Bo o k Revi ews 65

developments in non-framing applications and the

innovations required to allow the wider use of steel in
developing countries.
A. J . MACDONALD
Political Studies from Spatial Perspectives
Anglo-American Essays on Political Geography
Edited by ALAN D. BURNETT and PETER
J. TAYLOR
John Wiley, 519 pp., ISBN 0 471 27909 9 (H)
20.60 (1981), ISBN 0 471 27910 2 (Paperback) 9.45.
THE LAST two decades have seen the social
sciences, especially sociology and economics, re-
affirm the political dimension in their respective in-
terpretation of society. Geography has not been slow
to follow and has further expanded its traditional
boundaries to encompass political studies to explain
spatial distribution. This stimulation has produced a
rich and diverse research activity among political geo-
graphers. The book, Political Studies f rom Spatial
Perspectives, reflects this research activity and aims
to indicate possible research directions for the 1980s.
The book brings together papers covering the three
territorial scales af local, national and international
and broadly is directed towards the spatial con-
sequences of political decision-making. The majority
of the papers (over 20 original papers from university
researchers and teachers of political and human geo-
graphy in North America and Great Britain) were first
presented at the Institute of British Geographers'
Conference in 1980. The editors, Burnett and Taylor,
link the various papers with a ' state of the art' com-
mentary, within sections covering an overview of
political geography, theoretical analysis, research
agenda and empirical studies (which include electoral
geography, community councils, urban services and
changing transport networks). The strengths of this
reader include a display of the pluralistic nature of
the topic while showing the diversity of interests, the
conflicts of various approaches at the various scales
of concern and the dilemmas of spatial comprehen-
sion of political processes. The weaknesses, needless
to say, lie with all such amalgams of diverse topics:
namely the lack of coherence and theoretical
authority in spite of the editorial introductory gym-
nastics. However, the content does not necessarily
set out to clarify but primarily to present a range of
political studies within a presentation order devised
by the editors.
Those authors spreadeagled across the divide of
political science and geography while considering
Iocational patterns tended to show the strain of the
spread. Those who remained in the domain of politi-
cal science to focus on territorial analysis displayed
more conviction, so the more substantive papers ap-
peared to be concerned with theoretical political
analysis, as shown by the papers by Agnew and Dear,
for example, covering respectively ' A Theory of the
Local State' and ' Structural and Dialectical Theories
of Political Regionalism'. In terms of empirical
research, often constrained by limited resources, the
public inquiry, among other examples, was shown to
be a convenient vehicle for the study of locational
conflict, with the benefits of its own study boun-
daries, a ' captive audience' and often a detailed in-
formation source.
The lurch of knowledge, ideas and approaches
from a descriptive and causal set of explanations,
with their flirtation with quantitative and systems
views of analysis, to the normative and commentary
on public policy found in geography parallels the
paradigmatic shift experienced generally in the social
sciences. These papers echo this shift, and further
question the basic units of research approach and the
traditional boundaries of political geography.
I. APPLETON