JWSR Volume X, Number 2, Summer 2004  Book Reviews journal of world-systems research, x, ii, summer , – http://jwsr.ucr.edu issn -x Richard C. King, ed. Postcolonial America Reviewed by John Agnew Phillip Brown, Andy Green, and Hugh Lander High Skills: Globalization, Competitiveness, and Skill Formation Reviewed by Mamadi Matlhako Raymond D. Crotty When Histories Collide: Th e Development and Impact of Individualistic Capitalism Reviewed by Denis O’Hearn Al Crespo, ed. Protest in the Land of Plenty: A View of Democracy from the Streets of America as We Enter the 21st Century Reviewed by Th omas P. Roberts József Böröcz and Melinda Kóvacs Empire’s New Clothes: Unveiling EU Enlargement Reviewed by Deniz Yükseker Stefano Battilosi and Youssef Cassis European Banks and the American Challenge: Competition and Cooperation in International Banking under Bretton Woods Reviewed by Seán Ó Riain John MacArthur Th e Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy Reviewed by Dag MacLeod Rick Baldoz, Charles Koeber, and Philip Kraft, eds. Th e Critical Study of Work: Labor, Technology, and Global Production Reviewed by Leslie C. Gates EDITOR Barry Gills, The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle, UK Globalizations will seek to publish the best work exploring new meanings of globalization, bringing fresh ideas to the concept, broadening its scope, and contributing to shaping the debates of the future. The journal is dedicated to opening the widest possible space for discussion of alternatives to a narrow economic understanding of globalization. The move from the singular to the plural is deliberate and implies skepticism of the idea that there can ever be a single theory or interpretation of globalization. Rather, the journal will seek to encourage the exploration and discussion of multiple interpretations and multiple processes that may constitute many possible globalizations, many possible alternatives. The journal will be open to all fields of knowledge, including the natural, environmental, medical, and public health sciences, as well as the social sciences and humanities. Globalizations will especially encourage multidisciplinary research and seek to publish contributions from all regions of the world. To request a sample copy please visit: www.tandf.co.uk/journals SUBSCRIPTION RATES 2004 – Volume 1 (2 issues) Print ISSN 1474-7731 Online ISSN 1474-774X Institutional rate: US$195; £118 (includes free online access) Personal rate: US$48; £30 (print only) Globalizations ORDER FORM rglo PLEASE COMPLETE IN BLOCK CAPITALS AND RETURN TO THE ADDRESS BELOW Please invoice me at the institutional rate personal rate Name _______________________________________________________________________________________ Address ______________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Email _______________________________________________________________________________________ Taylor & Francis Ltd, Rankine Road, Basingstoke, Hants RG24 8PR, UK Tel: +44 (0)1256 813002 Fax: +44 (0)1256 330245 Email: enquiry@tandf.co.uk Website: www.tandf.co.uk Taylor & Francis Inc, 325 Chestnut Street, 8th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA Tel: +1 215 6258900 Fax: +1 215 6258914 Email: info@taylorandfrancis.com Website: www.taylorandfrancis.com Please contact Customer Services at either: New for 2004 advertisement http://jwsr.ucr.edu/eggplant/adclick.php?log=yes&bannerid=13&zoneid=&source=&dest=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tandf.co.uk%2Fjournals%2Ftitles%2F14747731.asp http://jwsr.ucr.edu/eggplant/adclick.php?log=yes&bannerid=13&zoneid=&source=&dest=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tandf.co.uk%2Fjournals%2Ftitles%2F14747731.asp http://jwsr.ucr.edu/ Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  King, C. Richard, ed. . Postcolonial America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.  Pages, isbn --- (cloth), isbn --- (paper). http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s00/king.html Much of the writing that is labeled “postcolonial” is about the persisting eff ects of European colonialism on the contemporary historical and literary renderings of the relationship between Europe and its former colonies, particularly India. Th e primary goal of this book is to extend postcolonial arguments to the case of the United States as it relates to the rest of the world and to off er cri- tiques of some of the established nostrums of postcolonial studies from a less-Eurocentric standpoint. Th e irony in the American case is not lost on the editor when he notes that the United States itself began as a post-colony to Europe even as it has generated its very own variety of imperialism, initially in North America but later at continental and worldwide scales. Unfortunately for a book in which words seem to matter more than any- thing else, whether or not this usage stretches the term “postcolonial” to the point of meaninglessness, when words like imperial or hegemonic might do better, is not adequately examined. Indeed, many of the chapters favor such words in preference to the perhaps too ambiguous semiotic freight carried by the “postcolonial.” Yet, two of the most stimulating chapters in the book, those by Jon Stratton and Jenny Sharpe, also show that American postcoloniality is qualitatively diff erent in important ways from what the Europeans brought to their relations with subjugated others, suggesting that ritual invocation of terms such as postcolonialism, imperialism, empire, and hegemony without making them more historically and geographically specifi c is perhaps an even larger intellectual and political problem. What we call the relations these words try to capture does matter, if only because what they entail and therefore what can or cannot be done about them also varies. In the absence of explicit atten- tion to these defi nitional issues, the book misses an opportunity to help clarify what are becoming increasingly murky and, by extension, increasingly scholas- tic debates among scholars with little or no public audience. If postcoloniality is only “some sort of global condition” (p. ), then its analytic capacity leaves much to be desired. At fi rst sight, the United States does seem ripe for postcolonial analysis. Implicit in dominant representations of US history are national narratives and political practices that alternate between celebrating the triumphs of its Euro- American pioneers in settling and stabilizing an American homeland and laud- ing the possibility of including subordinated groups at home and abroad within the cultural and economic framework established by the pioneers. Not only is the American experience thereby racialized but it is also profoundly deter- ritorialized or made available for consumption (in commodity form) around the world. Th is is a much more geographically expansive postcoloniality than that produced by the Europeans. Th e chapters range far and wide in pursuit of these themes. In the fi rst section of three chapters, the authors engage with the stories and narratives that have shaped the United States as an “imperial nation.” Stratton’s chapter is particularly coherent and strong in tracing the promised land and apocalyptic elements in American myths about the uniqueness and exceptional character of the United States. Whether this can be laid entirely at the door of the “insecurity” of the US as a settler state (p. ), however, is open to question. Th e four essays in the second section address the ways in which US transnational connections (immigration, trade, investment, etc.) shape American self-images and external relations. Jenny Sharpe makes a good case for a postcolonial analysis of literature penned in the United States by ethnic and diasporic writers by showing how it diff ers in detail from that of Europe, yet how the US shares the same sorts of power diff erentials with subordinate groups and world regions manifested in European-colonial core-periphery and migrant experiences. But, in showing how postcolonial analysis emanates from the mutual infl uence