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REVIEWS

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration inthe Age of Colorblindness, by MichelleAlexander. New York, NY: The NewPress, 2010. 290pp. $27.95 cloth. ISBN:9781595581037.

ROBERT C. HAUHART

Saint Martin’s [email protected]

In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer andOhio State University law professor MichelleAlexander examines the legal and socialframework that supports the regime ofmass incarceration of black men in the Unit-ed States. As Alexander carefully recounts,beginning in the early 1980s with PresidentReagan’s declaration of a ‘‘War on Drugs,’’a number of policy initiatives, SupremeCourt decisions, and vested interests, aidedand abetted by political divisiveness andpublic apathy, coalesced to create the social,legal, and political environment that has sup-ported mass incarceration ever since.Alexander’s analysis reveals disturbing par-allels between the racial caste systems ofslavery, Jim Crow, and today’s mass incarcer-ation of black men in our country. In the end,however, Alexander shies away from pro-posing a potentially successful strategy forredressing the dilemma she so carefullydepicts. Rather, she ‘‘punts,’’ or ‘‘cops out,’’as we would have said in earlier eras.

Alexander begins her analysis with a briefhistory of the several hundred years of vari-ously oppressive race relations betweenwhites and blacks in the United States. Quitecorrectly, Alexander observes that this histo-ry may be fruitfully understood as a sequenceof renascent forms of social control re-fashioned to the new tenor of the times.Thus, Alexander traces the history of Ameri-can political rhetoric in the latter half of thetwentieth century where ‘‘law and order’’comes to constitute code for ‘‘the race prob-lem’’ and a policy of malign neglect towardAfrican Americans is transmuted into anactive political strategy devised to developRepublican political dominance in the

southern states. Ultimately, as we know, thetwin themes of crime and welfare propelledRonald Reagan into the presidency. Search-ing for a follow-up initiative to define his ear-ly presidency, Reagan settled on increasedattention to street crime, especially druglaw enforcement. In short, the War on Drugswas not some disembodied social agenda,nor was it driven by public demand, asonly two percent of Americans believedcrime was an important issue at the time.Rather, as Alexander shows, the War onDrugs was a direct outgrowth of race-basedpolitics and therefore the fact that it has hada disproportionate impact on young blackmen should come as no surprise.

Alexander next turns her attention to theinterwoven details of the social, legal, andpolitical fabric that wrap the War on Drugsin supportive garb. As Alexander recites,the War on Drugs is the cornerstone on whichthe current regime of race-based mass incar-ceration rests because: (a) convictions fordrug offenses are the single most importantcause of the explosion in incarceration ratessince 1980, and (b) black Americans are dis-proportionately arrested, convicted, andsubjected to lengthy sentences for drugoffenses when compared to white Ameri-cans, even though drug use rates amongwhite Americans have been consistentlyshown to be higher than for black Americans.Thus, any practices or policies that supportthe execution of the War on Drugs supportthe continuation of our movement towardmass incarceration of an entire category ofAmericans. Among the many developmentsAlexander reviews, one may note: changes inSupreme Court doctrine with respect topolice stops, warrantless searches, consentsearches, and suspicionless police sweepsfor drug activity; federal initiatives to offergrants to support narcotics task forces; thedevelopment and expansion of moderndrug forfeiture laws which permitted stateand local law enforcement agencies to keepthe vast majority of seized cash and assetsin drug raids; and the legislative enactmentof mandatory minimum and ‘‘three strikes’’sentencing schemes, and their ready

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acceptance by the Supreme Court. Alexanderis at her masterful best when elucidating inconcise form the emergence of each of thesetrends and their consequent impact onincreased arrest, conviction, and incarcera-tion for primarily young black men over thelast thirty years. She is, of course, quite cor-rect to be indignant about the fact that theSupreme Court upheld a sentence of fortyyears imprisonment for possession and anattempt to sell nine ounces of marijuana in1982 (Hutto v. Davis, 454 U.S. 370).

Moreover, as Alexander further explains,the debilitating impact of our country’s Waron Drugs does not end once a person convictedfor a drug offense serves his or her sentence.Rather, an increasingly long and punitive listof collateral consequences now extends a per-son’s assignment to second-class status nearlypermanently. Thus, offenders may be ineligible(for life) for federally-funded health and wel-fare benefits, food stamps, public housing,and federal educational assistance; deniedadmission and licensure to many forms ofemployment and professional occupations;denied the ability to enlist in the military, pur-chase a firearm, obtain a federal security clear-ance, and restricted from voting. The result, asAlexander compellingly depicts, is not thatdrug law offenders face ‘‘problems of reentryinto society’’ as the current rhetoric of criminaljustice exhorts, but rather that convictedoffenders are ‘‘boxed in’’ (by having to admittheir conviction on forms) and thereby forcedout, often permanently, from many legitimaterelationships with society. Alexander’s analy-sis of these developments is pithy and nearlyflawless. She falters occasionally, however,when she attempts to place some of theseevents in a political context and chart the polit-ical landscape that will need to emerge to putan end to The New Jim Crow.

Alexander begins her final chapter by dis-cussing what she calls the ‘‘relative quiet’’ ofthe civil rights community in the face of themass incarceration of the people of colorshe describes. She wonders—given the mag-nitude and unfairness of the presentsystem—why the War on Drugs has notbecome ‘‘. . .the top priority of every civilrights organization in the country’’ (p. 212).In answering her own question, Alexandernotes that subsequent to Brown v. Board ofEducation in 1954 civil rights organizations

became increasingly professionalized—primarily by lawyers. Consequently, manyof the civil rights issues were framed in legalterms, pursued in the legal arena, andreduced to legally achievable solutions. Bydoing so, Alexander believes that the civilrights advocacy groups disconnected them-selves from the community and relinquishedthe grassroots source of their moral strength.They also foreswore the goal of activelymobilizing public opinion against theoppressive laws and social conditions theydeplored.

In the end, Alexander offers a number ofwhat she calls ‘‘conversation starters.’’ First,she states unequivocally that ‘‘tinkering’’with the present arrangements will not likelyachieve notable results; rather, she believeswe must end the War on Drugs. Second, indoing so, Alexander suggests we must talkexplicitly about race and oppose the tenden-cy to obfuscate the situation with a retreatinto denial behind the official veil of color-blindness. Third, Alexander suggests that itmay be time for civil rights groups to stepaway from affirmative action because of itstendency to shield the racial caste systemfrom scrutiny and redress. Finally, Alexan-der questions the success of the AfricanAmerican strategy to infiltrate elite institu-tions, including President Obama’s ascen-dance to the presidency, and thereby let civilrights ‘‘trickle down’’ to the mass of theblack community.

In lieu of these traditional approaches,unfortunately, Alexander offers little butplatitudes, wishful bromides, and cliches.Thus, for example, she suggests that ‘‘. . . .[blacks and whites alike] must lay downour racial bribes, join hands with people ofall colors who are not content to wait forchange to trickle down, and say to thosewho would stand in our way: Accept all ofus or none’’ (p. 245). However, as sociologistseverywhere recognize, to make a job ‘‘every-one’s’’ responsibility is to make it ‘‘no one’s’’responsibility. Apparently without irony,Alexander also soberly advises us that, ‘‘Allof this is easier said than done’’ (p. 247). Fora lawyer who has retreated from theentrenched fray of overturning the SupremeCourt’s precedents on sentencing, which sheabhors, her call upon the civil rights commu-nity to re-frame itself and get to work is not

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a call to arms but an invitation to snore. Insum, like many other indignant analyses ofthe highly objectionable War on Drugsoffered over the last thirty years, Alexander’ssuperb historical and legal review evades thehard work of developing a potentially effec-tive strategy for mobilizing progressivesocial action that is required.

Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics ofNumbers in Global Crime and Conflict, editedby Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.287pp. 24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780801476181.

MEGAN C. KURLYCHEK

University at Albany, [email protected]

Rarely in our society do we speak of an eventor phenomenon without quantifying it. Ifsomething is a problem, we want to knowhow big of a problem it is. If something isbeneficial, we want to know just how muchit will help. From advertisements that touttheir product as 50 percent better than theleading competitor, to nightly newscaststhat frighten us with figures of increasing dis-ease and crime rates, our intellectual appe-tites crave answers that we can sink our teethinto. Numbers have proven to be the food ofchoice.

Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics ofNumbers in Global Crime and Conflict is a capti-vating chronicle of our attempts to bringorder to the chaotic world around us by cat-egorization and quantification. At the mostbasic level this book is a collection of excel-lent essays each with a unique contribution.Individual essays explore the intriguingworlds of human trafficking, drug cartels,terrorism, and the human tragedies of war.Yet each piece in the collection also speaksto larger linkages that unify and give pur-pose to the collection. Themes connectingthe assorted topics include the difficultiesin obtaining reliable estimates, the dangersof misrepresenting the underlying phenom-enon, and the creation and consequences ofpolitical agendas formed upon these fiction-al foundations. The final result is a productthat intrigues and informs the reader fromcover to cover.

The foundation of this book is built uponthe human need to understand the worldaround us with science being the tool weuse to form such understanding. Unfortu-nately, numbers are too often mistaken forhard science regardless of their origin oraccuracy. Moreover, many key issues weseek to study are not simply quantified.Indeed, as noted by Peter Andreas andKelly Greenhill in the first chapter, manyof the activities we are most interested inexamining are purposefully hidden fromus by their actors (e.g., organized crime,drug dealing, war crimes, etc.) The neces-sary result being that the numbers reportedare rarely, if ever, an accurate assessmentof the phenomenon. Rather, the numberswe so dearly hold to be true are at best ascientific guess, and at worst, a mereillusion.

While it is not necessarily wrong toestimate, or as we often say in my field,‘‘guestimate,’’ Sex, Drugs, and Body Countsclearly depicts how estimates are often notpresented as such but rather are formulatedas fact. Once breathing, the numbers take ona life of their own such that they are oftrepeated, republished, and ultimately reifiedas fact even when one is hard-pressed tofind a legitimate genesis. This particularissue is nicely highlighted in Chapter Two,‘‘The Politics of Measuring Illicit Flows andPolicy Effectiveness’’ by Peter Andreas, asthe author searches for the source of a figur-e placing the profits of the internet por-nography market at $20 billion-a-year.One agency cites another with that agencyin turn citing another and so on and soforth. In the end, no official source is everfound.

Moreover, Lara J. Nettelfield posits inChapter Seven, ‘‘Research and Repercus-sions of Death Tolls,’’ that once a numberhas achieved general acceptance anyonewho challenges its origin may be cast avillain. Using the original estimate of200,000 to 250,000 killed in the Bosnianwar, the author reveals that when moreaccurate counts became available that low-ered the death toll substantially, thosereporting the new, more accurate numberswere criticized for attempting to minimizethe importance of the war and its humanloss.

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Of perhaps even greater importance thanthe creation of a number is its consequence.As noted by W.I. and D.S. Thomas, ‘‘If mendefine situations as real, they are real in theirconsequences’’ (1928, pp. 571–72). This ‘‘real-ity’’ created by numbers then leads to publicpolicy responses such that if a number isoverinflated the policy response is oftentoo severe, and if it is underreported or‘‘absent’’ from the data the response is inad-equate. Although some might argue thatoverestimation is not necessarily a ‘‘badthing’’ as it can lead to a more rapid policyresponse to an issue, such fabrication mustnecessarily have consequences. As high-lighted by Kelly Greenhill in Chapter Six,‘‘Counting the Cost,’’ one potential conse-quence is the loss of public and politicaltrust if numbers seem too illogical. On theother hand, if trust is gained, scarce resour-ces could be misallocated based on purpose-ful misrepresentations.

Furthermore, if a policy response is indeedcalled for, then we must of course also mea-sure how successful the policy has been ataddressing the given problem. Herein liesanother opportunity for ambiguity. As dulynoted by Sue Eckert and Thomas Bierstekerin Chapter 10, ‘‘(Mis)Measuring Success inCountering the Financing of Terrorism,’’when the behavior to be thwarted is criminal,much of the information upon which anassessment of effectiveness might be basedis ‘‘classified.’’ Thus, similar to the shadowsin which the counting of crime occurs, thesuccess of efforts to prevent or reduce itremain cloaked as well.

The above summary offers but a mereglimpse into the rich and meaningful infor-mation provided in this book. In my opinion,Andreas and Greenhill have compiled a com-pelling set of readings that will interest soci-ologists, political scientists, anthropologists,and criminologists alike. One might evenhope that this novel collection would findits way into the hands of journalists who sooften report the numbers, and the averagecitizen who is the unwitting consumer. How-ever, I end with a caution: although the title‘‘Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts’’ is indeed‘‘sexy,’’ the book is not for adult entertain-ment but rather mature audiences. Bymature, I mean those ready to open theirminds to question the reality in which they

live, and to be educated rather than remaineager consumers of numbers.

Reference

Thomas, W.I. and D.S. Thomas. 1928. The Child inAmerica: Behavior Problems and Programs. NewYork: Knopf.

Migration in a Globalised World: New ResearchIssues and Prospects, edited by CedricAudebert and Mohamed Kamel Doraı.Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam UniversityPress, 2010. 215pp. $39.95 paper. ISBN:9789089641571.

MATTHEW R. SANDERSON

Kansas State [email protected]

International migration, long neglected asa salient feature of globalization, is increas-ingly becoming the object of study for schol-ars interested in understanding some of themost vexing issues confronting contempo-rary societies, including state sovereignty,notions of citizenship, and belongingnessand human rights. As migration patternshave become more globalized, the determi-nants and consequences of these flows havebecome more complex, and scholars arereconsidering some of the fundamental ideasand categories upon which the field of migra-tion studies has been constructed. As a result,migration studies is experiencing an espe-cially dynamic period, with an array of newconcepts and analytical frameworks thatattempt to make sense of migration in global-izing world.

This volume highlights several of the keytrends in the field and points to some newdirections for research. Cedric Audebertand Mohamed Kamel Doraı assemble a col-lection of papers from an international con-ference organized by the Migrinter researchcenter at the University of Poitiers and theHumanitarianNet European network in2006. The volume is organized around fourthemes.

Part I includes three chapters that addressthe issues of migrant settlement, integration,and social cohesion in host societies. The

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opening chapter by Rinus Penninx providesan overview of research on migrant integra-tion in Europe since the 1970s, focusingexclusively on research conducted by theIMISCOE research network. In a particularlyinteresting chapter, Roger Waldinger usesdata from the 2003 International Social Sur-vey Program module on national identity tocompare public opinions of immigrants inthe United States and France. He finds someinsightful differences between publics butalso an interesting similarity in the politicsof immigration in the two countries: ‘‘leftand right fundamentally agree on the needto keep external boundaries controlled’’(p. 59). The following chapter by Sari Hanaficoncludes this section with a discussion ofthe Danish cartoon controversy in 2006 andthe perception of Muslim immigrants inWestern societies. Hanafi uses the Danishcartoon controversy as an example of howcultural hegemony works against migrantsin Western countries.

The second part of the book consists ofthree chapters that deal with migrant trans-nationalism. Thomas Faist opens this sec-tion with a wide-ranging essay on the topic,arguing that transnationalist approachesoffer a ‘‘counter-balance’’ (p. 101) to macro-level perspectives of migration while allow-ing for critical inquiry into the cross-nationalsocial processes that underlie global socialhierarchies. The following chapter by Ales-sandro Monsutti takes a critical approachto transnational studies, pointing out thedifference between ‘‘an intellectual flirta-tion’’ and a ‘‘genuine theoretical enrichmentcapable of leading to a new ethnographicpractice’’ (p. 121). This section is concludedwith an especially eclectic chapter by Ste-phane de Tapia, who describes the manyaspects of time and space in the concept oftransnationalism, emphasizes pitfalls in‘‘the language of migration’’ (p. 128), anddescribes the links between transnational-ism studies and a few strands of Frenchmigration research.

Two chapters in Part III discuss the issue ofmigration and development. Ronald Skel-don covers most of the key issues on this top-ic in a very limited space, including remittan-ces, diasporas, and the brain drain. Skeldonprovides a balanced overview, arguing that

migration is an ‘‘integral part of thedevelopment process’’ but that ‘‘we shouldbe well-aware of its limitations’’ (p. 156). Pat-rick Gonin approaches the migration-development nexus by describing migrantsas ‘‘frontier runners’’ (p. 161) that move andsettle in host countries in order to buildcapacity and resources for development intheir origin country. In doing so, Gonin con-tends that migrants become ‘‘circulating peo-ple with multiple and accepted territorial-ities’’ (p. 177).

Part IV consists of two chapters on forcedmigration. The chapter by Michel Agierdescribes an increasingly close, and contra-dictory, association between managementof refugees and asylum seekers, on the onehand, and humanitarian action, on the otherhand. Agier takes a particularly criticalstance against the UNHCR, arguing that ithas produced a situation in which the ‘‘dom-inant figure today is that of the failed asylumseeker. . .the last stage in abandoning thestateless’’ (p. 188). The following chapter byVeronique Lassailly-Jacob focuses on forcedmigration in Africa, a ‘‘new but overlookedcategory of refugees’’ (p. 191). Lassailly-Jacob pays special attention to Eritrean refu-gees in Sudan and Mozambican refugees inZambia and shows that there are incongrui-ties in host country laws on asylum in thetwo countries and between UNHCR andnational asylum policies.

Overall, the volume falls short in itsattempt to provide a ‘‘comprehensive stateof the art’’ (p. 203). As is the case with manyedited collections, it is difficult to integratea series of conference papers into a coherentwhole and this collection is no exception.Audebert and Doraı’s introduction and con-clusion do lend some unity to the volume,but the discontinuities between chapters aretoo much to overcome. Each chapter is rela-tively accessible, but as a whole, the volumeis very uneven in terms of quality, rigor,and originality. Very little of the material isparticularly groundbreaking, and some of itis indeed quite derivative. This book will beof interest mainly to English and French-speaking audiences in Europe desiring anoverview of some of the more importanttopics in migration studies from a predomi-nately European perspective.

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Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts,Theories and Methods, edited by RainerBaubock and Thomas Faist. Amsterdam,NL: Amsterdam University Press, 2010.352pp. $59.50 paper. ISBN:9789089642387.

GORDON F. DE JONG

Pennsylvania State [email protected]

While the title of this edited volume initiallyinvokes more cinematic than social sciencestimuli, it is the usefulness of these conceptsfor interdisciplinary theory and researchthat is the interest of the authors. With theincreasing popular use of the terms diasporaand transnationalism and the widening oftheir empirical scope, the phenomena cov-ered and the conceptual boundaries of eachconcept have become increasingly blurred.However, according to the editors, the goalof this volume is not to address the definition-al conceptual debate, but rather to argue thatthe meaning of diaspora and transnational-ism must be inferred from their use. Thisbegs the question, however, about whatdefines their explanatory power in social sci-ence research. For the editors the best criteriafor the academic value of these concepts liesin their capacity to trigger new research per-spectives and questions—criteria this multi-author edited volume is unable to attain fully,in part due the lack of comparability and val-idity in definitions and processes across thecontributed chapters.

Based on a European University Instituteconference, the book is organized in threemain sections: (1) interpreting of the two con-cepts, (2) new theoretical approaches andresearch questions, and (3) methodologicalproblems and innovations. A key conclusionfrom the overview chapter by Thomas Faist,co-editor, is that the meanings of diasporaand transnationalism often overlap andespouse similarities, but sometimes refer todivergent perspectives. However, he sug-gests that a strength of diaspora studies andmigrant transnationalism is its reflectivityof agency and processes, which can informunderstanding of broader issues of socialchange.

Turning first to the topic of interpreting theconcepts, in her chapter of the dynamics of

migrants’ transnational formation, JanineDahinden argues that diaspora and transna-tionalism are socially constructed conceptsthat connect with nomadic versus normativeforms of cross-border movements and ties.Transnationalism, she suggests, is character-ized by migrant circulation movement(behaviors) across borders, while diasporais characterized by the ties of migrants totheir collectives while being settled in coun-tries of immigration. However, diasporacan be a murky concept, particularly in artic-ulating the ideas and theory of immigrantincorporation. For example, does it followthat diaspora and transnationalism migrantsare characterized by distinctive sets of identi-ties and incorporation patterns in host coun-ties? Agnieszka Weinar’s analysis of how theconcept diaspora is used in policy discourseswithin the European Union immigration pol-icy finds that both diasporas and migrantdestination communities are discussed asemerging agents of development, perhapsdemonstrating the merger rather thanuniqueness of these terms as they are appliedto understanding broader policy transforma-tions in Europe.

Transitioning to theoretical approaches,the book includes chapters which focus onmacro-social structural perspectives andchapters which focus on micro-individualagency perspectives. Moreover, the focusshifts from theoretical perspectives on deter-minants of diasporas and transnationalism toconsequences for both nation-states and forindividuals and families. This is broad theo-retical terrain which cannot be easily inte-grated. One of the theoretical issues dis-cussed is the distinction between nationalistversus globalistic approaches to framingquestions and explanations about the conse-quences of diaspora and transnationalismfor nation-states. Using political participa-tion as a focus, nationalist framing focuseson impacts on state-of-origin political institu-tions, such as questions of diaspora andimmigrant communities that lobby hoststates to adopt particular stances and policiestoward political issues in the homeland. Onthe other hand a globalistic framing mightfocus on collective actor migrants as agentsof democratization who challenge politicalsovereignty across national boundaries. Inthis example a distinction between diaspora

562 Reviews




and transnational migrants may be lessimportant theoretically. The five theory chap-ters included in this book provide an over-view of the disciplinary diversity in theoreti-cal approaches and research questions aboutdiaspora and transnationalism, includingMyra Waterbury’s insightful analysis of con-ditions under which states engage popula-tions abroad and the impact this has oncitizenship.

According to the editors, a key methodo-logical question for diaspora and transna-tional research is: How can transnationalperspectives overcome methodologicalnationalism in the social sciences—the ten-dency to treat the ‘‘container’’ of the nation-state as a quasi-national social and politicalconfiguration? In the chapters included herethe answer to this question is through the sys-tematic use of multi-sites designs, the use ofnetwork methodology, the use of quantita-tive surveys as a means to assess associations,and exploring the value of internet researchdesigns. For example, the idea of diasporaand transnationalism two-way flows, wheth-er symmetric or asymmetric regarding thetypes of resources exchanged and powerapplied, is fundamental in both the use ofhome and destination area matched-samplemethodology, as illustrated in Valentina Maz-zucato’s chapter, and the use of ego-centerednetworks among individual overseas Chi-nese scientists, as illustrated in Koen Jonker’sanalysis. A conclusion is that the methodolo-gy of cross-boundary analysis, whetherembedded in transnational or diaspora stud-ies, needs to be distinguishable from cross-country comparative research that focuseson nation-states as units of analysis.

The concluding chapter by co-editorRainer Baubock is not a traditional editedvolume integrative essay, which he indicatesis not possible given the conceptual, theoret-ical, disciplinary, and methodological hetero-geneity of the contributions. Rather, Baubockfocuses on his discipline of political theory inan insightful elaboration of transnational cit-izenship, including dual citizenship, in thecontext of increasing international migrationand national political structural transitions.

In summary this is a useful volume whichprovides a rich overview that covers a lot ofissues about the diversity in diaspora andtransnational studies. However, this

diversity also reveals the conceptual, theoret-ical, and methodological fragmentationwhich may be indicative of an early develop-mental stage in this research field, or largerfissions in systematic scholarship. The lackof a strong integrative concluding essayleaves the interpretation an open question.One apparent conclusion is that diasporaand transnationalism studies would benefitfrom theoretical approaches that more sys-tematically link agency with socialstructures.

For this reviewer, a demographer, what isstriking is the lack of systematic articulationof this area of study to demographic migra-tion theoretical frameworks and quantitativeempirical literature on the selection intoand explanations for diaspora-related migra-tion streams, repeat international migrationbehaviors, and the considerable populationscience scholarship on straight-line versuslimited or segmented immigrant assimi-lation/incorporation into host countryinstitutions.

Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Changethe Middle East, by Asef Bayat. Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. 304pp.$21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804769242.

AYSxE ONCU

Sabanci University, [email protected]

At the heart of this volume of selected essaysby Asef Bayat, are questions of politicalagency and the manifest forms it takes ‘‘onthe ground in Middle Eastern cities.’’

Bayat has been a long-standing critic ofdominant narratives of the Middle East asa region caught between authoritarianregimes and militant Islam, where ‘‘ordinarypeople’’ are depicted as either passive vic-tims or perpetrators of violence. Discourseson war and conflict tend to privilege spectac-ular images of victimhood and high-profilepolitics. Bayat has sought to develop alterna-tive formulations which highlight the manyshifting ways ‘‘ordinary people’’ experience,negotiate, and contest hegemonic systems ofpower in their day-to-day lives. In Life as Pol-itics, he brings together some of the empiri-cal cases and theoretical positions with

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which he has been engaged throughout hisscholarship. The main theme which weavestogether the various chapters of the book,is how the mundane practices of the ‘‘urbansubaltern’’ both undermine state authorityand erode the power of religious institu-tions, in ways that are often invisible orunrecognized by the power elite, as well asscholars in the region.

When Life as Politics was published in2010, Asef Bayat’s arguments on grassrootsdynamism as the harbinger of democratictransformations in the Arab world seemeda utopian hope. Barely a year later, as eventsof the 2011 Arab Spring continue to unfold,his critical insights on everyday forms andspaces of political activity in the regionhave become prescient.

As Bayat reminds us in his introductorychapter, perceptions of stasis and lack ofpolitical agency to challenge the status quoin the region have generated ‘‘democracypromotion industry’’ in recent decades,advocating ‘‘change from the outside, byway of economic, political, and even militarypressure’’ (p. 3). But the problem, he argues,is not simply a matter of how the region hasbeen perceived from the ‘‘outside’’ by vestedinterests. Equally important is the way thisperception has been reinforced by existingscholarship in the region, which drawsupon concepts and theories developed pre-dominantly in Western contexts. Whenviewed from the prism of conventional socialscience concepts, the bottom-up dynamicswhich are transforming large cities, througha myriad of daily struggles, by variegatedactors, remain unnoticed. Hence any attemptto understand how ‘‘ordinary people arechanging the Middle East’’ must developa novel conceptual vocabulary which cap-tures ongoing changes on the ground. Bayatelaborates this line of thinking in the remain-ing chapters of the book, using a broad rangeof illustrative cases to argue for alternative,context-specific conceptualizations of agen-cy and politics.

The illustrative cases Bayat uses in hisbook are organized in two main parts, tohighlight and elaborate the concepts of‘‘social non-movements’’ and ‘‘street poli-tics’’ respectively. He argues that the conceptof ‘‘non-movements’’ allows us to observeand name a mixture of strategies which

involve individual and collective directaction, and yet do not involve collectivedemand-making and effective political lead-ership of the sort associated with socialmovements in the conventional sense of theterm. To illustrate, he discusses the strategiesof ‘‘quiet encroachment’’ used by the urbanpoor, such as running their own parkingservices (Chapter Four). His other examplesinclude Muslim women wearing hijab inways which express their individual femi-ninity (Chapter Five) and Egyptian or Iranianyouth creating their own ‘‘blended’’ culturesof Islamic pop or practices of ‘‘distance dat-ing’’ on the web (Chapters Six and Seven).Bayat discusses each of these cases as ‘‘fluidand unstructured forms of activism’’ whichare ‘‘largely unlawful’’ and run the ‘‘risk ofharassment, insecurity and repression’’(p. 93). But he forewarns against overestimat-ing them as ‘‘contentious acts of defiance’’ orattributing to them ‘‘political resistance’’ (pp.54–55). He suggests that the dynamics ofnon-movements invoke metaphors of cancer,often not becoming visible to authorities untilthe point of no return has been reached (p.81). Their significance resides not in chal-lenging dominant authority directly, but in‘‘generating a new reality on the ground, atthe grass roots level’’ (p. 93).

In the second part of the book, Bayat bringstogether a series of essays which highlight thesignificance of ‘‘Street Politics or Politics of theStreet’’ in the region. Once again, the authoruses a range of empirical examples from hisown work as well as relevant research in theregion to interrogate ‘‘how particular spatialforms shape, galvanize, and accommodateinsurgent sentiments and solidarities’’(p. 162). Thus he dwells upon the centralityof Enghelab Square during the collective pro-tests of 1977 in Tehran (Chapter Eight); theurban ecology of Islamic militancy (ChapterNine); the ‘‘geography of coexistence’’ amongCoptic and Muslim families in the Cairo’sShubra neighborhood (Chapter Ten); andthe changing significance of the Arab Streetas site of dissent (Chapter Eleven).

What makes Life as Politics a fascinatingbook is the freshness of Bayat’s insights onthe varied repertoires and spaces of popularagency in large cities of the region, and theirimmediate relevance in the context ofunfolding events during the Arab Spring of

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2011. These events have been dubbed therevolution of ‘‘shahab al-Facebook’’ (‘‘theyouth of Facebook’’) and also the revolutionof al-Jazeera. But the demonstrations so viv-idly on display on Cairo’s Tahrir Square—thanks to TV satellite channels and internetsites like Google Maps and YouTube—havealso revealed, once again, the importanceof physical space in the operation of powerand the ‘‘constitution of insurgent senti-ments and solidarities’’ as Bayat puts it.Reading his piece on Tehran’s EnghelabSquare as a ‘‘contentious space’’ and its cen-trality in the drama of events which led tothe Iranian revolution, allows us to recog-nize how Cairo’s Midan-el-Tahrir was trans-formed during the course of recent events.The Midan shifted from being simply a loca-tion of where millions of protestors gatheredto express their demands, to becoming anintegral part of the protestors’ struggle forlegitimacy and visibility.

For all its fascinations, Life as Politics isessentially a collection of vignettes fromAsef Bayat’s voluminous scholarly output.It demonstrates the breadth of issues andconceptual debates he has been engagedwith over the years, but not the cumulativedepth of his broader scholarship. The urgen-cy of recent events in Arab cities has under-scored the significance of Bayat’s alternativeconceptualizations—such as ‘‘social non-movements,’’ ‘‘quiet encroachment of theordinary,’’ ‘‘post-Islamism’’—in understand-ing bottom-up politics in the region. At thesame time, these events have opened newavenues of interrogation, ranging from theemergent forms of public contestation inthe era of mass-produced signs and fortifiedenclaves, to the variable dynamics of unfold-ing protests in divergent national contexts.No doubt, Asef Bayat will be following theseinterrogation marks in his future work,offering new lines of thinking for those ofus who have learned to appreciate the origi-nality of his scholarship.

Global Perspectives on War, Gender andHealth: The Sociology and Anthropology ofSuffering, edited by Hannah Bradby andGillian Lewando Hundt. Burlington, VT:Ashgate, 2010. 157pp. $99.95 cloth. ISBN:9780754675235.

VEENA DAS

Johns Hopkins [email protected]

This collection of essays resulted from a con-ference convened to honor the work of Mar-garet Stacey, who retired from the Universityof Warwick in 1989. Stacey’s work on gender,health and healing and her advocacy onbehalf of women and children are wellknown. After her retirement from Warwick,she was very active in bringing the sufferingof war and collective violence to the attentionof scholars and policy makers. The aspira-tions of the editors and the contributors forthis book to honor this remarkable womanare admirable, although the book ended upas a disjointed set of essays of varying qualitythat do not address the themes laid out in theintroduction in any systematic way.

The book consists of eight chapters and anintroduction. The chapters have differentobjectives. Some provide a review of key con-cepts within a disciplinary field, others pres-ent new data based on interviews or fieldobservations, and the last chapter is a medita-tion on peace in relation to such forms of suf-fering as hunger and environmental disas-ters. Though each paper might be said todeal with issues of war, violence, gender,and health, there is no sense of a collectiveproject. Authors of individual chaptersmake little attempt to relate their own under-standing of these issues to those of other con-tributors, nor are the specific issues raised inthe introduction addressed by the individualessays.

The introduction outlines themes that arenow well recognized in the literature onsocial suffering, such as the relation betweenordinary suffering and extreme suffering orintended and unintended suffering. The edi-tors ask: should there be a hierarchy of suffer-ing, and how does one find meaning inadverse events? There is also a brief discus-sion on medical innovations during wars

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and the tension between experimental andtherapeutic aspects of medicine. Whilesome of the observations are interesting, theintroduction does not give us a systematicsurvey of the field since there are huge gapsin the discussion. No reference is made tocolonial wars or to the changing nature ofwar after 9/11. The only justification offeredfor the selection of the chapters included inthe volume is that they cover various regionsof the world, showing that war and collectiveviolence as well as the neglect of violencedone to women are ‘‘global’’ in character.

Some of the individual essays make valu-able points and can be read with profit.Thus, Cynthia Cockburn’s lucid and honestportrayal of her attempts to map women’snetworks engaged in peace activities, andin fostering an antimilitaristic ethos is animportant addition to the literature on femi-nist advocacy against war. Some of thetougher questions on women’s participationin war and the torture machine are, however,not addressed since these were not withinthe scope of the essay. Srila Roy’s discussionof the South Asian literature on violence, tes-timony and trauma is well written. It raisesinteresting issues about the applicability oftrauma theory to cultures with a differentideology of language, or to women caughtin routine violence. The discussion wouldhave been enriched by looking directly atthe work on the critique of trauma theorieswithin humanitarian discourses as well asthe anthropological literature on domesticviolence. Astier Almedon, Evelyn Bren-singer, and Gordon Adam provide a complexdiscussion of theories of resilience. Theyargue that sometimes psychiatric interven-tions can become the problem rather thanthe solution—for example, in some contextssymptoms of PTSD might be signs of resil-ience rather than of disease requiring thera-peutic interventions. The essay is, however,uneven: some claims about the role of mediain bolstering community resilience, forexample, remain at the level of speculation.For instance, in the case of the democracymovement in Nepal, the authors argue that,‘‘Individual resilience, along with wide-spread skepticism about the King’s motives,was present in the population. But withoutradio’s ability to provide a coherent alterna-tive argument, and its mass reach, it is

unlikely that community resilience couldhave formed so quickly and that the ten-year civil war would have ended compara-tively peacefully’’ (p. 139). While mediaalong with other public speech plays animportant role in mobilization, such notionsof resilience ignore the long processes ofless visible forms of mobilization that wereat play in Nepal much before the overthrowof monarchy—nor does it capture the factthat political violence in less spectacularforms has continued in Nepal as paralyzingpower struggles between Maoist and non-Maoist parties have stalled the political pro-cess of Constitution-making.

