Copyright ©2009, American Sociological Association, Volume XV, Number 1, Pages 124-133 ISSN 1076-156X BOOK REVIEWS Clifton, Judith, Francisco Comin, and Daniel Díaz-Fuentes (eds.) 2007. Transforming Public Enterprise in Europe and North America. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. 239 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0-262-68161-2 Paper ($26.00). Readers who are concerned about globalization need to study the experience of the privatization of public enterprise in Europe and North America very carefully. What forces cause the nationalization and privatization of firms? Does privatization lead to greater foreign control? Do foreign owned or privatized firms behave differently than locally owned or public ones? Are any of these configurations better or worse for public welfare? If there are differentials in privatization, what explains these, and are these differentials consequential? These are all important questions in the study of the world system. Answering such a system requires a clear description of the spread of nationalization or privatization – a map of the causes or effects of such differences – and some general explanations about why some firms privatize and others do not. With these elements one could construct a theory of privatization that would be a critical component of world systems theory. This book is not that theory – and does not intend to be that theory. It is the first step in the construction of that theory. Nearly all books on comparative capitalism, be they about comparative labor relations, comparative democracy or comparative ethnic relations, need to start with a simple laying out of the facts regarding the nations of advanced capitalism. The first books in the field tend to be edited collections of chapters – with one chapter per nation describing the dependent variable – in this case the balance between public and private enterprise. Like other books of this type, there are a lot of facts to get on the table. This book requires no fewer than fourteen chapters to do a basic description of the balance between public and private enterprise in various capitalist nations. Fourteen chapters is obviously just a beginning, since there are no treatments of Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Israel, or some of the wealthier Eastern European nations such as Slovenia. That said, fourteen is a lot for a collection of this kind. The chapters are written by different authors – and it is notoriously hard to get authors in a collection to follow a standardized formula. In comparison with other collections, this is fairly disciplined with the chapters more or less covering similar materials and addressing similar schemes. The reader should not expect a generalized theory of privatization here. The reader does get a final essay by the editors marking about eight or nine different themes from the reading. These are discursive and general (Examples: Privatization is increasing – Experiences of different nations are different – More prestigious firms fare better in their treatment by foreign investors) The summary statements are probably mostly true, but they are hardly tested, and there is no attempt to see if all or even most of the cases fit the generalities. This is fine for what the book is trying to accomplish. It is hard to come up with a general theory that fits all of the amazingly complex twists and turns that can characterize inter-European differences in institutional structure. (Labor relations theorists have been tried and failed many times to explain North European vs South European systems of industrial relations.) All the book is trying to accomplish is establish the basic chronologies so that somebody else can come up with the grand theory. 125 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH That said, the authors and editors could have done a lot more to assist in the task of collective description. Summary tables and simplifying displays of complex data are entirely absent. We get long, long lists in the form of A is private, B was public until 1980, C has been private for a long time, D has always been public, with the lists going on and on interminably. It is like having an election summarized by hearing the results of every precinct listed one at a time with no repeats and nobody showing you a map of who is winning where or even adding up the totals to give you the final results. Maybe the editors could have provided a table of nations broken down into typical types – or maybe a set of tables of nations subbroken down by industries? Maybe some description could have been made of general industrial trends – with the nations who are the most obvious exceptions being marked as distinctive cases? This book is a tremendous raw material source for any one who wants to do a study of the causes and consequences of privatization under capitalism. But the scholar using this book had better have some strong coffee, and a legal pad. They will have to keep score themselves if they want to follow the game. Samuel Cohn Department of Sociology Texas A and M University profcohn@yahoo.com Mielants, Eric H. 2007. The Origins of Capitalism and the Rise of the West. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. 256 pages, ISBN-10 1592135757 Cloth (64.50). ISBN-10 1592135765 Paper ($25.95). Why Europe? is among the most persistent and vexing questions in all of social science: The Origins of Capitalism and the Rise of the West explains European ascendance through a comparative-historical analysis of the relationship between political structures and capitalist development. The central argument of the book is that Europe’s rare political structures enabled its rise to worldwide predominance. Specifically, only in Europe were urban merchant elites able to wrest enough political and military power away from nobilities to allow for the use of state infrastructures to broaden and deepen capital accumulation both within Europe and abroad. The opening chapter of the book presents the theoretical foundation for the comparative analysis in a review and critique of four theoretical perspectives on the origins of capitalism: orthodox Marxism, neo-Marxist “Brennerism” (p. 2), modernization theory, and world-systems analysis. The review is more than merely a passing genuflection before the alter of grand theory. Mielants concisely, but carefully and in some detail, evaluates each of these frameworks. Among other criticisms, orthodox Marxism and modernization theory are too