BOOK REVIEWS 119

traveler and reformer; Bholanath Chandra, another traveler who critiqued in

his writings the ideal of the "authentic" India; and Toru Dutt, whose father
gave her an English education and the opportunity to travel. Pandita Ramabai
and Parvati Athavale provide both the title and the life histories for the final
chapter of Home and Harem, "Pundita Ramabai and Parvati Athavale: Homes
for Women, Feminism, and Nationalism." Ramabai, whose pilgrimages and
travel through India and to England and the United States formed the parameters
for her participation in the reform movement for Indian women at home, was
also responsible in turn for the education of Athavale. Pundita Athavale was a
student in one of Ramabai's homes for Indian widows and went on, after exten-
sive travel-learning English and fundraising for the homes-in the United
States, to participate actively in the movement for Indian nationalism.
As Grewal maintains in the introduction to Home and Harem, her readings
exemplifY not just a "comparative" analysis but a "transnational" approach.
And such an approach insists compellingly that the "great game" was-and
perhaps continues to be-played not just in Parliament but in parlors too, not,
that is, just across mountainous steppes and passes but on the steps and in the
interiors of "home and harem."

BARBARA HARLOW
University of Texas-Austin

On Humane Governance. Toward a New Global Politics. By Richard Falk. University

Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1995. Pp. 288. $45.00 Hardcover.
ISBN 0271015114.

Hopes for the establishment of a new world order were disappointed when
the end of the Cold War failed to lead to a rethinking among the elite of
Western industrial nations. Their actions, geared toward "realistic" power politics,
were (or at least appeared to be) proven correct by the collapse of the Soviet
sphere of influence. The hopes of the least developed countries, however, that
the end of the East-West conflict would open the door to jointly combating
problems that could only be solved through global governance-poverty, envi-
ronmental destruction, and violence-have remained unfulfilled. On the con-
trary, the North-South conflict is becoming more pronounced. The mechanisms
of conflict resolution have remained half-hearted solutions.-The euphoria at
the disappearance of the bipolar world rapidly gave way to a sober assessment.
The world community's inability to establish, if not a global government then
at least a humane governance, has been demonstrated by the Gulf War and the
half-heartedness of the U.N. missions in Somalia and Rwanda. The conflict in
Iraq continues to stew; in Somalia and Rwanda, as in Bosnia before them, the
United Nations lost the prestige it had regained in the early 1990s. Two different
standards still apply; nationally and internationally normative principles are
being sacrificed to the constraints of power politics and economic interests. The

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120 BOOK REVIEWS

increasing connectivity of nations in the areas of economics, (information) tech-

nology, and the environment is bringing forth structures of geo-governance with
which the state-centered geopolitics common to Western industrial nations can-
not keep pace. The development of an inhumane governance is becoming appar-
ent, one which aims for an increase in competitiveness, growth, and accumulation
of capital and which for the most part is determined by the industrial nations:
the triad U.S.A., Japan, and Europe. There are, some chances for improve-
ment, particulary in Asia, but for a large part of the world's population the
situation is worsening.
The fundamental nature of the problem has been recognized, as is shown
by the discussion surrounding it. "The Global Civilization: Challenges for
Dem >cracy, Sovereignty and Security Project" (GCP), a program initiated by
the World Order Model ProJect (WOMP) in 1986, held yearly international con-
ferences with regional emphasis over the course of five years in Moscow,
Yokohama, Cairo, South Bend, and Harare. At these conferences, politicians
and social scientists spoke on the future of sovereignty, democracy, world pol-
itics, and economic policies and the question of a just world order.
The book under review is the GCP's final report, a summary and system-
atization of what came out of the discussion. The task of rapporteur was placed
upon the renowned theoretician of international politics and international law
Richard Falk, a professor at Princeton and member of the GCP steering
committee. Being sole author enabled Falk to violate the usual boundaries of
a project report and to incorporate the result of the discussion in a compre-
hensive study of the possible ways of realizing a (more) humane world order
on the basis of normative thought-a formidable challenge. This impressive
study is filled with good ideas, far-reaching analysis, and concise presentation
of the context. In view of the size of the task, the presentation was doomed
to fail, for in spite of everything a fundamentally new policy scheme is not
quite apparent.
We now have a general sense of the report's contents. After an introductory
analysis of the global political situation following the end of the Cold War-
in the transition from state-centered geopolitics to the formation of global struc-
tures of order-Falk issues a "triple indictment" against developments which,
as a result of the system of nation-states and the constraints of market politics,
benefit from the establishment of inhumane governance; First is global apartheid,
the deepening of the economic divide and the emphasis of ethnic contrasts
between a South that is becoming poorer and a North that is rich; and within
individual countries the deepening of these contrasts between different social
and ethnic population groups. Second is avoidable harm, that is, the spread of
abject poverty and the increasing threat to large portions of the world by inter-
and intranational violence and oppression. And third, is eco-imperialism, mean-
ing, the export of ecological problems, burdens, and responsibilities from North
to South. This indictment is well argued and convincingly supported.
While incorporating the results of the discussions on these topics, Falk tests