of Edward Said and Michel Foucault on literary studies beginning in the late s, she also demonstrates that analysis of the American case must emphasize transnationalism and power diff erentials rather than mar- ginality and oppression. E. San Juan Jr., however, will have none of this. He sees postcolonial analysis as merely “demobilizing Fanon” or the literary equivalent of a maligned “world-systems theory.” Without addressing in any way the main theme of the book, he embarks on a defense of the nation-state and national liberation as the antidote to a universal imperialism, whose most recent prime agent is the United States. In claiming that postcolonial analysis in its emphasis on the centrality of imperial culture must necessarily thereby celebrate it, San Juan turns to a national populism that for him, as for previous generations of revolutionary communists, miraculously prefi gures a global public space. Th is truly is writing against the grain. Th e fi nal section of six chapters focuses on the forms that postcolonial- ism takes within American culture. Th e emphasis is on how diff erent places and people invent, interpret, and resist literary, musical, and political messages with an eye to their relationship with the “postcolonial.” Th us, if one chapter emphasizes the “will to diff erence” with the mundane of the everyday in one place (Taos, New Mexico), another discusses the particular settings in which hip-hop music has been invented. Th e strength of these chapters lies in showing http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s00/king.html Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  how the postcolonial “comes home” within the territorial confi nes of the United States itself. Th ough individual chapters in this collection off er interesting perspectives on the “postcolonial condition” of the United States, I fi nd that the book as a whole counts as something of a disappointment. Apart from San Juan’s inter- vention, which fails to address the main theme of the book: the appropriateness of looking at the United States from a postcolonial perspective, there is little or no discussion of the term “postcolonial” and its various alternatives and what relative analytic punch they might pack. Of course, the language issue is part of a larger theoretical problem: the failure of contemporary literary studies to invest much in examining work in the social sciences, such as world-systems analysis, that might help them escape from the linguistic traps into which so much of the work in postcolonial studies seems to fall. In opening up to a new more analytic vocabulary this might have the incidental benefi t of helping relieve readers from the tortuous circumlocutions and prolix prose that affl icts so much of the writ- ing under the label “postcolonial studies.” John Agnew Department of Geography University of California, Los Angeles jagnew@geog.ucla.edu © 2004 John Agnew Brown, Phillip, Andy Green, and Hugh Lander. . High Skills: Globalization, Competitiveness, and Skill Formation. New York: Oxford University Press.  Pages. isbn --- (cloth), isbn --- (paper). http://www.oup.com/academic/ High Skills: Globalization, Competitiveness, and Skill Formation is a compar- ative study of high skill formation in six countries: Britain, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States. Policy makers and neo-liberals assume that a convergence of economic practices will diff use across all free market economies across the globe, leading to a single model of skills formation and economic development. Th is emphasis on the crucial role of a highly skilled workforce in fostering not only economic and social welfare, but also international competitiveness in skill for- mation has stimulated the creation of a highly skilled work force, often with the encouragement of the United States and Britain. Phillip Brown, Andy Green, and Hugh Lauder question this underlying assumption. In addressing what is the central question of their study: What are the conditions under which diff erent nation states attain a high skill economy? To answer this question, the authors develop an analytical framework of high skills derived from economic sociology that argues that skill formation and economic performance are socially constructed and experienced within social institutions such as schools, offi ces, and factories. Th e relationship between skill formation and economic performance can be organized in diff erent ways, shaped largely by diff erences in historical and economic conditions, cultural, political, and social mores (p.). Phillip Brown develops seven key societal conditions that are necessary to attain an ideal-type high skilled society. According to the authors, in order for an ideal-type high skills society to develop, there must be links between the following conditions through state action across diverse domains such as educa- tion and training, labor market, social welfare, and economic strategies. Th ese conditions are important precisely because they shape and become embedded in the key social institutions of a high skills society such as schools, offi ces, and factories. Th e seven C’s of high skills are: () consensus, the degree of commit- ment of major stakeholders to upgrade skills; () entrepreneurial innovation rather than merely cost-cutting approaches to productivity and competitive- ness; () capability, the continuous development in human capability, particu- larly in the use of new skill of “emotional intelligence” based on the assertion that all have the potential to benefi t from skills upgrading and lifelong learning; () coordination, a recognition of the need to concentrate not only on the supply side issues of education but also a fostering of demand for labor; () circulation, a diff usion of high skills across society; () cooperation, the general develop- ment of high trust relations including individual empowerment as well as col- lective commitment to skills upgrading; and () closure, policies that promote social inclusion as opposed to social exclusion from benefi ts accruing in a high skill society. According to the authors, Germany is the only country that comes closest to the model of a “high skill society.” Hugh Lauder argues that the process by which these conditions occur is through skill diff usion systems where there is a strong link among a nation’s: (a) labor market structure; (b) education and training systems; (c) key social and cultural characteristics; and (d) a strong interaction between the state and market. Germany has the high skills society model characterized by a strong occupational labor market and a close fi t between education and training and the labor market, ensuring a high degree of social inclusion, income equality, and trust. Japan has high skills manufacturing characterized by a strong inter- nal labor market regulated by the state and commitment to lifelong employ- http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Business/Management/HumanResources/?view=usa&ci=0199244200 Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  ment. Th ere is a high degree of social inclusion and social conformism among men and signifi cant inequities regarding women workers, and the SME sector. Singapore has the developmental high skills model characterized by state inter- vention in market relations, a complaint workforce, and signifi cant inequities regarding Malay underclass, women, and SME sector. Britain has the low skills/high skills model characterized by a fl exible labor market, employment insecurity, and minimum state intervention. Hugh Lauder with Yadollah Mehralizadeh challenges the neo-liberal premise that market capitalism will lead to a high skill economy that will deliver prosperity, opportunity, and social cohesion, particularly promoted by recent United States presidents and Britain’s Tony Blair. Rather, the relationship between skill formation and economic performance may diff er greatly between nations, by historical and cultural experiences, as well as political and social factors. Even nations that