Thailand suffered invasion, inflation, and defeat in World War II. From its badly disorganized economy it was obliged by the peace treaty to deliver rice for several years to the United Nations at prices well below the prevailing free market price. In spite of this its international reserves have made a spectacular recovery and its present growth rate puts it in the front rank among the less developed countries. This is not to say that an account of Thailand's development since World War II is simply a success story.

Our Daily Fix is about drug use and abuse in Australia today. The book deals with drugs - both legal and illegal - in their social context, who uses them, why, and with what effect. It examines government policies, community initiatives and public education about drugs; and its focus is upon the values which have created our drug dependent society. Above all, Our Daily Fix offers ideas and strategies for dealing with these issues, and plans for action.

This book presents a collection of papers which discuss the origins of the domestic ideal and its effects on activities usually undertaken by women: not only on women's wage work, but also on activities either not defined as work or accorded an ambiguous status. It begins with a discussion of how Evangelical aims led to the formation of the ideology of domesticity, which was subsequently moulded to other purposes by economic forces. Within this ideology, the one public arena considered suitable for work by upper-class women was philanthropy.

The Riverine Plain of south-eastern Australia, which extends through parts of southern New South Wales and northern Victoria, is an area of outstanding economic importance. On it has developed a large part of Australia's irrigated agriculture, and the future will see further development of its soils and water resources. The aim of this study is to bring together into a coherent whole the fragmented studies that have been carried out over the years and to amplify them by encouraging further investigation.

Law pervades the social, political, and economic aspects of the lives of all people in all communities. In Papua New Guinea, as in many emerging nations, however, law is not always the panoplied abstraction of western nations; rather, it is the customary law, in which discussions and arguments about disputes within the groups are carried on until consensus is reached. Contention and Dispute presents several case histories from different parts of Papua New Guinea showing what people argue about and how they settle their differences.

The Hong Kong Human Ecology Programme was a first attempt to describe the ecology of a city and its human population in a holistic and integrative way. This book is the outcome. It is concerned with the 'system as a whole' - changing patterns of flow and use of energy, of nutrients and of water, and changes in housing and transport. It is also concerned with individual people - their actual conditions of life and their mental and physical health.

Till the beginning of the nineteenth century the Pacific Islands had known Europeans mainly as transient visitors. Before it ended they had been drawn within the frontiers of the Western world. The changing way of life of the Pacific is shown through this series of portraits of men and women who lived in the islands between the early years of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of the First World War.

This book makes it possible for those who need to know and think about the issues raised by the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration to do so without having to read all the Commission's formidable documentation. It also includes the full text of the Commission's own summary of its findings and recommendations - here published for the first time.