Book Reviews 89

The study seeks to analyse and explain the evolution of public enterprise and its social context. Its objective, according to the authors, is ‘to show that particular policies and their implementation transcend individuals and have their roots in the interaction of social forces and objective conditions of the period which tend to constrain the options and behaviour of policy-makers of that time’.

The study is organized into 25 chapters, the second of which conceptualizes the intermediate regime and its variants. In the later chapters these are related to the specific experience of Bangladesh. The debates on the growth and role of public enterprise are discussed in the context of the nationalist movement, its transformation into a mass movement, the confrontation with the West Pakistan ruling class, the liberation of the East Wing and the emergence of Bangladesh. The discussion then moves on to the genesis of public enterprise policies in the new state, the unresolved tensions and conflicts within the nationalist movement and within the society; and the impact of public enterprise policies on the tensions and conflicts. The highlight of this study is the review of the organization and performance of public enterprise in the context of the environmental constraints conditioning its emergence and present role.

This study was conceived and carried out as part of a collaborative research project sponsored by research organizations in Bangladesh, India, Napal, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand. This Bangladesh study is the first and only one to be completed. Its comprehensiveness, its clarity of analysis and conclusions make it a very valuable contribution in this field.

V. KANESALINGAM Marga Institute, Sri Lanka

URBAN FOOD MARKETING AND THIRD WORLD RURAL DEVELOPMENT T. Scarlett Epstein Croom Helm, London and Canberra, 1982,260 pp.

The author is well known for her interest in development issues and for her inclination to bring to the study of what are often taken to be economic problems the most detailed observations and lower level generalization that derive from anthropological field work. In this book about markets in Papua New Guinea she also attempts to draw out practical conclusions about how to improve intra-country food distribution that will be obvious to development agencies.

Epstein’s most important finding is that for the majority of vendors an informal price fixing arrangement, which results in quite a lot of food being thrown away or taken home, is convenient in that it equates with a cultural disinclination to haggle and it meets their usually short term financial objectives. Only the minority of ‘profiteers’ are inclined to lower their prices-that is increase the size of their fixed price bundle of goods-as the day wears on to maximize their profit at the margin. This Epstein argues constitutes an inefficient means of supplying the national market with produce. Price differentials between one market and another are considerable and exceed the transport costs that would be involved in taking the goods from one to another, yet there is a dearth of middlemen: perhaps again for cultural reasons .

Her recommendations for training and infrastructural developments contrast favourably with apparent attempts of the authorities to control prices (p. 22) or to set up fresh food marketing structures which only serve big farmers and ignore the surplus in the market places (p. 231). Yet I found myself remaining with two kinds of doubt, first that the technical problems of handling small quantities of perishable commodities had been adequately consi- dered, and secondly whether cultural variables identified as influence upon behaviour in the market place really had as much to do with the fortunes of the producer sellers or their contribution to the economy as constraints upon their pattern of production: which were not discussed.

DONALD CURTIS Development Administration Group

Birmingham University