come closest to meeting all ideal-type conditions for high skills society, such as Germany and Japan, are divided by their his- tories, cultural, social, and political construction of these practices, and thus, are divided by paths of progression. Britain and United States’ fl exible labor market strategy limits skill formation because it increases unemployment, dis- courages training, and results in a strong polarization of skill and income, and social exclusion. Findings from this study suggest that the national economies are not as permeable as neoclassical economists and politicians would like us to believe. High Skill: Globalization, Competitiveness, and Skill Formation is a bold approach to developing an analytical framework of skill formation and eco- nomic performance and applying this framework to comparing economies from highly industrialized western countries and rapidly developing East-Asian countries. Th is book is not only empirically grounded but also theory-driven. Although the study focused on economies from developed and rapidly develop- ing East-Asian economies, it has theoretical relevance that extends beyond the cases studied, and as such, provides fertile ground for subsequent theoretical and empirical inquiry. Mamadi Matlhako School of Natural and Social Sciences Purchase College State University of New York Mamadi.matlhako@purchase.edu © 2004 Mamadi Matlhako Crotty, Raymond D. . When Histories Collide: Th e Development and Impact of Individualistic Capitalism. Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press.  pages, isbn --- (cloth), isbn --- (paper). http://www.altamirapress.com/ Ray Crotty was an interesting guy. He was an Irish farmer who observed his own failures and the general problems of farmers around him and then got a formal economics training which he used to explain the things he had observed. He made further observations of practical farming while working in Asia, Latin America and Africa with the World Bank and the UN, where he found simi- larities between Ireland and other former colonies. He then taught development economics in (of all places) the Statistics Department of Trinity College Dublin. Despite being mar- ginalized by much of the Irish academic community, he had a major impact on critical Irish thought and practice since the s, through his published work and his tireless campaigning against what he viewed to be the negative consequences on Ireland of EU integration. When Histories Collide is published posthumously due to the eff orts of Lars Mjoset of the University of Oslo, who worked with and admired Crotty. Th is is a two-part book in which Crotty lays out his interpretation of long- term world historical development and then applies his model with respect to Ireland (he also says some comparative things about North and South America and other colonised regions). He has a novel ecological theory of the origins of Western ‘individualist capitalism’, based on the ways in which pastoral migrants interacted with diff erent factor endowments to develop specifi c systems of prop- erty relations and production/reproduction. In the fi rst half of the book, Crotty unfolds his basic historical analysis of the twin processes of ‘individualist capitalist development’ and ‘capitalist colonial undevelopment’. Both processes are centred on the introduction of property. But private property (the identifying institution of individualistic capitalism) emerged autochthonously in Europe, and was thus a developing factor by inducing productivity in the limiting factor of production, but was ‘undeveloping’ when it was imposed onto collectivist societies. Th ere, it worked only to the advantage of a privileged class that was identifi ed with the metropo- lis and the masses of people sank into deep poverty. Crotty’s historical model unfolds something like clockwork, although it is a very long clock. Nomadic Indo-European pastoralists who were lactose toler- ant attained an advantage over farmers because they could drink milk and eat http://www.altamirapress.com/Catalog/Singlebook.shtml?command=search&db=^DB\Catalog.db&eqSKUdatarq=0759101582 Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  milk products when other sources of food failed. Th is enabled them to pro- duce a surplus population, leading to invasions of diff erent regions of Asia and Europe around  bc. Th e invasions produced diff erent outcomes according to the ecology of each region/society (note that Crotty’s ‘world-system’ begins at about the same time as that of Frank, but it proceeds very diff erently accord- ing to Crotty’s defi nition of individualist capitalism). In China, India and the Near East they did not produce capitalism. But invasions into Europe created individualistic constellations, in which the institutions of individual property emerged. Th ese European constellations took two forms. In southern Europe, condi- tions were such that the individual reproduction was possible only by extract- ing a surplus from slaves, so ‘individualist slavery’ emerged. Th e individualist slaveholder expanded extensively, by capturing more slaves, and the system expanded aggressively until it had to move northward. Th ere, in central-western Europe, it was undermined by a more productive economy where individualism took a diff erent and capitalist form because neither land nor labor was the lim- iting factor. Th e individualist farmer was able to adapt in a productive way to the environment by developing private property rights in capital (cattle, shelter, crops, food). After these populations competed with each other for three millennia, the system exploded. Capitalist colonialism emerged as Spain and Portugal extended slave-based agriculture outward into the world-system. And the Tudors in Eng- land introduced property rights in land, which, together with the stimulus from the fi rst outward movement of colonialism, provided the conditions for the rise of factory capitalism. England, however, was purely exceptional because it is the only place where property that was primarily in land developed autochtho- nously. Th e result was singularly ‘developing’ for England in an industrial sense, but because of the landed form of private property the English masses paid for its development and world leadership by enduring impoverishment for four centuries before they shared in the prosperity. From this point, the rapid surge of individualist capitalist colonialism cre- ated two outcomes. In settler colonies like North America, where the indig- enous populations could be largely swept away and land was virtually limitless, property was imposed and maintained by the settlers themselves. As in central Western Europe (but not England), they achieved development primarily on the basis of property in capital. Th e non-settler colonies, Crotty argues, were the only areas apart from England where property was based primarily in land. Since this was not an autochthonous development, property relations were forc- ibly maintained by the metropoles ‘for squeezing the colonized nations’ (p.). Land that was previously used for popular sustenance now became a source of profi t for agents and collaborators of the metropoles and the local people were squeezed and had no way to avoid sinking into poverty. Th is is the essence of Crotty’s ‘capitalist colonialist undevelopment.’ Th e second half of the book concentrates on how this model of historical development applies to the Irish case. Th e ‘capitalist colonization’ of Ireland began with the imposition of private property in land after the Tudor conquest. Eventually, the combination of cheap land, ecological conditions and changing demands in the metropolis led in – to the collapse of the Irish econ- omy after a collapse in grain prices throughout Europe and, then, the potato blight of the s, causing widespread famine (over a million died), depopula- tion and poverty. Crotty discusses the ‘aftermath of capitalist colonialism’ to make his anal- ysis speak to the current needs for change in colonized regions like Ireland. His central theme is that independence is obtained in capitalist colonies only when the metropolitan-oriented elite is suffi ciently strong and the colonized mass suffi ciently debilitated to ensure the perpetuation of ‘undevelopment’ in the post-colonial period. Crotty calls this the ‘essential continuity’ of capital- ist colonialism. When he wrote When Histories Collide, the Irish Celtic Tiger economy of the s had not yet emerged. Ireland was mired in poverty, one in fi ve was unemployed, the state was one of the most indebted in the world and it appeared as though dependence on foreign investments would be insuffi cient to change any of this. Despite his pessimistic analysis, Crotty has a pretty simple way out of undevelopment that only requires substantial national mobilization. To reverse undevelopment, he argues, one must deprive the state, ‘the enemy of the nation’, of its control of the nation’s resources; then one must recognize and implement the nation’s title to these resources. His argument for doing this is a strange mix of populism and neoclassical economics. Since he argues that the central problem of undevelopment is the legacy of free land (for those who have it), cheap capital and expensive (although low-paid) labour, his solution is market- led. He proposes that a ‘national dividend’, a large guaranteed income transfer to all residents of the state, would increase the supply of labour and cheapen it by eliminating the ‘poverty trap’ where wages are too low to induce anyone to forego their state welfare benefi ts. A land tax would force holders of the land to use it more productively or dispose of it to someone who will. And restoration of suffi ciently high profi t and capital taxes would increase the cost of capital, forcing its productive use in some cases and its substitution by labour in others. Th e thrust of each of these proposals is to develop institutions that will realign factor prices in a way that will ensure their effi cient use to the benefi t of the mass of people. In other words, Crotty suggests that ‘market-led individualistic capi- Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  talism’ can be introduced successfully in post-colonies with the right policies. Th is is a startling conclusion in two respects (apart from his eliding of the problems of Western poverty and inequality). First, such a simple market-based solution seems to be out of sync with a long historical analysis that centers on the embedding of institutions over the millennia, in a way that appears to be pretty unshakeable due to the powerful class alliances that underpin and ben- efi t from those institutions. Second, it all seems dated, anyway, after a decade of rapid economic growth in Ireland that seems to defy any long history. One wonders what Crotty would have made of the Celtic tiger. I think he would have been hampered by the fact that his historical model, interesting as it is, lacks suffi cient interior analysis of diff erent phases or cycles of unde- velopment, as we fi nd, for instance, in the work of Arrighi. He thus has dif- fi culty recognising the changes that have taken place in post-colonial Ireland (and in some other regions) to move it away from its agrarian past. Nonethe- less, Crotty’s is a rewarding long historical analysis and a serious alternative (or addition) to others. And I suspect, if he were with us today, he would insist that the ‘essential continuity’ of capitalist colonialism is proven by the fact that, in spite of Ireland’s recent economic growth, many of its basic inequalities have remained. Denis O’Hearn Department of Sociology and Social Policy Queens University Belfast d.ohearn@qub.ac.uk © 2004 Denis O’Hearn Crespo, Al, ed. () Protest in the Land of Plenty: A View of Democracy from the Streets of America as We Enter the 21st Century. Center Lane Press: Miami, FL,  pages (ill.), isbn: ---. http://www.centerlanepress.com/ Whether one dismisses protesters and their actions or actively seeks to join their ranks, it seems impossible to simply ignore their presence these days. Th ough a steady undercurrent of social movement and protest politics has run throughout US history, sustained and mass mobilizations seem to follow a cyclical pattern. Since the November  World Trade Organization meet- ings, when news media honed in on black-clad and often dreadlocked youths in contention with Seattle city police, and now the twelve-plus millions worldwide who recently marched to protest against a US invasion of Iraq, it would seem that the protest cycle is nearing another apex. But who are these people? Why do they dress the way they do and engage in the sometimes symbolic, sometimes violent, acts that they do? Mainstream media barrages the public with pundits’ opinions and selective fi lm footage of today’s radicals (but rarely the reactionar- ies), and seldom do we hear or see protests from the vantage of its participants. Al Crespo presents a rare and vivid photo project with the hopes of bringing the protests and protesters a little closer to the public. During a visit to Buenos Aires in , Crespo serendipitously found him- self caught up in a student street protest. Subsequent interviews with the stu- dents caused him to question the contemporary climate of protest in the United States. Th ose questions led to his project of traveling the US and capturing the protests on fi lm over several years. His journey covers the period from Novem- ber  to late September  and takes us to sixteen diff erent protest actions including the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, various Flor- ida protests concerning the election, Elian Gonzalez, and the return of Haitian refugees, and even to KKK marches, death penalty protests, and the fi rst peace demonstrations following the September t attacks. Amongst the hundreds of photos are also essays either introducing and contextualizing an event or are contributions from movement leaders who explain their groups and politics in their own words. Th e book is primarily about the photos and it must be said that they are stunning. Th e fi rst few black and whites capture the drama of recent protests, one depicting students drawing signs in the street while another stares down the barrel of a Los Angeles cop’s shotgun during the tumultuous fi rst night of the Democratic National Convention. Crespo evidently had no reservations of either crossing sides at rallies or getting close to the action as many photos even capture pro and con forces exchanging words, angry looks, and the ubiquitous middle-fi ngered salute. What comes across most vividly, and most importantly, is the great range of people and strategies that emerge in protest activities. Not all activists are young, or radical, and not all are chanting and waving signs. Rather, and in addition to the above, there are puppets, street theatre, occasional nudity, breathtaking colors and art, sit-downs, creative slogans, and a conscious type of drama that is diffi cult to convey. Crespo’s photos capture much of this and do so in a compelling and accessible manner. Th e essays deepen the overall picture presented by letting protest organiz- ers explain their tactics and reasoning. Th eir perspectives are refreshing and go far in explaining the motivations people have in joining protests and the emo- tions that animate events. Some essays help elucidate the aims and histories of controversial organizations, while others present a view that was overlooked http://www.centerlanepress.com/ Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  by media and protesters alike at the time. Examples of the latter include a his- tory of the School of the Americas Watch by its founder Fr. Rou Bourgeois and a compelling story of discrimination against Haitian refugees to the US by Marleine Bastien. Of particular note are the essays by Nicholas Barricada and John Sellers on the infamous organizations of the Black Bloc and the Ruckus Society, respectively. Th ese organizations are often stereotyped by news media and have become sort of symbols of mainstream institutions protesting