in terms of linkages between religious values, sexuality, economics and politics.

By Kathleen Weekley. Manila. 2001. 320pp. ISBN: 9715423051.

This is a story about the Communist Party of the Philippines (CCP) from its founding in 1968 to its devastating splits in the early 1990s. Weekley asks why the CCP was not able to adjust to the changed political condition of EDSA, when its necessary to do so. Her answers refer to the role of theory and practice in the CCP has often been uneasy, because in no more than 20 years, the Party officially reviewed and altered its original strategy only once in 1974. Even leading intellectuals did not address the full implications of the “adjustments” they had been making to CCP theory along the way, until it was too late. Weekley shows how this severely hindered efforts to redefine the CCP's place in post-dictatorship politics. Using official and unofficial CCP documents, and information from her indepth interviews with ranking party cadres (former and present), Weekley tells a story that is critical of and yet symphatetic with the dilemmas of the CCP.

By Raymond Markey, Ann Hodgkinson, Terri Mylett and Simon Pomfret with Maree Murray and Michael Zanko. University of Wollongong Press, Wollongong, 2001. xxv+419pp. (PB).

The book summarises the main results from the Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS). The data is unique in that it provides the only comprehensive and statistically reliable source of information about workplace employee relations at the regional level in Australia, and compares regional patterns with national trends discovered by the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey 1995 (AWIRS 95). IRWIRS surveyed general managers and employee relations managers at 194 Illawarra workplaces with at least 20 employees (representing a quarter of all these workplaces in the region), as well as 1219 employees, 86 union delegates, and 154 small workplace managers (with less than 20 employees).

The data collected relates to industrial relations indicators, workplace ownership, market conditions, management organisation and decision-making in the workplace, the role of employer associations, performance monitoring, human resource management practices, equal employment opportunity, unions, communication, employee involvement, negotiations, payment systems, organisational change, working hours, wages, job satisfaction, and management and employee attitudes towards each other and unions.The book reveals a positive pattern of employment relations in the Illawarra, distinctive in many respects from national trends.