The more empirical papers in the volumeexamine particular conflicts—Northern Ire-land, Gujarat, Uganda, Sahrawi refugeecamps—and come to similar conclusionsabout the neglect of a gender perspective inthe analysis of these conflicts. As in manyother cases reported in the literature thesilencing of rape victims is a major issue.The most interesting argument is in the essayby Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, who conteststhe idealization of the Sahrawi refugeecamps as free of violence against women.The author contends that kin-based violence,such as killing ‘‘deviant’’ women for familyhonor or confining, in medical facilities,women who have become pregnant throughunions that are not approved, is prevalent inthe camps but ignored in international policyor activist discourse. Although Fiddian-Qasmiyeh could only persuade three orfour women to talk to her on these mattersdespite the one hundred interviews she con-ducted, this is a pertinent question for refu-gee camps everywhere since kinship itselfbecomes reconfigured in such environments.As for the other essays, we learn some usefulfacts from them but the claims to rethinksocial theory are largely exaggerated. Insome cases, as in Rubina Jasani’s descriptionof the ethical dilemmas she faced as a gradu-ate student caught in a difficult situation ofwidespread suspicion against Muslims inGujarat after the post-Godhra violence, onewishes that she had received better guidanceinto the literature on anthropology andethics. Her dilemmas are real, but these ques-tions have been widely discussed in the liter-ature to which she barely refers. Overall,there are some good individual essays,

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which could have been published as inde-pendent papers in journals. The book asa whole disappoints this reader.

New Social Connections: Sociology’s Subjectsand Objects, edited by Judith Burnett, SydJeffers, and Graham Thomas. New York,NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 259pp.$85.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780230575981.

PETER HODGKINSON

London Metropolitan [email protected]

This collection of papers from the 2007 Brit-ish Sociological Association conferencecomes with a rather disarming health warn-ing: ‘Oh no! Not a conference volume!’ Whilethe editors suggest that such pessimism isactually misplaced and the book has intrin-sic merit, one is never quite sure that the‘‘excitement of a real, live conference’’ hasin fact been captured or developed in thecold light of day. That the sociological ques-tions addressed in this volume supposedlygrew ‘‘between the paving slabs of theuniversity precinct and blossomed in theurban air of the dockside campus’’ also per-fectly encapsulates the tensions that runthrough British, and perhaps most, sociolo-gy today. The early theoretical, foundational,disciplinary-focused contributions such asthose of John Scott, Michael Rustin, and Gre-gor McLennan provide a solid basis for themore substantive chapters by Bruno Latour,Erika Cudworth, and David Inglis. These, inturn, make way for the playfulness of thelater chapters, for example, David Beerand Roger Burrows on the sociology ofThe Wire. Unfortunately, the relationshipbetween the ‘‘paving slabs’’ and the ‘‘blos-som’’ was perhaps always too much forthis rather slim volume to successfully tra-verse. Somewhere in the midst of this ‘‘stateof sociology’’ agenda lay the unspoken ques-tion: who is the intended audience for thistext? One can only assume it is fellow sociol-ogists. In which case there is an obvious iro-ny in that the editors have committed one ofthe supposed cardinal sins of sociologytoday, that of being too self-referential.

The fractal nature of current sociologicalconcerns is captured in the book’s central

contention that there is a basic divisionbetween ‘‘subjects’’ and ‘‘objects’’ in sociol-ogy’s new social connections. As such,a bifurcated tone runs through most of thepapers and the volume as a whole. For exam-ple, it is found in Scott’s discussion of the sta-tus of sociology as a discipline and/orknowledge, Latour’s claimed dissolution ofthe natural/social, and Saskia Sassen’s viewthat new global ‘‘assemblages’’ are displac-ing the traditional nation-state. In compari-son, the chapters by Inglis, Gayle Letherby,Joyce Canaan, and Max Farrar address farmore parochial challenges, such as the lackof historical depth, the advocacy of the bio-graphical approaches, critical pedagogy,and the reflexive nature of doing ‘‘public’’sociology in the British context. Unfor-tunately, as represented here, British soci-ology might appear to be struggling to beheard or make an impact beyond the localconflicts and endeavours of these particularsociologist-activists. Indeed, the character ofBritish sociology appears to be somewhat‘‘middle-brow’’ and reserved, especiallywhen seen alongside the expansive and glob-al claims of the key note contributors.

Wittingly or unwittingly, this text repre-sents the key rupture between the internalintellectual development of sociology asa discipline and its external, moving set ofreferents in the shape of ‘‘others’’—other dis-ciplines, nature, national boundaries, stu-dents, or simply world events. It is anexample of the Janus-faced nature of contem-porary sociology, as seen through the lookingglass and wherein the objectification of thediscipline is only made possible by takingthe role of one of these ‘‘others.’’ As a result,the critical and subjective nature of sociolog-ical being, the sociological imagination, isultimately obscured to the point that, bythe conclusion of the volume, anything andeverything becomes ‘‘sociology’’—includingThe Wire and most reality TV.

Capturing the sense of occasion, even car-nival, of a sociology conference was nevergoing to be easy for the editors of this vol-ume. Such events tend to generate an atmo-sphere more akin to a religious congregationthan a discerning readership. Yet one gets thefeeling that it is only the former that is theintended audience for this particular text.Perhaps, in the words of an old adage, ‘‘you

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really had to be there’’ to appreciate wherethis collection of papers is coming from. Thefrisson of the event certainly appears to haveescaped in the passage of time and we areleft with what amounts to a ‘‘record’’ ofsome interesting papers on what are bynow already well-visited issues concerningthe nature of sociology today. The lively dis-cussions and debates that these papersundoubtedly generated in the conferenceitself are not evident in this text. The generaloptimism of the editors appears to be a con-sequence of their success in hosting whatwas by all measures and accounts a success-ful conference. However, this text also bearswitness to the fact that the progeny of suchevents do not always live up to their paren-tal expectations.

Overall, there was perhaps a better case forsuggesting that this text actually explores themisrecognition of sociology today. That is, thediversity of current sociology lends itself toboth adherents and confounders either ‘‘big-ging up’’ or ‘‘dissing down’’ the disciplineand thereby failing to capture the real giftof sociology, which is the sociological imagi-nation itself. In this respect British sociologyis particularly well-placed, as were the edi-tors of this volume who are situated in oneof the ‘‘subaltern’’ institutions, ‘‘to tell itlike it really is.’’ Instead, what we have isbasically a testament to an event that was,when the dust settled, a sociologyconference.

Social Status and Cultural Consumption, editedby Tak Wing Chan. New York, NY:Cambridge University Press, 2010. 273pp.$95.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780521194464.

BRIAN DONOVAN

University of [email protected]

Do opera fans listen to Katy Perry or do theyreject pop music as a mark of distinction?Cultural sociologists have taken up the ‘‘cul-tural omnivore’’ question since the early1990s following Richard Peterson and RogerKern’s finding that individuals with highcultural capital listened to popular music aswell as highbrow genres. The ‘‘discovery’’of omnivores challenged the universality of

Pierre Bourdieu’s theory and marked a freshline of research in cultural sociology. Theauthors in Social Status and Cultural Con-sumption analyze consumption patterns inthe United States, France, Chile, Hungary,the Netherlands, and Great Britain to bringa much needed comparative perspective tothe enduring issues raised by Bourdieu,Peterson, and others.

Tak Wing Chan’s opening essay makes anargument, carried through the remainingchapters, against two equally unsatisfyingmodes of cultural analysis. Individualizationarguments, represented in the work ofAnthony Giddens, posit that advanced capi-talism has uncoupled social structure fromcultural consumption. Homology arguments,represented by Bourdieu, convey an overde-termined and overly tight correspondencebetween social hierarchy and patterns of cul-tural consumption. The authors’ survey datalocate a fruitful place in the middle of thesepoles, one populated by (among others)American paucivores, high-status movie-goers in Chile, and Hungarian pop univores.

Florencia Torche’s study of Chilean cultur-al consumption patterns exemplifies the vol-ume’s overall strength in explaining the rela-tionship between cultural consumption andsocial structure. Torche’s data and analysisreveal that Chilean movie lovers are notlow-status univores lacking in economicand cultural capital. Movie attendance isa marker of high status, carries much moreesteem than attendance at a live theater ordance performance, and is strongly stratifiedby status, income, and education. Also, theseChilean movie aficionados, unlike their U.S.or European counterparts, are not culturalomnivores. Torche contends that state subsi-dies for theater and other highbrow arts canhelp explain why the Chilean case contrastswith findings from other nations in terms ofthe markers of cultural capital, but remainsconsistent with the book’s overall portraitof social status as determinative of culturalconsumption patterns.

The central strength of the book is its globaland comparative analysis of cultural omniv-orousness, but the collection has a moreambitious goal of resuscitating the Weberiandistinction between status and class. Theauthors’ research agendas orbit around thiscommon theme, thereby giving the volume

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a strong sense of coherence. But, like a cookwho insists that every dish contain a particu-lar spice, the repetition of the ‘‘class versusstatus’’ argument gives the essays a flavorthat does not always complement what ison the plate. The a priori assumptions aboutthe class/status distinction create an inevita-ble reification with one side positioned asthe winner over the other (and Weber, some-how, always finds a way to win). The essays,however, complicate the class/status dis-tinction more than they show the supremacyof one over the other in explaining consump-tion. Erzsebet Bukodi’s analysis of arts con-sumption in Hungary, for example, noteseducation as the most important variable inexplaining cultural consumption. GerbertKraaykamp, Koen van Eijck, and Wout Ult-ee’s study of the Netherlands found high-brow cultural consumption sharply strati-fied by income and education. In the end,many of the findings scattered throughoutthe volume support, rather than undermine,Bourdieu’s theorization of class and culture.

Of the essays in the collection, ArthurAlderson, Isaac Heacock, and Azamat Junis-bai’s analysis of music consumption in theUnited States makes the most persuasivecase to separate analytically class from status.From General Social Survey data on the lis-tening patterns for opera, classical, jazz, andmusicals, Alderson et. al.’s study finds threeclasses of musical consumer: inactives, omni-vores, and paucivores (who occupy a middleground between the low cultural consump-tion of the inactives and the voracious con-sumption of the omnivores). Their regressionanalyses show no strict correspondencebetween social class and musical consump-tion, suggesting that the practices of musicalconsumers owe more to status variables com-pared to economic ones. Despite compellingstatistical evidence, the authors’ claims aboutclass and status often slip from an analyticdistinction used to make sense of a narrowedset of regional data (e.g., four music genres)to a general claim about the relationshipbetween culture and status. Like other essaysin the volume, the authors’ study has greatforce in middle-range debates about culturalomnivorousness, but is on comparativelyweaker footing when it wades into Weber,Marx, and Bourdieu’s grand theories of classand status.

Richard ‘‘Pete’’ Peterson had a tremendousinfluence on American cultural theory, andhis 2010 death was a serious loss to sociologyand musicology. Chan’s edited volume isa testament to the enduring importance ofPeterson’s ‘‘cultural omnivore’’ concept.The collection of essays in Social Status andCultural Consumption makes a substantialcontribution to the scholarship on culturalconsumption. The presentation of the quan-titative data is both accessible and thorough,with approximately twenty figures and fiftytables supplementing solid explanations ofmethodological techniques such as latentclass cluster analysis and multinomial logis-tic regression. The direct, clear, and accessi-ble writing style makes this an ideal textfor a cultural sociology graduate seminaror an advanced undergraduate course.

Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Genderand Violence, edited by Meda Chesney-Lind and Nikki Jones. Albany, NY: StateUniversity of New York Press, 2010. 266pp.$27.95 paper. ISBN: 9781438432946.

ANGELA LEWELLYN JONES

Elon [email protected]

Fighting for Girls is a wonderful collection ofworks drawn from strong theoretical tradi-tions: feminist criminology, constructionist,and critical criminologies. The authors ofthe various chapters pose significant chal-lenges to the widely-held notion that girlsare more violent today than they were inthe past and that this is primarily due totheir attempts to be more like boys. MedaChesney-Lind and Nikki Jones organize thecollection in a clear fashion that conciselypresents the data regarding girls’ violence,the institutional context of girls’ violence,and explanations and implications of girls’violence.

The data related to girls’ violence reveala trend of increased violence in young girls;however, this is a misrepresentation of thefacts. The truth is that there is increased lawenforcement related to person offenses, andthis is catching more young females in thecriminal justice net. With mandatory arrestfor domestic violence and zero-tolerance

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policies toward fighting in schools, girls arelanding more frequently in the system, butthat does not equate with being more violentthan they have been in the past. Another con-sequence of these policies is the dispropor-tionate arrest and incarceration of AfricanAmerican young women, who are overrepre-sented in detention facilities.

In Chapter One, Mike Males explores thepopular response to the myth of girls’ vio-lence, and the dangers of our inability to becritical of these ideas and develop policiesapplicable to adolescent girls. Numerousdata sources provide empirical evidence thatgirls’ involvement in index crimes has actual-ly decreased significantly over the past twen-ty years. The only crime where there has beenan increase in girls’ commissions is misde-meanor assaults, and in fact, there has beenan increase in this crime for boys and adultsas well. A possible explanation involves themandatory arrest policies for domestic vio-lence and zero-tolerance policies for schools.Eve Buzawa and David Hirschel, in ChapterTwo, explore how these policies haveincreased youth exposure to the criminal jus-tice system. They present data that show dif-ferences in assault rates and arrest rates. Juve-niles were much more likely to be arrested forassaulting adults, while adults were muchless likely to be arrested for assaulting juve-niles, thus raising questions about the imple-mentation of the policies. In Chapter Three,Chesney-Lind examines data that reveal anincreased arrest and incarceration rate foradolescent minority girls in recent years,while there is no similar increase for theirmale counterparts or for adolescent femalesin the middle-class majority. She argues thatno attention has been given to the context sur-rounding violence by these young women orthe disparities in the criminal justice system’sresponse to their behavior.

When exploring the institutional context ofgirls’ violence and concerns, various authorsargue that girls have not become more vio-lent, but the contexts in which they live, goto school, spend time with peers, and so on,have become more disorganized and oppres-sive, and this leads to more reactive behavioron the part of the young women. The girls areexposed to more violence around them,and they understand that they are more vul-nerable to violence themselves in these

environments. In Chapter Four, MelissaDichter, Julie Cederbaum, and Anne Teitel-man present a remarkably comprehensiveliterature review that reveals a frighteningpicture of how adolescent girls are at muchgreater risk of violence in dating relation-ships, problems associated with teen preg-nancy, sexually transmitted illnesses, andperceived power held by adolescent maleswho control condom use.

Chesney-Lind, Merry Morash, and Kather-ine Irwin explore in Chapter Five the gen-dered nature of relational aggression. Theyargue that much of the new focus on bullyingamong adolescent girls and boys has com-bined all varieties of aggression into one cat-egory that fails to distinguish gender differ-ences. It also fails to recognize the variationsbetween direct and indirect aggression,physical and non-physical aggression, one-time and continuous events, and levels ofseverity. The policing of all forms of aggres-sion as equal results in girls, who more fre-quently engage in relational aggression, find-ing themselves more often receiving thesanctions of the school system and the policedue to zero-tolerance and mandatory arrestpolicies. Building on the role relationshipsplay in the lives of young girls, in ChapterSix, Judith Ryder highlights attachmenttheory’s interpretation of young women’sinterpersonal and context-specific violence.She reveals that girls’ definitions of violencewere quite different from the mainstreamdefinition of violence, and consequently, theprograms into which they were funneledfor assistance did little to respond to theirneeds.

Sibylle Artz and Diana Nicholson, inChapter Seven, present a longitudinal exam-ination of the impact of school context on theprobability of violent/aggressive behavioramong adolescent girls. They found that inpositive, smaller, single-sex settings wherestudents are engaged with their classmatesand school, aggressive behavior declinescompared to the larger, more heterogeneous,complex public school environment. MarionBrown extends this examination in ChapterEight with a look at group homes and findsthat they often encourage the violence whichthey seek to eliminate. She found that frustra-tion with rules and surveillance leads to con-tinued aggression in these environments.

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The final part of the book, explanationsand implications of girls’ violence, stressesthe macro-level factors impacting the livesof adolescent girls and the necessity forscholars to explore these contexts and makethe media aware of the real picture. In Chap-ter Nine, Jones examines growing up in theinner-city neighborhood and how for mostyoung people this becomes an exercise insurvival, where strategies such as situationalavoidance and relational isolation areemployed. Morash, Suyeon Park, and Jung-mi Kim present findings in Chapter Tendrawn from their analysis of longitudinaldata to examine the effects of individual,family, and community variables on thechoices of adolescent females to engage inviolent activities. They found that the stron-gest predictors of future violent behaviorfor adolescent females were early runningaway, a lack of hope for their future, a lackof parental support, failing to completeschool, and neighborhood and schoolcontext.

Finally, in the epilogue, Walter DeKeser-edy revisits the big picture, reminding us ofthe power of the media to create a moral pan-ic (girls gone wild!), and the criminal justicesystem’s power to reinforce the patriarchalcontrol over girls and women. He remindsus that we must reflect on the context of vio-lent behavior, and that we must conductresearch that sheds light on the reality ofwhat is going on in girls’ lives. We need tobe proactive about getting the word out tothe public through various media outlets, totry to shift the focus to where it shouldbe on these topics. Fighting for Girls doesjust that. It is an excellent collection ofscholarship to redirect our attention to thereality of adolescent girls’ lives and the realissues that beg for our attention and socialchange: homelessness, high infant mortalityrates, high rates of assault on females, andilliteracy—just to name a few.

Multifaceted Identity of Interethnic YoungPeople: Chameleon Identities, by SultanaChoudhry. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010.219pp. $99.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780754678601.

KIMBERLY MCCLAIN DACOSTA

New York [email protected]

Multifaceted Identity of Interethnic Young Peo-ple: Chameleon Identities is a study of identitychoices among South Asian/white individu-als in the United Kingdom. The term ‘‘SouthAsian’’ refers here to peoples with ancestryfrom the Indian subcontinent, includingIndia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Sultana Choudhry situates her study pri-marily in the social psychology literatureand in the growing body of social science lit-erature on mixed race or, to use the author’spreferred term, ‘‘interethnic’’ people in theAnglophone world. In focusing on SouthAsian/white interethnics, the author beginsto fill a gap in both literatures. She rightlypoints out that there is a relative dearth ofresearch on South Asian/white interethnicsin Britain, despite the fact that they comprisea substantial proportion of interethnics ina society in which interethnic births are onthe rise.

This is a multi-method study, incorporat-ing semi-structured interviews, discourseanalysis, retrospective diary accounts of fac-tors that influenced respondents’ ethnic iden-tity choices and a survey of 87 interethnics ofa variety of ethnoracial combinations. Whilethe majority of respondents were interethnic,some phases of the study include monoethnicrespondents, including some parents of theinterethnic respondents.

While I applaud this use of multiple meth-ods, I found the description of methods atonce confusing and overly detailed. Becausenumerous samples engaged with varyingmethods are presented in the text separately,it is difficult to discern just how manyrespondents by age and ethnicity actuallywere interviewed or surveyed. A summarytable of the sample would have helpedimmensely in following the narrativedescription of the results. Moreover, thevery long descriptions of the rationale behindwhat are accepted techniques of qualitative

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research are more appropriate to a disserta-tion or methods-centered book. While appre-ciated, they belong here in an appendix.

The author claims to make three theoreticalcontributions: one, that identities are fluidrather than fixed; two, that children of inter-ethnic unions are not necessarily conflictedabout their subject position; and three, thatthese individuals in fact ‘‘are more successfulthan others because of the ways in which theyutilise their interethnic backgrounds’’ (p. 5).

I have several criticisms of these claims.These first two ‘‘theoretical contributions’’are not contributions in so far as claims tothe contextual, situational quality of identitychoices are a theoretical breakthrough sever-al decades old in the social sciences (thinkMead, Cooley, Goffman, etc.). Moreover,that the identity choices made by the chil-dren of interethnic unions are also contextualand situational, and that these people are notnecessarily ‘‘mixed up’’ because of it, hasbeen empirically demonstrated by numerousresearchers, and especially so over the lasttwo decades. This book does not break newtheoretical ground. What this study doescontribute is further evidence that suchprocesses are also at work in the identitydecisions made by South Asian/white inter-ethnic people in the United Kingdom. Itscontribution lies in researching this under-studied population.

And while this is a contribution, it would bestrengthened considerably with a sustainedattempt to ground the book’s questions in his-torical and social context. To offer one exam-ple, Choudhry often mentions the ‘‘marginalman’’ thesis proposed by Robert Park in1928 and elaborated by his student, EverettStonequist, in the 1930s, as a claim her resultschallenge. My major quarrel with this usage isthat there is little attempt to describe the waysin which a theory developed with special ref-erence (in Stonequist’s case) to the U.S. con-text in a particularly rigid racial formation(one that was invested in strictly curtailingracial boundary crossings, especially betweenblacks and whites, and legally denying theirexistence in order to maintain racial segrega-tion in nearly all aspects of life) might needto be modified to explain the situation ofSouth Asian/whites in the United Kingdomin the early twenty-first century.

What is it about the patterns of incorpora-tion and exclusion of South Asians living inBritain—the ways that ethnoracial categoriesare constructed and in which ethnoracialdivisions have been mapped onto socialspace—that makes the denotation of thispopulation make sense? If it is true (andmost research suggests that it is) that ‘‘thereis a potential tension between an individual’sideas and assertion of ethnic identity and thewider society’s collective attributions’’ (p. 4),of what might these likely tensions for SouthAsian/white interethnics consist and why?What can the study of the identity choicesof these interethnics tell us about the natureof racial domination in Britain in the contem-porary period? Most of this context is leftunspecified and so the implications of thefindings of the study are left disconnectedfrom broader processes of ethnoracialformation.

The final claim the author makes about thesignificance of the study—that interethnicpeoples are more successful than others—is, to put it bluntly, baffling. The questionimmediately arises, successful in what way:financially, psychologically, occupationally,something else? Unfortunately, that questionis not satisfactorily answered. The authormakes vague reference to ‘‘successful inter-ethnic figures in all works of life’’ (p. 191)and then diverges into a discussion of Bar-ack Obama’s successful bid for the U.S.Presidency that credits his and other inter-ethnics’ success to their interethnic heritageand their multifaceted fluid entities. In oth-er parts of the book, the author suggests thatit is the strategic way in which interethnics‘‘adopt a particular identity/personality tosuit the situation they find themselves inand to negotiate challenges such as racismwith a greater degree of success than otherethnic minorities’’ (p. 6). But this claim ismerely asserted, not demonstrated. To sup-port such a claim, one would need to com-pare systematically the ways that other eth-nic minorities attempt to negotiate thesesame challenges and clearly articulatewhat constitutes success in doing so. Tomake such statements without the requisiteresearch to support them tends to reinforceshibboleths about a kind of multiracialexceptionalism.

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Stormy Weather: Middle-Class AfricanAmerican Marriages Between the Two WorldWars, by Anastasia C. Curwood. ChapelHill, NC: University of North CarolinaPress, 2010. 196pp. $35.00 cloth. ISBN:9780807834343.

RENEE ROMANO

Oberlin [email protected]

As a college student in the mid-1990s, Anas-tasia Curwood happened upon some old let-ters her grandparents had written to eachother in the 1930s and 40s. Fascinated bythe intimate window into one African Amer-ican middle-class marriage and curious tounderstand how her grandparents’ marriagewas influenced by the social, cultural, andpolitical currents of their day, she embarkedon a research project that resulted in thisslim but engaging volume. In Stormy Weather,Curwood explores marriages among theAfrican American middle class in the periodbetween WWI and WWII, years that gaverise not only to the new, more militant racialpolitics of African Americans who describedthemselves as ‘‘New Negroes,’’ but also wit-nessed cultural shifts in sexual practices andgender roles that extended well beyond theAfrican American community. Curwoodaims to uncover both how changing ideasabout sex and gender and the new racial pol-itics affected African American men andwomen as they navigated their intimate rela-tionships. She offers a fascinating, if some-what limited, portrait of black elites strug-gling to build relationships that wouldparticipate in the political project of advanc-ing the race, and provide them with roman-tic love, support, and intimacy.

Based on letters between couples, pub-lished prescriptive literature, and AfricanAmerican popular cultural products, StormyWeather first outlines how ideas about mar-riage among the black middle class changedin the years between WWI and WWII andoffers a description of the ideal New Negrohusband and wife. Curwood then focuseson the relationship between her grandpar-ents to explore how issues like class, skincolor, and sex influenced black middle-classcouples. She uses the personal story of her

grandparents and other black middle-classcouples—such as John and Lugenia Hope,Marcus and Amy Garvey, and Robert andKatherine Flippen—to highlight how theirpersonal relationships were influenced bylarger ideological, political, and economicstructures.

Throughout the book, Curwood seeks toreveal the internal dimensions of privatelife, to offer a history that highlights the emo-tional experience of these couples. She focus-es the book on black middle-class marriagesin part because she could not find sourcesthat would enable her to reconstruct the emo-tional lives of black working-class couples inthe same way. In focusing on the interiorlives of blacks, Curwood criticizes historicalscholarship which, she charges, typically dis-cusses African Americans only as victims ofracism or as activists against it. Her approachis a welcome addition to the literature ontwentieth century African American blacklife, but her blanket condemnation of histor-ical scholarship ignores quite a few worksthat go well beyond the ‘‘racial protocol’’approach she critiques (Tera Hunter’s To‘Joy My Freedom and Gretchen Lemke-San-tangelo’s Abiding Courage come immediatelyto mind). Neither does Curwood addresssociological literature that offers a windowinto the private life of African Americansor that has explored the contours and mean-ings of marriage in the United States.

The couples Curwood writes about facedmany daunting challenges, from trying toretain their middle-class status and remainfinancially stable during the Great Depres-sion, to navigating shifting sexual cultureswhile insisting upon their sexual respectabil-ity. But no conflict loomed larger than thatover gender roles and what functions hus-bands and wives should play in an idealNew Negro marriage. Curwood suggeststhat both New Negro men and womenexplicitly understood marriage to have thepolitical function of uplifting the race by cre-ating stable, respectable families who couldprovide a model for poorer blacks and a sup-portive partnership for engaging in ‘‘racework.’’ But they differed dramatically onhow those political goals should be achieved.Many middle-class men, Curwood demon-strates, believed the ideal New Negro hus-band should be the primary breadwinner

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and should have authority over his wife andchildren. They sought patriarchal familiesunder male domination. Their wives, how-ever, wanted to expand beyond their domes-tic roles to advance the race through theirown professional endeavors. Many of thesewomen not only needed to make money tocontribute to the household income, butthey also wanted to be active in their commu-nities. The ideals for New Negro wives andhusbands, in other words, came into conflictin ways that often created marital tension.Curwood’s grandmother’s desire to workin a settlement home and a nursery schoolangered her grandfather, who wanted hiswife to stay home, or at the most, to dodomestic work rather than have a career.

This example—of Curwood’s grandfatherencouraging his wife to be a domestic ratherthan a professional—illustrates some of thechallenges of the approach Curwood useshere. As she admits, her grandfather’s prefer-ence was not typical; most of these middle-class men did not want their wives to bedomestic servants, in part because thatwould make them vulnerable to sexualexploitation by white men. Curwood’sgrandfather was insecure and was alwaysstriving to limit and control his much bettereducated wife. He abused his wife and even-tually took his own life. Their story is illumi-nating and powerful, but it is not always gen-eralizable. And this tension—between theunique and the typical—emerges at severalpoints in this book. In the most problematiccase, Curwood delves into the writings ofJean Toomer as an example of black middle-class men’s ideas about the proper role ofa New Negro husband. Yet Toomer wasa misogynist who believed that men werebiologically superior to women. Curwoodcalls him ‘‘retrograde’’ and ‘‘regressive.’’ Hewas ambivalent about his own racial identityand his own marriages were to white wom-en, not to middle-class black women. Hisrantings about the importance of men beingin charge of the household, whether theywere the breadwinners or not, does not nec-essarily reveal much about the cultural val-ues and ideas of the black middle class dur-ing this period.

In the end, one of the greatest strengths ofStormy Weather—the wonderful and rich sto-ry of Curwood’s grandparents’ marriage—is

also one of the book’s major limitations. Infocusing so intently on the experience ofmiddle-class blacks, Curwood does not fullyaddress the ways in which their marriagesdiffered from or were similar to those of oth-er groups at the time. And by looking only atthe interwar years, Curwood chooses not tocarry this story forward to shed light onwhat today has become a marriage crisisamong the black middle class, as fewer arechoosing to marry and those who do divorceat higher rates than whites. One hopes thatCurwood will write a sequel to continuethis fascinating story of how middle-classblacks have understood marriage and navi-gated this most intimate of relationships.

Afrikaners in the New South Africa:Identity Politics in a Globalised Economy, byRebecca Davies. London, UK: I.B. TaurisPublishers, 2009. 200pp. $86.00 cloth. ISBN:9781845117856.

EBENEZER OBADARE


Over the past several months, the attentionof the South African public and watchersof events in the country has been riveted byrevelations from the ongoing trial of JuliusMalema, president of the African NationalCongress (ANC) Youth League. Prosecutorsaccuse Mr. Malema, 30, of fomenting racialhatred against Afrikaners. Malema countersthat he is doing nothing of the sort, but mere-ly championing the ideals of what hedescribes as the ‘‘revolution.’’ Mr. Malemahas always divided opinion across SouthAfrica’s racial, political, and generationalspectra; yet, only a few people could haveanticipated the degree of interest and emo-tional intensity that his trial in a Johannes-burg High Court has provoked.

In a sense, the trial and surrounding polit-ical drama is a reminder of how much SouthAfrica still has to do to live up to its auto-identification as a ‘‘rainbow nation.’’ Poi-gnantly, it is also a distraction from the seri-ous economic and security challenges facingthe country. In privileging the theme of pow-er relations and how they structure ethnicidentity, Rebecca Davies does a brilliant job

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of bringing these two themes into equal andtimely focus. She accomplishes this by takingthe road relatively less traveled—analyzing,at least primarily, the travails and conceitsof Afrikaner nationalism, as opposed to thetravails of the black majority in the aftermathof the end of apartheid. But the focus on Afri-kaner nationalism or identity politics is, itseems to me, merely instrumental. The quar-ry the author is really stalking is ethnicity orethnic identity, in so far as it imbricates withclass and power, hence the placement of theanalysis in the book on a Gramscian theoret-ical fulcrum. Pace current literature on thesubject, the author avoids a characterizationof ethnicity as a fixed essence. Rather, ethnic-ity is a continuum which tends to vary insalience, intensity, and meaning to grapplewith its subtleties is to apprehend how socialgroups behave in real historical conditions.

The author uses what she describes as ‘‘theconstruction of the Afrikaner nationalist pro-ject’’ to elucidate this point about the versatil-ity of ethnic categorization and mobilization.To capture the complexity of Afrikaneridentity (a phenomenon that may appearmonolithic to the unsuspecting outsider)she introduces three different definitions:the ascriptive, the auxiliary, and self-identification. The idea here is to show that,contra widespread assumption, Afrikaneridentity itself has always been, for want ofa better word, ‘‘constructed.’’ If Afrikaner-dom ever attained any of the cogency thatoutsiders tend to ascribe to it—Daviesdescribes it as ‘‘little but a fiction held togeth-er by a potent mix of respect for both ideolog-ical dogma and material interests’’ (p. 37)—itwas only in fits and starts. She gives a con-vincing account of an ever elusive volk unityin which class and racial (‘‘white’’ versus‘‘colored’’) tensions remained salient, andpolitical domination and the ‘‘apartheid div-idend’’ were the only elements impedingserious dissent.

Yet, in my opinion, significant as the fore-going is, it is by no means the most importantinsight in the book. That special honor goesto the way in which the author manages toembed the events and processes which shedescribes within a global matrix. In her anal-ysis of the making of Afrikaner nationalism,Davies argues that ‘‘at the close of the apart-heid era, Afrikanerdom was not so much

coming apart at the seams as embarking ona fundamental process of restructuring’’(p. 43). Part of that restructuring was thefamous not-so-secret pact between labor,state and business that resulted in the termi-nation of minority white rule and the transferof power to a democratically elected AfricanNational Congress. While subsequent schol-arly analysis has been quick to zero in onthe role of labor, especially the Congress ofSouth African Trade Unions (COSATU) andthe state in that consensus, there persistsa tendency to either downplay or misdiag-nose the role of business.

Davies uses this oversight to establisha larger point, which is that, by and large,Afrikaner-ness specifically, and identity pol-itics in general, unfold in the shadows of cap-ital, and a signal failure of much of the rele-vant literature has been its inattention to‘‘the structural background of the globaleconomy.’’ It is difficult to dispute this lineof argument. The finger of predatory liberal-ism has been obvious in the pie of every eco-nomic regime across the world, especiallysocieties of the Global South caught in thethroes of transitioning from various formsof authoritarianism to variants of liberaldemocracy. Davies’ point is that neoliberal-ism was present at the birth of the newmulti-racial regime in South Africa, anddeserves to be listed among the variousexplanations for the persisting failure ofpolitical change to herald economic transfor-mation. Rather than lament the failure of anapparently eager South African politicalclass to deliver on the promise of the ‘‘revolu-tion,’’ Davies argues that instead, we shouldbe mindful of the anti-transformational spiritof the elite consensus that birthed the newnation.

