Greening the Gatt, trade, environment and the future

B o o k Reviews justify everything from a post-Cold War Pentagon strategy of 'environmental security' to right-wing (racially-coded) government attitudes to the 'underclass'. In Part II, 'Human Nature', the focus shifts somewhat to contemporary notions of life, especially human life, and its increasingly ambiguous status as technological developments, such as those associated with reproductive sciences, genetic engineering and artificial evolution, complicate ever further the never simple relationship between the biological and the artifactual. In her essay, Tiziana Terranova takes as her starting point one product of such 'seemingly unstoppable confusion' (p. 165) and provides a starkly critical examination of how the rhetoric of 'cyberculture' binds the most unlikely allies in its heralding of the 'posthuman'. Without departing from the central thematic of border traffic, Part III, 'Futurenatural', heralds another change of emphasis, this time towards considerations of some of the ways in which the mixed-up world sketched in the previous chapters has been or might be fruitfully revisioned. Of specific interest to several of the authors here is how ideas derived from scientific theory have become popular cultural metaphors, and what this implies for our understanding of the differences, similarities, and connections between these respectively 'hard' and 'soft' modes of inquiry. 'Chaos' and 'complexity' are, of course, invoked here, while Slavoj ZiZek provides a dense but provocative piece centred around the muchvaunted comparison of quantum physics and poststructuralist theory. At their best, the essays contained in FutureNatural furnish us with privileged access to some of the stories which together, as Katherine Hayles puts it in her chapter, 'constitute a multilayered system of metaphoric and material relays through which "life"', "nature", and the "human" are being redefined' (p. 146). These are stories of the most concrete kind: world-making - - that is to say world-changing - - stories through which what counts as 'the future of nature" is being performed very much in the hic et nunc. By following these narratives through the heterogeneous mediations (variously coded 'technical', 'cultural', and so on) by which they operate (Evelyn Fox Keller's account of 'the biological gaze' is exemplary in this respect), the authors yield up a series of problematics which demand our urgent attention. As the French philosopher-cum-historian of science, Michel Serres, has recently written, the proliferation of such problematics radically alters our position vis-gl-vis nature-as-world: our relationship to questions of 'death, life, reproduction, the normal and the pathological' no longer takes the form can decide, but rather must decide. As he puts it: 'in dominating the planet, we become accountable for it' (Serres with Latour 1995, p. 173). In light of this fact, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that so little attention (with the honourable exceptions of Nelly Oudshoorn and Sarah Kember) is paid in the book to those writers like Serres, like Donna Haraway, like Bruno Latour, who have been most active in providing the tools and figures that such accountability will require. Such a gripe is probably slightly unfair though - - the essays were, after all, originally conference papers and often seem significantly restricted even in their final form by word-count requirements - - in terms of providing a suggestive sketch of this most vital of terrain, one that will encourage many readers to delve further and deeper, FutureNatural must be considered a success. NICK BINGHAM Department of Geography Universtty of Bristol

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Reference Serres, M. with Latour, B. (1995) Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. University of Michigan Press, Michigan.

Greening the Gatt, Trade, Environment and the Future, Daniel C. Esty, 1994, Institute for International Economics, Washington DC, £14.99 pbk, ISBN 0-88132-205 -9 This book takes a look at how the tensions between trade and environment policy might be resolved in an era when a globalisation vision is holding sway. Daniel Esty has been a participant-observor of the GATI" process and the spirited questioning of trade liberalisation impacts. He sets himself the task of making a case for a new environmental regime centred on a Global Environmental Organisation (GEO) to counterbalance the trade regime centred on the World Trade Organisation (WTO). He begins by tracing the history of the trade-environment conflict as it has emerged in recent decades, stressing the growing awareness of trade in environment and environment in trade issues. Unabashedly from the trade liberalisation stable, he sees parallel institution building as the way to resolve conflicts which stem from the different perspectives of trade and environment protagonists. For Esty, 'The goal, recognizing both the value of free trade as a boost to economic growth and the need to safeguard the environment, is to ensure that environmental sensitivities are built into the international trade regime and to guarantee that free trade requirements are respected to the fullest extent possible in environmental policymaking' (p. 32). The book has many strong points. Foremost, it is an exacting complication of official history and legislation relating to trade-environmental tensions, usefully put into several appendices, including one summarising the remarkably few trade and environment cases, a record that indicates the politicisation of issues has not proceeded very far. The book is also a rich source of mainstream literature on G A I T and Green politics. Most importantly, the book contains the full weight of argument assembled in favour of both a pro-GATF-WTO regime and a pro-Environment regime. The special value of the book lies in the cross-fertilisation of ideas which comes from recognising the many interdependencies that characterise the trade-environment nexus. Yet, exploring at this time a parallel regime structure, a GEO to keep the WTO company, simply glosses over serious flaws behind much official discussion of tradeenvironment relationships. Esty accepts trade iiberalisation as a natural path for world development. Whether because of this view, or for other unstated reasons, he examines regime options without regard to the realities from which many critics are vehemently questioning the Green-GATl" model he proposes. In Esty's ideal world, the concern is just how to facilitate growth. It has little or nothing to do with answering distributional questions as part of the growth process. While acknowledging the ambiguous and often bitter politics of Rio, he moves into a sanitised world that is not complicated by complex and pressing issues, such as those of North-South acrimony, corporate dominance of world trade, debt obligations, labour standards, changing powers of nation states,

