CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

GLENDA ABRAMSON teaches Hebrew literature at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies

GERALDINE BEDELL writes for Night and Day

ANDREW BROWN writes on virtually anything

BARRY BUZAN is professor of international relations at the University of Westminster

LESLEY CHAMBERLAIN is the author of Nietzsche in Turin (Quartet)

JEREMY CLARKE is a freelance writer

ROY DENMAN was EU ambassador to the US

SUSAN GREENBERG is a freelance journalist and editorial consultant

VIJAY JOSHI is fellow' of Merton College and reader in economics, University of Oxford. He is co-author of India’s Economic Reforms 1991-2001 (OUP 1996)

GARRISON KEILLOR is a novelist and radio presenter

ANGELA LAMBERT is a journalist and the author of Kiss and Kin (Bantam Press, 1997)

GERARD LEMOS is a publisher. He is training to be a social entrepreneur

NICK MARTIN-CLARK is a freelance journalist

SIMON MAXWELL is director of the Overseas Development Institute

JOHN PLENDER writes for the Financial Times

FREDERIC RAPHAEL is a novelist

MATT RIDLEY is a science writer. His most recent book is The Origins of Virtue (Viking)

GERALD SEGAL is director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies

LEE M SILVER is professor of evolutionary biology at Princeton University

HAZHIR TEIMOURIAN writes on the middle east

MITSUKO UCHIDA is a classical pianist from Japan who was raised in Austria. She now lives in London

ALEX DE WAAL is associate of Inter-Africa Group, Ethiopia, and author of Famine Crimes (James Currey 1997)

GEOFF WATTS presents Medicine Now (BBC)

PETER WAYNE is serving 13years for robbery at Lindholme prison

MICHAEL YOUNG is director of the Institute of Community Studies and author of The Rise of theMeritocracy (1958)

Prospect

O P IN IO N S 8 TWO TIERS FOR THE FUTURE LEE M SILVER Will your descendant be a genetic aristocrat 300 years from now?

F7Ps only. Page 9

9 THE MEETING IS THE MESSAGE SUSAN GREENBERG The Davos World Forum has become too big for its ski boots.

10 ACCUSO FREDERIC RAPHAEL attacks the little people who hounded a scholar and a gentleman.

12 FAMILY AND KINSHIP REVISITED MICHAEL YOUNG AND GERARD LEMOS Reformers should learn from the informal mutual aid that predated the welfare state.

14 DEBATE: DOES AID WORK? ALEX DE WAAL AND SIMON MAXWELL Do third world aid programmes do any good?

Issue twenty-seven February 1998

Blurred boundaries. Page 18

ESSAYS 18 A WESTERN THEME BARRY BUZAN AND GERALD SEGAL There will be no clash of civilisations. Western ideas will remain dominant, but by blending with others.

Merchant navy. Page 24

24 CHALK AND CHEESE MITSUKO UCHIDA Britons and Germans seem similar, but their intellectual and political traditions are opposite poles in Europe.

29 DARWIN ON THE MIND MATT RIDLEY How much behaviour is innate? Quite a lot, according to Steven Pinker and the increasingly influential school of evolutionary psychology.

The instinctive gene. Page 29

2 PROSPECT February 1998