Now, if I had my way, Julius Malemawould go to jail. Not for inciting hatred. Youhave to wonder whether hate speech is not,in itself, ultimately a good thing for democra-cies. But that is an issue for another day. Thereason why Malema deserves a stint in prisonis that his visceral demagoguery is divertingattention away from South Africa’s economicproblems, emblemized by its high levels ofinequality. Whereas Malema would appearto blame ‘‘race’’ for South Africa’s continuingproblems, Davies’ tightly-argued book chal-lenges us to place race in a context in which

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class appears to have greater import, thoughwithin a constantly shifting macroeconomicmilieu. I think posterity will prove her right.

Never Good Enough: Health Care Workers andthe False Promise of Job Training, by ArielDucey. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 2008. 300pp. $19.95 paper. ISBN:9780801475047.

CHRIS WARHURST


Seduced by the promise of the knowledgeeconomy, an inordinate amount of academicand policy-maker attention has been focusedin recent years on good jobs and the expand-ing number of professional and associateprofessional jobs. This task is important if itdebunks the ‘‘new world of work/new econ-omy’’ theses. Equally, however, there isa need to acknowledge and examine theexpanding number of jobs at the bottom ofthe occupational hierarchy, particularly inroutine services. These ‘‘bad jobs’’ have lowskill, pay and prospects, and often becomea job-trap for migrant and female workers.This second task is one that now exercisesthe efforts of a growing number of research-ers both in the United States and Europe. Ari-el Ducey’s effort is an important contributionbecause it critically examines a commonlyheld belief among these researchers thattraining offers a route out of these jobs intosomething better.

The context of Ducey’s research mirrorsthe wider debates about good and bad jobs.She notes that health care is the largestemployer in New York City and that six outof the ten occupations predicted to have thelargest job growth in the United States arealso in health care—with almost all requiringsub-baccalaureate qualifications. It is onegroup of these front-line health care workersthat Ducey primarily focuses on—nursingassistants. These workers mop floors, andbathe, dress and feed patients and are, asone of them succinctly put it, ‘‘professionalbutt cleaners’’ (p. 24).

Data are drawn from three qualitativestudies of: acute care units and nursinghomes, a hospital, and training providers.

Fieldwork consisted of observation and inter-views. Although the interview sample wasnon-representative, as might be expected inthis industry, most of the subjects were wom-en, mainly from ethnic minorities and oftenmigrant (although it would have been usefulfor a distinction to have been made between‘‘migrant’’ transitory workers and ‘‘immi-grant’’ workers intending to settle perma-nently in the United States and who canhave very different job orientations andaspirations).

A healthy sociological tradition still existsin the United States of giving voice to work-ers and, following this tradition, Ducey dulydelivers. Her focus is the ‘‘human experi-ence’’ (p. 20) and on every page, these work-ers vividly recount their struggles to get in,get on and just get by in their jobs. Thesejobs require hard and dirty work, often with-out breaks, have poorly enforced job descrip-tions and are undervalued, making workersfeel worthless, as well as low paid. Foremployers, publicly-funded training wasa way to plug perceived skills gaps in theworkforce. For workers it was posited as cre-ating qualification routes into better jobs inhealth care and so was supported by theunion as a response to employee demandsfor better pay and prospects. It also offeredthe union an organizing tool with which toattract new members and demonstrate unioncapacity to ‘‘add value’’ (p. 5) to the industry.

Most training centered on soft skills devel-opment, customer service skills, or in pro-gram-specific IT training, usually in newcomputerized billing systems or on minortechnical tasks such as taking bloods.Although offered as a way for workers to‘‘survive and thrive in a market-drivenhealth care sector’’ (pp. 84–85), this training,while important, proved insufficient. It alonecould not deliver better skilled, better paid,more meaningful jobs. Cost-cutting withlay-offs, staff shortages and heavier work-loads remained. Indeed the training provid-ed multiskilling rather than upskilling andenabled management to use workers moreflexibly to multitask. As one nursing assis-tant said, it allowed the organization to‘‘dump on us more’’ (p. 92). Plus, what wasdumped on them was not fundamentally dif-ferent: the new tasks were still routine. Mul-tiskilling ‘‘did not create ‘complex jobs’. . .In

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health care, the bar for entry into the work-force has been raised [through credential-ism]. . .but the nature of the work has notchanged’’ (p. 105). Moreover, wage levelsdeclined as credentials rose. Healthcare pro-viders do spend big bucks but more oftenon new IT billing systems than on improvingthe wages of their front line staff. Job losses,argued to be prevented by training, were infact limited by the union securing public sub-sidies for the hospitals and being able to insertjob security clauses into labor contracts. Whatthe training did do however was to turn atten-tion for the problems of the industry awayfrom unhelpful job design, poor managementand limited resources and onto the workers—or rather workers’ perceived unhelpful atti-tudes. If they could only change these atti-tudes through soft skills training, all wouldbe right. As one training consultant admitted:‘‘It’s easier to train than to analyse the prob-lem’’ (p.135).

Stylistically, Ducey’s continual use of thefirst person can be irksome and results inthe argument seeming idiosyncratic ratherthan, as it actually is, generalizable. More-over the punch line is given away too earlyin the book so that the author continuallyreturns to the same point, just from multiplestarting places. At times it is difficult to dis-cern the sequencing of events and specificcontext, causes and consequences. Judiciousediting to create a single narrative arc wouldhave created a more powerful delivery. Nev-ertheless, the key finding—that, in the U.S.context at least, more training does not deliv-er better jobs or even save existing jobs—makes uncomfortable reading for those whosee skills as the answer to poor job quality.

In this respect, Ducey’s study adds toa growing awareness that improving the sup-ply of skills does not ensure that these skillsare deployed by employers in ways that arebeneficial to employees—or unions—thosewho have invested time and resources indeveloping them. But if skills are not theanswer, routes other than training need tobe found, and Ducey calls for a fundamentaloverhaul of workplace organization andmanagement and the funding of U.S. health-care. Along the way Ducey captures a pictureof struggling but dedicated and decent work-ers who already go the extra mile for theirpatients, and so for their employers, and

who simply want—and deserve—better(working) lives.

Religion, Families, and Health: Population-Based Research in the United States, edited byChristopher G. Ellison and Robert A.Hummer. New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity Press, 2010. 468pp. $34.95 paper.ISBN: 9780813547190.

JUSTIN T. DENNEY

Rice [email protected]

Religion, more aptly religiosity, has a longand recognizable history in the social scien-ces as an innately collective phenomenon. Assuch, social theorists recognized early on thepower of religion in framing social life (Dur-kheim [1897] 1951; Weber [1930] 1992). Simi-larly, the family has and continues to serve asan immediate and undeniable contributor tothe social experience. This volume of worksedited by Christopher Ellison and RobertHummer admirably and ambitiously tacklesthese major institutions within society andprovides fertile ground for scholars acrossspecialties to recognize the reciprocal andcyclical nature of religion, family, and health.

The book, a compilation of research froman impressive body of scholars, highlightsthe roles of major institutions in society inshaping individual lives but extends farbeyond that. The book reminds us that reli-gion, regardless of its presence in an individ-ual’s life, has far-reaching implications forsociety. The first chapters set the reader outon the right sociological foot and illustratehow the institution of religion shapes ourconception of how the family is formed andmaintained. In doing so, the book describeshow social structure embeds itself early inlife and affects us throughout the life coursewhether we (and our individual agency)like it or not.

The authors of the 21 chapters analyze anarray of longitudinal and cross-sectionaldata sources, each moving the empiricaland theoretical social world of religion for-ward by using available population-levelinformation. Some of these sources are quiteunique and underexplored in the existing lit-erature, such as a fascinating, albeit small,

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national sample of Arab Americans dis-cussed in Chapter 11.

Insights abound throughout the text andrange from substantive considerations sur-rounding the impact of religious denomina-tion on adolescent sexual behaviors to impor-tant methodological considerations and datacollection of relevant information necessaryfor population-level research. The bookreveals that most large national surveys donot consistently collect measures of religiosi-ty, which places restrictions on our knowl-edge of the enduring and changing effectsof religion on social life. While numerousauthors call for improvements in this area,we come away from the book without manystrategies focused on how this data gap canbe addressed, especially in times of shrinkingresearch budgets.

The compilation of work makes clear, how-ever, that the effects of religion on family for-mation and health vary enormously acrossimportant social characteristics such as age,gender, race and ethnicity, and socioeconom-ic status; religious groups such as Mormons,Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; and in thebehavior under study such as timing of firstbirth, parenting, sexually risky behaviors,and cause-specific mortality. This createsempirical complexity and also a fair amountof intrigue, leaving the reader with a multi-tude of interesting leads to explore.

Part Two of the volume is dedicated tohealth outcomes and is an important addi-tion to existing yet incomplete bodies ofwork studying the relationship between reli-gion and health. Notably, Chapter 13 pro-vides precise conceptual frameworks forfuture investigations of the relationshipsbetween religiosity and health. The chapterestablishes a clearer set of potentialpathways—including selection, causation,and mediating and moderatingmechanisms—than existed previously andthat can be used in future work to explainrelationships between religion and health.

The health chapters highlight that morethought should center on how studies mea-sure and interpret religiosity. Generally,health studies use self-reported indicatorsof religious service attendance but multipleauthors raise the question of whether othermeasures, including spirituality or religiousmeaning, may be more insightful indicators

of religious life, specifically in how it formsand what it means over the life course. Thismeasurement concern is exemplified ina chapter examining Jewish identity andhealth (Chapter 17). In the chapter, theauthors find that the more closely oneadheres to the tenets of their faith, the health-ier that person is. Simply measuring howoften those persons attend synagogue wouldlose important information.

Many of these health chapters concludewith important food for thought moving for-ward, including a more sustained efforttoward examining the potential negativeimpacts of religiosity on health outcomesshould one choose to rely on religious faithrather than seek effective treatment options.Equally important, how might changes inreligiosity over the life course impact one’sexperience of health? If an individualbecomes more religious as an adult, forexample, does that confer the same generalbenefits to health compared to someonewho has been devout throughout a lifetime?These are important questions for health aswe flesh out how, and to what extent, religionprotects health and extends life.

Examining each chapter in the volume indetail provides countless unique insights aswell as consistent messages. Scholars of reli-gion have increasingly realized the salienceof the family in understanding how groupsform and maintain belief systems, and schol-ars of the family in turn recognize the impor-tance of religious meaning in forming andmaintaining domestic life. More recently,scholars of health have come to realize thepowerful effects of religiosity on varioushealth and mortality outcomes. The bookbuilds on each of these separate areas andprovides much needed improvement andclarification. Upon completing the book, thereader is left with a satisfactory challengeimplied throughout but largely unmet inthis volume—considering how religiosityand family combine and interact to affecthealth and well-being. This challenge ismost obviously directed at scholars of health,but the research community should do wellnot to ignore the enormous potential of col-laboration across specialties and disciplinesin future investigations. The volume by Elli-son and Hummer speaks to this and otherchallenges and is telling us to get to work.

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References

Durkheim, Emile. [1897] 1951. Suicide: A Study inSociology. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Weber, Max. [1930] 1992. The Protestant Ethic andthe Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Routledge.

The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers,Programmers, and the Politics of TechnicalExpertise, by Nathan Ensmenger. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 2010. 320pp. $30.00 cloth.ISBN: 9780262050937.

CAROLYN L. KANE

Hunter College, [email protected]

Checking your email may appear as naturalas eating an apple, but the decades of inten-sive labor, research, and skill that went intomaking this possible are, to the contrary, any-thing but simple and easy. In 1950, in order tocheck one’s email (if email or the internet hadexisted) one would have had to write anentire computer language, in mathematicalnotation, which could then be translatedinto binary code for a computer––usuallythe size of at least one room and involvingup to 30,000 vacuum tubes––and demandanywhere from 70 to 100 human operatorsto work the cable-and-plug panels. Usuallywithin the first ten minutes a tube wouldblow or a ‘‘bug’’ would be found, and theentire process would be reviewed. The prob-lem with computing (unlike being human) isthat errors are intolerable. In The ComputerBoys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, andthe Politics of Technical Expertise, NathanEnsmenger offers an in-depth and well-researched analysis of the difficulties facedin the early decades of digital computerprogramming.

As early as the 1950s, digital computerswere seen as the promise of the future, butcontrary to popular myths of computersand their unprecedented progress, majorchallenges and roadblocks have complicatedthis history. Primarily, Ensmenger shows,a constant perceived and real ‘‘crisis’’ in thenumber of people who knew how to operatethese (then) gigantic machines has hauntedthe background of computer programmingfor over half a century. After WWII many

research and development think tanks(RAND and IBM) employed women to oper-ate the cable-and-plug panels. Their role asthe first female ‘‘human computers,’’ or‘‘coders,’’ is both unique and a result of cul-tural stereotypes. The ‘‘ENIAC girls’’ (asthey were referred to) followed instructionswritten by men. The task was given to wom-en because it was then seen as secondary,‘‘soft,’’ and purely mechanical. However,coding soon proved to be much more com-plex and demanding, at which point thecomputer boys would take over.

From the start, the ‘‘hard’’ intellectual, sci-entific, and analytical aspects of computerprogramming were allocated to men. It wasalso deemed ‘‘a black art,’’ an arcane practicewhere the success of a programmerdepended on his ‘‘individual ability and idi-osyncratic style’’ (p. 67). Three pivotal pio-neers include Vannevar Bush who, in the1920s worked in the electrical engineeringdepartment at MIT (there was no officialcomputer science program until 1969) build-ing a theory of the ‘‘differential analyzer,’’one of many, but the most well-known, ana-log computer developed at MIT in the inter-war period (p. 120). In 1937, Alan Turingintroduced the ‘‘Universal Turing Machine.’’By treating the computer as an abstractionand mathematical construct, Turing posedthat anything that could be ‘‘physicallycomputed could be computed by a Univer-sal Turing Machine’’ (p. 128). And in the1940s, John von Neumann publisheda report on the Electronic Discrete VariableAutomatic Computer (EDVAC) that provid-ed a description of the machine as theworld’s first stored-program computer.Unlike previous programmable machines,his did not distinguish between data andinstructions, thereby granting the machinethe intelligence and autonomy to modifyits own instructions, in effect allowing the‘‘computer to program itself’’ (p. 33). This‘‘von Neumann architecture,’’ Ensmengerexplains, quickly became the ‘‘logical basisfor almost all computers designed in subse-quent decades’’ (p. 128).

While mapping out the early history ofcomputer programming, Ensmenger alsodiscusses the rise of computer science in the1960s alongside the development of organi-zations like the Association for Computing

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Machinery (ACM). Early on, the field of com-puter science needed legitimation withinthe academy. Thus standards and testingprocedures were simultaneously developedby the ‘‘computer scientist,’’ as well asdefined what (he) should be able to do(p. 117). By the 1960s, many realized ‘‘cod-ing’’ was not as mechanical as it was oncepresumed to be, and thus no longer fit forwomen. As a result, men were primarilyrecruited and sought to fill the gap andneed for computer programmers and scien-tists. These ‘‘computer boys’’ were not onlybeing employed as programmers, but stan-dardized tests were implicitly biasedtoward men, favoring programmers withbackgrounds in math and engineering, andstereotypically ‘‘masculine’’ qualities (p.76). This growing breed, because of theirunique skills and distinct working styles,came to be a threat to traditional businesshierarchies and management.

At the same time, the introduction of com-piler and assembly languages appeared tem-porarily to alleviate this threat. Assemblylanguages, similar to compilers and subrou-tines, functioned like a middleman, cancel-ling the need for intricate and highly com-plex mathematical programming. Instead,with assembly languages, programmerscould code in alphanumeric language orterms more familiar to them. While program-ming still required skill and intelligence, lan-guages such as FORTRAN developed in the1950s (p. 90) and COBOL developed in1959, opened the doors to many who werenot trained in math or engineering (pp. 89,93). For example, instead of computinga mathematical algorithm that looks some-thing like: Z(i) = AiXi

2 1 BiYi, a COBOLprogrammer––a language created specifical-ly for businesses––would work with a line ofcode that looked like: ‘‘MULTIPLY NUM-BER-OVTIME-HRS BY OVTIME-PAY-RATEGIVING OVTIME-PAY-TOTAL’’ (p. 96).FORTRAN and COBOL were just the startof many thousands of compiler and assem-bly languages that permanently revolu-tionized computing, becoming a per-manent middle layer––what we now call‘‘software’’––between the machine’s digitalcomputations and the human. Nonetheless,adept programmers need skill and continuethrough today to be in high demand.

Today people work with computers infields ranging from engineering, architec-ture, molecular biology, anthropology, ecolo-gy, physics, cognitive science, economics,and medicine. One would be hard pressedto find a professional field that did not relyon computers, at least to some extent. Out-side of work, computing is also the norm,making life easier and more fun. And yet,many of the challenges and difficulties facedin the early decades are rarely rememberedas we casually check our email or downloada movie. The Computer Boys Take Over offersa detailed account of the rise of computerprogramming, the history of software, andhow these histories have come to play sucha central role in the so-called ‘‘ease’’ withwhich we compute today.

No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race andClass in Elite College Admission and CampusLife, by Thomas J. Espenshade andAlexandria Walton Radford. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2009. 547pp.$35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780691141602.

SHAMUS RAHMAN KHAN

Columbia [email protected]

Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Rad-ford have written a tremendous, encyclope-dic text on the relationship between race,class, admissions, and campus life at elite col-leges and universities. If you want to knowhow many white applicants participated inextracurricular activities compared to non-whites, the predicted probability of beingaccepted by a school based on race and class,the percentage of black students from multi-racial or immigrant families, what percent-age of students date within or outside theirrace, or just about anything else on the topicof class, race, and college, chances are thereis a table or chart for you in this book. Onewill learn a tremendous amount simply bywading through this text. But it is not clearwhat can be said in general.

The book follows students through the col-lege process—from the applicant pool toadmissions to the college experience. Thefindings will be somewhat familiar to read-ers. Espenshade and Radford report a strong

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‘‘Asian penalty’’ in college admissionsprocesses—though comparatively morequalified, Asians are significantly less likelyto be accepted. By contrast, the likelihoodof blacks being accepted is far higher thanfor any other racial group. The predictedprobability of a lower-class black studentbeing accepted into an elite private universi-ty is .87, compared to .65 for Hispanics, .58for Asians, and a staggeringly low .08 forwhites. Given their priorities, colleges canonly afford to meet their financial and racialdiversity goals through the overlap of thesetwo interests. Once in college, Espenshadeand Radford show that the experience forblack students is hardly a smooth one. Halfof the black students are in the bottom 20 per-cent of their class rank. Perhaps more happi-ly, black students are likely to socialize withothers of a different race. Whites, by contrast,are the most likely to socialize within theirracial group (p. 223).

To say that such findings are familiar is notto say they are unimportant—Espenshadeand Radford confirm and at times amendthe considerable literature on race, class,and college. Providing such a range of infor-mation in a single volume makes the text anessential reference for those working onrace, class, and education. At times themass of information is overwhelming, asfacts and figures rain down without muchtime taken to structure them in a coherentline of argument. In some instances the datapresented require far more explanation.Table 3.4 is the worst offender, where weare presented with odds ratios that approach1,000,000 (and others which strangely roundto 0.00). In a model with 80 independent var-iables and 977 cases where many of theirmeasures are so highly correlated with oneanother (SAT-I and ACT), this table is fullof impossible results that require elaborationor elimination.

Espenshade and Radford structure theirwork around answers to three sets of ques-tions: (1) to what extent does elite higher edu-cation promote social mobility, (2) how isaffirmative action used and what are its con-sequences, and (3) once in college, what is thecharacter and experience of campus life?

To answer such questions Espenshade andRadford constructed The National Study ofCollege Experience (NSCE). Their data are

comprised of individual student informationon all applicants for admissions to ten col-leges and universities. These schools provid-ed demographic, application, and financialaid information for classes entering in thefall of 1983, 1993, and 1997. In addition, a sur-vey was sent to a sample of the 1997 appli-cants about their experiences in college, pre-college experiences, and demographic andbackground characteristics.

The colleges selected were all part of theCollege and Beyond database. Given suchoverlap, readers should not be surprised tofind that much of the terrain has been cov-ered before in the ‘‘River Trilogy’’ (Bowenand Bok 1998; Massey et al. 2003; Charleset al. 2009). The data and questions are simi-lar, and the findings largely consistent. Yeteach book is different enough to make themall essential parts of a broader literature.Whereas Bowen and Bok provide a spiriteddefense of affirmative action programs,Espenshade and Radford provide a slightlymore sober yet powerful evaluation. Think-ing counterfactually, they ask what the con-sequences of eliminating affirmative actionmight be on the demographic compositionof incoming college classes. What if wewere to simply consider class? Or give great-er weights to low-income students? Or useSAT scores as a single metric? Espenshadeand Radford argue that all of these alterna-tive programs would lead to a decline inthe racial diversity of campuses. FollowingGlenn Loury, they suggest that instead offocusing on admissions into college, wemight instead improve preparation for col-lege, engaging in ‘‘developmental’’ affirma-tive action.

Espenshade and Radford have almostnothing to say about gender, problematicgiven the growing overrepresentation ofwomen in colleges. Though they gathereddata on historically black colleges and uni-versities, we hear nothing from these data.The reader must have a keen eye for whetherthe reported data are from 1997, or from 1993and 1997, or 1997 and 1993 and 1983. Espen-shade and Radford might have exploitedsuch a range of data to tell us more abouthow increases in inequality, growing collegecosts, and the growth of affirmative actionprograms between 1983 and 1997 influencedapplicant pools, or incoming classes, or

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college experience. Regardless, Espenshadeand Radford have done scholars an enor-mous service by gathering so much informa-tion in one place.

References

Bowen, William and Derek Bok. 1998. The Shape ofthe River. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress.

Charles, Camille, Mary Fisher, Margarita Mooney,and Douglas Massey. 2009. Taming the River.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Massey, Douglas, Camille Charles, Garvey Lundy,and Mary Fisher. 2003. The Source of the River.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Cultures of Violence: Racial Violence and theOrigins of Segregation in South Africa and theAmerican South, by Ivan Evans. Manchester,UK: Manchester University Press, 2011.310pp. $32.95 paper. ISBN: 9780719085574.

CHARLES CROTHERS

Auckland University of Technology, [email protected]

Lynching is one of several forms within thesad repertoire of informal collective vio-lence. Ivan Evans extends our knowledge ofdifferences among these, and the conditionsunder which some rather than others emergeand then later fade away, by examining the‘‘lynch culture’’ of ‘‘the South’’ of the UnitedStates in comparison with South Africa,where ethnic violence remained private.His time-period is the era of ‘‘segregation’’in the last half of the nineteenth and the firsthalf of the twentieth centuries. While extend-ing the theoretical understanding of formsand contexts of private violence, Evans alsousefully provides much thick historicaldescription in support of his arguments. Inparticular, he addresses the contrastingeffects on informal violence across the tworegions of labor controls, the legal system,and religion.

Evans situates his work within the micro-tradition of Southern United States/SouthAfrica comparisons, summarizing availableconceptualizations and adding further

layers. The account is unbalanced in its cov-erage since Evans is hamstrung by the limit-ed South African historical work—which hisbook considerably redresses. However, hisemphasis on the historical rather than thesociological means the book is rather discon-nected from relevant theory.

Private white-on-black violence was com-mon to both racial orders and arose throughappropriative employment relations coupledwith asymmetrical power relationships. Hadhe wished to generalize more, Evans couldhave shown how these two emblematic racialorders compare with other racial ordersacross many colonial or settler situations.Moreover, in order to keep tightly focused,complexities within his two study areas arelargely ignored, in particular the importantrole in South African ethnic relations of Indi-ans and Coloureds. A lynch culture involvesthe public spectacle of collective and ritualis-tic hunting and killing: ‘‘. . .the rites of pas-sage that human sacrifice entailed sup-pressed the inequalities that divided whitesand guided the frenzied but strangely wor-shipful mob through a choreography thatculminated in the supreme suspension oftime, the ritual death of a sacrificial and vul-nerable victim’’ (p. 25)—even though thecrowds did not understand this ‘‘religious’’transference of their violent impulses.

Intriguingly, although Evans does notassuage his reader’s curiosity, lynchingexisted before the defeat of the South,although previously 85 percent were againstwhites. Afterwards, there was an abruptswitch to white-on-black violence, althoughsome whites continued to be targeted.Lynching emerged as other means of socialcontrol of blacks became constrained duringthe short-lived Reconstruction era, withstruggles becoming deflected onto civil soci-ety and sanctioned by ideology. ‘‘Lost caus-ism in the South provided the glue to holdtogether a demoralised white communitythat was divided by class, anxious about itswomen, and fearful of the social and politicalequality that would flow from the emancipa-tion of African Americans’’ (p. 248). Thesesentiments were harnessed to keep the whiteworking class supine by white elites reigningover King Cotton—indeed, where there wasa range of employers, violence was lessextreme. The employment situation in South

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Africa was more complex as ‘‘Employers inthe three sectors demanded divergent formsof labour control that precluded all employ-ers from rallying to an overtly violent regimeof labor regulation. Mine owners cherisheda system of circulatory migrant labor; indus-trialists factored a settled urban populationwhich the majority of farmers pinned theirfortunes to a system of labor tenancy’’(p. 242).

Northern reconstruction efforts werequickly repelled through a ‘‘white backlash’’which left the South to shape its own fate.While federal policing did subsequentlyexercise its muscle in the South (as in anti-bootlegging) it did not address ethnic vio-lence until the 1960s. By then employershad developed a distaste for violence sincetheir operations depended on an engagedblack labor force. Therefore the lynch culturefaded but never entirely ended: instead ittransmuted into the more institutionalizedforms of capital punishment, incarcerationand street policing. Evans interestinglyrecords for each region, but does not expli-cate the commonness of the trajectory, a phasewhen there was an interracial populist move-ment uniting ethnicities’ interests before thiswas quickly defeated.

Evans superbly identifies three themescommon in both regions’ ideologies: ‘‘‘lostcausism’; government intervention in theeconomy, paternalism’’ (p. 246). However,he then seems to lose his interpretive nerveand lamely suggests that ‘‘. . .these were notonly and perhaps not even the most impor-tant elements of segregationalist ideologybut they suffice to convey the contrastingideological meanings that marked thebureaucratic and lynch cultures of violence’’(p. 246).

Despite his superb development of histhree themes, Evans advances a list of othertopics yet to be considered ‘‘. . . .residentialsegregation, the desegregation of education,affirmative action policies, the changing rela-tionship between race and class, and thechanging meaning of ‘whiteness’’’ (p. 251).

To this could be added the nationally-versuslocally-controlled structures of police orga-nization, the different relationships withtheir wider national settings of the racialorders (the North in the United States and‘‘reserves’’ in South Africa), the patterns ofownership of the means of violence, and dif-ferent forms of social cohesion. In sum, whileEvans’ scholarship provides very usefuladditional historical material, the long listof differences undermines the comparativestructural analysis.

Evans’ opening comments point to differ-ences in national contrition, with the Truthand Reconciliation Commission havingendeavored to heal some of the wounds ofSouth Africa’s past whereas the UnitedStates has still to come to terms with its. Butthere is the huge irony, that since the periodcovered in his book, and against the thrustof Evans’ argument, there has been thespread of a form of lynching (especially‘‘necklacing’’) within contemporary SouthAfrica black settlements which is directedat criminals, ‘‘traitors’’ or immigrants, andwhich had been preceded by largely non-violent mass ethnic clearing of urban blacksand vicious large-scale ANC/IFP conflicts.

Finally, it is a pity that the volume ismarred by several proofing errors. Author‘‘Etherington’’ becomes ‘‘Hetherington’’ inthe same passage, and worse, both make itto the index. South Africa’s Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission is lauded for bangingup criminals when its function was to excul-pate criminals if they offered up ‘‘the truth,’’and in fact was bitterly criticized for notbringing criminals to trial. Why such a briefstatistical time series on numbers of lynch-ings was presented on page five is unclearwhen longer time series are referred to inthe book. Two rather different interpretationsof the peak for lynching (1897 or 1918) areoffered within three pages of each other.

Evans greatly advances analytically acutehistorical work on these two racial orders,but also shows that there is so much moreto be researched.

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The Just City, by Susan S. Fainstein. Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 2010. 212pp.$29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780801446559.

FRAN TONKISS

London School of Economics and [email protected]

Cities have become key sites for the analysisof justice and injustice. This is because citiesseem to concentrate injustice along class,racial, and ethnic lines, and at the sametime seem to hold out the best hope for com-bating (or at least reducing) these same formsof injustice. A city offers a kind of laboratoryfor studying the impacts of policy, of eco-nomic growth and decline, and of socialmovements on complex populations andchallenging socio-economic problems. InThe Just City, Susan S. Fainstein draws onher work of more than three decades onequity, urban planning and development toconsider the prospects for more just urbanprocesses and outcomes. This clearly-arguedand thoughtful book adds to efforts to con-textualize theories of justice in real political,economic and spatial settings—where phi-losophies of justice meet difficult social real-ities, and where law is not the only tool forthe definition and pursuit of justice.

The conceptual debates that frame thissubject are now familiar. Fainstein offersa further go-round of Rawls, Nussbaum,Young, and Sen, with a twist of Harvey,before offering her own take on how to thinkabout justice in the city. The analysis of urbanjustice and injustice, she contends, shouldfocus on three critical issues: equity, diversityand democracy. This is intended to gobeyond a concern with economic distribu-tion to consider the claims of social differenceand citizen engagement in any reckoning ofwhat is more or less just. Justice in the cityis not simply a question of who gets what,but of who gets in and who gets asked. Thesethree criteria provide a basis for assessing theimpacts of both city policy (on housing, pub-lic amenity, service provision, transport andinfrastructure planning) and particularurban development projects. If the conceptu-al framework is an open one, Fainstein is cir-cumspect about the range of her substantive

analysis: ‘‘limited to what appears feasiblewithin the present context of capitalisturbanization in wealthy, formally democrat-ic, Western countries’’ (p. 5). She recognizesthat such a focus is vulnerable to criticism,but is equally clear that there is no easy trans-fer of ideas and practice between rich-worldcities, let alone from developed to develop-ing city contexts. It is telling that, given Fain-stein’s commitment to a planning politics ofthe possible, some of her proposals formore just urban development appear quixot-ic in the context of current regimes of citygovernance.

Fainstein’s empirical studies build on herlong-term interests in the cities of NewYork, London, and Amsterdam. In each caseshe traces a record of urban developmentand policy since the 1970s, both at city leveland in relation to specific large-scale projects.Over this period all three cities have seen pro-nounced cycles of economic decline andgrowth, reversals of what appeared to bechronic population decline, and demograph-ic change shaped in significant ways by inter-national in-migration. Applying her triad ofequity, diversity and democracy to thesestories leads to some surprising conclusions.New York’s Battery Park City can easilybe taken to epitomize the ‘‘neoliberal’’ urbandevelopment trends of the 1980s: post-industrial, finance and leisure-oriented,waterfront, mega-project. Yet Fainstein arguesthat it produced certain positive outcomes inrespect of equity and diversity, albeit in theabsence of much meaningful democraticengagement. Its commercial and residentialdevelopments enhanced the city’s tax basewhile retention of the land in public owner-ship made for an ongoing source of city reve-nue. The fact that the development was builton landfill meant that upscale housing andoffices did not involve direct displacementof existing populations, and the provision ofnew public spaces and amenities accessibleto non-residents supported a more diversemix of recreational users. The score-card issimilarly mixed for London’s Docklandsdevelopment. In this case, Fainstein points tothe double-edge of diversity in thinking aboutthe just city: gentrification increased the socialdiversity of the area, but was seen as a kind ofdispossession by many of its establishedworking-class residents.

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The book concludes with a series of criticalproposals for urban planning and policy.Fainstein has sought to remain even-handedin her treatment of the relative claims of equi-ty, diversity and democracy, but it is the dis-tributive politics of urban justice that opensonto the most concrete practical strategies.These include requirements for affordableprovisions in all new housing developments;one-for-one replacement of public or afford-able housing lost from the overall stock; re-location and compensation rights for thosecompulsorily displaced by re-development,whether renters or owners; incremental ratherthan comprehensive neighborhood redevel-opment; and low-fares policies on publictransport together with tolls and taxes on pri-vate motoring. Several of these measures haveexisted at times in these three cities; some havenow disappeared, others are being eroded.

In the interest of diversity, Fainstein advo-cates a commitment to mixed land uses andinclusive zoning; the creation and protectionof accessible and varied public spaces; andbroader policies of affirmative action to pro-mote equitable access to housing, educationand employment. The political and planningstrategies for ensuring democracy are harderto specify, and one has a sense of Fainstein’swariness regarding the kinds of capture andthe forms of exclusion to which processes ofurban engagement and consultation are toooften subject. She wants to see real participa-tion in planning and development by localpopulations without making current resi-dents the only or the loudest citizen voice inurban decision-making. This tension isendemic to the dual life of the city as a com-mon property and a local landscape. Thestruggle for a more just city, the reader under-stands, is bound to be conflictual, and it willnot always seem fair.

Inclusion and Exclusion of Young AdultMigrants in Europe: Barriers and Bridges,edited by Katrine Fangen, Kirsten Fossan,and Ferdinand Andreas Mohn. Burlington,VT: Ashgate, 2010. 284pp. $114.95 cloth.ISBN: 9781409404200.

NATALIA RIBAS-MATEOS

Equipo de Sociologıa de las [email protected]

There has been since the 1990s a tradition ofputting together books which work with thedifferent European migration patterns andwhich reflect in many ways the various tradi-tions, diverse terminology as well as variedways of collecting data on migration and eth-nic minorities. This is an old issue in therealm of social sciences. However, the bookunder review also brings us new air becauseit is probably one of the first works whichputs together the European landscape whenworking with ‘‘young adult migrants.’’ Italso renders new paths by making a seriouseffort to review the classical sociological con-cept of social exclusion.