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advocacy of NGOs and so on. In this messier world, the issues of the day go far beyond how restraints on growth might be lifted, or how ardent free traders might respect environmentalist claims. Even these concerns fail to go to the big problems of sustainable development, namely the enormous pressures for growth rooted in particular consumption patterns, the sidelining of much of Africa from the development stakes or the deep seated and nagging issues of distribution which lurk beneath the trade-environment debate. Esty's considered case is thus in the end ahistorical and lacking any sense of the present cultural and political turmoil relating to GATY and the WTO. He fails to see that his G E O can, indeed must, be about more than re-disciplining state-behaviour. Rather it would be far more useful if his GEO model squarely addressed enterprise rules, where governance issues relating to citizenry (and the uncitizened) as well as profits require urgent debate. Switching the spotlight onto the corporates as enterprise states would be a more worthy commitment of WTO resources at the moment than attempting to refine the liberalisation framework. Some G A T I ' - W T O watchers have referred to the whole process as essentially anti-people. The use on the book's cover of the dolphin as the representative of flora and fauna on the planet does little to dispel the depth to which that thinking permeates the trade-environment debate.

dominance and subordination in relations 'between the self and others, between us and them' (p. 2). The theoretical orientation of the ensuing inquiry draws on the work of Raymond Williams, Michel Faucault and Judith Williamson to recast a familiar dichotomy of media research - - the distinction between manifest and latent content. The discourse of advertising is seen to function on two levels: a primary level that comprises the messages that the advertiser wished to communicate; and a secondary level of latent messages about society and culture. In interpreting the meaning of an advertisement, the author also argues that it is important to look beyond producers' intentions and recognise that the audience collaborates in constructing meaning. That is easier said than done, as the history of media research amply shows, but O'Barr sees a route out of this difficulty by inviting readers themselves to act as the audience. This leads to a book that proceeds in two halves. The early chapters (2-4) seek to acquaint readers with the conventions and techniques of representing Otherness in advertising so that they can participate in deciphering how meaning is defined in the advertising process. The source material includes illustrations from an archival collection of Kodak print advertistements, the National Geographic magazine for 1929, and contemporary travel and business magazines. The basic conclusion revealed by comparative analysis of these sources is that the ideological principles underpinning representation have not changed much over time.

R I C H A R D LE H E R O N

Department of Geography University of Auckland

Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising, W. M. O'Barr, 1994, Westview Press, Boulder, £43.95 hbk, ISBN 0-8133-2196-4, £11.95 pbk, ISBN 0-8133-2197-2 A welcome spin-off from the recent 'cultural turn' in the social sciences is the way that popular culture has come in from the cold. Anything from travel brochures to rock music, science-fiction cinema to seaside postcards now merits study from those concerned with modes of cultural representation and the social transmission of values. Yet perhaps no single cultural artefact has gained more from this development than the advertisement. Advertising research, once commonly held in low esteem due to its connections with market research or the training requirements of conservative professional institutes, now attracts the attention of a multidisciplinary community. Inter alia, the advertisement is scrutinised as an art object, as a rich source of imagery about changing patterns of consumption, and as a sensitive indicator of changing values about gender and social relationships.

Culture and the Ad focuses on representations of the 'Other' in historical and contemporary advertising. Written from an American perspective, it examines representations of 'foreigners' (particularly the Japanese) and other categories of 'outsiders' (notably indigenous and African Americans) in advertising. The book argues that such representations provide 'paradigms for relations between members of advertising's intended audience and those defined as outside it'. These paradigms are viewed in ideological terms, identifying themes such as hierarchy,

The second half of the book (chapters 5-8) reflects the author's wish to move himself out of the 'central role as critical interpreter' (p. 14). A set of 43 well-chosen advertisements is chosen for the reader to consider the ways in which African Americans have been portrayed in American advertising, ranging from the ever-grinning servants of the 1930s to the self-conscious attempts to break the stereotypes in the 1980s. This is followed by a chapter comparing depictions of Japanese in American magazines with those of Americans in Japanese literature. The concluding chapter briefly considers the future. The author suggests that representations of dominance and subordination are unlikely to alter significantly given the degree of familiarity with the images, social relations and inequalities that make up the discourse of advertising. Taken as a whole, the prime attraction of this book undoubtedly lies in its visual content. I defy anyone with the slightest interest in either American society or advertising to pick up this book and fail to become engrossed in the 130 adverts. Even though publishing costs only allowed them to be reprinted in monochrome, they retain their fascination and power as a repository of evidence of values and attitudes. While historic adverts for Kodak or for tourist trips on the railroads permit glimpses into past worlds, they also remain worth studying for their insight into contemporary issues of subordination and servitude. On the debit side, O'Barr is perhaps the victim of his own worthwhile objectives. In empowering the reader to approach imagery without the intervention of immediately-attached interpretative captions, the author invites the question as to whether the initial theoretical analysis serves as more than window-dressing; a scene-setting that is de rigeur for a cultural studies text. After all, the advertisements are well-chosen and thematically arranged. It is perfectly possible to skip much of the conceptual material and move straight to the advertisements without signifi-