against protest itself. Having prominent activists of those societies explain what they do and why they do it helps cut through some of the disinformation and gives greater meaning to the photos of street action. However, as interesting and useful as the photos and essays are, a little more verbiage would have done the book well. Th ough separate introductions to sec- tions explain the basic scenarios of each protest covered, a more thorough intro- duction and conclusion to the book would have helped set the overall context of contemporary US activism. For instance, is now actually a more turbulent time with more and varied protests in the US than during the ’s or the ’s, or does it just seem that way because of the way protests are presented to us? Extra history on organizations, events, and protesting in general would have rounded out the book. Most glaring, though, is the lack of grassroots voices in the book and the lack of conservative protest movement leaders’ essay contri- butions. As deplorable as the KKK may be, it would have helped balance the book some to have an essay by one of its leaders, or by another movement, that would give their perspective on organizing and animating protests. Omitting grassroots voices, however, is hard to forgive since the book is essentially about their experiences. Photos depict people from all walks of life banding together and at times risking their lives for a cause. Why do they do it? A consistent criticism of contemporary protests from mainstream press is that protesters don’t know why or even what the issue of the day is. It would have been easy for Crespo to get waivers from a few people he photographed and ask them their views on direct action or how they got involved. Even a few short quotes would have deepened and enriched an already great pool of information. Even considering the above criticism I would highly recommend this book to anyone. Its essays are engaging and the photos are sometimes impossible to describe. Th ough certainly not an academic book, the text and images combine with the subject matter in a way that I think still makes it impossible to read without stirring up critical thought on the events that are defi ning our times. I have actually participated in about a third of the protests that Crespo covers (and was somewhat surprised not to see me in it) so the book was especially intriguing for me. I can attest that the protests I attended were just as vibrant and chaotic as they seem in Crespo’s photos. If nothing else, Protest in the Land of Plenty is an historical photographical testament to the creativity, energy, and tenacity Americans can bring to their politics. Th omas P. Roberts Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies University of Massachusetts, Amherst tprobert@polsci.umass.edu © 2004 Th omas P. Roberts Böröcz, József, and Melinda Kóvacs, eds. . Empire’s New Clothes: Unveiling EU Enlargement. Central Europe Review,  pages, isbn ---. http://www.ce-review.org see also http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~eu/ Concerns about imperial and colonial designs have recently resurfaced in the context of the realignment of political forces within Europe and between Europe and the USA. József Böröcz and Melinda Kóvacs’s edited book Empire’s New Clothes: Unveiling EU Enlargement deals with a related and very crucial aspect of the ongoing reshaping of the European Union, namely the role of empire and coloniality in the process of “east- ern enlargement.” In the Introduction, Böröcz argues that the concepts of coloniality and empire, as used in postcolonial stud- ies, are relevant for the study of the current re-division of Europe. According to him, all the institutional elements of an imperial order are present in the process of eastern enlargement. Th ese elements are unequal exchange, colonial- ity (creating a fi xed system of inferiorized otherness through cognitive mapping of populations), export of governmentality (through the standardizing control mechanisms of modern statehood) and geopolitics (global strategy of projecting the center’s power to the external world). Th e EU’s approach towards eastern European countries in the process of membership negotiations epitomizes the imperial order in the making. Some important aspects of this imperial outlook are the racial othering of the outsiders based on arguments about irreconcil- able cultural and civilizational diff erences; the creation of a quantitative pat- tern of inferiorization and exoticization; the notion that post-socialist eastern Europe needs to “catch up” with the western half of the continent culturally and economically; and intensive involvement by prominent EU members in the http://www.ce-review.org http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~eu/ Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  candidate countries’ economies. For Böröcz, all of these factors have created the sense among east-central European countries that inclusion in the EU is a rati- fi cation of their “Europeanness” (or “whiteness”), an idea that is reinforced by the European Union’s synecdoche representation of itself as “Europe.” Böröcz’s arguments inform the following six chapters of the book. Most of the essays employ discourse analysis to extricate signs of coloniality from EU documents written in the course of membership negotiations. Böröcz analyzes the offi cial communications between the Hungarian gov- ernment and the European Commission (–) in the second chapter, entitled “Th e Fox and the Raven: Th e European Union and Hungary Renegoti- ate the Margins of ‘Europe’.” His conclusion is that the communication between the two sides is characterized by asymmetry of power, dependence (of Hungary on the EU), and asymmetry of the addressivity of the two sides’ texts. In this way, the EU document denies subjectivity to Hungary and reserves it for only itself, since it monopolizes the power to judge whether the former is deserving of becoming part of “Europe” as defi ned by itself. Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro focuses on geopolitics in the next chapter enti- tled “Th e Enduring National State: NATO-EU Relations, EU-Enlargement and the Reapportionment of the Balkans.” He points out that the bombing of Yugoslavia in  demonstrated that NATO’s and EU’s policies towards the Balkans have a colonial and imperialist element. Within the context of the par- tial membership overlap between NATO and the European Union, there is a realignment between Germany and France versus the alliance between the US and Britain. In this setting, the eastern enlargement of the EU is crucial in terms of both gaining the allegiance of the new members of NATO and the export of western European capital into the region. Nevertheless this process is ridden with contradictions since the EU cannot pursue its imperial aims in an unhindered fashion because of the unquestionable military superiority of the US. In the next chapter entitled “Shedding Light on the Quantitative Other: Th e EU’s Discourse in the Commission Opinions of ,” Melinda Kóvacs and Peter Kabachnik pick up where Böröcz left off . Th ey analyze the “Political Criteria” sections of the European Commission Opinions on ten east-central European candidates. Th ey argue that the discourse used by the EC reproduces the eighteenth century western European construction of eastern Europe as its inferior other. Kóvacs and Kabachnik identify discursive patterns in all of the Opinions, which underline the othering of eastern Europe. In the EU docu- ments, the ten candidate countries are said to be “lacking” in certain political criteria, there are institutional “obstacles” for their accession to membership, and they are represented as “rustic” (and therefore backward) societies. Th e next chapter by Kóvacs continues with a similar discourse analysis of the  and  EU Reports on candidate countries. Inspired by Edward Said’s study of Orientalism, she asserts that the EU’s perception of the candi- date countries is reminiscent of how colonial administrators viewed the “Ori- entals”—inferior and without subjectivity. Particularly, the EU Reports “put down” (inferiorize) the candidates through various discursive strategies and thus “put off ” (delay) their accession to the EU by creating ambiguities. Anna Sher, in the chapter entitled “A Di-Vision of Europe: Th e European Union Enlarged,” has a similar approach in her analysis of speeches made by three EU leaders. She identifi es several discursive strategies that are used in these speeches: dividing Europe along the Cold War axis into the west and the east, grounding this division on the economic and political backwardness of the eastern half, and constructing the western half as “Europe” itself. In the last chapter, “Th e Austrian Freedom Party’s Colonial Discourse in the Context of EU-Enlargement,” Katalin Dancsi studies the  party pro- gram of Austria’s anti-immigrant and nationalist coalition partner. She argues that the Freedom Party employs a “colonial” dynamics in its political discourse. Particularly, it creates an image of a national self (defi ning “Austrianness” in an exclusive way), and engages in the othering of outsiders (exclusion of eastern Europeans and immigrants from the construct of the self ). Th is book is innovative in that it introduces concepts and methodologi- cal tools from postcolonial scholarship (coloniality, Orientalism, othering, dis- course analysis) to the study of European Union’s current enlargement process. But the application of these tools does not penetrate beyond the surface. In all chapters except Engel-Di Mauro’s, the authors look for evidence of western European colonial intentions at the level of words and phrases in offi cial docu- ments or speeches, rather than undertake content analysis. Th eir assertions that certain types of wording in the EU texts are signs of coloniality are not well substantiated. A further problem in the book pertains to relevance. Th e scheduled acces- sion of ten countries (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta) into EU membership in May  means that some of the insights in Empire’s New Clothes are already out- dated. Th at would not have been the case had the book not had certain weak- nesses. Th ere is an implicit assumption throughout the chapters that the EU’s inferiorization of eastern Europe is bound up with the membership negotia- tion process. Now that those countries have secured membership, is coloniality over? Th e answer is probably no. Th en, we need a diff erent type of analysis to pinpoint imperial designs. Some information is given in Böröcz’s Introduction and Engel-Di Mauro’s chapter, but there is need for a more rigorous analysis of Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  the economic and geopolitical motives behind, and the consequences of, EU’s massive undertaking of eastern enlargement. Put diff erently, the facts pertain- ing to a new empire in Europe have to be established (or at least cited) before discourse analysis can be persuasive. Deniz Yükseker Department of Sociology Koç University dyukseker@ku.edu.tr ©2004 Deniz Yükseker Battilosi, Stefano and Youssef Cassis. . European Banks and the American Challenge: Competition and Cooperation in International Banking under Bretton Woods. Oxford: Oxford University Press,  pages, isbn --- (cloth). http://www.oup.com/academic/ Between the s and the s—at the height of ‘embedded liberalism’ —US banks internationalized signifi cantly, entering the European banking market and often experimenting with new fi nancial innovations that would become central to the global fi nancial order of the s and s. Th is edited volume explores the history of this trans- formation in US and European banking, which proved so consequential for the organization of the global economy. Stefano Battilosi’s introductory chapter argues that the foundations of the global fi nancial order of the s and s are to be found in the Bretton Woods years and in the complex patterns of competition and emerging cooperation among US and European banks. Even as European banking markets (such as the eurodollar) grew in importance, they became more Americanized and increasingly central to US global economic and fi nancial hegemony. European governments faced political opposition from the US in attempts to regulate these growing markets and European banks were drawn into these more specu- lative forms of banking. Subsequent chapters outline the position of European and US banks before this internationalization process, assessing the competitiveness of the more thoroughly internationalized European banks (Cassis) and the motiva- tion of US banks in entering the European market to escape US regulation (Sylla). Other chapters describe the fortunes of various institutional structures through which international banking was pursued—international fi nancial centers and clubs and consortia—while a chapter is devoted to the strategies of each of British, French and German banks. Harold James’ fi nal chapter returns to the themes of Battilosi’s introduction, exploring how the emerging fi nancial markets and the changing interests of the banks within them undermined the eff orts in the s of central banks and the Bretton Woods institutions to regulate these new markets. Th e great contribution of this volume is to provide a careful, detailed his- tory of the relations among US and European banks in this crucial period and arena where the organizational strategies of the new global fi nancial order were in the making. Combining statistical data, documentary research and case studies, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the emergence of this new organizational space for banking. Th e most stimulating chapters are those that address these issues of the creation of a new global order directly (Battilosi, James) and those which seek to explain, rather than describe, why diff erent pat- terns of cooperation and competition emerged (e.g. Ross, Bussière). Th ere is a wealth of historical detail here for the specialist in the development of the global fi nancial system and the volume is valuable in that it gathers together analyses of this emerging fi eld of international banking from the perspectives of diff er- ent actors in the US and Europe. Th roughout the book, the limited power of the Bretton Woods institu- tions becomes ever clearer in the face of the emergence of the Euro banking markets, which emerge as a crucial international fi nancial space between US domestic regulation and the relatively static European banking industry. Th e authors provide multiple examples of the variety of strategies employed by US and European banks and how these strategies interacted to produce a new space for organizational innovations in fi nance. Perhaps most interesting is the implication that European banking markets were crucial to the process of the fi nancialization of the US economy, despite the imagery of the US as the more ‘liberal’ regulatory environment for fi nance during the period. However, few of the authors set out to provide an analytical framework through which we might understand the reasons for these shifts. Given the emphasis on ‘competition and cooperation’ we might expect a more detailed exposition of the debates in industrial organization regarding how and when fi rms will engage in diff erent mixes of competitive and cooperative relationships (although this is discussed in Ross’ chapter). It would also have been valuable if more attention had been paid to the political context within which banks shifted their strategies and to govern- ment-business relations. Th ere are suggestions throughout the chapters of how bankers themselves attempted to shape the policy environment itself but this is not given any sustained analytical treatment. How might this emergent fi nan- http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Business/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9MDE5OTI1MDI3OA== Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  cial space have been structured diff erently? What might have been the conse- quences for the liberal