Inclusion and Exclusion of Young AdultMigrants in Europe is elaborated using thebasis of a European research project of inclu-sion and exclusion of young adult migrants(or those of immigrant background) usingselected national case studies of Estonia,France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, andthe United Kingdom. It is clearly organizedand written and shows a good quality ofwork, especially provided by the authorswho are the editors of the book.

Their approach builds up the commongrounded themes of an old debate aroundthe immigration models in Europe, but theyalso capture it in a more general global con-text of the contemporary border. For exampleregarding the case of Southern Europe, theyquote that Southern Europe has erecteda symbolic fence as protection against theGlobal South. In this goal of tackling a seriouscross-national comparison they locate theconstruction of numerous migration histo-ries, different national discourses and hetero-geneous political tones, multiple classifica-tions of the foreigner, different educationmodels, cultural tensions and European

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politics. By focusing on the narrower objec-tive of the book, on the process of socialexclusion, the editors brilliantly include allthe different theories of contemporary socialexclusion. And they do that by not forgettinga wide range of elements which interfere insuch processes, thereby presenting a veryholistic view. The holistic tone is often repeat-ed when showing how juridical, political,economic and cultural patterns are framingprocesses of inclusion and exclusion, keep-ing always in mind the different nationalcontexts.

The well-known sociological debate on thesystematic inequalities according to class,gender and ethnicities as an intertwinedsocial fact is also considered. However, theyalso include the new social exclusion per-spective related to the development of thetwo-thirds societies, where one-third islocked into poverty or near poverty. The inte-grationist perspective argues that the focusshould not be only on differences betweenimmigrants and nonimmigrants, but ratheron the process of social exclusion. They doso by thinking of a process of losing groundin a number of different areas, such as thelabor market, the social network, and politi-cal and cultural life.

The real fresh air of the book is placed intothe youth analysis: in the links between theadolescent years and the transition to adult-hood as a real emergent area of scholarship.The book, once again by being too holistic,not only pretends to reflect national concep-tual schemes, but centers on problematicaspects associated with the ways in whichissues of immigration and ethnic relationsare couched in language. A crucial concernis put into the question of whether youngadult immigrants (and their descendants)have radically different experiences fromtheir peers in the ethnic majority population.

By addressing the youth, the book reallyaddresses the meaning of the global genera-tion, following Beck and Beck-Gernsheim(p. 44). Today young migrants could be mar-ginalized from an economic social point ofview, while they are not necessarily marginalfrom a cultural and political perspective,because they grow up in globalized societies,they use digital technologies, and they areconscious and aware of their empowermentchallenges. This is now one of the open

questions which remains—for how long wewill have to wait to recognize the new roleof this global youth in ‘‘Fortress Europe’’?

Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas,edited by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and CynthiaBejarano. Durham, NC: Duke UniversityPress, 2010. 382pp. $25.95 paper. ISBN:9780822346814.

MOLLY TALCOTT

California State University, Los [email protected]

A visceral heaviness in my chest developedas I read the introduction to Terrorizing Wom-en: Feminicide in the Americas, signifying thesociological, political, and human import ofthis well-written and thoughtfully organizededited volume. In mapping ‘‘cartographiesof feminicide,’’ Rosa-Linda Fregoso andCynthia Bejarano build a compelling analy-sis of contemporary feminicide in theAmericas. The editors’ and contributors’empirically-grounded theoretical innova-tions and the sheer breadth of this volume(which includes twenty-two contributions)qualify it as the most innovative and path-breaking body of scholarship on the topicof feminicide. Terrorizing Women is amongthe most illuminating collections on thestudy of contemporary violence as it inter-sects with gendered racism, the exploitationendemic to neoliberal capitalism, and thecomplicity of nation-states in renderingwomen’s bodies vulnerable to violence inthe formal and informal markets of capitaland misogyny.

I wrote this review just days after the homeof Malu Garcıa Andrade (president of Nues-tras Hijas de Regreso a Casa/May Our Daugh-ters Return Home, and the sister of Lilia Ale-jandra, killed in 2001) was set on fire whileshe attended an anti-feminicide protest andhunger strike in front of the offices of theChihuahua State Attorney General in Ciu-dad Juarez. One day earlier, the home ofSara Reyes Salazar, mother of Josefina ReyesSalazar (a human rights activist killed in2010), was burned down; only weeks earlier,three members of Sara’s family wereabducted and later found dead. In the previ-ous two months, women’s human rights

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activists Marisela Escobedo Ortız (of Justiciapara Nuestras Hijas/Justice for Our Daugh-ters and mother of Rubi Frayre Escobedo,killed in 2008) and Susana Chavez Castillo(of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa) werealso murdered. Despite years of mobiliza-tion by a transnational coalition of activistswhose demand is ‘‘¡Ni Una Mas! (Not onemore!),’’ feminicides in Ciudad Juarez, thestate of Chihuahua, and across the Americascontinue with chilling impunity. As femini-cide escalates unabated, social researchersand advocates face an enormous challengein making sense of the systematic and rou-tine killing of women. This volume contrib-utes significantly to that effort.

Moreover, this collection represents a com-ing together of ‘‘transnational’’ and ‘‘inter-sectional’’ feminist scholarship coupledwith a radical shift in the locus of knowledge:by focusing on the region of the Americasand invoking the concept of transculturation,Fregoso and Bejarano frame the Global Southas ‘‘a site of theory production’’ rather thanas ‘‘an area to be studied’’ by experts in theGlobal North (pp. 4–5). As a result of theirawareness that feminicide—the murder ofwomen linked to racialized, gendered struc-tures of capital, militarized power, andinequality—continues to escalate, Fregosoand Bejarano’s project is public (interdisci-plinary) sociology at its best: as they note,one of the collection’s primary aims is ‘‘to con-tribute to the political and legal process ofdefining and advancing a human rightsframing of feminicide’’ (p. 8). TerrorizingWomen employs and transcends academiccritique, includes the testimonies of‘‘witness-survivors’’ (family members of vic-tims), and explores a range of remedies tothe vexing tragedies of feminicide occurringnot only in Mexico, but across the Americasin Guatemala, Argentina, and Costa Rica.

Several chapters in Terrorizing Womendemonstrate how antiracist feminist analysisenables a more complete theorization ofglobal political economy. Many chapters inthis volume (such as those by Mercedes Oli-vera, Julia Estela Monarrez Fragoso, and Ali-cia Schmidt Camacho) demonstrate howfeminicide both represents and reproducesthe disposability of racialized womenlaborers upon which deeply unequal sys-tems of capital accumulation depend. In

her essay, Olivera demonstrates how socialviolence in Mexico is a product of poverty,unemployment, the disintegration of thepeasant economy, migration, women’s lackof land rights, and a nonfunctional justicesystem. Camacho examines feminicide asa brutal manifestation of the ‘‘feminizationof the dispensable non-citizen’’ (p. 276) andas the ‘‘shadow supplement of a binationalproject to produce a feminized populationwithout rights, readily appropriated forwork and service in both legal and illicitlabor markets’’ (p. 285) in both the UnitedStates and Mexico.

Essays by Rita Laura Segato and by HectorDomınguez-Ruvalcaba and Patricia RaveloBlancas address what longstanding impuni-ty reveals about feminicide in Ciudad Juarezand the state of Chihuahua. In her compel-ling analysis, Segato argues that the impuni-ty of these crimes is the way into decipher-ing them, for ‘‘no crime committed bycommon outcasts would remain in completeimpunity for this long’’ (p. 73). Feminicidesare a form of expressive violence, enacted bya ‘‘second state,’’ that is ‘‘acting and shapingsociety from beneath the law’’ (p. 80) andestablishing its sovereignty, patriarchaland regional totalitarianism, and territorialcontrol by terrorizing the city’s women.Like Segato, Domınguez-Ruvalcaba andBlancas argue that ‘‘all recommendationswith respect to the disappearances anddeaths of women have to take the useless-ness of the state as the starting point’’ (p.195). As such, Domınguez-Ruvalcaba andBlancas urge us to rethink obsolete, state-centric mechanisms of accountability thattarget only the government as the object ofscrutiny.

In addition to advancing a more sophisiti-cated analysis of gender, racialization, andviolence as constitutive of contemporaryglobal political economy, this volume alsocontributes an understanding of the new civ-ic networks and social movements that arisein response to feminicide. Such movementsat times invoke legal instruments for seekingaccountability and promoting women’shuman rights, yet they also move ‘‘beyondthe legal.’’ As Fregoso and Bejarano note,feminist scholars and activists possess an his-torically justifiable skepticism of the state’swillingness to ‘‘grant’’ women their full

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human rights, particularly in an era in whichrights are being denationalized. As such,social movements are embracing approachesthat center healing, justice, new cultures of cit-izenship, and the restoration of community. Inplace of a notion of human rights that relies onliberal individualism, Fregoso and Bejaranoadvance the concept of ‘‘human rights for liv-ing’’: a model of human rights as substan-tive, indivisible, and which requires deepstructural change for its realization. Femini-cide, according to the contributors, exists aspart of a broader matrix of human rights vio-lations that traverse public and privatedomains, interconnected formal and infor-mal economies, states and borders, sites ofcorporate and misogynist power, and milita-rized shadow states. Such violations includenot only the rape, torture, and murder ofwomen but also those which are directlysanctioned by the neoliberal state, such ashunger, poverty, and displacement. All inall, Terrorizing Women suggests that manypaths—transnational, legal, community-based, and cultural—are being pursued inorder to address and ultimately dismantlethe corporate, state, and shadow state sys-tems that enact private and public practicesof feminicide.

Terrorizing Women signals that much schol-arly and advocacy work on the topic of fem-inicide remains to be done. It begins thework of placing feminicide in comparativeperspective (with a focus on the Americas),which is an important theoretical develop-ment, given that feminicide is a transnationalphenomenon. And finally, as Fregoso andBejarano note in their introduction, the rela-tionship of structural violence against queerand transgender people to feminicideremains underexplored. This volume doesnot explicitly advance a sexual rights fram-ing of feminicide, yet through its criticalhuman rights framing, it offers an impres-sive theoretical and empirical foundationon which future research on the queer sexualpolitics of feminicide (and movements toend it) might build.

Older GLBT Family and Community Life,edited by Christine A. Fruhauf and DanMahoney. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010.180pp. $45.95 paper. ISBN: 9781560237549.

KARIN A. MARTIN


With the tremendous growth in the popula-tion of people over age 65 and the expansionof sexuality studies, the social sciences haveseen an increasing attention to the intersec-tions of the fields of aging and sexuality.While this area of research is still in itsnascent phase, it holds out much promisefor expanding our scholarly understandingin both aging research and sexuality research.Older GLBT Family and Community Life isa contribution to this endeavor. The projectof understanding older GLBT (Gay, Lesbian,Bisexual, Transgender) lives is an interdisci-plinary one, drawing from psychology,social work, gerontology, human develop-ment, and sociology. It is also a multi-method project with chapters based on focusgroups, interviews, questionnaires, and per-sonal narratives. While the editors divide thevolume into three sections—on GLBT healthissues, friendships and family relationships,and ‘‘the storied, complex lives of olderGLBT adults’’—there are at least two threadsthat further stitch the volume together.

First, the volume is the product of a specialissue of the Journal of GLBT Family Studies,and as such it is particularly attuned tounderstanding GLBT elders in the contextsof families. This perspective is significantbecause until recently, scholars understoodolder GLBT lives as existing primarily out-side of family contexts. The authors herecounter this stereotype by examining themultiple, rich, complex, and sometimes dif-ficult contexts of families for GLBT elders.For example, Christine Fruhauf, NancyOrel, and David Jenkins provide a rich por-trayal of the issues facing grandfatherscoming out to their grandchildren. Theydescribe grandfathers’ fears in this processand the ways in which adult childrenbecome resources or intermediaries. It isa depiction in which GLBT elders are deeplyembedded in families. In Steven Pugh’s

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chapter, however, we see that family rela-tions may vary across time for GLBT per-sons. Pugh finds two distinct periods oflife—at the emergence of sexuality and astheir lives settled in adulthood—where fam-ilies were particularly significant for theGLBT elders from whom he collected lifenarratives. Other chapters consider a varietyof dimensions of family including parent-child relations, GLBT partners/couples,and friends. These chapters move us pastthe image of the familially-exiled GLBTelder.

Second, this collection uniquely attends tothe complex and difficult issues of care, carework, and support throughout many chap-ters. Much sociological work on care hasfocused on who does care work in the work-ing family, and work in sexuality has focusedheavily on care of those with HIV/AIDS.This volume extends our thinking aboutcare work by implicitly and explicitly askingwhat care work GLBT elders do and receive.For example, Thomas Blank, Marysol Asen-cio, Lara Descartes, and Julie Griggs’ chapterasked aging men to consider the possibilityof prostate cancer in focus groups. His partic-ipants articulated some concerns about med-ical care, imagined social support from fam-ily, but most interestingly, the authors say,‘‘expressed romantic notions’’ (p. 24) of theways in which long-term partners would besupportive and caring. Also, in the sectionon health, Tarynn Witten directly takes onthe issue of end of life care for transgenderelders. According to Witten, the difficultiesthat transgender people face follow theminto late adulthood. End of life care is compli-cated by caregivers’ ‘‘continuing conflictsregarding gender transition begun earlier inlife’’ (p. 47) and by institutional and legal het-eronormativity. Finally, a last chapter consid-ers care using personal narrative from thepoint of view of a gay son caring for his elder-ly mother. This chapter is the only one in thebook that does not focus on GLBT elders.

This eclectic mix of chapters begins toallow us to see in more complex detail a pop-ulation that has been fairly invisible. Whilethis volume sheds light on many interestingand important phenomena for older GLBTadults, there are still some corners thatremain in the dark. For instance, the volumefocuses more on gay men than lesbians. Of

the eight chapters, five are empiricalaccounts or case studies of gay men. Noneof the remaining three focus on lesbians butare data from lesbians and gay men, or trans-gender persons. A gendered perspective onGLBTaging is still needed. Another dark cor-ner is sex itself. We hear very little of the roleof intimate sexual behavior and experiencefor older GLBT people. The few bits we dohear about sexual experience (in Blanket al.’s chapter for example) suggest that itneeds further study. Finally, more lightwould be shed on the older GLBTexperienceif we had data that allowed comparisonswith other groups. Many of the chaptershere imply a comparison to younger GLBTpersons or to heterosexual elders, but thereis little data to examine whether these com-parisons hold up empirically. However, thechapters are extremely generative of possiblefuture research in the intersecting areas ofaging and sexuality, and it is likely that thisbook will spawn much of that research.

Who You Claim: Performing Gang Identityin School and on the Streets, by RobertGarot. New York: New York UniversityPress, 2010. 260pp. $22.00 paper. ISBN:9780814732137.

ANDREW V. PAPACHRISTOS

University of Massachusetts, [email protected]

In Who You Claim: Performing Gang Identity inSchool and on the Streets, Robert Garot uses anethnomethodological approach to analyzethe ways young men and women navigateidentity, gang-involvement, and violence. Instark contrast to scholarly accounts that painta portrait of gang members using broad cat-egorical brush strokes (e.g., gang vs. non-gang, core vs. periphery, and so on), Garotprovides a beautifully complex picture ofyouth identity and the countless ways inwhich it is created, maintained, and enacted.In Garot’s account, gang members are notbloodthirsty killers programmed by theirloyalty to some monolithic organization.Rather, they are painstakingly ‘‘normal’’human beings struggling to make their waythrough alienating schools and impover-ished neighborhoods. The end result is

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a book that, like no other before it, describeshow the rituals and identities of young peo-ple are responsible for the social phenomenawe call ‘‘gangs.’’

Who You Claim is based on interview andobservational data from ‘‘Choices Alterna-tive Academy’’ (CAA), an alternative school‘‘designed for the baddest of the bad: theroughest kids in the toughest neighbor-hood’’ (p. 15). Garot spent four years inter-viewing more than 46 ‘‘consultants’’ (as hecalls the interviewees and informants) andobserving hallway, cafeteria, playground,and classroom dynamics. Garot’s methodo-logical approach reflects this objective ofunpacking gang identity and his use of pri-mary ‘‘on-the-ground’’ and ‘‘in-the-class’’data is as compelling as it is revealing.

The book is organized into two parts: onethat focuses on alienation at school (Part I)and the other which focuses on gang identityoutside of school (Part II). Part I sets the stagefor the drama that unfolds in the rest of thebook by describing the school and its cast ofcharacters. For Garot, CAA is not some bea-con of hope that might help troubled youthre-orient their identities towards more main-stream (read non-violent/non-gang) behav-iors. On the contrary, the main function ofCAA, Garot tells us, is control. The consul-tants’ actions are a form of resistance to thealienation of CAA, the apathy of teachers,and the indecipherable meaning and fickleenforcement of school rules. The ‘‘hiddencurriculum’’ at CAA is about ‘‘fear,’’ andthe ways in which teachers and administra-tors try to retain control of the student pop-ulation (pp. 41–44). For example, in a chapteron student dress codes (Chapter Three),Garot describes how ‘‘arbitrary, inconsistent,and meaningless rules’’ give rise to studentresistance and adaptations (p. 45). Rulesinvoked by administrators to promote stu-dent safety (i.e., minimize gang presenceinside school) become battlegrounds uponwhich students struggle to express theirindividuality while teachers and administra-tors struggle to maintain authority andcontrol.

The main argument unfolds in Part II,where Garot details the processes of identityformation, creation, and maintenance as theyhappen outside of CAA. Each of the chaptersin Part II chronicles a unique dimension of

gang identity and, more importantly, theprecise ways in which they transpire on thestreet. Although the majority of the datawere collected at CAA, Part II relies mainlyon consultants’ accounts of how they negoti-ate and avoid violent encounters on the street.Much of the facework described by Garotchronicles how youth respond to questionsof identity and how such identity workadapts to situational and contextual factorssuch as the clothes people are wearing (andhow they are wearing them), the streets onwhich encounters unfold, the presence ofthird parties, and so on. The most pervasivequestions posed to Garot’s consultants are‘‘where you from?’’ and ‘‘who you claim?’’(Chapters Four and Five). For the consul-tants, such questions are extremely potent‘‘locally recognized interrogation devicesand central practices for demonstratinggang identity’’ that force ‘‘the respondentto make an identity claim in terms of gangmembership’’ (p. 71). Thus, the answers tosuch questions can determine the paths ofaction taken in street-level interactions, espe-cially during potentially violent encounters(Chapter Six). Claiming to be from ‘‘some-where’’—a particular neighborhood—defacto associates that person with a particulargang ecology, regardless of whether or notthe person actually considers themselves tobe an associate of said gang. Neighborhoodgeography, group attachment, and individu-al identity create a deadly Venn Diagram inwhich young people must decide how tomove away from the center and towardsa safer social location given the situationalspecifics. Most often, the consultantsrespond by saying they are from‘‘nowhere’’—a telling response that deniesone aspect of an individual’s identity(attachment to a community) for the sakeof personal safety.

The empirical attention of Who You Claim ison the gang members themselves. And,without a doubt, Garot succeeds in revealingthe complex nature of gang identity.Unfortunately, Garot does not afford thesame complexity to other actors in hisnarrative—in particular, teachers. In fact, ascompared to the multifaceted and spiritedgang members, the teachers and administra-tors at CAA are portrayed as unidimension-al, flat, and categorical. Without exception,

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Garot describes teachers as oppressiveauthoritarians with little understanding orcare for pedagogy and education. Apathyamong teachers—especially those in schoolssuch as CAA—is believable and even under-standable. But I find it hard to believe that all(or most) of the teachers at CAA viewedtheir vocation purely in oppressive terms.Just as the identity of gang membersemerges from encounters with other actorsin the school environs, one might also rea-sonably expect that the identity of teacherswould emerge in a similar dynamic manner.Though, admittedly, Garot’s objective is tostudy gang members and not teachers,such a flat analysis of teachers is quite outof character in this interaction-based study,especially because Garot’s own presence atCAA most likely linked him with staff andfaculty.

This limitation not withstanding, Who YouClaim is a ‘‘must-read’’ for scholars interest-ed not just in gangs, but also in youth iden-tity, education, urban neighborhoods, andviolence more generally. This book is per-haps the first to accurately describe theminutiae of micro-level rituals that guideidentity formation among gang youth. It isthrough such interactions that we learnthat gang membership is not some catch-allmaster status in the lives of gang members.Gang membership is a fluid, dynamic, andspatially-situated aspect of identity thatintersects with other dimensions of self.Gang members are, at the same time, resi-dents of a neighborhood, students ina school, friends, family members, and soon. Trying to capture the idea of ‘‘gang mem-bership’’ without such dynamism not onlymisses the empirical point, but also poorlyrepresents what gang membership actuallyis.

The New Custodians of the State: ProgrammaticElites in French Society, by William Genieys,translated by Marc Smyrl. New Brunswick,NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010. 213pp.$49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781412811569.

BRUNO COUSIN

University of Lille 1, [email protected]

During the past ten years, the French sociol-ogy of unelected political and administrativeelites went through an important renewal.The works of Bruno Latour on the Conseild’Etat, Dominique Schnapper on the Conseilconstitutionnel, Sylvain Laurens on immigra-tion officials, Emilie Biland-Curinier on localcivil servants, Michel Offerle on lobbying,Yves Dezalay on economic and legaladvisors—and many others—have studiedgroups and institutions almost unanalyzeduntil then, and often approached them usinginnovative theoretical perspectives. In TheNew Custodians of the State (an adapted trans-lation of his 2008 book, L’elite des politiques del’Etat), William Genieys contributes to thisexploration of neglected fields by focusingon social welfare and defense policymakersin France. However, the author does nottake part in the ongoing discussions withinthe sociology of elites, but dialogues witholder references and with the political sci-ence literature.

When he addresses French defensepolicies—following the seminal works ofSamy Cohen and Bastien Irondelle—Genieysmainly tries to refute the military-industrialcomplex (MIC) paradigm, and demonstratethe lasting pertinence of Suzanne Keller’sdescription of some bureaucratic elites as‘‘strategic.’’ The ‘‘programmatic elites’’ ofthe subtitle are in fact alliances of senioradministrative, technical, and military offi-cials consolidated around a specific projector policy program, whose destiny hasbecome progressively bound with theirown respective career or corps interests.The members of these coalitions use theirhighly specialized sectoral or multi-sectorcompetences, their connections, and relatedlegitimacy to gain autonomy, exert influenceon the decision processes (notably by con-trolling some of their steps), oppose other

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government elites, and resist the financialrationale of cost-reduction implementedthrough governance tools. Therefore, themodel of action presented by Genieys seemsto be less an analytical alternative to the MIC,as he claims, than an alternate strategydeployed by insiders with specific resourcesto counter—among others—the MIC itself(pp. 145 and 156).

The other part of the book is more system-atically prosopographical: it analyzes thecareers of the 133 civil servants who occu-pied senior administrative and/or top advis-er positions in the national healthcare andfamily policy sectors during the 1981–1997period, and more specifically the 36 of themwho did it for the longest (more than threeyears) and became welfare experts. Amongthe latter, Genieys identifies three genera-tions that rose in different political contexts:the ‘‘elders,’’ the ‘‘81 generation’’ linkedwith the Socialists’ first accession to power,and the ‘‘social policy managers’’ of thelate-1980s and 1990s. Almost all of themwere trained as generalists at the prestigiousEcole nationale d’administration (ENA). Butmany members of the two younger groupssubsequently joined the social affairs cham-ber of the Cour des comptes (which is incharge of the financial audit of France’snational public institutions) or the Inspectiongenerale des affaires sociales (in charge of thecontrol, audit and evaluation of social poli-cies), where they acquired skills and posi-tional resources that led to their functionalpoliticization and sectoral specialization,and therefore to their appointment to execu-tive positions.

Thus, welfare policy elites are described ashaving grown proactive: they no longeroppose the budgetary approach and manage-rial tools while negotiating with the financeministry. Instead, they anticipate and inte-grate them in their proposals, so as to be theones setting the contents of the sector’s agen-da, if not the schedule. The book, however,does not explore the relation between thisadaptation to new normative frameworksand the policies actually implemented dur-ing the following years—the welfare elitesare defined as ‘‘new custodians of the State’’

because they have been able to maintainand even strengthen its (and therefore their)prerogative to conceive, enact, pursue, andcontrol social policies. But with which orien-tation, exactly? Indeed the work of BrunoPalier on this question is quoted as a refer-ence (pp. 50 and 115), although a morefocused analysis relating the actors studiedby Genieys with the measures they promot-ed would have usefully completed his book(as it does in the chapters about defensepolicymakers).

More generally, since the author’s demon-strations are sometimes repetitive, it is evenmore frustrating that some of his key pointsremain undeveloped, and lack further con-nections to the sociological literature. Severaltimes, his analysis of ‘‘programmatic elites’’recalls and illustrates the importance of themultipositionality of certain actors, the riseof project-oriented organizations and justifi-catory registers during the last decades,and the relevance of investigating meaning-making processes in order to understandthe actions of policymakers. However,despite the fact that these issues are charac-teristic of the Bourdieusian and post-Bour-dieusian approaches—and that Genieyshimself acknowledges the centrality of Bour-dieu’s work in his introductory theoreticalessay (pp. 36 and 38) and further in thebook (p. 81)—he never directly addressesthem.

Nevertheless, The New Custodians of theState presents stimulating data and in-depthcase studies that will interest both Frenchscholars and Franco-American comparatists.The fewer relations and the lesser circulationof administrative elites within the privatesector (because civil servants can always goback to their statutory posts, when they areremoved from government-appointed posi-tions), the role of serving in administrativejurisdictions or inspection corps in buildinga top public career, the little influence ofthink tanks on policy design, and the leader-ship disputes behind the wide array ofservices provided by a corporatist welfaresystem, are French characteristics that cer-tainly will hold the attention of anybodyeager to better understand la Republique.

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Threat Perceptions: The Policing of Dangersfrom Eugenics to the War on Terrorism, bySaran Ghatak. Lanham, MD: LexingtonBooks, 2011. 131pp. $60.00 cloth. ISBN:9780739129579.

OWEN WHOOLEY

Rutgers [email protected]

The widespread appeal of Ulrich Beck’snotion of the ‘‘risk society’’ has resulted ina large corpus of research that treats risk asa contemporary phenomenon—the by-product of certain changes in modernity dur-ing the latter portions of the twentieth century.However, as Saran Ghatak nicely demon-strates in his book, Threat Perceptions, the con-struction and governance of risk has a longand often dubious history that is inscribedin our current understandings of danger. Intracing the emergence of risk over the courseof the nineteenth century United States,Ghatak brings a much needed historical sen-sibility to the study of risk, showing howcontrolling it has puzzled social scientistsand policy makers for a long time.

Ghatak lays out two analytical goals forreconstructing the evolution of defining andcontrolling risk in the United States. First,Ghatak seeks to situate the current debatesover risk within a broader historical perspec-tive through a ‘‘history of the present.’’ This isachieved with aplomb, as the book’s majorcontribution is to get the reader thinkingabout risk and threat perception as not mere-ly a symptom of modern governance, buta longstanding and persistent issue.

Ghatak’s historical orientation forms theanalytical foundation for his second goal, toshow that risk is not a pre-existing realitybut the result of simultaneous processes ofsocial, juridical, and scientific construction.The complicated ‘‘tortuous ways’’ that riskhas evolved are driven by the interactionbetween scientists and state institutions. Putdifferently, it is an emergent phenomenonborn of historical contingency and alliancesbetween researchers and policy makers.Threat Perceptions does a nice job in illumi-nating the animating issues for such alli-ances throughout different periods of riskgovernance. Yet, while Ghatak effectively

calls our attention to these configurations,his largely descriptive analysis begs formore analytical rigor in teasing out the inter-actions and tensions among actors. The slim131-page volume cannot bear the full weightof this second goal. Consequently, Threat Per-ceptions is an excellent primer on the historyof risk—a good place to start for anyoneinterested in these issues, but only a start.

This is not to say that researchers interest-ed in this topic will not find plenty of gristfor the sociology mill in this short book. Thesix empirical chapters recount differentmoments and topics in the history of risk inthe United States. The first four comprisea coherent narrative that traces the evolutionof risk construction from dangerousness inthe nineteenth century, to eugenics, to a psy-chopathological model, and finally to a mod-el of actuarial justice (or, the emergence ofstandardized statistical instruments for mea-suring risk potential). These chapters flowseamlessly into one another, providing anexcellent account of how danger and riskhave changed over time. They also under-score the linkages between the different con-ceptualizations and eras, as Threat Perceptionsdistills the key intellectual and politicalissues of each period. Although ostensiblyGhatak is interested in both the scientificand policy sides of the construction of risk,his discussion, especially in the earlier chap-ters, is skewed heavily toward the social sci-entific dimensions. This imbalance some-what muddies his analysis of interactionbetween science and politics that is at thecore of the book’s analytical intervention.Still, one would be hard pressed to finda book that encompasses a wide array ofsource material in such an economicalfashion.

While fascinating, the final two empiricalchapters on political dissent and terrorismsit a bit awkwardly in the book’s overall nar-rative. This awkwardness is born both fromtheir topics and their different emphases.Whereas the previous four chapters skewtoo heavily toward the intellectual founda-tions for risk, these two chapters focus almostexclusively on the policy and policing side ofthe equation. This is not to suggest that thesechapters are weak or limited. Indeed, thematerials contained therein deserve booksof their own. But Ghatak’s argument would

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be better served if these two contemporarychapters were more integrated with the his-torical narrative.

Threat Perceptions lays out an ambitiousagenda, and while Ghatak synthesizesa breadth of material, it is never given itsfull analytical due. For example, in the chap-ter on eugenics Ghatak claims that the ideaof defective delinquency provided a com-mon meeting ground of the agenda of scien-tists, criminal justice professionals, lawyersand social reformers (p. 44). Yet he coulddo more to examine how and why it providedthis common meeting ground. To under-stand how these alliances were formed, weneed more contextualization of both the dis-ciplinary projects of various groups and thepolitical issues of governance among policymakers. We need more analysis on the ‘‘nex-us between science and law’’ (p. 101), onhow intellectuals tap into and interact withgoverning organizations to create the affini-ties that Ghatak describes. What we getinstead is a largely descriptive narrativethat identifies the major issues in the historyof risk construction, but which fails to illu-minate the nitty gritty processes out ofwhich this history evolved.

Nevertheless, in the end, Ghatak effective-ly identifies the difficulties and tensions intrying to calculate rationally and preventfuture dangers within a democratic society.And if this history tells us anything it isthat preemptive strikes against risk havea dark side, having given birth to eugenics,McCarthyism, and the Patriot Act. Ghatak’sdescription of the corrosion of individualrights in the name of risk governance illumi-nates the persistent tension between control-ling risk and democratic values. It is this crit-ical, historical sensibility that is the book’strue contribution, providing a foundationfor subsequent research into how the alli-ances formed between researchers and poli-cy makers produce our often problematicresponses to danger.

Asia’s Flying Geese: How RegionalizationShapes Japan, by Walter F. Hatch. Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 2010. 292pp.$24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780801476471.

SOOK JONG LEE

SungKyunKwan University, [email protected]

In this book, Walter F. Hatch entertainsresearchers of Japanese political economyand economic sociology by offering a newperspective drawn from network studies.The economic downfall of Japan from the ear-ly 1990s has led to much comment and debateamong journalistic and academic writings.Most early works on Japanese political econ-omy explained Japan’s economic success bythe unique ways it operated capitalism. Fac-ing the question of why the same Japaneseoperation failed later, endogenous or exoge-nous explanations have been attemptedwithout much satisfaction. Hatch’s versionis more systematic than other attempts, butit also leaves some questions behind.

Hatch characterizes Japanese capitalism as‘‘selective relationalism’’ where political andeconomic exchanges occur exclusivelyamong insiders of networks and elites whoenjoy positional power in allocating resour-ces such as information, capital, and technol-ogy. This relationalism has three legs, state-industry ties, business-business ties, andmanagement-labor ties. Anyone who is famil-iar with studies on Japan’s political economycan envision each leg: alliance capitalism/reciprocal consent/administrative guid-ance/amakudari-shingikai for bureaucrats-business ties, vertical and horizontal keiretsuand other enterprise networks for business-business ties, and permanent employment/seniority wages for management-labor ties.This popular postwar model began to facechallenges in the late 1970s as rising oppor-tunity costs outweighed savings in transac-tion costs. Japanese firms continued to investbut domestic productivity fell. Hatch attrib-utes the increasing inefficiency of selectiverelationalism to the changing economic envi-ronment of technological uncertainty.

Japanese elites responded, according toauthor, by externalizing the system to theAsian region in the 1980s rather than

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mending domestic selective relationalism.Government officials became cheerleadersfor economic regionalization and offeredOfficial Development Assistance (ODA) toAsian countries. Japanese manufacturers ofelectronics, machinery, and automobile partsestablished production networks based ona technological division of labor. As the bub-ble burst and the business rush to Asia wasaccelerated in the 1990s, Japanese officialscharacterized this dynamic process as a ‘‘fly-ing geese’’ pattern of regional economicdevelopment led by Japan.

While Asian regionalization has beenwidely claimed to be market-led integration,Hatch emphasizes that this was driven byJapanese elites who wanted to prevent theirrelational capitalism from collapsing athome. In this sense, he terms the process‘‘elite regionalism.’’ Finding a buffer inAsia, Hatch argues that Japanese economicreform in the 1990s was not real restructuringbut rather mere distributional change. Recip-rocal ties between regulators and the regulat-ed continued, and business ties were main-tained among core insiders. On the otherhand, the cost of distributional change wasplaced on smaller companies and increasingnon-regular and dispatched workers.Regionalization in Asia was accompaniedby domestic polarization. In this sense,regionalism only postponed the reform ofincreasingly failing and innovation-resistantnetwork capitalism in Japan. Therefore, theend of relational capitalism would be goodfor Japan’s future.

Why did Japanese elites not change selec-tive relationalism despite the rising costs?Here, Hatch seeks answers from networkstudies. Change in the dense network struc-ture of the Japanese has a high opportunitycost. Japanese elites did not want to changesince innovation undermined the establishedrelations and thus threatened their positionalpower.

This selective relationalism has beenchanging slowly since the late 1990s accord-ing to Hatch. A driver came from a crisis inthe Japan-led regionalization. Local busi-nessmen who were satisfied with profitsnow wanted technological independenceand more local input—horizontal networks.Also China emerged as a regional hegemonreplacing Japan as the hub of trade and

production networks. The Asian FinancialCrisis of 1997 also weakened Japan’s posi-tional power as the IMF regained new influ-ence. Japan’s ODA to Asia has also been indecline. The political power transfer to theDemocratic Party of Japan in 2009 has beena facilitating factor for change. Althoughthe author sees strong signs for structuralchange, readers may be skeptical in light ofJapan’s response following the 2011 earth-quake and the nuclear meltdown of theFukushima power plant.

Hatch tries to build a theory that regional-ization is the protective response of anadvanced capitalist state to the forces of glob-alization. Here, he finds Germany in Europesimilar to Japan in Asia, although he does notelaborate on how German elites have soughtEuropeanization to protect their corporatecapitalism. With the same logic, is Chinaregionalizing against the forces of globaliza-tion to protect its socialist market economy?Advocates of the Beijing Consensus for Chi-na’s development assistance model maywell be motivated to protect their socialistmarket economy from Westernization. Thethesis of regionalization as a buffer againstglobalization has been stated elsewhere.However, it needs to be verified throughmore empirical studies.

Recently, trade, production, and invest-ment networks have been studied to showa deepening of regional integration in Asia.Taking the region as a unit of analysis, eitherJapan or China is often regarded as a node inwhole network geography, so that the goalsand motives of national elites forging net-work ties have not been sufficiently studied.This book fills this gap by focusing on the Jap-anese elites in the Japan-led regionalization.In addition, studying interactions betweena domestic economy and its regionalization,as in this book, is critically important forthis globalized world.

Nevertheless, this book has some pitfalls.While the author’s main thesis is Japan’sregionalization to trump globalization, hedoes not elaborate on how the forces of glob-alization have pressed Japan’s industries,businesses, and government elites. The Japa-nese form of relational capitalism is regardedas not suitable for an advanced economy ina globalized environment. Although it hasbecome a cliche to maintain that an open

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and more inclusive market economy fitsglobalization, the author could benefit fromdetailing this in the Japanese context. Despitethe fresh introduction of network study con-cepts, they exist only as metaphors andJapan’s positional power in actual specificnetworks is not truly measured. Lastly, read-ers may find the subtitle puzzling. Since Jap-anese selective relationalism at home wasexternalized into Japan-led Asian regional-ism, it would be more suitable to use the sub-title ‘‘How Japan Shapes Regionalization.’’Or if the author meant that the crisis ofJapan-led regionalization pushed Japan tochange, then it might be better to say ‘‘HowRegionalization Shapes New Japan.’’

Women, Work, & Politics: The PoliticalEconomy of Gender Inequality, by TorbenIversen and Frances Rosenbluth. NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.202pp. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780300153101.

JOAN ACKER


Gender inequalities are ubiquitous through-out human societies, historically and today.In spite of much research and theorizing onthe causes and characteristics of theseinequalities, empirical and theoretical puz-zles remain. For example, why, in spite ofhuge changes toward gender equality, arethe gender segregation of jobs and genderedpay gaps still so widespread? In Women,Work, & Politics, authors Torben Iversenand Frances Rosenbluth suggest answers tosuch questions, including questions abouthow gender inequalities may be fundamen-tally changing today. They use ideas aboutmarkets, individual choice and bargainingto analyze the historical development andcross-national variations of gender inequal-ities today. They limit their analyses primar-ily to wealthy, Northern, industrial (or post-industrial) societies.

The authors develop a complex analysisthat links individual and intra-householdprocesses with large-scale institutional pro-cesses. They argue that gendered inequalitiesare the outcomes of countless decisions byindividuals in their daily lives in families

and on the job, as spouses, employees,employers and policy makers as they act intheir own perceived interests. The resultingtheoretical argument is presented in consid-erable detail and with admirable clarity. Inaddition, the authors use the theory to exam-ine the relationships between fertility andlabor market participation of women toexplain present-day changes and cross-national differences in fertility rates and pop-ulation growth. They also apply the theory topolitics, looking at changes in the politicalalignments and voting patterns of differentgroups of women and their political partici-pation in a variety of countries with differentelectoral systems.

The basic argument of this book is thatpower differences between women andmen, as well as other gender inequalities,arise in bargaining processes within the fam-ily, which take place under specific econom-ic, institutional, and ideological conditions.These conditions may change, contributingto changes in the relative bargaining powerof women and men. Reciprocally, changesin intra-family bargaining may spark institu-tional and normative changes in the broadersociety. Wives and husbands bargain over thedivision of household labor, the distributionof family resources, whether the womanshould take a paying job, and many othermatters. Power in the bargaining process ulti-mately depends upon the individual’s abilityto leave the family or marriage, and thatdepends most basically on outside resources,such as income from a job. The gender divi-sion of labor that assigns women to unpaidwork leaves most full-time homemakerswithout outside resources and with little bar-gaining power. When jobs for women arescarce, marriage is often the best choicea woman has to ensure economic survivalfor herself and her children. As jobs haveopened for women, more and more womenhave chosen to work for pay, changing thefamily bargaining situation to some extent.As a result, men do more household workthan in the past, but not enough to bring gen-der equality in housework and caring tasks.Women who work for pay still do significant-ly more at home than do men. The genderpay gap and male dominance in the ‘‘better’’jobs persist. To understand this, we have tolook at employer decisions.

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Employers’ hiring decisions are critical inconsigning women to lower paid work thanmen. These are rational decisions: men’slabor is more valuable than women’s, espe-cially in the private sector. The economy isdivided into two production systems: oneemploys high-skill, specialized workerswho become more valuable to employersover time, and the other system employsworkers with general, unspecialized skillsthat do not build greater value with longjob tenure. Employers in the high skill sectorare reluctant to hire women because theyexpect women to leave the job for childbear-ing and caring work before employers canreap the benefits of their increased humancapital. Thus, women are effectively barredfrom high paying jobs, which remain maledominated. Women do not have similarproblems in the general skills sector whichcovers service and caring work, often in thepublic sector. This sector is also expandingand jobs are, or used to be, widely availablefor women. Thus, many women choose towork in this sector. The choices of bothemployers and women workers create a cir-cular process from which there is no easyexit. The only solution, according to theauthors, is to break the vicious circle by elim-inating the domestic division of labor – menhave to do half the housework.

This is only a brief summary of an ambi-tious project that makes an important contri-bution to efforts to understand the causes ofgender inequalities and their persistence.The linking of individual decisions and fam-ily bargaining to their consequences for thelarger society is admirable. Many of the anal-yses provide new insights into complex pro-cesses. The comparative analyses are excel-lent, demonstrating the complexity as wellas the multiplicity of processes that maintaingendered inequalities.

But, does the book adequately explain thegender segregation of work and the ongoingpay gap? I am not satisfied that it does. Inspite of its complexity, this argument missesor underplays some important elements inthe reproduction of gender inequalities. Itdoes not give enough attention to the waysin which gendered assumptions are funda-mental to the organization of work and toimages of adequate workers. Most paidwork places are organized on the implicit

assumption that workers have no obligationsoutside that workplace. The worker is unen-cumbered, and is probably a man witha woman to take care of the family andhome. This is a gendered organization ofwork and it disadvantages those who mustrespond to other obligations, usually women.

Gender images and assumptions are moredeeply embedded in workplace practices,including hiring and wage setting, than thistheory allows. Although the authors talkabout the importance of norms and values,they do not capture the ways in which gen-dered assumptions about the nature ofwomen and men shape many choices. Menare seen as naturally dominant, potentialdecision-makers and leaders, while womenare seen as naturally nurturing and caring.Such assumptions may not be consciouslyheld, but research on women in organiza-tions has repeatedly shown that such imagesfrequently cast women in male-defined jobsas inappropriate or inadequate to the tasks,simply because they are women. It is reason-able to conclude that such images influencemanagers’ decisions.

Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics ofWaiting in India, by Craig Jeffrey. Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. 221pp.$21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804770743.

DEV N. PATHAK

Jamia Millia Islamia University, New [email protected]

Waiting, the leitmotif of this work, inter-changeably referred to as ‘‘limbo’’ and‘‘timepass,’’ is cause as well as effect in youthculture and politics in India. It stems from a -socio-historical condition and it ushers socie-ty into a new milieu. Biographically, it mayseem transitory. Historically, it manages tobe eternally defining the destiny of socialactors. Craig Jeffrey develops an incisivelydetailed account of the empirical dimensionsof waiting, by wishing away the inherentmind game and experiential complexitiesthereof. Timepass is not about the epistemo-logical complexities of the term ‘‘waiting.’’Instead, it is about understanding the richlower middle class, their investment in theeducation of their children as a strategy to

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navigate various fields, and their aspiration(and timepass) as a strategic tool of youthin a situation of educational decay, corrup-tion, and unemployment. Jeffrey has movedonto the question of youth in a phased man-ner. It entails his doctoral research in 1996–97on the socio-political strategy of rich Jatfarmers, his ‘‘Bijnaur research’’ in 2000–02on educational transformation and thereproduction of inequalities, and in the thirdphase of his engagement with the field in2004 when he undertook research on youthin the universities of Meerut district, UttarPradesh, India. This portrays the whole ofresearch in which the theme of unemployed,educated youth, assailed by an administra-tive and educational decline—operating inthe liminal limbo toward a future—is a smallpart. At one level, this work attempts todraw the micro-power politics (in a Foucaul-dian sense) to add an important chapter inthe political sociology of India, and at anoth-er it seeks to make sense of the collectivebehavior of youth in the larger frameworkof society. The frame of reference is stratifiedinequalities, with social actors aspiring tosucceed in the fields of competition, locatedin the ‘‘global south’’ with readjusted eco-nomic structure. ‘‘Waiting,’’ thus, assumesa significance greater than the semantic sug-gestion of the term.

The overall treatment is reminiscent ofMertonian functionalism in deliberatingupon the intended and unintended conse-quences of youth’s timepass, and its bearingupon the social structure which already haslatent as well as manifest inconsistencies.Curiously though, there is not even an obli-que acknowledgement of functionalism.Instead, Jeffrey claims to pursue Bourdieu’snotion of habitus and thereby attempts tounderstand the regenerative strategies ofclasses while navigating fields. However, inorder to understand the role of an individu-al’s agency in youth politics, he recognizesthe need of adequate theoretical underpin-nings. There is, albeit, no clear resolve towardthat, and thus launches a theoretical anarchy.There is no clear answer as to what couldhelp in comprehending the biographicalpeculiarities of the political animators in theuniversities of Meerut. A typical sociologicalanxiety is also a lack of clarity on the natureand scope of the Meerut research, whether

it has a quantitative and/or qualitative orienta-tion, and whether methods and techniquesinvolved have yielded only ideas, or numbers,or mixed data. In spite of the apparent ethno-graphic flavor of the narrative and the slicesof everyday life of youths, there is no clearstatement on the possible social anthropologi-cal orientation in the background. The mentionof non-participant observation and structuredinterviews as methods and techniques doesnot aid in understanding the larger orientationin the research. It could be possibly a heuristicmethodological looseness for making theresearch possible. What is puzzling, however,is the total absence of a mention.

The most important attraction in this workis the central thesis emerging from the fourchapters put together, excluding chapterson the introduction and conclusion. Thebackground of the phenomenon of youth’stimepass has the emergence of rich Jat farm-ers and their political influence in the west-ern Uttar Pradesh in north India, due to theagro-economic developments in the post-independent India. The economic reformsand rise of the lower caste appear to be caus-ing an intensification of local Jat politics.Another strategic response to challenges isinvestment in the education of Jat children,culminating in increasing enrollment at thecolleges and universities. On the otherhand, educational decay and rising unem-ployment are the causal factors behind thecreation of addas (places where youths hangout). This is where the phenomenon of time-pass is most articulate. As an entirely mascu-line space, it enables political animators tomobilize their strength and engage withthe state machinery, for both their own paro-chial interests (as political actors) and that ofthe larger society (as social reformers). Cut-ting across caste lines, the youth-in-waitinghowever reaffirm gender principles. Andthus, addas also encourages mischief againstwomen and is thereby a perceived socio-moral threat.

The book’s thesis runs the risk of narrowteleology, typically reminiscent of functional-ist analyses in sociology, in spite of impres-sive details. Also, despite some grains ofvalue-neutrality present in the analysis,there is an inclination toward anti-studentpolitics. There is no critical reflection on theworldwide disdain of student politics in the

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post-globalized world. It also neglects thepotential ideological and emotional elementsin youth activism, in universities as well as insociety at large. In this regard, it is also prob-lematic that the term ‘‘global south’’ appearsin a taken-for-granted fashion. Needless tosay, the eclectic use of cinematic images ofyouth, with an emphasis on switching from‘‘angry young man’’ to tapori (street-smartyouth) in Indian cinema, scuttles a fullercomprehension of the phenomenon. Also,an exhaustive review of literature in theintroduction, with little sub-thematic organi-zation, serves less effectively.

Last but not least, due to the critical ques-tions it raises, the book offers more thanmere timepass for a reader interested in thediscourse on youth politics in India, and thepractical peculiarities of the lower middleclass and their strategies of mobility. It invitesthe reader to steer clear of the hitherto dom-inant motif, characterized by the sociology ofmoral panic, in the discourses on youth inIndia. It is timely and relevant.

Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Ageof Fear, by Aaron Kupchik. New York: NewYork University Press, 2010. 261pp. $35.00cloth. ISBN: 9780814748206.

GLENN W. MUSCHERT

Miami [email protected]

Homeroom Security examines current schooldiscipline. As bureaucratic institutions,schools are subject to rules and proceduresthat often lead to unintended negativeconsequences—the contemporary regime ofdiscipline in America’s schools may be oneexample of such an irony. In the name ofsecurity, schools have instituted increasinglypunitive forms of discipline, and controlmeasures are increasingly present in schools.This book examines the unintended conse-quences of contemporary regimes of disci-pline in American public schools. In recentdecades, many schools have increased con-trol measures and penalties for rule trans-gression, including zero-tolerance policiesand placement of school resource officers(SROs), metal detectors, and surveillancecameras in schools. Ironically, these punitive

measures may undermine students’ percep-tion of the legitimacy of the school behavioralstandards.

The focus on punitive measures to controlbehavior in school leads to a variety of prob-lems. Schools overreact to threats of violence,which by the most reliable data, have greatlydeclined in recent years. Disciplinary practi-ces often have a ‘‘one size fits all’’ approachto all forms of school misbehavior, and tothe extent that they are responses to extremecases of rule transgression, the rules miss theboat with regard to addressing commonforms of misbehavior in schools. The under-lying reasons behind student misbehaviorcan be ignored, and students are exposed toa new regime of control, which stresses theimportance of police and surveillance practi-ces. Since youth primarily learn about civicengagement in schools, these attitudes willcarry over into their adult lives and expressthemselves via the style of civic engagementthey choose, if any. More directly punitivemeasures undermine the legitimacy of secu-rity practices in schools, and ultimatelyincrease the very forms of misbehavior theywere intended to mitigate.

The persistence of a punitive school envi-ronment runs counter to many of the partici-patory principles which maximize the bondsbetween students and their schools, andtherefore contradicts the educational goalsof school institutions. This has a negativeeffect on all students, though for minorityand economically-disadvantaged students itis even more so, as vulnerable populationssee their life chances damaged in punitiveenvironments. There is an underlying socialjustice agenda in this text, one which repeat-edly demonstrates how the most vulnerableyouth (namely, those in minority and/orlower-income groups) are more likely to beharmed (and/or harmed worse) by the newschool disciplinary practices, despite thefact that these security policies are designedto protect the educational rights of all stu-dents. Despite the fact that school securitymeasures often violate students’ civil rightsand create a negative environment in schools,these measures are often met with approvalby those who carry out such measures ona daily basis: that is, well-intentioned teach-ers, administrators, security personnel, andSROs.

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The empirical research supporting the textis derived from the author’s observationsconducted at four U.S. high schools, two ina Mid-Atlantic state, and two in a Southwest-ern state. Of the schools studied, one in eachpair was in a lower-income district with highlevels of minority enrollment, and the otherswere located in mostly white, affluent areas.The text explores the rate of disciplinaryoffenses at the four schools, the practicesthrough which rule transgressions weremet, and the security measures in place ineach school. Each of the schools faces chal-lenges, including overcrowding, a growingstudent population, and pressure to performwell in fiscally difficult circumstances. Ontop of this, schools in the less affluent dis-tricts also deal with other challenges, suchas neighborhood poverty, higher rates ofcrime, and gangs. Despite these differences,and perhaps unexpectedly, each of the fourschools studied has remarkably similar secu-rity and punishment practices, although theymay utilize different configurations of per-sonnel in its administration.

Individual chapters within the text describethe disciplinary processes at the four schoolsstudied, the advantages and disadvantagesof SROs in schools, and the recent tendencyfor rule compliance in the name of safety totrump all other institutional goals, even theprimary pedagogical ones. The tendency forschools to ‘‘teach to the rules,’’ is particularlyproblematic, as students learn undue compli-ance to authority. Although the overall find-ings of this book are often sobering and alarm-ing, the author ends the book on a positivenote. Recently, he was part of a state-leveltask force to implement improved disciplin-ary processes in schools, one which was ori-ented toward moving discipline towardevidence-based practices in line with the sug-gestions offered in this book. Thus, thereseems to be some awareness in educationcircles that these measures may backfire,which is driving efforts to revise disciplinaryprocesses. This is indeed reason for hope.

In this important text, the author has pro-vided much of value, and the work deservespraise on a number of fronts: it is well-written; the author’s voice is lucid (notingNicole L. Bracy as co-author on two chap-ters); the book is well-referenced and expert-ly situated within the relevant literatures;

and, it is empirically grounded, with discus-sion based on methodologically sound obser-vations in the field. The placement of thedetailed methodology section as an appendixremoves this specialized discussion from themain text, retaining accessibility for a non-specialized audience, while maintaining therigor for the academic reader. This text wouldbe useful in courses at the undergraduate andgraduate level, including juvenile delinquen-cy, youth and society, and the sociology ofeducation. In courses in related disciplines,such as education or criminal justice studies,this book will undoubtedly be useful; andscholars of all the above-mentioned topicswill find utility in this text. Beyond the ivorytower, a variety of popular readers will alsofind this book informative and accessible,including parents, teachers, school adminis-trations, and criminal justice personnel.

Sex Panic and the Punitive State, by Roger N.Lancaster. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2011. 308pp. $24.95 paper.ISBN: 9780520262065.

DOUG MEYER

Graduate Center, [email protected]

Beyond any criticism that can be made of SexPanic and the Punitive State, this is a book thatdemands to be read. It is the sort of book thataims to be provocative—some might saycontroversial—as Roger Lancaster problem-atizes many aspects of sex offender laws,which have increased rapidly over the lastseveral decades. Charting the rise of the puni-tive state, whereby accused child molestersare assumed to be guilty until proven inno-cent, Sex Panic is a well-argued, polemicalattack on sensationalist media coverageand victims’ rights groups which havestoked fear and peddled false allegations,making it an important book for anyoneinterested in the relationship between thecriminal justice system and modern-daysexualities.

The book is divided into two parts—thefirst focuses on sex panic and the secondon the punitive state. Lancaster outlinesdiscourse on a wide array of topics,ranging from the culture of fear and the

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prison-industrial complex to neoliberalismand Abu Ghraib. This expansive approachcertainly makes the book ambitious andinformative, although I do worry that under-graduate students would have a hard timeretaining the book’s central argument, giventhat it may appear excessively broad to thecasual reader. Most of the book focuses onobscure criminal cases or well-known eventsthat have received extensive media coverage.In one chapter, Lancaster uses an autoethno-graphic method to describe his immersion ina sex abuse case involving one of hisfriends—a gay male junior high school teach-er who was improbably accused and con-victed of sex abuse. The details of the case,as Lancaster presents them, suggest that hisfriend was falsely accused, and the descrip-tion of the events fits into Lancaster’s overallargument that a general presumption of guiltpervades many aspects of American life. Thispart of the book, where Lancaster focuses onhow anxieties around sexuality have increas-ingly come to emphasize a ‘‘monstrous’’ sex-ual predator, is the strongest. Lancasterreveals the costs of this discourse: incendiarynewscasts add to public fear and lead to callsfor vengeance and punishment. Here, thebook seems unquestionably queer and radi-cal, in the best sense of those words, as Lan-caster values rehabilitation over punishmentand condemns prosecutorial solutionswhereby large punishments are given to peo-ple who have committed relatively minor,sometimes even consensual, infractions.

Lancaster covers a significant amount ofterritory in this book, and while some mayview the breadth of material as a strength, Ifound the argument to be overextended attimes. The connection between moral panicsand the global war on terror seemed particu-larly strained and tangential. Lancaster alsocasts a politics of victimization purely in neg-ative terms, viewing it as contributing topunitive governance. This constructionseems a bit neat, as history is replete withexamples of social movements that haveused victimization narratives without callingfor punitive measures. Moreover, Lancasteris too dismissive of the gains made by vic-tims’ rights groups, particularly domesticviolence advocates. Indeed, he overlooksadvocates who have opposed more punitivelaws and have not relied on the criminal

justice system to help disadvantaged groups,as these advocates have argued that punitivemeasures tend to reinforce power imbalan-ces rather than undermine them. The bookwould have benefited from a more balancedapproach in this regard, with Lancaster mak-ing greater use of the substantial body ofwork by feminists who have debated thebest way to combat violence against women.Given that he focuses relatively little atten-tion on the gender dynamic of moral panics,this book may appeal more to scholars inter-ested in sexuality and queer theory thanthose concerned with gender and feministresearch.

Lancaster is not unaware of the balancethat can be struck between the presumptionof innocence for the accused and the desireto be sympathetic to victims’ claims, but hiscontinued emphasis on questioning victims’unrealistic accusations could be viewed asreinforcing conservative attacks on a ‘‘cultureof victims.’’ He suggests that people in theUnited States have come to love trauma andvictimization, yet the degree to which Amer-icans support or abhor victimization seemsmore debatable than Lancaster has presentedit. One wonders, after all, what Lancasterwould make of individuals who have clearlybeen victimized also taking great pains to dis-tance themselves from a victim identity. Inframing victimization politics as purely prob-lematic, Lancaster has arguably reinforceda simplistic dichotomy whereby movingbeyond trauma and recounting past victimi-zation are framed in hierarchical, mutuallyexclusive ways.

Despite these theoretical concerns, I wouldcertainly recommend Sex Panic and the Puni-tive State, especially for scholars interested insexuality. Lancaster’s ability to connect con-temporary sex panics with the U.S. crisis ofmass incarceration makes a significant con-tribution to the sexualities literature. Onehas the sense that Lancaster, perhaps view-ing conservatives as a lost cause, is primarilyaddressing liberals and progressives whohave aided in the process of punitive gover-nance, and thereby reinforced discourse thatrenders non-normative sexualities as evil ormonstrous. As the number of people in ourprisons remains appallingly high, Lancas-ter’s distrust of the crime control apparatusbecomes an important and timely critique.

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This book would work well for a sexualitiesor deviance course, particularly one thatcovers moral panics, and perhaps even fora course on the sociology of the family. Sinceundergraduate students may get much oftheir news from incendiary newscasts, andmay come into frequent contact with medianarratives that emphasize ‘‘evil’’ pedophilesand innocent children, this book would beespecially useful for challenging some stu-dents’ taken-for-granted assumptions.

The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and theColor Line in 21st Century America, byJennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean. NewYork, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010.234pp. $37.50 cloth. ISBN: 9780871540416.

CHARLES HIRSCHMAN


Not so many years ago, sociological courseswith the title ‘‘American Race Relations’’had a predictable content. With rare excep-tions, the focus was exclusively on the trou-bled history of blacks and whites in the Unit-ed States, including slavery, Jim Crow,segregation, prejudice, and institutional dis-crimination. There were many topics to cov-er, but a few core principles provided struc-ture and unity to the field. At present,sociological courses on American race andethnic relations have become more expan-sive covering a broad array of peoples—American Indians, Latinos, Asian Ameri-cans, and Pacific Islanders—and themes,including diversity, multiculturalism, immi-grants and the second generation, people ofcolor, multiracialism, and even the meaningof whiteness.

These new topics and issues have beendriven by demographic changes in the com-position of American society (and the stu-dents in our classes) as well as by rapidchange in the stratification and participationof minority groups in American society. Ifsociology students, and even their teachers,sometimes have difficulty grasping the over-all structure and dynamics of contemporaryAmerican race and ethnic relations, the prob-lem may be that social change has over-whelmed the traditional foundations of

sociological theory and empirical generaliza-tions in the field. Personally, I have struggledto keep my teaching on race, ethnicity, andimmigration more than a series of unrelateddiscrete topics. Fortunately, a new book, TheDiversity Paradox: Immigration and the ColorLine in 21st Century America by Jennifer Leeand Frank D. Bean has arrived just in time.

The Diversity Paradox provides much need-ed clarity on the complex issues of the new(and old) diversity in American society.The primary focus of The Diversity Paradoxis on the demography of racial/ethnicchange, intermarriage, and multiraciality—the identification with two (or more) racialgroups. Changes in Census 2000 (and in sur-veys and other statistical forms) haveallowed respondents to ‘‘mark one ormore’’ racial categories. Although mixedracial ancestry is not a new phenomenon,its formal inclusion in standard data sourceshas forced researchers to rethink the mean-ing and significance of divisions betweenthe standard race categories. Although onlytwo or three percent of Americans nowclaim multiple race identities, intermarriagerates of more than 50 percent among second-generation Latinos and Asians suggest thatmultiraciality is likely to rise rapidly in thecoming decades.

Lee and Bean embed their empirical studyin history and theory. The standard Ameri-can race narrative denies multiraciality withthe so-called ‘‘one drop rule’’ that forces alldescendants of mixed ancestry into theminority population. The children of whiteslave owners born to black mothers becomeslaves. Even a trace of ‘‘black blood’’ (ances-try) in the Jim Crow era was stigmatizedand was the basis of segregation and raciallystructured social, political, and legal institu-tions. Although these practices were almostuniversal for African Americans (most ofwhom have mixed racial ancestry), theywere inconsistently applied to other minoritygroups, including American Indians, Lati-nos, Asians, and marginalized Europeangroups. The descendants of immigrantsfrom Eastern and Southern Europe wereeventually considered white, and some othergroups occasionally evaded being raciallystigmatized. For example, Mexicans wereable to avoid being classified as a racial groupin the census, and the Chinese in Mississippi

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were eventually recognized as non-blackeven if they were not quite white. However,the maintenance of a white/nonwhite colorline was the dominant pattern prior to theCivil Rights era. The color line sometimesrequired extraordinary leaps of (il)logic,such as the 1923 Supreme Court decisionthat Asian Indians were not white becauseof the common man’s understanding ofwhiteness.

The legal, political, and administrativesupports for American Apartheid and thetraditional racial classification began tounravel in the late twentieth century withthe Civil Rights Movement and the politicalreforms of the 1960s and 1970s. These socialchanges coincided with (and helped toprompt) the renewal of mass immigration,particularly from Latin America and Asia.The diversity of new peoples and changedsocial mores also led to record levels of mixedmarriages and persons of multiracial ances-try. Lee and Bean provide a thorough docu-mentation of recent demographic changesand a clear and compelling synthesis of theresearch literature on the new Americandiversity.

Perhaps, the most important empiricalcontribution of this volume is the search formeaning of intermarriage and multiracialitythrough in-depth interviews with 36 inter-married couples and 46 multiracial adults.Although the authors appropriately cautionagainst generalizing from such small sam-ples, the findings are strikingly consistent.For intermarriages between Latinos andwhites and between Asians and whites,‘‘race’’ was a nonissue. Marriages betweenLatinos and whites and between Asiansand whites were accepted by family andfriends as perfectly normative. MultiracialAsians and Latinos had ‘‘ethnic options’’ intheir identities. One interesting finding isthat multiracial Latinos (and their parents)always emphasized their minority identityin schooling and job applications.

In stark contrast, black/white (and black/Asian and black/Latino) intermarriages con-sistently had ‘‘problems.’’ Families andfriends generally disapproved of their mar-riages. Most whites and immigrants oftensaw marriage to a black person as a sign ofdownward mobility with negative effects

on children. Anti-black prejudice was notjust verbal, but also included acts of families‘‘disowning’’ multiracial children. Disap-proval was sometimes expressed by blackfamily and friends who considered blackmen who marry out as disloyal or worse.Multiracial blacks did not have identityoptions—everyone considered them to beblack. Lee and Bean conclude that thetwenty-first century color line is not betweenwhite and nonwhite, but between black andnonblack.

In two chapters, Lee and Bean describe andmodel the geographical and temporal varia-tions in intermarriage, multiracial identities,and a summary index of diversity. This topicis fraught with immense methodological andconceptual pitfalls. Because rates of inter-marriage and multiracial identity are highfor Asians and Latinos and low for blacksand whites, summary measures are heavilyinfluenced by population composition. Inaddition to this ‘‘direct’’ effect on the levelsof intermarriage, population compositionhas an effect via relative exposure of differentgroups to each other (Blau’s macro-structuraltheory), and perhaps another effect via cul-tural perceptions as the number of inter-group interactions increases. Lee and Beanare aware of these complex issues, but theiranalyses do not always reflect them. In spiteof these minor limitations, The Diversity Par-adox is an important theoretical and empiri-cal contribution to the field.

Citizen Environmentalists, by James Longhurst.Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2010.238pp. $35.00 paper. ISBN: 9781584658597.

SUZANNE STAGGENBORG


In the late 1960s and 1970s, large numbers ofnew environmental groups formed acrossthe United States, many identifying them-selves as ‘‘citizens’’ with names such asCitizens Opposing Pollution and Citizensfor a Better Environment. This phenomenon,which James Longhurst calls ‘‘citizenenvironmentalism,’’ used the rhetoric of ‘‘cit-izenship’’ and ‘‘participatory democracy’’ to

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mobilize activists to become involved in gov-ernment. In Pittsburgh, an organizationcalled Group Against Smog and Pollution(GASP) formed in 1969, was part of thisnew wave of environmentalism. In his excel-lent history, Longhurst focuses on GASP andits experience in battling air pollution inPittsburgh. However, the book is far morethan a case study of GASP, as the authorputs the experience of the Pittsburgh move-ment in the broader context of citizen activ-ism that was flourishing throughout thecountry.

GASP and other citizen environmentalistgroups were part of a profound transforma-tion to a new period of citizen involvement,which included active participation in theregulatory process. Longhurst explains howthis era of citizen involvement was a directresponse to legal changes that encouragedpublic participation. In the late 1960s and1970s, the courts expanded the legal defini-tion of standing from a requirement of directeconomic interest in a matter before a court,to one of public interest in matters such aspollution. With this legal doctrine of citizenstanding, the environmental movement hada powerful new tool. And beyond newopportunities to use the courts to protectthe environment, activists gained standingmore broadly in the ‘‘citizen organization’sability to involve itself in public, political,or governmental affairs’’ (p. 7). In additionto the ability of citizens’ groups to file law-suits, which encouraged the formation ofnew groups such as Clean Water Action, var-ious federal laws also explicitly encouragedpublic participation. The federal Air QualityAct of 1967, for instance, required states tohold public hearings when they creatednew pollution laws in line with federalstandards, and the National Air PollutionControl Administration (NAPCA) encour-aged the formation of local organizations.These laws were part of the changing politi-cal culture of the 1960s and 1970s, in whichthe language and ideas of ‘‘public invol-vement’’ and ‘‘participatory democracy’’became widespread (p. 9).

In this context, environmental organiza-tions formed throughout the country to battleproblems such as air and water pollution. InPittsburgh, where air pollution from indus-trial production was bad enough to earn the

city a reputation as ‘‘the smoky city’’ as earlyas 1800 (p. 32), grievances were plentiful. In1969, when the Commonwealth of Pennsyl-vania and Allegheny County held publichearings on revisions to the state air pollutionlaw and county regulations, the NAPCAfunded the Pittsburgh chapter of the Leagueof Women Voters to organize and preparecitizens to participate in the hearings. TheLeague, along with the local chapter of theFederation of American Scientists and theWestern Pennsylvania Conservancy, helda series of seminars to prepare speakers forthe hearings. In his opening chapter, Long-hurst describes the result at the AlleghenyCounty Air Pollution Advisory Committeemeeting on September 24, 1969 as a publichearing ‘‘filled with acrimony, tears, andpublic denunciations’’ that attracted hun-dreds of citizens and ended up lasting threedays rather than the few hours originallyplanned. After this dramatic event, GASPwas formed as an ongoing organization ofcitizens who became heavily involved in pro-viding oversight of pollution control efforts.When Allegheny County established itsnew air pollution code following the hear-ings, it created an Air Pollution Appealsand Variance Review, known as the VarianceBoard, and GASP became an active partici-pant in the process.