fi nancial order that emerged from it? What balance of industrial organizational and macro-political forces shaped these new banking strategies and institutions? Th ere are clues and important pieces of information throughout the book but they are not integrated into an overall account of the broader political economy of this transformation of international fi nance. Th e book is a valuable and comprehensive contribution to the history of this important transformation of banking relationships, but provides little explana- tion of how the dynamics described in the analyses might fi t together within a broader framework. Th e book directs our attention to the importance of this new ‘organizational fi eld’ where international banking became Americanized through the pursuit of fi nancial innovation in Euromarkets. Th e wealth of historical detail provides a solid foundation for future analyses of the broader political economy of this organizational fi eld but the current volume will be of interest primarily to specialists in banking history and the particular role of the industrial organization of banking in the shift to a liberal fi nancial order. Seán Ó’Riain Department of Sociology University of California, Davis sporiain@ucdavis.edu ©2004 Seán Ó Riain MacArthur, John. . Th e Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy. Berkeley: University of California Press,  pages, isbn --- (paper). http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9599.html John MacArthur’s Th e Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy is an ambitious book on an important topic. A study of the political battles surrounding the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Th e Selling of “Free Trade” takes the reader on a journey from the factory fl oor to the highest levels of corporate and political power and back again. In the process, the book touches on questions of economic restructuring, the ideology of free trade, union and presidential politics, the transformation of the Democratic party, and the consequences of trade legislation for workers in the United States and Mexico. Although Th e Selling of “Free Trade” has much to recommend it, the book ’s strengths are often diffi cult to distinguish from its weaknesses. To his credit, MacArthur has written a highly readable account of a topic that has been recast in recent years as the exclusive province of technocrats and policy wonks. MacArthur writes about trade policy with fl air displaying a keen sense of social justice and never losing sight of the social consequences of trade. He puts a human face on trade by introducing the reader to Gorica Kost- revski, a Macedonian immigrant working in a stapler factory in Queens, New York. Th e factory is slated for relocation to Mexico after the signing of the NAFTA and Gorica provides the hook that MacArthur uses to pull the reader away from the esoterica of trade theory to the real-world costs of trade. Th e Sell- ing of “Free Trade” follows Gorica’s job: from its origins in a non-union plant, through the acquisition of the family-owned company by American Brands/ ACCO, and a union organizing drive and strike that improve wages and work- ing conditions in the plant. MacArthur then traces the NAFTA debate through the corridors of Con- gress, presidential ambitions, party politics, corporate lobbying and public relations campaigns. In the concluding chapter, MacArthur seeks out Gorica’s counterpart at the newly relocated plant in the Mexican border town of Nogales and fi nds an illiterate, sixteen-year-old girl working for barely  a week in Gorica’s old job. Along the way, Th e Selling of “Free Trade” makes a number of important observations. MacArthur concludes that the NAFTA was never really about trade as much as it was about providing investment security for U.S. corpora- tions operating in Mexico. He points out that Mexican President Salinas was driven to enter into the trade deal out of the desperation caused by Mexico’s crushing debt burden. And MacArthur raises other interesting points about the trade-off s that corporations must calculate between low-wages and control over the work process and the possibility of labor becoming so cheap that the process of production is actually “deautomated.” And yet, MacArthur addresses such a wide range of topics that he is unable to examine fully many the arguments he makes or explore their implications. Without a strong theoretical framework to harness its ambitious scope, the book meanders among anecdotes and then, at various points, leaps to grand assertions regarding the nature of the trade deal or politics more generally. Th e NAFTA, we are told, was “entirely about money (p. );” it “was an invest- ment agreement designed to protect American corporations (p. );” “politics is self-interest…complete self-interest (p. );” “the way politics really works in America” is through the manipulation of public opinion with sales, marketing and advertising (p. ). And, while MacArthur invokes Gorica Kostrevski as he travels from Cap- itol Hill, to corporate seminars and the offi ces of lobbyists, the link back to http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9599.html Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  Gorica ultimately proves tenuous, more of a rhetorical fl ourish than a clearly established connection. In the Afterword, written in  following an initial printing in , we learn that Gorica received educational assistance under the Transitional Adjustment Assistance program in the NAFTA and had found a job cleaning offi ce buildings at  an hour more than she earned working in the stapler factory. Given the unequivocally negative conclusions that MacArthur draws about the consequences of trade, this revelation highlights the diffi culty that the book has in dealing with a more interesting but more ambiguous story that would take into account unintended consequences and unexpected out- comes. Moreover, the interviews with elite informants that provide much of the empirical core of the book have limited value if the purpose is to assess the motives and beliefs of these actors. Not only are these actors probably the least credible sources of information on their own motives, but interviews on the topic are not likely to provide much beyond what is available in already pub- lished sources. MacArthur acknowledges as much when he discusses his inabil- ity to arrange an interview with then Vice President, Al Gore. Finally, through no fault of its own, Th e Selling of “Free Trade” falls victim to bad timing. Despite the grim storyline, it is diffi cult not to feel a touch of nostalgia for the political battles that MacArthur documents. Back when it was fashionable to note that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of diff erence between Dem- ocrats and Republicans, it may have seemed that the Clinton White House was uniquely cynical, that corporate interests completely dominated our political institutions, and that the major media were little more than scribes promoting the administration line. Th e Clinton presidency may not have been a golden age of ethical purity and political autonomy. But with the benefi t of hindsight, many of MacArthur’s assertions regarding the Clinton administration seem hyperbolic. Indeed, having learned what real cynicism and corruption look like during the last two years, it is diffi cult not to think, “what I wouldn’t give for that dime’s worth of diff erence.” Dag MacLeod California State Judicial Council Administrative Offi ce of the Courts dag.macleod@jud.ca.gov ©2004 Dag MacLeod Baldoz, Rick, Charles Koeber and Philip Kraft, eds. . Th e Critical Study of Work: Labor, Technology, and Global Production. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,  pages, isbn --- (cloth), isbn --- (paper). http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1546_reg.html Contributors to this volume seek to understand recent global trends in work relations from the ground up, taking the workplace and worker consciousness as their starting point. By assembling these empirically rich and theoretically innovative studies, many of which were presented at the “Work, Diff erence, and Social Change” conference at Binghamton University in May , Baldoz, Koeber and Kraft have deepened our understanding of the “mechanisms that organize and change work ” (p.). Th e volume off ers a pan- oramic view of how managers have recently tried to achieve more productive and compliant service sector workers (Part ii), industrial workers (Part iii) and professional and technical workers (Part iv). We learn that employers have recently used new technologies to both “deskill” and “reskill” labor, confi rming one of the central tenants of Harry Braverman’s seminal work on labor process. For example, while managers have recently used computer-based technologies to de-skill labor in the apparel, soft- ware and high-tech industries, automobile as well as high-tech industry manag- ers have recently used computer-based technologies to simultaneously re-skill production workers. According to Bonacich, the computerization of the design phase has eliminated the need for apparel manufacturers to keep production staff in house, intensifying the division between conceptual and manual labor. From Sharpe, we learn that the software industry has repeatedly tried to auto- mate software development in order to de-skill the industry’s elite labor force. Similarly, Chun notes that computerization of computer component assembly “eff ectively reduced an entire workforce devoted to board stuffi ng to performing a single task on the surface mount technology (SMT) line” (p. ). Yet, by the s, Rinehart tells us that auto employers used computers to compress quality control and design development tasks into production jobs—a process euphe- mistically referred to as “reengineering.” Similarly, as Silicon Valley contract manufacturers have branched out beyond just making printed circuit boards (PCBs) to “a wide array of electronic development, marketing trend analysis and computerized testing” (p. ), they increasingly expect many of their work- ers to be multi-skilled. We also learn about the divergent ways that managers have recently restruc- tured production organization—another strategy to control labor identifi ed by http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1546_reg.html Journal of World-Systems Research Book Reviews  Braverman but one, the editors note, is often overlooked. For example, Bonacich and Sharpe chart the growing use of subcontracting in the apparel and software industries respectively. At the same time, Chun relays that computer compo- nent assemblers have shifted away from subcontracting to capital-intensive contract manufacturing. Similarly, while the software and automobile indus- tries have recently tried to shed internal labor markets, computer component assemblers have recently introduced them. Rinehart traces how the American and Canadian automobile industries gradually shrank the number of mid-level supervisory positions. Th ey dismantled the industry’s Fordist and Taylorist labor process with Quality of Work-Life policies in the s, Total Quality Management systems in the s and Re-engineering in the s. Yet, Chun fi nds that Silicon Valley managers have become more competitive by off ering temporary workers the possibility of permanent status. Finally, we learn that managers have diverged in their reliance on ethnically defi ned labor recruitment strategies to control labor. According to Bonacich, white apparel manufacturers in Los Angeles continue to employ predominantly Asian subcontractors who then hire mostly Latino immigrant production workers. Nakano Glen shows that private individuals hiring help around the house as well as public care-giving institutions continue to recruit women of color, although immigrant women from poorer countries have begun to replace domestic women. In contrast, Chun fi nds that Silicon Valley managers no longer recruit workers from within their ethnic community. Instead, they place greater emphasis on fostering the collective pride of workers in high quality production, yielding a more ethnically diverse labor force. Many contributors also extend labor process theory in new and provocative directions, building on the editors cogent articulation of a new critical study of work. Burowoy opens Part I with an intellectual autobiography that draws on more than -years of ethnographic research in the U.S., Hungary and Russia to demonstrate why we should extend analyses of the labor process to include worker-consciousness. Doing so, he argues, will help uncover distinct labor regimes—systems of labor control jointly defi ned by how workplace manage- rial strategies interact with the political context. Based on fi eld work at one of Silicon Valley’s new contract manufacturers, Chun concludes that capitalist managers have forged yet another labor regime: fl exible despotism. Th is new labor regime, Chun argues “require[s] more com- plex and rationalized coordination of worker consent” (p. ) than Burowoy’s market despotism because it subjects workers to “constant layoff s, compulsory overtime, and production shutdowns” (p. ). Subsequent chapters suggest that fl exible despotism may apply equally to non-industrial work settings. Meiksins and Whalley fi nd through survey research that technical professionals work- ing as contingent workers rationalize the high levels of self-discipline needed to earn a living without job security by internalizing a professional etiquette. Sim- ilarly, Ó’Riain reveals, with his lively account of Irish subcontractors working for an American software company, how workers in “off -shore” units manage both local and global identities in order to rationalize working hard to meet deadlines imposed by distant managers and simultaneously maintain relation- ships with future global employers. Lan challenges us to integrate sexuality, emotions and physical representa- tion into analyses of worker consciousness, particularly when studying labor control mechanisms in the expanding service sector. Although her selection of the Taiwanese cosmetics industry, an industry self-evidently oriented towards managing bodies, weakens her argument somewhat, her research shows how managing bodies can contribute to forging productive service workers. Soares’ analysis of cashiers in Québec and São Paulo illustrates how managing emo- tions and self-representation are key aspects of controlling low-wage service workers, even though he does not reference Lan’s thesis. Haydu reminds us that changes in employer consciousness as well as worker consciousness may shape emergent labor regimes. He shows us that the forma- tion of an embattled employer consciousness helped determine capitalist vic- tory over organized labor in America at the end of the late th century. Th ose interested in longer historical processes will fi nd Nakano Glen’s -year overview of reproductive labor and Sharpe’s sweeping analysis of capital-labor struggles in the software industry particularly compelling. Th ose concerned with how workers might resist new managerial strategies will be interested in Soares’ descriptions of grocery clerks subverting clients and man- agers, Bonacich’s constructive assessment of recent organizing eff orts in Los Angeles’ apparel industry, and Webster’s sobering analysis of the forces that dampened militancy among South Africa’s shop stewards. Taken together, these studies confi rm capital’s ability to adopt myriad labor control strategies and demonstrate the advantage of more sophisticated approaches to analyzing the labor process if we want to comprehend (and/or undermine) capital’s logic. Th e volume’s geographic breadth and theoretical depth make it a valuable resource for labor scholars and students alike. Leslie C. Gates Department of Sociology Binghamton University lgates@binghamton.edu ©2004 Leslie C. Gates Book Reviews King, C. Richard Brown, Green, & Lander. Crotty, Raymond D. Crespo, A, ed. Böröcz & Kóvacs Battilosi & Cassis MacArthur Baldoz, Koeber, and Kraft Text7: Text8: Text9: Text10: Text11: Radio Button6: Off