Longhurst describes in great detail howGASP was able to have an important influ-ence on the process of government regulationof pollution and to mobilize public involve-ment in Pittsburgh. The group benefitedfrom the leadership and expertise of twotypes of activists: academics and professio-nals, largely men, who provided scientificand technical expertise, and middle-classwomen connected through a social networkof women’s organizations. It was women,many of whom were homemakers marriedto academic or professional men, whoformed the organizational backbone ofGASP, and they used gendered languageand tactics that were critical to the group’ssuccess. For example, GASP funded its edu-cational projects through the productionand sale of cookbooks (‘‘flour power’’), andmaternalist language in the group’s educa-tional materials highlighted responsibilityfor the health and well-being of children.Although journalistic coverage of the women

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focused on their gender and women activistswere not always taken seriously, Longhurstargues that maternalism was neverthelessan effective ‘‘tool for access’’ that helpedGASP gain support and influence.

Citizen Environmentalists is an exceedinglywell-documented account of GASP and thebroader citizen environmental movement,based on extensive documentary data aswell as journalistic accounts and originalinterviews with activists. It provides anextremely valuable history, not only ofGASP and the Pittsburgh movement, but ofan important period in the development ofAmerican environmentalism. Longhurstshows how GASP had to confront many ofthe same problems as environmentalistsacross the country, including the perennialissue of ‘‘jobs versus the environment.’’GASP did not ultimately succeed in creatingadequate regulations to alleviate industrialpollution—the air in Pittsburgh cleared inlarge measure with the decline of the steelindustry. Over 40 years after GASP’s found-ing, however, severe problems with air andwater quality remain, and the organizationis still active in trying to remedy thoseproblems.

For sociologists of social movements, thiscaptivating history of the environmentalmovement shows how citizen activism hasmade a difference and how it might continueto do so through groups such as GASP. Polit-ical opportunities were clearly critical in ush-ering in this new phase of American environ-mentalism, but it was the leadership,organization and rhetoric of environmentalgroups that mobilized citizens and forcedsome changes in public policy and culture.Hopefully, this history will help to inspirenew studies of how local environmentalgroups are organizing to battle the devastat-ing environmental problems that we all needto face.

Women’s Work and Pensions: What is Good,What is Best?: Designing Gender-SensitiveArrangements, edited by Bernd Marin andEszter Zolyomi. Burlington, VT:Ashgate, 2010. 321pp. $69.95 paper. ISBN:9781409406983.

ALEKSANDRA KANJUO MRCELA


The current reform of pension systemsworld-wide is the topic of a number of schol-ars, policy makers and social policy analysts.This book, edited by Bernd Marin and EszterZolyomi, contributes to the gender sensitivedebate on trends, outcomes and consequen-ces of the present changes. Their analysisacknowledges the embeddedness of pensionsystems in the context of changes in workand family/partnership life as well as demo-graphic changes (aging of the population).The contributing authors of the book, expertsin the field of social policy, are in a good posi-tion to speak authoritatively about thismatter and to estimate the challenges ofretirement income security and poverty risksfor men and women across Europe. In sodoing, they present rich statistical and otherrelevant data relating to surveys conductedat the E.U. level and research done in differ-ent countries, and comment on trends in pen-sion reforms and their impact on the lives ofwomen. The book documents changes welland gives a general and comparative over-view of the state of pension reforms in differ-ent countries while pointing to specificdilemmas and choices concerning genderequality.

Authors of chapters in Part II of the bookrecall the specific features of pension systemsand their reforms, as well as other relevantchanges in other analyzed countries (Poland,Austria, Finland, and Italy). Despite the focuson specific environments, more in-depth dis-cussion of some points of general interest inthese chapters contributes to the main aimof the book: understanding the position ofwomen as a heterogeneous group in theworld of work and pensions. These authorshelp us to understand a complex picture ofdifferent and changing European environ-ments: from precarious work realities of

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women and men in Eastern Europe to chal-lenges of part-time work and uncertain pen-sion future in Central Europe, and problemsof older women in the North not being able tocope with full-time working schedules. Inthese illustrative cases, the authors ask:What is bad in pension reforms and policiesfrom the women’s point of view?

Analyzing pension policies at a time ofprofound societal, demographic and eco-nomic changes is a challenging task. In thelast decades pension reforms have been con-sidered inevitable, as the existing systemsseem to be unsustainable. Pension reformsare a very sensitive political and social policyquestion. And increased precariousness ofemployment and intensification of workadd to a feeling of uncertainty among theworking population. The pension reformsthemselves are seen as going in the directionof devolution of risk and responsibility forretirement savings. The authors are awareof the complexity of the task, and point tothe multidimensional aspect of their analy-sis, where taking a number of situation-specific factors into account (such as gender,class, time horizon) is of utmost importance.

Complexity of the situation does not allowfor easy or one-dimensional answers. Theauthors do not suggest such solutions. How-ever, their analysis indicates that the optimaloutcomes for women and men in retirementcould be achieved based on the acknowl-edgement of the importance of differentforms of work (paid and unpaid care work)and a more fair distribution of householdand care work among men and women. Asis noted in the book, changing and equalizingthe working and living experiences of menand women today (women have never beenmore active in acquiring education andemployment, and thus a more equal distribu-tion of care should be foreseen) gives rise toan expected future where old women andmen will have a more similar pension incomethan today.

Throughout the book the authors stressthat gender specific and (for women) unfa-vorable consequences of pension policiesare outcomes of the different work and lifehistories of women and men. As the out-comes of pension systems reflect the positionof women and men in the labor market andin the society, gender inequalities cannot be

resolved by redesigning only the pensionsystem. Additionally, remedies for genderinequalities within the pension system couldreinforce the traditional gender roles andthus preserve discrimination in the labormarket. Thus equality in the labor market iseven more crucial for the equality of pensionsystems that are today increasingly linkedto individual work histories. For the timebeing, the authors suggest a gender sensitiveapproach in designing pension policies—useof gender neutral devices that will favorwomen as they, more than men, are involvedin caring and unpaid household work, andthat influences their work histories.

The authors pointed to some policies thatformerly improved the position of womenin retirement, but because of changes in thepension policies designs are no longerenhancing gender equality. An example isthe much debated equalizing of retirementeligibility age for men and women. Theapparently reduced benefits for women thatwere tailored to accommodate women’sdual role of worker and caregiver, are seenby the authors of the book to be emancipa-tory for women, as the remedies within a sys-tem do not alter it. Equalization is gearedagainst maintaining the position in whichwomen are expected and motivated to takeover an unequal share of care responsibili-ties. Given the trends of changes in pensionsystems from benefit to individualizedcontribution-based pension systems, womenwill be worse off if they have several feweryears of contributions. However, generationsof women who will not yet experience moreequality in distribution of care, will be penal-ized by the dual burden of paid and unpaidwork.

Although the editors could have avoidedsome unnecessary repetitions in the book,the structure of the book and the presenta-tion of rich and relevant data (both in themain body of the book and in the annex) pro-vides an interesting and well-documentedstudy. The choice of specific topics (such astypes of pension design choices, indexation,survivors’ pensions, poverty risk and others)makes sense for presenting changes in theworld of pensions today with special atten-tion to the interests of women. The value ofthe book lies in its presentation of an interest-ing explanatory socio-economic analysis of

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the plethora of changes in the world of workand family. It is also a practical guide to pol-icy makers regarding the features in design-ing pension policies to which one has topay attention, in order to achieve not onlyprevention of poverty risks for all, but alsogender fair results.

Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia andLatin America, by James W. McGuire.New York, NY: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2010. 406pp. $30.00 paper. ISBN:9780521139342.

MING-CHENG LO

University of California, [email protected]

In Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asiaand Latin America, James McGuire offersa cogent and provocative argument about theconnections between democracy and healthin developing countries. McGuire focuseson the decline of infant mortality as his keyindicator of public health and developmentachievement, arguing that avoiding prema-ture death is key to ‘‘an individual’s capaci-ty to live the life that he or she has reason tochoose’’ (p. 1). Analyzing this focus consis-tently and systematically throughout thebook, the author builds his core argumentthat provisions of relatively low-cost basicpublic health services are more importantfor lowering infant mortality than eitherthe rate of economic growth or the amountof public health spending. What factors,then, would encourage the governments indeveloping countries to extend basic publichealth services to the populations that aremost vulnerable to premature death?McGuire contends that long-term democra-cy is an important factor, not only becausedemocracy may generate electoral incen-tives for government to adopt pro-poor pol-icies, but also democracy generally culti-vates the political environment for themobilization of issue networks as well asthe political culture in which disadvantagedcitizens come to expect and demand socialequality and human rights.

Wealth, Health, and Democracy relies onboth qualitative and quantitative analysis.The introductory chapter sets up the

framework for how the book dialogueswith the literatures on public health andcomparative politics of development. Chap-ter Two offers a detailed quantitative analy-sis of 105cases, followed by eight chapters of casestudies (four developing countries in LatinAmerica and four in Asia). The concludingchapter revisits the book’s major theoreticalarguments.

The evidence that McGuire marshaledtogether in this study is truly impressive.The book’s massive amount of data on healthpolicies and various health indicators makesit a goldmine for researchers interested incomparative politics and single cases alike.On the theoretical front, the book broadensthe conventional framework of discussionson development; drawing on Amartya Sen,McGuire challenges scholars to conceptual-ize development not only in terms of eco-nomic growth, but also citizens’ capacities.In this light, the argument that democracyencourages certain health-promoting poli-cies is particularly innovative, as it depictsauthoritarian developmental states not asa necessary evil that citizens in developingcountries have to endure for the sake ofdevelopment, but as a fundamentally flawedengine for development itself.

While readers will appreciate the clarity ofMcGuire’s core arguments, they will alsofind it interesting that these arguments arenuanced and, in some cases, inadvertentlyqualified, in his case studies. On the ground,the connection between democracy and pub-lic health services appears to be more compli-cated and at times not entirely sustainable.For instance, in Taiwan, South Korea, andChile, the author shows us that most of thebasic health services responsible for bringingdown infant mortality rates were establishedunder authoritarian rules. (McGuire arguesthat, for Chile, the democratic years preced-ing Pinochet contributed to cultivating a cer-tain political culture. But even if this weretrue, the same pattern does not exist in Tai-wan or South Korea.) Conversely, in Indone-sia, Suharto is depicted as a populist leaderwho was sympathetic to the rural poor, butultimately did not do enough to providebasic health services to this population. Theauthor explains this puzzle by invoking var-ious factors, including the rural dwellers’

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priorities, Indonesia’s geography, and insti-tutional arrangements—factors that are notdirectly related to the absence of democracy.Furthermore, McGuire’s interesting histori-cal studies reveal that, as much as democracycan empower the poor, democracy is equallylikely to encourage the mobilization of thenot-so-poor, which channels resources awayfrom the poor while allowing the governmentto claim the credit for having responded tothe will of the ‘‘people.’’ This empirical pat-tern suggests that it is the successful mobili-zation on behalf of the poor, not democracyper se, that may put pressure on the govern-ment to provide basic health services. Thisobservation is important in and of itself,yet it is not fully incorporated into the book’stheoretical arguments.

McGuire’s book raises important ques-tions for future scholars to consider, even ifit does not fully address them. One suchquestion relates to the ‘‘deviant’’ cases—countries that have successfully broughtdown infant mortality without havingdemocratized (such as China), and countriesthat have democratized yet continue to sufferpersistently high infant mortality (such asIndia). It would be unfair to question whythe author did not incorporate these twocases into his study, but future research canbenefit from extending and qualifyingMcGuire’s theory by considering these tworapidly-developing countries. Similarly,some readers may find it less than entirelysatisfying that, as creative as the author isin applying Sen’s capacity theory to develop-ment theories, the book focuses on a singleindicator, infant mortality, as the measure ofcitizens’ capacities. It may be fruitful forfuture studies to expand McGuire’s endeav-or, exploring the potentially multifacetedrole of citizens’ capacities in the reconceptu-alization of development.

Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asiaand Latin America is a well-researched studythat offers an innovative theoretical argu-ment. It will no doubt be an important con-tribution to studies of public health andcomparatives politics of development.

Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crimeand the Racial-Spatial Divide, by Ruth D.Peterson and Lauren J. Krivo. New York,NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010. 157pp.$37.50 paper. ISBN: 9780871546937.

JOHN R. HIPP

University of California, [email protected]

In Divergent Social Worlds, Ruth Peterson andLauren Krivo address the important ques-tions of whether, and why, there are differingcrime levels based on the racial/ethnic com-position of neighborhoods. The most strikingcharacteristic of this book is the tour de forcescholarship represented by the data collec-tion undertaken. The authors attempted anincredibly daunting task: collecting crimedata for neighborhoods (generally definedas census tracts) in nearly 100 large citiesselected randomly. Such a data collection isunprecedented, and that collection effortalone is worth the price of admission. Any-one who has dealt with a police departmentin an effort to obtain data on crime eventsin neighborhoods understands the difficultyof collecting such data for one or two cities.To do so for over 90 cities is amazing.

The payoff of this large data collection isthe important narrative that Peterson andKrivo are then able to weave. Although priorresearch has illuminated the neighborhoodprocesses that occur within a single city, thisstudy sheds light on how these processes dif-fer across numerous cities. An importanttheme is the divergent worlds of whites andminority groups (particularly African Amer-icans), and the consequences for levels ofcrime. Although the fact that minority groupslive in more disadvantaged neighborhoodswith more crime is not novel, the documenta-tion of these facts is useful, and the narrativeprovides genuine insights. After an introduc-tory chapter that provides a brief historicalcontext for race relations in the United States,four analytic chapters explain this process.

The first analytic chapter describes thedegree of segregation that exists betweenracial/ethnic groups in the United States,especially between whites and AfricanAmericans. Although pointing out the exis-tence of such segregation is not novel, the

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relationship between it and distributions ofdisadvantage is striking. In particular, thefigures plotting the distribution of violentand property crime rates for five classifica-tions of neighborhoods based on racial/eth-nic composition (mostly white, mostly Afri-can American, mostly Latino, minority-dominated, and integrated) are elegant intheir simplicity. These graphs display insharp relief the difference between whiteand African American neighborhoods, asthere is almost no overlap in their violentcrime rates (that is, the highest violent crimerates for white neighborhoods are about thesame as the lowest violent crime rates forAfrican American neighborhoods). In con-trast, the figure for property crime showsmuch more overlap, which becomes animportant part of their narrative.

The second analytic chapter describes thesocio-economic differences between neigh-borhoods based on their racial/ethnic com-position (here defined as majority white,Latino, African American, or minority, orintegrated). Although neighborhood schol-ars will not be surprised to learn of sharpsocio-economic differences across theseracial/ethnic classifications, the authorsagain provide figures that visually depictthese differences. Again, the simple eleganceof these graphs highlights how the distribu-tion of disadvantage in white neighborhoodshas almost no overlap with that of primarilyAfrican American (or primarily Latino)neighborhoods. Visually observing suchlack of overlap in the social worlds of thesevarious groups makes the point better thanany sophisticated statistical analysis.

With this preamble, the third analyticchapter focuses on the extent to which eco-nomic disadvantage is related to crime ratesbased on these neighborhood racial classifi-cations. The authors present results from sta-tistical models attempting to explain the lev-el of violent or property crime in the tractsacross these cities. The story told from thesemodels is the relatively greater importanceof economic disadvantage compared torace. For instance, they find that whereasa primarily black neighborhood will havea higher violent crime rate than a white

neighborhood when each has average levelsof disadvantage, the primarily black neigh-borhood has no more violence than a whiteneighborhood when each has high levels ofdisadvantage. Thus, high levels of disadvan-tage lead to higher levels of violence, regard-less of the race of the residents. The pattern iseven more striking in their models for prop-erty crime: higher levels of property crime inblack neighborhoods are almost entirelyexplained by the other structural characteris-tics of these neighborhoods.

The fourth analytic chapter asks whetherthe spatial location of neighborhoods of vary-ing racial/ethnic composition affects crimerates. A key finding from their models isthat the presence of many white residents innearby areas lowers the rate of crime in thetract of interest. Thus, the context aroundthe neighborhood appears important forunderstanding violent crime rates. Theirfindings for property crime are even morepronounced: whereas they only find modestdifferences between black and white neigh-borhoods in their standard models, this rela-tionship actually reverses when accountingfor the proportion of white residents in near-by areas. That is, black neighborhoods sur-rounded by white neighborhoods actuallyhave lower rates of property crime than thosenot surrounded by white neighborhoods.

Peterson and Krivo have provided a won-derful statement on the relationshipbetween the socio-economic worlds inwhich different racial/ethnic groups in theUnited States live, and the levels of crimein those neighborhoods. This is not meantto be a final statement. Indeed, as is almostalways the case with statistical analyses,debates ensue about modeling decisions,and what their consequences might be. Thebeauty in this case is that the data resourcethat the authors have given along with thisbook will allow those debates and discus-sions to be tested and carried out empirical-ly. In the meantime, this book is a powerfulstatement on the differing social worlds ofracial/ethnic groups in the United States,and the consequences for the amount ofcrime that members of these groups experi-ence in their neighborhoods.

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Breaking the Poverty Cycle: The Human Basisfor Sustainable Development, by Susan Pickand Jenna T. Sirkin. New York, NY:Oxford University Press, 2010. 298pp.$49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780195383164.

ROBERT K. SCHAEFFER

Kansas State [email protected]

Poor people often regard their situation asthe product of fate, luck, or Providence. Toescape poverty, Susan Pick and Jenna Sirkinargue, people need to overcome this psycho-logical inertia, and the fatalism and shameassociated with it, and become actors whocan make the choices necessary to improvetheir circumstances. ‘‘The roots of sustainabledevelopment lie. . .in the capacity of people toovercome their psychological, social andcontextual barriers, to view the worldthrough a news lens, as agents. . .of change.Personal and social change begins at the psy-chological level. People must learn to exercisecontrol over their lives and make choices’’(p. 3).

Unlike early modernization theorists whoargued that the religion or culture in onlya few societies prepared people to make therational choices demanded by market-basedsociety and development, Pick and Sirkinmaintain that effective decision-making neednot be a cultural given, rather it might betaught. Using principles based on the workof Amartya Sen, a recent Nobel laureate in eco-nomics, the authors have advanced a set ofparticipatory education programs throughthe Mexican Institute for Family and Popula-tion Research (IMIFAP) that have empoweredthe poor and enhanced their ability to makechoices about reproduction, health care, safety,and self-employment. The goal of these pro-grams, which are based on the idea that ‘‘Ican, I will, take charge of my life,’’ is to increasethe decision-making capabilities of the partici-pants, help them to overcome fatalism andshame, which is endemic among the poor inMexico and many other countries, and tomake them more effective decision-makersand consumers. The authors argue that if indi-viduals learn to demand more of people inhouseholds, bureaucracies, and markets, theycan improve their place in the world. There is

some evidence that this is true. When womenand men are empowered, they often insist onsafer sex and fewer children, which can reducefamily size. If they make better choices abouthealth care, safety, education, and self-employ-ment, they can improve their economic oppor-tunities. And if they simultaneously reducefamily size and increase incomes, they mightescape from the kind of low-level equilibriumtrap that ensnares many poor households.Richard Nelson in 1956 argued that develop-ment would be difficult to achieve if economicgrowth was accompanied by rapid populationgrowth. By analogy, large family size can con-strain, not enhance, the economic opportuni-ties and circumstances of poor households.But if they can reduce family size, they havethe opportunity to escape the kind of low-levelequilibrium trap that Nelson described.

The authors’ decade-long experience withdiverse ‘‘Programming for Choice’’ educationclasses provides evidence that the classeshave increased the decision-making capabil-ities of tens of thousands of poor people acrossMexico and other Latin American countries.However, they do not demonstrate that thekind of individual agency which providesreal benefits to people in intimate settingscan translate into the kind of collective agencyto alter the bureaucratic, economic, and cul-tural institutions that shape inequality andencourage fatalism in the first place. In fact,the authors seem reluctant to make this con-nection, arguing that while ‘‘[t]his emphasison self is fundamental to sustainable develop-ment, empowerment based solely on external. . .motivations may reinforce dependency,rather than personal agency, because of theexternal locus of control’’ (p. 243).

Of course, this approach contrasts sharplywith many other theorists of social change,who have argued that external organizationat the local, national, and global level canhelp people not only to overcome their psy-chological aversion to change but also devel-op a sense of collective agency to help themchallenge the economic, political, and cultur-al institutions that obstruct change.

Although individual empowerment mayhelp poor people make more effectivechoices, has it made it possible for them to‘‘break the poverty cycle’’ and reduceinequality, as Pick and Sirkin suggest? Per-haps, but they provide little empirical

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evidence that it has. A realistic assessmentwould require some attention to the widersocial developments that have affected pov-erty and inequality in Mexico during thelast 20 years. The introduction of the NorthAmerica Free Trade Agreement, successivepeso crises, falling farm prices, restrictionson immigration to the United States, theassassination of political leaders, and ongo-ing drug wars have all constrained the capa-bilities and choices of poor people in Mexicoand reshaped the contours of poverty andinequality. Have the people who have beenempowered by participatory education pro-grams, of the kind advanced by the authorsand IMIFAP, managed to overcome thesestructural constraints on their choices? Theauthors do not provide an answer, thoughit is central to their argument. Still, while Iam skeptical of the authors’ claim that partic-ipatory education and individual empower-ment provide the key to breaking the cycleof poverty, I think it may well unlock someof the doors that confine poor people.

Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography,Volume II, by Mary Pickering. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.638pp. $98.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780521513258.

Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography,Volume III, by Mary Pickering. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.667pp. $98.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780521119146.

G. W. F. MEYER

Laurence Sterne College

In 1975 on her way to achieving Phi BetaKappa in three years at Harvard, Mary Bar-bara Pickering wrote ‘‘The Creative Absolut-ism of Raoul Spifame’’ as her 109-page hon-ors thesis. (Spifame [d. 1563] is so obscurethat even the 11th Edition of the Britannicadoes not mention him. Only Gerard deNerval’s ‘‘The King of Bedlam’’ [1839] haskept his memory dimly alive [Nerval 1999:6–20].) Pickering then spent considerabletime burying herself in French archives,until finally (in 1988) finishing a six-volumeHarvard history dissertation called AugusteComte: His Life and Works, 1798-1842. She

meanwhile had taught at Pace Universityand then returned to her childhood stomp-ing ground, with a job at San Jose State,where she has been ever since. Pickeringthus broke every rule in the Handbook ofUpwardly Mobile Academics: she spent yearsin foreign archives sifting through materialsnobody else reads; she wrote a gigantic dis-sertation; she became expert on one man’swork, a theorist who is little read today,despite his name being universally known;and she then consecrated her entire profes-sional career to the construction of a monu-mental biography of his time and workwhich is unlikely to be read by philosophers(who now disregard Comte), by sociologists(who do not read multi-volume biographiesof anybody), by historians (who do not holdComte in high regard, either), or by the laity,who know nothing about him. Why wouldshe behave in this way, assuming she is notmad?

Because at some point Mary Pickeringdecided to become the world’s most accom-plished biographer of a major figure in thehistory of social theory, and she knew itwould take a while to achieve that, whichshe has now done. Beginning in 1993, whenCambridge University Press published thefirst volume of the biography (776 pages),Pickering laid out a plan of attack uponComte’s world to which she has remainedsteadfastly committed. If every social scientistwith the slightest interest in the past wouldstudy her resulting work, the level of dis-course about their collective past would beelevated to such an extent that one could rea-sonably speak of a pre-Pickering and post-Pickering understanding of Comte, positiv-ism, Saint-Simon, and the miasma that wasFrench intellectual life during his heyday.While Michael Burawoy recently asked inthese pages ‘‘Who now reads Comte?,’’ thesimple response should now become ‘‘Thosewho read Pickering’’ (Burawoy 2011: 396).

The first volume of this stupendous study(which includes a 31-page bibliography)takes Comte from birth (January 19,1798)through 1842 when he completed his six-volume Cours de philosophie positive. Picker-ing opens the volume with Comte’s remarkat 27 to a friend, ‘‘The essence of my life isa novel, and an intense novel, which wouldappear truly extraordinary if I ever

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published it under some assumed names’’(Vol. I: 1). Pickering wrote the ‘‘novel’’Comte could not, yet her care with factualdetail recreates his ‘‘life and times’’ withsuch verisimilitude that we do not needComte’s own version. The last 160 pages ofthe book are the best analysis available ofthe Cours, which include potent observa-tions like this: ‘‘Comte would hardly recog-nize his version of positivism in these [cur-rent] definitions. They represent in fact thevery approaches to which he was opposed’’(Vol. I: 694). If there is a theme that Picker-ing never fails to sing, it is this: Comte ascaricature has so overwhelmed the actualComte whom she came to know duringher 30-year investigation, that virtuallyevery textbookish treatment is either wrongor uselessly distorting.

The second volume, released 16 years afterthe first, covers ground wholly unknown tomodern sociology, taking the story to 1852.It offers such a cornucopia of cultural andbiographical details pertaining to Comte’smany associates, enemies, lovers, acolytes,and friends that one quickly understandshow correct he was in seeing his life as animprobable novel. Because we live in theEra of the Ascendant Woman (which Picker-ing herself represents so well), the only com-ponent of his life receiving attention has beenComte’s relationship with his wife, CarolineMassin, who was not, according to Picker-ing’s research, the whore as she is routinelydescribed. Pickering is able to say with preci-sion that Comte first used the word ‘‘altru-ism’’ in a series of lectures that Massinhelped organize in April 1850, a concept cen-tral to his later notions of civilizationalimprovement. His later idolizing of Clotildede Vaux, and through her the apotheosis ofwomen in general, is also given very closeattention in the second volume (Vol. II: 133–183). One reason Pickering decided toexplore these relationships in as much detailas the archives allowed—aside from theirintrinsic human interest—is because eachilluminates Comte’s theorizing, while alsoconverting our idea of him from the soullessmathematician and megalomaniacal rhetori-cian into a fully developed human male ofthe period, as loaded with foibles and confu-sions as anyone, yet intellectually equippedto generalize these quandaries into broad

ideas for societal renewal. Seldom has a theo-rist found so much grist for his mill in theeveryday occurrences of a perlexing life,and during a time of political turmoil.

This volume also includes a telling analy-sis of Comte’s role in the 1848 revolution inFrance: ‘‘A gifted teacher, Comte eagerlyresponded to artisans’ widespread desirefor education’’ (Vol. II: 266). Pickering endsthe volume by laying out the origins ofComte’s ‘‘religion of humanity’’ and the pos-itivist movement as reflecting Comte’s writ-ings and personality, far removed as it wasfrom the positivist tradition of succeedinggenerations.

Focusing on events in French political lifebetween 1851 and 1857, and how thesehelped transform Comte’s worldview, thelast volume of Pickering’s monument toscholarship gives pride of place to the secondof his masterpieces, the four-volume Systemede politique positive (Vol. III: 159–393). Onceagain, the reader is treated to an explicationthat is second to none, due especially to itsdetailed linking of day-to-day argumentsamong Comte’s associates with the largerpolitical forces of the time. Perhaps becauseit was translated in 1875–77 by a team ratherthan by the inimitable Harriet Martineau, ithas not enjoyed the celebrity of his earlierwork, which Pickering regards as a greatloss, since it is in the later work that Comteshows his global concerns for peace, harmo-ny, interpersonal affection, and the humanneed for a system of belief that is post-dogmatic.

Comte thought so highly of Martineau’sloose translation and condensation of hisCours that he recommended her 1853 versionover his original for prospective positivists(Vol III: 10). ‘‘The Elusive Disciple: HarrietMartineau’’ (Vol. III: 132–156) is but one ofmany tantalizing portions of this concludingvolume. As with all her Comte archaeology,Pickering extracts a great deal from archivedletters, diaries, and personal commentariesunavailable elsewhere. Typical of her laborsis footnote 297 on p. 144, covering most ofthe page, which explains why Martineauwas delighted to be the one to translateComte into English, in that so many othernotables (e.g., George Eliot) also desired todo so. This kind of synthesized, archive-based information is what gives Pickering’s

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three volumes their unique value as scholar-ship, all the while telling a humanly enchant-ing tale of a great mind that fell apart as itstruggled to create a sociologically-attunedutopia. Anyone who still believes that wehave nothing left to learn from Comte simplyhas not found Mary Pickering.

References

Burawoy, Michael. 2011. ‘‘The Last Positivist.’’Contemporary Sociology 40(4): 396ff.

Nerval, Gerard de. 1999. Selected Writings. Tr. withintro. by Richard Sieburth. New York, NY:Penguin Books.

Pickering, Mary. 1993. Auguste Comte: Volume One:An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press.

Premarital Sex in America: How YoungAmericans Meet, Mate, and Think aboutMarrying, by Mark Regnerus and JeremyUecker. Oxford, UK: Oxford UniversityPress, 2011. 295pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN:9780199743285.

PAULA ENGLAND

New York [email protected]

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker providean overview of the sex lives of heterosexual,unmarried ‘‘emerging adults’’ (age 18–23).The volume appears written for lay or under-graduate audiences; writing is accessible,statistical analyses are relegated to appendi-ces, and theory is not central. What nonethe-less makes the book valuable for scholars isthat the authors consider many related topicsin an integrated way: who is sexually active,norms about when sex is all right, viewsabout timing of marriage, gender differencesin preferences for casual versus relationalsex, and effects of casual and relational sexon women’s and men’s emotional well-being. Another plus of the book is that itincludes analyses from two major nationalsurveys (the Longitudinal Study of Adoles-cent Health and the National Survey of Fam-ily Growth), from surveys covering studentsat multiple colleges and universities, andfrom qualitative interviews they conducted.

The book is loosely guided by two theoret-ical perspectives that the authors call ‘‘sexualeconomics’’ and ‘‘script’’ theory. ‘‘Sexualeconomics’’ emphasizes partner markets—competition between members of one’s ownsex for access to partners of the other sexwho can provide sexual pleasure, affection,economic resources, and/or someone tohave children with. ‘‘Script theory’’ empha-sizes culture and norms about sex.

We learn that those who start sex later thanthe norm are heterogeneous. They includevery religious youth, those who have littleopportunity for relationships because othersdo not find them attractive, and those fromthe upper-middle class who are risk-averseand have high educational expectations.Regarding the latter group, the authors findit paradoxical that those who could mostafford a child financially tend to start sex rel-atively late and contracept assiduously there-after, making them the least likely to have anunplanned pregnancy. They argue that oneexplanation is that youth with promisingfutures have a high incentive to avoid inter-rupting schooling or a career to care fora baby. Another explanation for this class gra-dient that they do not consider is that upper-middle class environments may more suc-cessfully inculcate the self-regulation neededfor consistent contraception.

The most common sexual script is serialmonogamy, combined with an aspiration to‘‘settle down’’ to monogomous marriageeventually, albeit at ever later ages for succes-sive cohorts. Many of those who are very reli-gious and/or politically conservative havemoral qualms about premarital sex, or atleast feel that sex belongs in relationships.They keep more of their sex in relationships.Nonetheless, many of them selectively findreasons to rationalize violating rules theybelieve in. Their situation is discussed ina chapter on ‘‘red and blue’’ sex.

Another chapter considers the emotionalconsequences of sex, using depression asthe outcome measure. They present evidencethat having more numerous sexual partnersoutside relationships encourages depressionin women, but not men. They draw on evolu-tionary psychology to argue that this genderdifference reflects the fact that women arehardwired to avoid nonrelational sex. In myview, it is also possible that casual sex has

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worse consequences for women than menbecause of the cultural double standard—the fact that women are judged more harshlythan men for having nonrelational sex.

Their use of an economic, market perspec-tive provides a compelling interpretation forone striking finding from college data. Aftercontrolling for many individual and schoolvariables, they find that the higher the pro-portion of females in a student body, themore women have casual sex outside rela-tionships, and the less women go on datesor have boyfriends. This finding suggeststhat, in settings where women are competingwith many other women for male attention,women are more likely to give men whateverthey want. And, the finding suggests thatwomen ‘‘get less’’ (in dates or relationships)‘‘for’’ sex when women are in greater supply,just as the market model predicts would bethe case if casual sex was more greatlydesired by men and relationships weremore greatly desired by women.

My main criticism of the book is its treatmentof the double standard. Instead of recognizingit as a socially constructed piece of culture thatcould be otherwise, they explicitly state that itcannot ever be changed. They see it as a logicaldeduction from the ‘‘sexual economics’’ theorywhen combined with the assumption that menwant casual sex more than women. But thedouble standard cannot be logically derivedfrom the market theoretical perspective (evenif we grant their assumption that men likecasual sex more than women). The marketmodel does predict, as discussed above, thata larger supply of women (relative to men)decreases the ‘‘price’’ of sex for men. But thisresult of competition does not imply that menwill morally disrespect women who, whenthey find themselves competing with morewomen for men, switch to offering sex withfewer requirements for commitment first. Theauthors are correct that many men do disre-spect their partners if they provide casualsex. But saying that this disrespect is pre-dicted by the market model is like sayingthat economic theory predicts the following:if three new restaurants open in a smalltown, customers will start seeing the restau-ranteurs and their now-lower-priced food tobe immoral or disgusting.

While I applaud the authors’ attention toboth markets and culture, I was left wanting

more discussion of how the two perspectivesare to be integrated. For example, when cannorms about what is right reduce predatorybehavior by men that market competitionallows them to get away with? If marketsyield certain behavior for long enough, donorms about appropriate scripts shift? Futuresex research should tackle these issues.Regnerus and Uecker have provided a com-prehensive and provocative contribution tothe conversation.

A Community of Europeans?: TransnationalIdentities and Public Spheres, by ThomasRisse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 2010. 287pp. $24.95 paper. ISBN:9780801476488.

CHARLES TURNER


Without a European demos and polity, poli-ticians and intellectuals are always likely tosee in Europe and/or the European Unionwhat national agendas make them see; buteven the most detached scholars can be par-tial in this way. Early on in this scrupulousand readable monograph, Thomas Rissewrites that ‘‘I am born with a German pass-port. . .’’ (p. 20), but he need not have: thespirit of postwar West German liberalism isdiscernible throughout, and comes sharplyto the surface in the conclusion, where welearn that if liberal elites fail to fight for theirvision of the European Union, ‘‘continentalEurope will end up where the United King-dom is now’’ (p. 251).

Before that, the book asks a number of per-tinent questions, and tackles them with verveand perseverance. Is there a European identi-ty? Is there a European public sphere? Ifthere is such a public sphere, does it contrib-ute to the formation of a European identity?What is the relationship between these fac-tors and ‘‘the democratic legitimacy of theEuropean project’’ (p. 4)? In searching foranswers, Risse eschews some of the moremetaphysical reflections on Europe in favorof an admirably sober set of materials—Eurobarometer-style attitude surveys,‘‘media analyses’’ of the European press,and a bibliography that consists largely of

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empirical political science. This both helpsand hinders him; we do need an empiricallyplausible sense of the way these questionsare played out in different European states,but Risse plays rather fast and loose with the-ory, his terminology sometimes glossing overimportant complications. Thus ‘‘the strug-gles over European identity’’ involve twomain substantive concepts of Europe: ‘‘amodern EU Europe supported by the Euro-pean elites. . .and embracing modern, demo-cratic and humanistic values against a past ofnationalism, militarism or Communism,’’and ‘‘a Europe of white Christian peoplesthat sees itself as a distinct civilization. . .This European identity construction isless open to strangers and entails boundariesagainst Islam as well as Asian or African ‘cul-tures.’ The extreme version of this antimod-ern and antisecular identity construction isnationalist, xenophobic and racist’’ (p. 6).While there may be a distinction to makebetween an elite perspective on Europeanidentity and ‘‘mass public opinion,’’ Rissetends to run this together with others wherea bit of cross-classification might have beenhelpful. For instance, he tends to seemodern/antimodern and secular/religiousas synonymous distinctions, while few soci-ologists of religion now do. And althoughRisse knows that the picture is not so sim-ple—that, for instance, Catholic values havebolstered many elements of elite E.U.discourse—this broad distinction recursthroughout.

His justification for them is connected withhis observations about the existence ofa European public sphere. He argues thatthe increasing presence of the EuropeanUnion in national politics has itself politi-cized European identity, and created a Euro-pean public sphere (though not in the Haber-masian sense), one in which the samequestions are increasingly addressed in dif-ferent states. Ironically, this politicizationand Europeanization has produced anincreasingly stark alternative in ‘‘mass publicopinion,’’ between a secular, cosmopolitan,‘‘political’’ Europe oriented to ‘‘the valuesof modernity,’’ listed here without commentas ‘‘enlightenment, democracy, human rights

and peace’’ (p. 50), and a ‘‘cultural’’ Europethat is Christian, exclusionary and anti-Islamic. In seeing cause and effect this way,he is quite well served by his ‘‘social con-structionist’’ approach (p. 20): the presenceof the European Union as a set of institution-al realities helps create the idea of Europe asa topic of debate, and as a possible object ofattachment, though not one, he is keen tostress, that replaced national identity—thediscussion here is about the Europeanizationof remaining national identities. But socialconstructionism can be pushed too far, andI think that it is in the discussion of E.U.enlargement. For instance, he says that cos-mopolitan Europeans construct a non-European other temporally, in the form ofthe nationalist, fascist or communist past,while culturalist exclusionary Europeansconstruct a non-European other spatially;there may well be something in this, but heclaims that those who oppose Turkey’s E.U.membership on the grounds of its lackingthe dual heritage of Christianity and enlight-enment are appealing to ‘‘primordial con-structions’’ (pp. 27 and 52), and resorting tonineteenth century nationalism projectedonto a European canvas, when it may besaid that their arguments are just asempirical-historical as are those of thecosmopolitans.

Finally, at one point the book refers to‘‘attitudinal or behavioural consequences’’(p. 45); in fact, it is all about attitudes, values,and public discourse. There is no discussionat all of behavioral consequences, but per-haps they ought to be borne in mind, becausethey complicate the picture of alternativeforms of Europeanization painted here. TheUnited Kingdom may be at the bottom ofRisse’s cosmpolitanism league, but it is fareasier to build a mosque there than it is inGermany or Switzerland, the U.K. govern-ment is—albeit naıvely—in favor of TurkishE.U. membership where Germany is lesskeen, and it is in modern, democratic Francethat President Sarkozy has told what theycan and cannot wear in public.

These caveats aside, this is a noteworthyand largely fair-minded contribution; itdeserves to be read and discussed.

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Youth in Transition: Eastern Europe and theWest, by Ken Roberts. New York, NY:Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 243pp. $39.00paper. ISBN: 9780230214446.

ROSS MACMILLAN

Universita Commerciale Luigi Boccon, [email protected]

Processes of globalization over the past threedecades have ushered in a large volume ofresearch on the implications of societalchange for life experience and human devel-opment. A key issue in this area is that effortsto link the local with the global are not easilyaccomplished. By definition, large-scalesocial processes are not easily apprehendedby observing or measuring individuals.Moreover, the large-scale processes of inter-est are typically multi-dimensional anddynamic, and as such place particular bur-dens on researchers and research designs toeither measure and model the dynamism ormake convincing interpretative (rhetorical?)claims. Given such difficulties, it is not sur-prising that Youth in Transition falls short inproviding an integrative account of themicro-macro contexts that characterize thelives of youth in post-communist countries.

The book itself is comprised of nine chap-ters. After an introduction that situates thework in a socio-historical context, subsequentchapters focus on ‘‘labour markets,’’ ‘‘educa-tion,’’ ‘‘housing and family transitions andgender divisions,’’ ‘‘leisure,’’ and ‘‘politics.’’Somewhat strangely, the flow of these chap-ters is interrupted by a chapter on ‘‘Individu-alisation and the reflexive self,’’ which islargely theoretical and when applied to post-communist youth entirely rhetorical, and bya chapter on ‘‘Class divisions’’ that seems tostruggle to make a coherent point. As a bookabout everything in the lives of contemporaryyouth, Youth in Transition ultimately provideslimited theoretical or analytic purchase onany of the key components.

It is tempting to conclude that the difficul-ty of the enterprise is what undermines theultimate success of the research. Yet, I amnot convinced this is the case. For Youth inTransition, an equally significant problem isthat the research itself is uneven and scatter-shot. For a book that ‘‘draws liberally from

a series of investigations in which the author. . .was involved from the beginning of the1990s and over the following 20 years’’(p. 17), that involved ‘‘evidence from andabout young people in a total of 12 differentformer communist countries’’ (p. 17), andinvolved ‘‘combinations of quantitative andqualitative evidence’’ (p. 18), it was typicallydifficult to understand exactly what researchwas done. Although there are lots of exam-ples, one recurring crime was the presenta-tion of tables that ended with the note‘‘Source: see text’’ when there is little to noinformation in the text describing what actu-ally was done (e.g., ‘‘Table 6.2 lists the ‘atleast once a week’ rates for samples of 20-somethings in a variety of locations from1997 onwards’’ (p. 127)). Similarly, narrative‘‘life stories’’ (p. 18) are typically presentedin ‘‘Boxes’’ of varying lengths and some-times indicate the experience of a singleindividual without any contextualizationor are boiled down into a series of de-individualized and de-contextualizedquotes. It does not help for clarity that said‘‘Boxes’’ are also used to report the work ofother researchers, to describe key conceptsfrom particular theorists, to describe lawsor conventions, or simply to provide broadsummaries of conditions in other countries.A style editor would have been useful.Both strategies do little to situate the actorin a social context and hence do not providea tight lens on the variable life experiences ofyouth. Although I read the book twice, Icould not tell anyone what the author actual-ly did to study the lives of post-communistyouth. To me, this is a real problem. Sciencerequires clarity of methods, and the ability tounderstand evidence requires some knowl-edge of what actually was done to produceit. Such details are simply not included.

There is an equally compelling problem.The effort to unravel (or delineate) globaliza-tion effects is pursued through cross-nationalcomparison. Yet, it did not appear that theauthor had done any fieldwork in the ‘‘West-ern’’ nations that are the explicit point of com-parison and the acknowledged source ofglobalizing forces. (And a quick scan of theauthors’ published work in the Referencessuggested no such work.) This means thatthe author is entirely reliant on the researchof others or secondary data. Given that the

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methodological complications of vantagepoint are acknowledged, if not stressed, inthe opening sentences of the book, it is notsurprising that the comparative aspects ofthe book are often thin and disjointed.

Still, this is not an uninteresting book andsomeone interested in various features ofadolescent lives in post-communist countriescould learn a lot. It is true that the analysesare uneven but there is some payoff in thedetail. Moreover, I do not have a problemwith a book that falls short in advancinga coherent account of the social dynamicsthat are shaping the lives of contemporaryyouth. Grand theorizing has its limits, as C.Wright Mills articulated decades ago. Asa study that compiles decades of qualitativeresearch, the life histories are informativeand tell compelling stories of life coursedynamics in the context of large-scale socialchange. If anything, I wish there were more,or they were used more systematically. Whilethe research may not be enough to builda coherent theory of globalization, socialchange, social structure and agency, and lifecourse experience, it does inform the smallerquestion of the transition to adulthood inpost-communist countries. In an odd coda,I believe the author would agree with myassessment. Towards the end of the introduc-tory chapter, the author ends with the conclu-sion: ‘‘The issue then becomes: exactly whatare the global similarities and what are thedifferences as regards the situation, outlooks,and behaviour of young people? The materialin this book is relevant, but inevitably inconclu-sive’’ (p. 14, with emphasis added). I couldnot have stated it better myself.

Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boardsand the Social Sciences, 1965–2009, by ZacharyM. Schrag. Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2010. 245pp. $45.00 cloth.ISBN: 9780801894909.

GAYE TUCHMAN


I have lost track of how many social scien-tists I have heard complaining about Institu-tional Review Boards this past year. Theyseem to divide themselves into two groups:

young people—assistant professors andgraduate students—who are having troublegetting approval for their projects, and pro-fessors who have been tenured for a whileand who announce, ‘‘I never could have got-ten IRB approval’’ for that article or book thatreceived so much praise.

Among sociologists in particular, IRBs areinfamous. Audience laughter explodedwhen in his presidential address to the Lawand Society Association, Malcolm Feeleyobserved (2007: 264) ‘‘. . .on my campus, theCommittee for the Protection of Human Sub-jects is known to graduate students as theCommittee for the Prevention of Researchon Human Subjects.’’ Laura Stark (2007:777) observed, ‘‘[I]t was the closest thing Ihave seen to someone bringing down thehouse at an academic conference.’’ The audi-ence apparently approved another of Feel-ey’s observations: ‘‘IRBs subject researchersto petty tyranny’’ (loc. cit.: 264). Since somany social scientists, especially qualitativeresearchers, agree that institutional reviewboards do more harm than good, why dothey continue to be a mainstay on collegecampuses?

In Ethical Imperialism, a social historyof IRB regulations, Zachary M. Schragaddresses a version of this question: Whydo IRB regulations apply to the social scien-ces and whom do they serve? (As currentlyapplied, the term ‘‘social science’’ includeshistory and journalism.) When he was writ-ing his dissertation and eventual book onthe construction of the Washington, D.C.metro, Schrag had been caught by one uni-versity’s insistence that its institutionalreview board had the responsibility of over-seeing oral-history interviews. He wascaught by another university’s board, whenhe wanted to explore an oral history of riotcontrol. As Schrag saw it, ‘‘Because theyrequire researchers to do no harm to the sub-jects of their research, these ethical codeswould, if taken seriously, prevent me fromholding people to account for their wordsand deeds, one of the historian’s highestduties’’ (pp. ix–x). But this scholarly bookdoes not read like the result of anger. Rather,it is the dry and thoroughly researched storyof how IRBs came to be, how they came toadopt rules designed for medical, biological,and psychological researchers and then to

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apply them to the social sciences, how thoserules became institutionalized, and how therules protect universities rather than thepeople who serve as subjects and informantsin social science research.

Schrag explains how four waves of regula-tions unfolded. First in 1966, the PublicHealth Service instituted regulations for its(mainly) medical and psychological grant-ees, although by 1972 those regulationsbegan to be applied to social scientists. In1974, Congress passed the National ResearchAct, also aimed at abuses in medical and psy-chological research, but interpreted by theDepartment of Health, Education, and Wel-fare in ways seemingly designed to preventfurther congressional regulation. (This iswell known in, for instance, the news indus-try. When fearful of more regulations, youmust regulate yourself in a strict but accept-able fashion so as to forestall your would-be regulators.) A third regime, initiated by1981 but using recommendations froma 1978 national commission, was supposedlydesigned to avoid inappropriate IRB over-sight; however, this new ‘‘leniency’’ wasshort-lived. In the late 1990s, the biologistwho headed the Office for Protection fromResearch Risks introduced the omnipresentthreat of penalties for those universitieswhose researchers ignored or broke the rules.

On and off, throughout the 44-year periodthat Schrag discusses, accomplished socialscientists tried unsuccessfully to preventthe application of rules designed for medicaland psychological research to their fields.Birds of quite different feathers flockedtogether either to try to influence govern-ment regulations or to defy them. It is a realtreat to read how Ithiel DeSola Pool, JamesDavis, Albert Reiss, Howard Becker, EdnaBonacich and Jack Katz all more or lessagreed that the regulations harm social sci-ence. Schrag expressed his conclusions ina milder manner, but his generalizations arenonetheless pointed: ‘‘the present system ofIRB oversight is not based on empiricalinvestigation of ethical abuses committedby social scientists,’’ ‘‘the system in generalis weak on empirical evidence,’’ ‘‘policymakers failed to explore alternative meas-ures,’’ social scientists were not representedon the bodies that made the rules, and ‘‘theextension of IRB oversight over most social

science was largely unintentional, or at leastso flawed that no one has been willing totake responsibility for it’’ (pp. 188–89).

Perhaps because he is an historian, Schragdoes not attempt to draw more general con-clusions about IRBs, but in recent years soci-ologists have done so. They have invoked dif-ferent concepts. Carol Heimer and JuLeighPetty (2010) have pointed toward bureaucra-tization, institutionalization, and the failureto distinguish between the regulation ofresearch and the regulation of ethics. Ethics,they note, are contextual. Feeley (2007: 774)fears that IRB regulations invoke a ‘‘hyper-instrumentalism’’ that ‘‘would turn all legalanalysis into cost-benefit analysis.’’ JackKatz (2007: 805) is unabashedly political:‘‘The impact of IRBs on critical social researchmust be appreciated not only as hinderingsome academic careers but as a significantturning point in American political historytoward the repression of progressive inquiryand expression.’’

I would use slightly different terms: IRBregulations and especially their applicationto social science are examples of an account-ability regime, a politics of surveillance, con-trol, and market management that disguisesitself as the value-neutral and scientificadministration of individuals and organiza-tions that increasingly dominate Americanhigher education. At colleges and universi-ties, the accountability regime is itself redo-lent of neoliberalism, an approach to socio-economic policy that lauds the efficiency ofprivate enterprise, promotes the effective-ness of managerial oversight by fosteringindividual and institutional accountability,and seeks to increase the role of the privatesector in determining the political and eco-nomic priorities of the state. IRBs are justone piece of the new higher-education com-plex that has been mandating missions state-ments and strategic plans, encouraging prof-it from (copyrighted) research, assessingteaching practices, fiddling with faculty gov-ernance, and expanding the (largely power-less) contingent labor force (Tuchman 2009).

IRBs protect universities, not researchers,not the subjects or informants whom socialscientists observe and interview. At myown university, I can think of graduate-student projects that (I believe) the IRB killed,because the research would have made the

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university look bad. Both Schrag (2010) andHeimer and Petty (2010) offer good examplesof research that was inappropriately modi-fied. I suspect that many sociologists knowof other examples where an IRB preventedpotentially valuable research. Ultimately, inan accountability regime, bureaucracies pro-tect themselves and document that they havedone so. As Heimer and Petty put it, ‘‘theprotection of organizational interests seemsto have carried the day. A bureaucratizedresearch ethics is essentially an ethics of doc-umentation’’ (op. cit., 611). Among all of thedocuments that academics fill out, this setimpedes research.

References

Feeley, Malcolm M. 2007. ‘‘Presidential Address:Legality Social Research, and the Challengeof Institutional Review Boards.’’ Law and Soci-ety Review 41 (4): 757–76.

Heimer, Carol A. and JuLeigh Petty. 2010.‘‘Bureaucratic Ethics: IRBs and the Legal Reg-ulation of Human Subjects Research.’’ AnnualReview of Law and Social Science 6: 601–26.

Katz, Jack. 2007. ‘‘Toward a Natural History ofEthical Censorship.’’ Law and Society Review41 (4): 797–810.

Stark, Laura. 2007. ‘‘ Victims in Our Own Minds?IRBs in Myth and Practice.’’ Law and SocietyReview 41 (4): 777–86.

Tuchman, Gaye. 2009. Wannabe U: Inside the Corpo-rate University. Chicago, IL: University of Chi-cago Press.

Disability Hate Crimes: Does Anyone ReallyHate Disabled People?, by Mark Sherry.Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. 164pp.$59.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781409407812.

JOHN B. CHRISTIANSEN

Gallaudet [email protected]

For those who do not want to know theanswer to the question posed in the title ofthis book, feel free to skip the first paragraphof this review. Others will probably not besurprised to learn that the author’s answerto that question in this short volume is anemphatic yes. Mark Sherry makes no attemptto write a dispassionate account of hate

crimes and other forms of violence againstpeople with disabilities. Rather, in five pow-erful chapters he seeks to convince readersthat there is far more hatred directed towarddisabled people, especially in the UnitedStates and in the United Kingdom, than isreflected in either formal statistics or in theminds of most non-disabled people.

Much of the book consists of examples ofvarious types of crimes, violence, and gener-al hatred directed toward people with a vari-ety of disabling conditions. In the secondchapter, for example, there are more thantwenty pages of instances of such hatred, pri-marily from various websites, and many ofthem are quoted at considerable length. Cer-tainly, after reading this chapter, few if anyreaders will remain unconvinced that thereis a substantial amount of hatred ‘‘out there’’directed at people with physical, cognitive,and emotional disabilities. Similar examplesof such hatred are discussed in the otherchapters as well, one of which focuses on dis-ability hate crimes in the United States, andanother of which focuses on such crimes inthe United Kingdom. The author points outthat disability rights organizations in theUnited Kingdom have been much more pro-active than similar organizations in theUnited States in documenting the extent ofviolence directed against people with dis-abilities and advocating for appropriate leg-islative and social changes. These two chap-ters also include a rather rambling andtedious discussion of the strengths and limi-tations of formal statistics related to disabili-ty hate crimes in the United States and theUnited Kingdom. No one should be sur-prised at Sherry’s conclusion that there isconsiderable under-reporting of such crimesin both nations. The last chapter includesa discussion of possible responses to disabil-ity hate crimes.

Although the author is to be applauded formaking readers more aware of disability hatecrimes and other forms of abuse and violencedirected at disabled people, this book is dis-appointing on several levels. It is not verywell organized, especially within chapters,the documentation is uneven, and it is quiterepetitious. Moreover, the author repeatedlyuses words or phrases like ‘‘quite common’’or ‘‘widespread’’ or ‘‘often,’’ and then typi-cally supports such generalizations with

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one or two examples (some of which aremuch too long—one does not need to readdozens of lines of vitriol from various blogsand websites to get the point). In addition,there is very little sociological analysis orexplanation in the book. The author’s maingoal seems to be to try to convince readers,over and over again, that there are more peo-ple than one might intuitively think whoreally do hate disabled people and who fre-quently act on the basis of this hatred. Itwould have been better to have focusedmore on trying to explain why these attitudesexist, and why this violence and abuseoccurs, instead of presenting so many exam-ples. Make no mistake, these disability hatecrimes and acts of abuse and violence (aswell as disablism—that is, prejudice againstdisabled people) are indeed horrific, andthe author’s undisguised outrage is certainlyjustified, but readers do not need countlessillustrations to become convinced of that.

Sherry laments the fact that too few acts ofviolence against people with disabilities areformally recognized as disability hate crimes.While this is no doubt true, this is also a prob-lem for hate crimes in general, and a morefruitful approach might be to focus on whatmight be done to try to reduce violence andchange negative attitudes rather than criti-cize prosecutors and other actors in the crim-inal justice system for not employing the dis-ability hate crime classification more often.As the author himself makes clear, provingguilt when a person is charged with a hatecrime is very difficult to do.

The author also points out that emotionaland physical abuse, even if it does not typi-cally result in a formal disability hate crimecharge, sometimes occurs within families;moreover, in-group abuse among thosewith disabilities is by no means absent. Inthis regard, it is important to acknowledgeSherry’s point that disabled victims of abusemight not even recognize that they are beingabused.

In the last chapter, responding to disabilityhate crimes, the author suggests that effortsto reduce the isolation and social exclusionof disabled people are important, as are legaland political strategies designed to empowerdisabled people. While offering some sensi-ble suggestions, such as improving socialservices for people with disabilities and

making it easier for abused disabled peopleto contact appropriate authorities, the dis-cussion of necessary cultural, social structur-al, and public policy changes is somewhattruncated and vague. It is one thing to arguethat it is important to change negative atti-tudes and stereotypes that, as Sherry makesclear throughout the book, countless num-bers of non-disabled people have about peo-ple with disabilities, and quite another tospecifically discuss how this might be doneon a large scale. Can the civil rights move-ment in the United States serve as a modelin this regard? Has legislation such as theAmericans with Disabilities Act helped?What other social or legislative changesmight be effective? In sum, although thisbook provides extensive examples of variousforms of hatred and abuse directed at peoplewith a wide variety of disabilities, a compre-hensive analysis or explanation of why thishappens, or what we might do to deal moreeffectively with this problem, is lacking.

Wealth, Whiteness, and the Matrix ofPrivilege: The View from the Country Club, byJessica Holden Sherwood. Lanham, MD:Lexington Books, 2010. 163pp. $60.00 cloth.ISBN: 9780739134122.

ALLISON L. HURST

Furman [email protected]

Our understanding of elites’ practices andculture is constrained by the difficulties of‘‘studying up.’’ Sociologists seem to thinknothing of invading the space of working-class people, observing behavior that isonly public because privacy is a luxury ill-afforded. Invading the world of elites isa trickier proposition. Jessica Sherwood’swork is a valiant attempt to remedy thisimbalance, but it is marred from the startby obstacles placed in her path not only bythe elites themselves but by her own Institu-tional Review Board. Prevented from fullyengaging with a country club, Sherwoodresigned herself to an interview-only study.Perhaps unnerved by a too-timid IRB, Sher-wood acknowledges she was careful not toantagonize any of her subjects, even statingshe may have been ‘‘more meek in interviews

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than necessary.’’ Despite these methodologi-cal limitations, Sherwood manages to add toour understanding of elite practices and cul-ture by focusing her attention on the‘‘accounts’’ country club members give oftheir exclusive practices (of gender, race,and class). By having accounts at all, elitessignal their general adherence to the greaterideology of meritocracy and democraticaccess; the specific accounts then serve toeither justify or, in some cases, denyexclusivity.

This is a relatively easy book to digest,with examples clearly illustrating the partic-ular types of accounts Sherwood presents.Because Sherwood includes an intersectionalanalysis (albeit lightly done), this book can beused in courses on race/ethnicity and genderas well as class and stratification. Studentsshould appreciate the clarity of Sherwood’swriting and her tight and concise organiza-tion. The book is organized around three sub-stantive chapters, dealing with, respectively,country club members’ accounts of class,racial/ethnic, and gender exclusions. Sher-wood provides numerous clarifying exam-ples in each chapter, often rich in detail andtone.

Unfortunately, the intersectional analysispromised by Sherwood falls victim to herneat order. I can too clearly envision a disser-tation committee member (or editor) encour-aging her to simplify when she should havebeen admonished to complicate. Intersec-tionality is messy, and separating issues ofclass, racial, and gender exclusion in distinctchapters makes it nearly impossible to prop-erly engage in an intersectional analysis.Although there is some discussion of genderin the chapter on class, and race in the chapteron gender, this is too-little and too-far-between to support her claim that this is thefirst and only study of elites to employ inter-sectionality. But we all know how difficultintersectional analyses prove to be in prac-tice. At least Sherwood keeps readers attunedto the multiple strands of exclusion that com-prise the ‘‘matrix of privilege’’ in the title.

One of the strengths of limiting herresearch to accounts of exclusion is that Sher-wood was able to describe and critique whatshe calls ‘‘the dominant inequality ideology,’’or the idea that ‘‘the American Dream of mer-itocratic equal opportunity is a reality’’ (p.

128). Members tie themselves up in knots try-ing to explain to Sherwood why belonging topredominantly white, male-dominated clubsrequiring substantial economic and/or cul-tural capital is not exclusive behavior (myfavorite was the member who claimed thataffording membership was simply a matterof prioritizing). Sherwood is correct to pointout that the presence of these accounts is evi-dence of the power of the ideology (or elsewhy bother to deny or justify?).

A focus on accounts may be a clever way toturn an externally imposed limitation intoa strength, but it also means that certainaspects of elite culture escape Sherwood’sattention. Readers interested in how elitesuse exclusive club memberships to constructand mobilize an upper class would do betterto turn to Diana Kendall’s Members Only(2008) instead. Comparing the two, it is clearthat Sherwood’s country club members aremore upper-middle-class than upper-class.An interesting question then arises ofwhether a more elite group—one that didnot ‘‘earn’’ their way into country clubmembership—would have tried so hard toaccount for exclusion. Does the dominantinequality ideology reflect the ideology ofthe professional-managerial class? Further-more, it was sometimes unclear whetherSherwood’s data always supported herclaims. For example, some of her interview-ees justified exclusion on the basis of their‘‘right’’ to exclude. It is a stretch to see thisin the same category as those who justifiedexclusion on the basis of providing a placefor their children to have fun in a protectedenvironment, or denying that there wasany exclusion in the first place.

Sherwood has done a good job turningaround a limitation imposed on her by herinstitution’s IRB and the suspicion of theclubs to which she sought access, but thishas come at a cost to what this study couldhave been. Established researchers like Ken-dall may be able to work through the systemmore effectively, but this is little consolationto social science research. ‘‘Studying up’’ isdifficult enough without artificial obstaclesbeing imposed by lawsuit-wary IRBs. HadSherwood been able to observe the clubsfirsthand, her intersectional analysis mayhave turned out to be a bit stronger, and con-tradictions between accounts and practices

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could have been identified. It is a shame tosee social science research so intimidated.

Although this is not a breakthrough bookin stratification studies, it is a book worthincorporating into classroom teaching; wellwritten, interesting, and clearly organized.It should provoke some good undergraduateclassroom discussions about the reality ofdemocratic access in the United States todayand the ways in which inequalities aremasked and privileges unmarked.

Reference

Kendall, Diana. 2008. Members Only: Elite Clubsand the Process of Exclusion. Lanham, MD: Row-man & Littlefield.

Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu’s Legacy:Settling Accounts and Developing Alternatives,edited by Elizabeth Silva and Alan Warde.London, UK: Routledge, 2010. 182pp.$130.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780415495356.

VICTORIA JOHNSON


Nearly a decade after his death, Pierre Bour-dieu continues to inspire and to exasperate,and to do so in a wide range of sociologicalsubfields as well as in several neighboringdisciplines. Accordingly, through edited vol-umes and review articles, scholars have con-tinued to take stock of Bourdieu’s impact onthe sociological study of culture, education,religion, stratification, organizations, econo-mies, and politics. In this tradition, CulturalAnalysis and Bourdieu’s Legacy brings togeth-er British, American, and French scholarsto review, deploy, and criticize Bourdieu’sapproach to cultural sociology.

As editors Elizabeth Silva and Alan Wardepoint out in their introductory essay, ‘‘cul-ture’’ here encompasses the broadest rangeof its meanings. Scholars in this collectionexamine artifacts, repertoires, and practices,as well as the social structures through whichthese are produced and reproduced. Whilesome readers may find this volume some-what diffuse in its diversity of topics, levelsof analysis, and stances toward Bourdieu,

a patient reading will be rewarded. Despitethe inevitable review of concepts (capital,habitus, field) and criticisms (determinism,reductionism) that will be familiar to mostcultural sociologists, a number of the essayssuggest promising paths for future research,and as a whole the volume offers a revealingsnapshot of the contested reception of Bour-dieu’s work among cultural sociologists inseveral countries.

In their introduction, Silva and Wardedescribe the individual essays in the volumeas falling into four (broadly delineated)position-takings vis-a-vis Bourdieu’s frame-work and methods: (1) defense; (2) partialappropriation; (3) critical revision; and (4)rejection. The essays that fall into the firsttwo categories will be most useful to those(especially graduate students) seeking tofamiliarize themselves with Bourdieu’sframework and methods as well as with com-mon appropriations of and criticisms of hisapproach. Among the defenders is MichaelGrenfell, whose contribution, ‘‘Workingwith Habitus and Field: The Logic of Bour-dieu’s Practice,’’ offers a useful discussionof the ways Bourdieu’s framework hasbeen misappropriated (a categorization intowhich, incidentally, Grenfell would likelyhave to place several of the essays that fol-low his). Equally useful for the novice isRick Fantasia’s fruitful application of Bour-dieu’s model in a comparative study of theFrench gastronomic field at two criticalmoments in its history.

For those more familiar with Bourdieu’sapproach to cultural analysis and his recep-tion among cultural sociologists, however,the most thought-provoking essays in thevolume will be those that take the strongestcritical positions. For example, in his contri-bution on ‘‘Bourdieu, Ethics and Practice,’’Andrew Sayer argues that the habitus con-cept, while indispensable, remains under-theorized with regard to the place of ethicsin human decision-making. It is true thatBourdieu pays comparatively little attentionto the ethical dispositions of the habitus,although it is important to remember theextent to which judgments of taste (of thekind analyzed at length in Distinction) gohand-in-hand with judgments about themoral worth of those being judged. Similarly,Sayer’s claim that Bourdieu neglects the

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operation of emotions in the responses of thehabitus is perhaps overstated. In Distinction,The State Nobility, and Masculine Domination,for example, the emotion of shame playsa role in (dominated) actors’ responses tothe perception that they are being judged.Thus as Frederic Lebaron notes in hiswide-ranging and insightful response tothe contributions in this volume, ‘‘Bourdieudid account for aspects which Andrew Sayeraccuses him of disregarding’’ (p. 148). How-ever, ‘‘accounting for’’ these aspects of thehabitus is not the same as offering detailedempirical studies of their operation in differ-ent social domains or examining a widerrange of emotions than Bourdieu consid-ered. As Lebaron also points out, ‘‘If oneassociates habitus not strictly with the repro-duction of original conditions but also withadaptation and invention in new situations,the various empirical observations of con-crete habitus and their changes open a largespace for a sociological research pro-gramme’’ (p. 148).

Not all the contributors to this volume seethe value of pursuing such a narrowlyBourdieu-inspired agenda. In an unusualand interesting contribution (invited by theeditors), Michele Lamont reflects on her intel-lectual trajectory into, through, and beyondBourdieu’s sphere of influence. Lamont takespains to point out that many European andNorth American colleagues have influencedher trajectory, but she nonetheless offers anilluminating account of her interactions withand intellectual relation to Bourdieu in partic-ular. For Lamont, Bourdieu’s concepts, ques-tions, and methods provided a point of depar-ture rather than a complete research agenda tobe executed in a new empirical setting. The sto-ry she tells here—of tutelage, inspiration, cri-tique, and intellectual independence—isthe kind rarely recounted in print by sociol-ogists. It is useful not only for what it adds tothe repertoire of possible stances towardBourdieu represented in this edited volume,but also as a piece that could be shared use-fully with graduate students as they try toimagine their own intellectual and profes-sional trajectories.

Perhaps the volume’s most provocativeessay comes from Antoine Hennion, a long-standing critic of Bourdieu’s sociology of cul-ture. Hennion’s novel focus is the visual

data—the pictures of various household inte-riors and their inhabitants—employed byBourdieu in Distinction to support his argu-ments about the relation between consump-tion choices and classification processes.Hennion argues that when Bourdieupresents pictures of ‘‘typical’’ interiors asso-ciated with particular class fractions, herelies on precisely those skills of judgmentthat he purports to be revealing to the reader.It is through this unacknowledged, evenhidden, ‘‘production work the sociologistdoes for the benefit of his readers,’’ Hennionasserts, that Bourdieu is ‘‘transforming intoa universal knowledge the hypersensitivityof certain layers of the middle class tothe subtle play of social differentiation’’(p. 126). Although the concern to analyzethe social production of the sociologicaltext might have resonated with Bourdieu,he would hardly have embraced Hennion’sconclusions regarding the sociological sig-nificance of Distinction.

In a lecture on Manet that he gave in 1999 atthe College de France, Bourdieu noted thatsustained criticism of an institution is animportant indicator of and contributor to itspower in a field. To the extent that Bourdieuhimself continues to draw not only praiseand defense but also sustained criticism,even his strongest critics—perhaps especial-ly his strongest critics—help to reinforce hispowerful position in the field of culturalsociology.

Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unionsand Social Change, by Amanda Tattersall.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.209pp. $21.00 paper. ISBN: 9780801476068.

DAN CLAWSON

University of Massachusetts, [email protected]

Amanda Tattersall’s Power in Coalition:Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Changeprovides the best and most analytic study ofcoalitions available. Based on case studies ofthree coalitions, each in a different formerBritish colony (the United States, Canada,and Australia), each involving differentunions, she develops an analytic apparatusthat can be applied to any coalition.

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Old labor focused on its internal resourcesand collective bargaining, backed by thepower of the strike; coalitions (except, possi-bly, with other unions) were at best a distrac-tion, and might be a detriment. The work-place focus was built into the law, whichspecified the subjects about which theemployer was legally required to bargain(wages, hours, working conditions) and sub-jects about which the employer could refuseto bargain (dumping pollutants in the riverfrom which workers and their kids got theirwater supply, refusing to hire black workers).An effective regulatory regime has to offerworkers an incentive for staying inside thesystem; for a generation or more U.S. laborlaws did so.

Neo-liberalism has changed all that. On theone hand, it has meant the de facto destruc-tion of the laws which were supposed to pro-tect labor rights. On the other hand, the forceof the state, and the reorganization of capital,have created both rules and practices thatmake it increasingly difficult to hold corpora-tions to account, and give business a host ofnew weapons to use (runaways, subcontract-ing, ‘‘replacement workers’’ [until 1980called scabs] if there is a strike). Both therise of neo-liberalism and the shift from inter-nally to externally-focused labor are world-wide phenomena, not specific to the UnitedStates.

As a result, it is no longer possible forunions to rely exclusively on their internalresources. As Tattersall notes, ‘‘When uniondensity was at its peak, unions exercisedsocial and economic influence alone. Today,‘the workers united’ are frequently defeated’’(p. 2). Whether unions embrace coalitionsenthusiastically or are driven to them reluc-tantly, over the last twenty years unionshave increasingly relied on coalitions. Laborsuccess depends on altering public percep-tions, building public support, and changingpolitical outcomes. If labor is to win, it cannotact alone, but must create connections withthe so-called new social movements.

Both labor practitioners and labor-orientedacademics stress the importance of coalitions,and there is a raft of literature celebrating coa-litions, documenting their scope, and offer-ing examples of best practices. Until recently,however, there has been almost no analysis ofcoalitions, of what makes them more and

less likely to succeed, or even of the variousdimensions of coalitions and the ways theyvary from one situation to another.

Tattersall’s three case studies includea teacher union-led coalition in Australia, a -protect-healthcare coalition in Canada, anda stop-Walmart/living-wage coalition inChicago. In many books, the main interestis in the case studies; Tattersall’s strength isdeveloping an analytic apparatus. The casestudies are sometimes interesting, some-times tedious (as they may have been to theparticipants themselves). I found the analyticcategories and conclusions consistently stim-ulating even when I disagreed with them.Tattersall gives us multiple ways to thinkabout coalitions, and reaches surprising con-clusions that conflict with both the rhetoricand the practice of many of the groups thatcelebrate coalitions. The book is far too richto cover more than a fraction of its argumentsand insights here, but let me highlight four ofits contributions.

First, the measure of a coalition’s success,Tattersall argues, depends not just on thesocial-change outcome, but also on howsuch victories are achieved. Some coalitionsstrengthen participants’ organizationalcapacity; others leave people burned outand partners feeling ill-treated. Coalitionsdo not need to be zero-sum, where one orga-nization uses its limited energy and capacityto help another organization. Coalitions caninstead be positive-sum, where at theend of a campaign to lower class sizes, teach-ers are more involved in their union and par-ent organizations are strengthened andenergized.

Second, a counter-intuitive finding thatmakes a lot of sense is that ‘‘less is more.’’‘‘Defying the popular conception that longlists of coalition partners make for powerfulalliances, across the case studies it was easierto build strong coalition relationships whencoalition membership was restricted andthere were fewer organizations makingdecisions and sharing resources’’ (p. 143).In the Chicago anti-Walmart/pro-living-wage campaign, for example, instead of put-ting the emphasis on assembling an impres-sive letterhead listing scores of participants,the coalition intentionally restricted itself toa handful of leaders who met regularly andbuilt strong ties with each other.

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Third, union leadership often insists onmaintaining firm control of the coalition. Iexperience this in my own work in highereducation, where the top leadership of theMassachusetts Teachers Association is wor-ried that PHENOM, the Public Higher Edu-cation Network of Massachusetts, has beenor will be taken over by students. (Studentsworry the coalition is faculty-staff dominat-ed.) I and others argue that unless studentshave real power they will not be committedand involved; without student support, fac-ulty will be dismissed as self-interested. Tat-tersall finds that ‘‘Across the case studies,unions gained more power from working incoalition when they had less direct controlover the coalition’’ (p. 161).

Fourth, often coalitions —especially thebroad coalitions involving a wide range ofgroups—can only agree on a negative mes-sage (stop Walmart). But the coalition mes-sage ‘‘was dramatically more powerfulwhen it was positively framed’’ (p. 146),along the lines of ‘‘all big box retailers shouldpay a living wage.’’

Power in Coalition is a call for both activistsand academics to think analytically aboutcoalitions, and it offers impressive insightsinto what sorts of coalitions work best inwhat sorts of circumstances.

Making Transnational Feminism: Rural Women,NGO Activists, and Northern Donors inBrazil, by Millie Thayer. New York, NY:Routledge, 2010. 234pp. $35.95 paper. ISBN:9780415962131.

BARBARA SUTTON

University at Albany, [email protected]

Globalization is often presented as a sweep-ing, almost self-driving, force fueled bymacro-economic trends and technologicalinnovation. In such accounts, it is easy tolose sight of the social actors who make glob-alization happen. These include not only cor-porations, governments, and financial insti-tutions with disproportionate power toinfluence global agendas, but also socialmovement activists who practice globaliza-tion in rebellious ways. Making TransnationalFeminism is a multi-sited ethnography that

illuminates the latter dimension of globalprocesses: the cross-border engagements ofmovement actors who challenge aspects ofthe new world order at the same time thatthey maneuver within its constraints. Asauthor Millie Thayer puts it, ‘‘globalizationmay accelerate some forms of domination,but it also facilitates the linking and empow-ering of once-disconnected oppositionalforces’’ (p. 8). This outlook is hopeful butnot naıve, for Thayer deftly reveals the con-tradictions, tensions, and appropriations, aswell as the emancipatory possibilities, thatfigure in transnational exchanges.

Based on participant observation, archivalresearch, and in-depth interviews, Thayermeticulously charts how two women’sorganizations in Northeastern Brazilemerged, developed, and changed in thecontext of a globalizing world. The organiza-tions are SOS Corpo (a feminist NGO con-cerned with women’s bodies and health)and Movimento de Mulheres TrabalhadorasRurais (MMTR, a grassroots women’s orga-nization of rural workers). Thayer’s strategicchoice enabled her to explore the complexways in which global flows influence andare affected by movement actors with asym-metrical power. We learn that both of theseorganizations challenge gender injusticeand are part of overlapping ‘‘counterpub-lics,’’ but they differ along various axes ofinequality. SOS Corpo is composed of urban,middle-class feminists and has extensiveinternational linkages, and MMTR is aworking-class organization from the ruralsertao region, associated with the labormovement within Brazil, but largely cut offfrom global ties. Thayer shows how theseorganizations collaborated and navigatedtheir power differences, while also negotiat-ing inequalities and exercising various kindsof leverage in relation to other domestic andinternational social actors.

Among the social actors who influencedthese organizations are global North donorssupporting gender empowerment projectsin the South. Thayer skillfully analyzes howrelations with donors, particularly Northernfeminists who administer gender programs,both enabled the growth of SOS Corpo andfacilitated specific projects of MMTR, butalso posed taxing conditions that fosteredintra- and inter-organization tensions. In the

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case of SOS Corpo, which became especiallydependent on international funding, theseconnections deeply shaped the workingsand strategies of the group. Originally a col-lective, SOS Corpo morphed into a more for-malized, specialized, and hierarchical NGOoriented to policy makers rather than tograssroots women. The book also tells ofMMTR’s efforts to capture the interest ofglobal donors while aiming to maintain itsautonomy and identity as a working-classsocial movement organization.

Yet it is not only money that circulates.Another intriguing dimension of the bookinvolves the flow of ideas and concepts,such as the notion of gender. Thayer raisesthe provocative question, ‘‘how did JoanScott travel from Princeton to the sertao?’’(p. 2). She refers to the impact that thisU.S.-based scholar’s formulation of genderhad on feminist discourse in Brazil. Whileat first sight this North-South discursiveflow may seem colonizing, Thayer pointsto both the precedent of homegrown femi-nist struggles in Brazil and in Latin America,as well as the mutations that the concept ofgender underwent when Brazilian feministsadopted it. Thayer proposes that this is notsimply a case of an imported idea, but anexample of the creative transformation andnovel use of concepts as they move acrossborders. In this way, Brazilian feministsinfused ‘‘gender’’ with notions of citizenshipthat were particularly salient in local democ-ratization struggles.

The book shows the dynamic interplaybetween material and discursive ties, whilealso identifying the prevalence of cultural,political, or economic connections in differ-ent types of North-South and intra-countryexchanges. In doing so, Thayer presentsa conceptualization of the global thatincludes social relations across nation-statesas well as within their borders. This contribu-tion is partly rooted in Thayer’s innovativeresearch approach, which goes beyonda comparative analysis. While the book offersdetailed accounts of each selected organiza-tion, including their differences and similar-ities, Thayer centers attention on the ‘‘rela-tions’’ they weave with each other and with

various constituencies (p. 29). She demon-strates how ‘‘global processes are constitut-ed by links among social actors based in par-ticular local sites’’ (p. 25). In tracing theserelationships, Thayer finds that ‘‘globalflows passed through and between the twomovement sites [she examined] as well asacross national boundaries’’ (p. 19).

Another contribution of the book is theempirically-grounded concept of a ‘‘socialmovement market.’’ Thayer highlights therisks of commodification that funding imper-atives and the logic of neoliberalism imposeon movement organizations. The bookshows how movement actors trade in politi-cal resources to advance their agendas andexercise power in their dealings with eachother. Thayer closely examines theseexchanges, distinguishing movement assetsthat are practical (e.g., money, experience,networks) from those that are symbolic(e.g., legitimacy, authority, authenticity).These resources can support social justiceinitiatives when animated by a collaborativespirit, and they somewhat help balance anunequal power field. Yet Thayer warnsabout the specter of neoliberal competitionthat can turn such strengths into mereexchangeable assets, undermining solidari-ty and obscuring the mutual relations thatenable the development of valuable move-ment products.

On the whole, Making Transnational Femi-nism is an excellent addition to the literatureson gender, globalization, social movements,and Latin America. The arguments are his-torically situated within political and eco-nomic shifts in Brazil and beyond. The meth-ods employed illustrate the value ofqualitative research to the study of globalissues, and the book’s methodologicalappendix offers an honest and insightfulexploration of transnational fieldworkdilemmas. Throughout the volume, Thayerarticulates subtle and contradictory dynam-ics aided by clear prose, sound organization,and useful tables and figures. This bookpromises to attract both scholarly audiencesand activist-minded individuals who willfind in its pages a wealth of analyses rele-vant to movement practices.

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By Himself: The Older Man’s Experience ofWidowhood, by Deborah K. van denHoonaard. Toronto, CAN: University ofToronto Press, 2010. 198pp. $45.00 cloth.ISBN: 9781442641099.

DEBORAH CARR

Rutgers [email protected]

The grief of widows has been widely docu-mented, in both scholarship and contempo-rary culture. First-person testimonials byesteemed writers like Joyce Carol Oates(2011) portray the searing emotional distressthat women face when their husbands die.Empirical studies also reveal how womenstruggle yet ultimately achieve a sense of per-sonal growth and independence followingthe deaths of their husbands. This female-focused approach to understanding spousalbereavement is justified, in part, on demo-graphic grounds. Women are far more likelythan men to outlive their spouse, givenmen’s elevated mortality risk and women’stendency to marry men slightly older thanthemselves.

Although widowhood is widely regardedas a ‘‘women’s problem,’’ scholars generallyacknowledge that spousal death may beeven more distressing to men than women.Men typically are ill-prepared, both emotion-ally and practically, for the transition, andfew have a support network of fellow wid-owers to whom to turn. Yet despite thesebroad assumptions that ‘‘widowers copeworse,’’ practitioners, scholars, and layper-sons know relatively little about bereavedhusbands. Deborah van den Hoonaard’sengaging and thoughtful book, By Himself:The Older Man’s Experience of Widowhood, fillsthis important void.

Her book carefully and vividly describesthe ways that older men adjust to spousalloss, and focuses on six key domains: psycho-logical adjustment, relationships with adultchildren, dating and romantic relationships,relationships with friends, everyday sociallife and engagement, and household mainte-nance. The analysis is theoretically cohesiveand draws heavily on symbolic interactionistperspectives; a key theme is that older wid-owers struggle to ‘‘do masculinity’’ as they

cope with loss. In some cases, their relianceon typically ‘‘masculine’’ behaviors andpractices bolsters their recovery from loss,in other cases it is an impediment. For exam-ple, the men take pride in knowing they werecompetent husbands and fathers, yet manyalso find that the overwhelming emotionsassociated with bereavement challenge theirsense of masculinity and self-control. ByHimself makes important contributions tothe study of masculinity and bereavement,and answers essential questions about theways that gender-typed socialization pro-cesses shape older men’s experiences withthe bereavement transition.

Van den Hoonaard conducted open-endedinterviews with 26 widowers ages 60 andolder, between 2000 and 2002. She drew hersample from two populations that differedstarkly in terms of geography, religion, edu-cational attainment, and in their approachesto dealing with loss. Nineteen men wererecruited from urban and rural locations inone of Canada’s Atlantic provinces, and sev-en from retirement communities in Florida.In the former group, nearly all were of Britishdescent, whereas the latter were Jewish menfrom the northeastern United States whohad relocated to Florida upon retirement.These differences in cultural backgroundshaped how these men thought about and‘‘did’’ masculinity; the Canadian sampleidentified with a rugged, taciturn ‘‘rural mas-culinity on a symbolic level’’ (p. 10), whereasthe widowers in the Florida sample weremore likely to draw a sense of identity fromtheir professional and financial successes,the accomplishments of their children, andtheir gift of gab—which proved to be a keyresource as these men were better able toarticulate their pain over the loss of theirwife, and to navigate their new romantic rela-tionships with neither embarrassment norawkwardness.

The qualitative data are most intriguingwhen van den Hoonaard discusses themen’s struggles with their interpersonal rela-tionships. Most men were ambivalent aboutestablishing new romantic relationships,and many found it difficult to maintain close,nurturing relationships with their childrenand friends—social ties that had been previ-ously cultivated by their wives. The widow-ers, all ages 60 and older, tended to fall back

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into the language of their younger selves (i.e.,‘‘I’m a bachelor. . .’’) when faced with theromantic overtures from eligible women intheir communities. Most viewed repartner-ing as a natural part of being a widower,although many acknowledged that they didnot want to be ‘‘tied down’’ to one woman.

This same ambivalence and tension distin-guished men’s relationships with their chil-dren. Many of the men reported mixed feel-ings, especially toward their daughters.They wanted (or expected) their daughtersto take on many of the domestic tasks andresponsibilities previously assumed by theirwives, yet bristled when their daughters triedto take control of matters. Other men, still,were reluctant to reach out to their childrenfor help, yet were hurt when their expecta-tions for support from their children wentunmet. In short, men’s adherence to tradi-tional gender-typed expectations and behav-iors posed obstacles as they sought to main-tain quality relationships with significantothers. In these chapters, van den Hoonaardmovingly illustrates the downside of hege-monic masculinity for older widowers.

This book would be a welcome addition tograduate level courses on qualitative meth-odology, aging/life course, and masculin-ities. Van den Hoonaard clearly and honestlydescribes how she recruited and interviewedsubjects, and thoughtfully reflects on theways that her age and gender may haveaffected the content of the interviews. Shenotes that widowed men may attempt to‘‘do masculinity’’ in the course of the inter-view, and may be reluctant to share theirpain or feelings of insecurity in navigatingtheir new lives as ‘‘single men.’’

Some bereavement researchers may quib-ble with the relatively scant attention givento the vast empirical and theoretical workon grief and bereavement. Theories rangingfrom attachment theory, to stress and copingtheories, to the more specific dual processmodel of bereavement—each of which hashad a powerful influence on contemporarybereavement scholarship—are virtuallyabsent from the text. Further, empiricalresearchers may question how widespreadthe documented patterns are, and may seekfurther information on the time course andduration of men’s loss-related adaptations.However, these omissions do not undermine

van den Hoonaard’s contributions; through-out her analysis, she remains true to her rootsin symbolic interactionism, and providesa cohesive interpretation of the men’sthoughts, feelings and behaviors. As vanden Hoonaard herself states, the goals of ByHimself are to understand ‘‘meaning ratherthan. . .rates,’’ and ‘‘social processes ratherthan. . .causal explanations.’’ The author suc-ceeds in both of these aims.

Reference

Oates, Joyce Carol. 2011. A Widow’s Story: A Mem-oir. New York, NY: Ecco.

Folkloric Poverty: Neoliberal Multiculturalismin Mexico, by Rebecca OvermyerVelazquez. University Park, PA: Penn StatePress, 2010. 209pp. $60.00 cloth. ISBN:9780271036571.

ERNESTO CASTANEDA

University of Texas, El [email protected]

This is an historically embedded account ofshifting ethnic and political identities inresponse to large social change. It discussesarchival materials and historical develop-ments in the tradition of social science histo-ry, while also providing an original ethno-graphic account of the birth, life, and deathof a particular indigenous social movementorganization. It uses social theory withsophistication to analyze documents andfirst-person accounts from the actorsinvolved in the ‘‘Guerrero Council 500 Yearsof Indigenous Resistance.’’ While much hasbeen written on Chiapas and Oaxaca, it con-centrates on Guerrero, an important statewith a long tradition of popular politicalopposition movements on which little hasbeen published in English. Folkloric Povertycontains a historiography of anthropologicalstudies of La Montana region of Guerrero,where this reviewer has done fieldwork.Rather than parochial, this is a sociologicalcase study of how government experts dealwith ethnic minorities, and how changes inthe political opportunity structure createnew pan-ethnic identities under which to

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mobilize. It details the claim-making andcontentious politics of the Council undera neo-liberalizing regime. This book offersa fresh look at democratization, patron-clientrelations, authority legitimation practices,and other issues of interest for political soci-ologists and other social scientists.

As the book chronicles, in the 1920s theemerging Mexican government co-optedthe image of the campesino (a poor andoften indigenous farmer) as part of itsnationalistic discourse and imagery whilesimultaneously favoring the industrializa-tion of the urban and northern areas of thecountry. In the 1930s, Cardenas incorporatedindigenous farmers into the PRI nationalparty by giving them land, and organizingthem in a national confederation, thus solid-ifying their political identity as campesinos,and not as indigenous. In 1948, the InstitutoNacional Indigenista (INI) institutionalizeda modernizing agenda that held indigenousgroups as sources of pride and identity forthe Mexican nation, while simultaneouslyaiming to assimilate existing indigenouspeoples into a modern, urban, Spanish-speaking citizenry subject to the centralizedMexican state.

Intellectuals like Manuel Gamio, AndresMolina Enrıquez, and Jose Vasconselos wor-ried that cultural heterogeneity could com-promise national unity. Contrary to biologi-cal views of race held elsewhere, theyemphasized that the mixing of Spanish andindigenous elements would give rise to a mes-tizo (mixed) national culture. This could beseen as the Mexican version of the meltingpot image, implying that ‘‘to remain an Indi-an was to remain a foreigner in Mexico’’(p. 67). This process parallels the attempt ofthe French empire to integrate colonial peo-ple into its ‘‘civilizing’’ mission. Both instan-ces are examples of modernizing projectsaimed to change cultural practices to tran-scend the racial differences of conqueredpopulations, and to transform marginalpeasants into workers serving whatever eco-nomic model in which technocrats wereinvested.

Despite elite dreams to educate and assim-ilate them, many indigenous peoples stilllived in the poorest and most remote areasof the country struggling for subsistence, giv-en the low prices paid for their agricultural

and other products. Echoing critiques of indi-genismo made since the 1970s, Rebecca Over-myer-Velazquez uses the term ‘‘folkloricpoverty’’ to describe the ethnocentric repre-sentation of the indigenous as isolated,poor, parochial, illiterate, and having limitedcommand of Spanish. This is a myth theauthor challenges by showing how indige-nous people have always had constantrelationships—even if often exploitativeones—with non-indigenous people. Never-theless, this myth justified the existence ofthe INI, and the continued discrimination,marginalization, and exploitation of indige-nous peoples.

The main contribution of Overmyer-Velaz-quez’s work resides in documenting whathas happened in Guerrero since the late1980s. She argues that the adoption of neolib-eralism in Mexico temporarily increasedindigenous groups’ political voice. Thesimultaneous indigenous demands forautonomy and piecemeal help were compat-ible with neoliberalism and the tenets of Sal-inas’ Solidarity National Program. The par-ticipation of poor ‘‘folkloric’’ peasantcommunities provided some of the much-needed legitimation for Salinas followingthe 1998 election. Guerrero’s indigenouscommunities received money for neededprojects without any long-term commit-ments from the government: a neopopulistsolution to a neoliberal problem.

In the 1990s, neoliberal globalizationbrought other changes to Mexican indige-nous movements. Borrowing official dis-course on multiculturalism, human rightsand international treaties on indigenousrights, there was a change from a campesinoidentity to an indigenous identity. Interesting-ly, indigenous movements sought autonomywithin the Mexican nation-state. Indigenousmovements, including the EZLN, saw them-selves as indigenous but also as Mexicans.This national identification allowed organi-zation around the pan-ethnic label of ‘‘indig-enous.’’ In the case of Guerrero, Nahuas,Mixtecos, Tlapanecos, and Amuzgos triedto form coalitions to increase their politicalweight.

The end of the one-party system createdmany expectations by indigenous leaders.Yet the multi-party electoral game dividedindigenous leaders, groups and towns. The

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Council became an important brokerbetween the government and indigenoustowns. After a number of successes in gettingfunding for public projects, indigenousgroups talked about this NGO as a ‘‘party,’’and established patron-client relations theway they had done with the PRI and laterwith opposition parties.

The image of ‘‘folkloric poverty’’ drawsthe interest and sympathy of benevolentelites, human rights activists, anthropolo-gists and international organizations. Yetassumptions of ‘‘folkloric poverty’’ limitindigenous self-representation, self-under-standing, and the type of claims that indige-nous people can make. The book includesexamples of indigenous leaders whose‘‘authenticity’’ was questioned once theyspoke on national or international arenas: oneindigenous leader reflected, ‘‘when an Indianputs on a tie, he stops being Indian’’ (p. 160).Thus successful leaders who transcended localconcerns were often seen as traitors to thegrassroots and their pueblo, meaning both‘‘people’’ and ‘‘town’’ (p. 174). Folkloric Pov-erty underlines localism and so advocatingfor national policies is seen as an overexten-sion where ethnic professionals should notspeak in the name of indigenous people atlarge. Rather than gaining a larger voice atthe national level, indigenous movementsface a crisis inherent in the limits of theirpolitical identification. Therefore, like thepost-revolutionary regime, Salinas and Foxwere successful in mobilizing indigenousconstituencies for legitimation and supportwithout providing sustained benefits orrelinquishing any power.

Britain’s War on Poverty, by JaneWaldfogel. New York, NY: Russell SageFoundation, 2010. 270pp. $37.50 cloth.ISBN: 9780871548979.

ROGER PENN

Lancaster University, [email protected]

Britain’s War on Poverty provides a detailedanalysis of New Labour’s attempt to elimi-nate child poverty by 2019. The policy wasinaugurated by Prime Minister Tony Blairin 1999 and backed enthusiastically by his

successor, Gordon Brown. Jane Waldfogel isa professor of social work and public policyat Columbia but has spent a considerabletime at the Centre for the Analysis of SocialExclusion at the London School of Economicscollaborating with British poverty research-ers. A constant theme within her book is thecontrasting fortunes of child poverty policiesin Britain and in the United States.

The background to Blair and Brown’s ‘‘Waron Poverty’’ was the increasing inequalities inBritain during the 1980s and 1990s and, inparticular, the rapid increase in ‘‘worklesshouseholds’’ headed mainly by single moth-ers. This had been accompanied by a plethoraof research findings by British social scientistsabout the long-term negative effects of childpoverty upon subsequent adult life chances.

The empirical core of the book is the chap-ters that deal with the three main elements inNew Labour’s ‘‘War on Poverty.’’ Theseinvolved promoting paid employment(Waldfogel insists on calling this ‘‘work’’),improving financial support for familieswith children, and investing in childrenthemselves. The first involved ‘‘New Deal’’welfare-to-work programs, the NationalMinimum Wage in 1999, and tax credits forfamilies in paid employment. The secondentailed improved child benefits paid (notto mothers as Waldfogel repeatedly claims)but to either parent or guardian of childrenaged 16 or younger. The final area involvedboth improved support for child care aswell as more generous paid parental leaveafter the birth of children. However, thelatter still contained very marked genderinequalities—mothers had far more gener-ous entitlements than fathers—and werepoor by Nordic standards.

How successful was this battery of policy ini-tiatives? Walfogel’s argument oscillates withinher text between measures of relative and abso-lute change. In relative terms, the proportionof children in poverty in Britain fell from 26percent in 1999 to 22 percent in 2004, butsince then the proportion in poverty hasincreased once again. The initial reductionin relative poverty Waldfogel puts down to‘‘an expanding economy,’’ however thisexpansion did not end in 2004 but ratheraccelerated until 2008, which leaves the cau-sality unclear and, more seriously, throwsdoubt upon the assumed efficacy of the suite

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of policy changes that are constantly trum-peted in her book. Indeed, those in direstpoverty (those below 40 percent of medianhousehold incomes) increased significantlyduring the period. These households almostcertainly contained a disproportionate num-ber of children.

Waldfogel ignores the persistence through-out the period between 1997 and 2009 ofmarked regional and ethnic differences inchild poverty in Britain. The latter is a partic-ularly notable omission given the high pro-portion of children now born to internationalmigrants and ethnic minority families andthe enormous differences in female economicparticipation in the labor market betweenethnic groups in Britain. It is also interestingthat the author does not refer in any greatdetail to the health effects of poverty, bothat the start of life and in adulthood. Thereduction in health inequalities was a corner-stone of New Labour policy but the evidenceoverwhelmingly shows that these increasedduring the decade after 1999.

Waldfogel is also remarkably optimisticabout the popularity of these welfare reformswithin the wider population. The enormouswelfare bill and perceived abuses catalogedrepeatedly by the tabloid press such as theDaily Mail, the Sun, and the Express werepowerful factors contributing to the defeatof the Labour Government at the 2010 BritishGeneral Election. Indeed, the cuts to many ofLabour’s welfare policies detailed at lengthby the author have not generated a greatgroundswell of popular dissatisfaction nor,interestingly, a great deal of fervor amongLabour Members of Parliament over thelast twelve months.

Overall, the book is well-written but suf-fers from a series of defects. The most glaringproblem is the partisanship evident through-out. Alternative voices and views on welfarereform and the situation of children in disad-vantaged families get short shrift. The evi-dence has been forced into a Labourist apolo-gia. The tables are also often unclear as toprecise sourcing and contain the rider thatthey were constructed by the author fromofficial sources. This makes them impossibleto verify or cross-check. The footnotes, albeitextensive, were too often unrelated to theargument and generally the reader isexpected to take too much on trust.

The contrast with the United States is ofinterest but somewhat perverse. To compareBritain’s so-called ‘‘War on Poverty’’ withAmerican experiences is to benchmark itagainst the worst example of poverty andsystematic inequalities in any of theadvanced economies. A more telling com-parison would have been with countriessuch as Sweden, Finland or Germany, whichhave a far better record over a much longerperiod.

Finally, from the perspective of the ‘‘lon-gue duree,’’ the small changes described byWaldfogel must be seen as relatively insignif-icant. Levels of poverty have increased sig-nificantly since the late 1960s and theseminor fluctuations since 1999 represent butone episode within this broad conjuncturaltrajectory.

The End of the Revolution: China and the Limitsof Modernity, by Hui Wang. New York, NY:Verso, 2009. 238pp. $26.95 cloth. ISBN:9781844673605.

JIN WANG

Sun Yat-Sen University, [email protected]

The End of the Revolution is a collection ofessays written by Hui Wang in the pasttwo decades. It is the English version of a Chi-nese collection whose title, translated intoEnglish literally, is ‘‘Depoliticized Politics,’’which is also the title of the first chapter.What Wang meant by ‘‘depoliticized poli-tics’’ is similar to what is referred to bysome in America as the convergence of thetwo parties or the decline of party politics,which he called ‘‘the hollowing of Westerndemocracy’’(p. 6). Although the increasingpolarization of American politics over thepast two decades seems to call the conver-gence thesis into question, what is moreproblematic is Wang’s juxtaposing suchdiagnosis of a characteristically Westernand democratic disease with the patient ofChinese politics.

Although Wang is mindful of ‘‘their struc-tural, internal and historical differences,’’ it istoo tempting not to see ‘‘an internal dynamiccommon to both the single-party and themulti-party systems,’’ which is the decline

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of the political party and the depoliticizednation-state in contemporary democracies.But the Chinese Communist Party was a Len-inist party in a non-democracy. Wang is rightto say that even within the CCP ‘‘it is not easyto carry on real debate’’ and ‘‘the CCP hasconducted no public debates about politicalvalues or strategy’’ (p. 6) since the mid-1970s. But the lively debates and deadlystruggles during the ‘‘line struggle’’ yearsunder Mao were not only about ‘‘serious the-oretical considerations and policy deba-te’’(p. 6), as Wang described, but more aboutpower struggle and power consolidation thatwere typical at the beginning of every dynas-ty throughout Chinese history. The livelinessof the party politics ended with Mao’s deathand Deng’s success in consolidating powerwithin the party, which allowed him to steerthe policies in a new direction over objectionsby the Left.

The fact that ‘‘divisions. . .can only beresolved within the power structures’’ (p. 6)is not the result of depoliticized party politicswithin the CCP, but the reason for it. It is nota new phenomenon that emerged after neo-liberalism (Wang’s real villain) had becomethe new hegemony, but the reason that gaveit the hegemony. None of the examples of‘‘theoretical battles’’ cited by Wang, from1927 to 1978, was actually settled by the vir-tues of theoretical arguments, but by powerstruggles with Mao outmaneuvering andoutlasting his opponents at every criticaljuncture. His greatness as a theoretician wasonly second to his real greatness as a fighterand survivor, as are all great political leaders.

The rosy image that Wang projected ontothe CCP, where the vitality of the party poli-tics was preserved by continued vigorousdebates on policies and strategies within theparty, is illusionary at best. The foundationof the one-party system is the monopoly ofpower. In order to maintain the monopolyof power, oppositions have to be suppressed,both within the party and without. The leftistideology during the Mao era was equallyhegemonic. Those who were labeled rightistsor capitalist-roaders, such as Deng Xiaoping,were purged and sent to the countryside.Therefore, it is not just under the neoliberal-ism’s hegemony during the market reformera that ‘‘the possibility of exploring the rela-tionship between the party and democracy’’

has been destroyed (p. 7). It has never beenseriously explored by either side.

Wang’s opposition to the hegemony of theneoliberalist ‘‘radical privatization ideology’’seems also to color his analysis and interpre-tation of the 1989 student movement. Whilehe criticizes the neoliberals for being ‘‘anti-historical’’ in their commentaries on the1989 movement, he commits the same sin oftailoring history for his own arguments.Granted that no one has a monopoly on theinterpretation of history, Wang’s determina-tion that ‘‘state-led neoliberal economic poli-cies led to the social upheaval’’ and ‘‘thesocial mobilization of 1989 was based on pro-tests against the uneven decentralization ofpower and interests’’ (p. 34) would have tobe squared with the fact that the 1989 socialmovement was first and foremost a studentmovement, and measured against the com-peting hypothesis that the movement wasthe result of the temporary opening of thepolitical opportunity structure which wasbrought about by the initial phase of the mar-ket reform.

The political atmosphere on universitycampuses in the late 1980s, right before the1989 student movement, was the most openand liberal in recent history. The studentswere still guaranteed jobs after graduationand were still widely referred to as ‘‘the cho-sen ones’’ (not in the Christian sense, but tianzhi jiao zi in Chinese). Their outcry againstofficial corruption and their zeal for democ-racy demonstrated during the movementwere less because of personal injustices suf-fered at the hands of the authorities, or rela-tive deprivations caused by ‘‘the unevendecentralization of power and interests.’’ Ifanything, they were the privileged youthon their way to become the new power elites.What appealed to them were the concepts ofdemocracy and freedom, even though vagueand abstract to most of them. Theyresponded to the rally cry for democracyand freedom with the typical zeal of theyouth of a certain age.

If one takes the value of democracy seri-ously, then one must acknowledge that fun-damentally, democracy itself is worth fight-ing for, and the oppressed will not needa more material grievance to push themover the edge to join the protest. The questionof ‘‘why many state officials and government

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cadres marched on Chang’an Avenue’’(p. 33) towards the end of the movement,therefore, can be answered with the chang-ing dynamics of authoritarian control. Oncemassive and prolonged student protests rip-ped open the tightly controlled social order, itbecame easier for other groups and othermembers of the population to mobilize andparticipate. It can be argued that it was exact-ly because of signs that broader groupsmight be heading for such a tipping pointthat the authorities decided to crack downhard on the protests and put an abrupt endto the social movement.

The 1989 student movement, therefore,can be regarded as a failed uprising thatdid not bring down the one-party system inChina, compared to those which succeededin Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.There is nothing anti-historical about this

comparison. Wang’s wish to ‘‘contextualize’’the 1989 student movement within the muchlarger international anti-globalization move-ments that continued all the way to Seattle in1999, Washington in 2000 and beyond, raisesquestions about his approach to history.

Wang’s predicament is understandablethough. Facing the triumphant capitalismin the world and the hegemony of neoliberal-ism in China, it seems the only hope to fightthe tide of globalization and ‘‘radical privat-ization’’ is the ‘‘reactivation’’ of the socialisttradition that ‘‘gave workers, peasants andother social collectivities some legitimatemeans to contest or negotiate the state’s cor-rupt or inegalitarian marketization proce-dures.’’ (p. 18). That is the ‘‘nostalgic’’ and‘‘romanticized’’ attitude toward historywhich Wang himself rejects (p. 66).

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