short-sighted. Each overemphasizes the Industrial Revolution as the basis of modern economic growth, while failing to recognize that it was but “…the outcome of different processes that must be traced back to the period before the Industrial Revolution” (p. 10). Brennerism? It is overly preoccupied with “…class struggle between the exploited (the peasants) and the exploiters (the nobility) within a given territorial unit (the nation-state)” (p. 2-3). BOOK REVIEWS 126 And what of world-systems analysis? It needs to be modified. Specifically, Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis neglects “historical continuity” (p. 23) in the transition to capitalism. Mielants contends that the origins of capitalism are found not in the long 16 th century as is more customary in the world-systems literature, but in the late-12 th century Western European city- states. He argues that many of the capitalist features commonly identified as specific to the 16 th century world-economy were already present in many of the late-12 th century urban centers of Western Europe: “…for example, wage labor, the specialization of industries, a complex division of labor, class struggles, profits from trade (derived from the fact that entrepreneurs who own the means of production are involved in specialized production and competition), complex financial techniques, and the systematic construction of an exploitable periphery to further the ceaseless accumulation of capital” (pp. 31-32). Thus, medieval European cities were early “power containers of the bourgeoisie” (p. 42) that would eventually yield to nation-states, which would later intensify and expand the scale of capital accumulation: “The same policies and techniques of domination and exploitation experimented with and implemented by elites in the medieval European city-state system were later used by the elites of nation-states during the 16 th and 17 th centuries to foster their ceaseless accumulation of capital” (p. 43). Similarly, Mielants contends that Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis minimizes the importance of the non-European world in Europe’s transition to capitalism. By emphasizing an “extreme break with the past” (p. 23) within Europe in the 16 th century, Wallerstein does not recognize the myriad impacts of the external, non-European, arena on medieval Western European city-states. And in these city-states, Mielants argues, interactions with non-Europe were shaping the preconditions for the large-scale transition to capitalism in the long 16 th century. Thus, world-systems theory also leaves the question unanswered: Why Europe? For Mielants, the answer lies in the unusual political systems of medieval Western European city-states. From the theoretical review and critique, he sets out into the heart of the book, which is a series of comparative-historical investigations into the political economies of China, South Asia, and North Africa. Why Europe and not China or South Asia? Europe was certainly not exceptional in the size of its cities, the extensity of its urban networks, the intensity of its division of labor, the scale of trade, nor in its propensity to generate wealth. Compared to Europe, however, the Chinese state, and the gentry, was much more powerful vis-à-vis merchant elites. The Chinese Empire was able to extract revenue from the taxation of land, making it relatively “self-sufficient” (p. 74). The South Asian nobility was in a similarly powerful position. In contrast, European political structures were much less centralized, which meant that European nobilities were much weaker vis-à-vis merchant elites: “It was the European nobility’s relative poverty…that restricted their political power; their need to call on credit and financiers was structurally unavoidable…charters and concessions had to be given in return for the financial (and at times, political or military) support of the urban-based elites in charge of the city-state politically, economically, and judicially” (p. 79). Thus, unlike their counterparts in Europe, economic elites in China and South Asia were never able to effectively use the state to advance their interests at home or abroad. So why not North Africa? Islam was not particularly antithetical to capitalist development (p. 126, footnote 2) and North African cities also achieved particularly high levels of economic development as early as the 10 th century. Again, however, the existence of autonomous city-states controlled by a mercantile bourgeoisie was much more limited in North Africa when compared to Europe. North African political institutions were frequently 127 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH characterized by tribalism, which was “not quite conducive to state-building formation or capitalist development in the long run” (p. 150). If relatively independent city-states would emerge, such as Timbuktu, it was “…more as a consequence of geographical opportunities and economic needs than through political decisions” (p. 133). Without a stable, institutionalized state structure, economic elites were not able to effectively form a “commune or bourgeoisie” (p. 133) that could achieve power “as a class” (p. 143). As one might imagine, identifying the origins of capitalism is a cumbersome task. The sheer scope of the topic makes it possible to digress into any number of potentially tangential topics. Mielants, however, manages to adhere closely to his thesis, confining many of the less consequential issues to the footnotes. Mielants marshals an impressive collection of research from across the social sciences to investigate the question at hand. In doing so, Mielants makes a convincing case both for the utility of alternative (i.e., non-nation-state) units of analysis and a longer time horizon in world-systems analysis. Beyond challenging the more conventional views on the appropriate unit of analysis and time horizon, Mielants also wants to help dispel the “Eurocentric biases” that tend to pervade world-systems analysis (p. 43). On this count, the book is marginally less effective. The analyses of China, South Asia, and especially North Africa, do indeed serve to bring them out of “history’s dustbin” (p. 125), and the comparisons with Europe are very revealing. However, if this was an important objective, then the analyses could have investigated the impacts of non-Europe on the transition to capitalism in Europe more systematically. For example, only in the comparison of China and Europe are these impacts of ‘non-Europe’ most clearly articulated. Mielants provides an enlightening, and perhaps somewhat provocative, account of how Pax Mongolica (ca. 1250- 1350), by providing relatively stable political-economic contexts in East Asia, facilitated an expansion in the division of labor between Western European city-states and their hinterlands. Even here, however, while it is quite convincing, the analysis is given surprisingly brief treatment. In short, the comparative analyses could have been strengthened with a more thorough explanation of how non-European regions were also consequential for capitalist development in medieval Western European city-states. This relatively minor reservation aside, The Origins of Capitalism and the Rise of the West is an important contribution both to world history and to world-systems analysis. Countless others have examined the relationship between political structures and capitalist development in attempting to grapple with the ‘rise of the west’ question. Thus, the book treads on well-worn ground. However, Mielants is able to clear a relatively novel path by assembling a holistic and coherent account that challenges some of the prevailing wisdom regarding why, how, and when capitalism emerged in Europe. In doing so, he provides an intriguing explanation of why Europe ultimately gained ascendance in the world-system. Matthew R. Sanderson Department of Sociology and Anthropology Lehigh University matthew.sanderson@lehigh.edu BOOK REVIEWS 128 Loveman, Brian, ed. 2004. Strategy for Empire: U.S. Regional Security Policy in the Post-Cold War Era. Lanham, MD: SR Books. 339 pages, ISBN 0-8420-5176-7 Cloth, ISBN 0-8420-5177-5 Paper ($29.95). Strategy for Empire is a collection of essays by academics and policy makers who have specialized for decades in assessing the consequences of US foreign policy domestically and internationally. These essays address the practical results of a recent turn in US foreign policy that sees leading foreign policy establishment figures openly embracing the idea that the US should be exerting its power openly as a hegemon. Especially in the post-911 period (though the “War” on “Terror” seems to preclude there ever existing such a time in the near or long-term future), this is advocated unapologetically and declared to be inevitable and urgently necessary. The book is divided into two halves; essays in the first half by foreign policy experts who regard the consequences of this ostensible sea change in a positive light followed by those who take a critical perspective. The book begins with a series of official policy statements from the White House in the aftermath of 911. Contradictory calls for unilateralism and multilateralism deliver what might appear a schizophrenic message. However, there is in fact no clash of identities, since the latter is plainly subordinated to the former by the present administration. The first chapter is a speech on “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September, 2002,” which George Bush delivered in the runup to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The message contains an air of confidence in American military capacity (that now five years into the Iraqi and Afghani quagmires has come to be regarded as the stuff of bluster) to destroy once and for all terrorist organizations with ‘global reach.’ Leaving aside what is to be done about terrorist organizations without a ‘global reach,’ it is the renewed commitment of the US to an imperial role in not only defeating ‘enemies,’ but in rewarding ‘friends’ of ‘freedom’ who organize their markets in line with a neo-liberal vision of deregulation. Ralph Peters immediately spells out the dilemma for the US, namely that for most of its history the US has committed itself to ‘break the imperial hierarchies that held mankind in bondage’ (pg. 35). Indeed, there are times that, if put side by side, policy statements on colonialism by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations in the early post-War years echoed those you would find from Ho Chi-Minh or Frantz Fanon. Even such a rhetorical posture, forget substantive commitment to such principles, is now seen as an impediment since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now the need for a UN is decried as hosting ‘backward, vicious regimes, such as those of China or Russia’ (pg. 41). Instead, new organizations (backed by an assertive US military) are needed such as a “Union of Democratic Nations.” Michael Ignatieff laments the ‘lack of stomach’ America has for a fight, which he fears has given terrorists resolve since the Somalia ‘debacle’ of 1993. America has since been forced to ‘awaken to the barbarians’ (pg. 45). The rationale for global regime-change is, for Ignatieff, self-evident. The dilemma that remains (witness Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq!) is how to create nation state stability in post-colonial zones. This is no small problem, since the logics of nation-building and neo-liberal regimens of cost-cutting rarely work well together. Robert Wilkie argues for the need to bring Europe on board in this global pursuit of post- 911 hidden and dispersed enemies, yet it is a Europe that needs to recognize its interest in submitting to the military leadership of the US. “Europe” lacks the capacity to reorganize its economy along a militarist line, which the unilateralists insist is the only way terror can be fought 129 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH while sustaining neo-liberal patterns of global economic restructuring. Modernization of European militaries, it is argued, is now key to Europe’s ability to contribute to the global search and destroy missions for terrorists. A win-win if there ever were one for the US defense sector. In Asia, Andrew Scobell asserts that the US Empire must play a more active role in the training of militaries spanning the geographical stretch from Tokyo to Jakarta, especially to countervail the presumably growing threat of North Korea. The need to deal with ‘powderkeg’ states (Indonesia, China, and Pakistan) requires more involvement on the part of the US army in the training friendly nation-states armies. It is here where the unilateralist vision seems most oblivious to the complex ways in which the developmental priorities of states such as South Korea relies on future cooperation with and investment in North Korea and a less militaristic approach to the resolution of the half-century old Korean War. The unilateralist approach not only avoids historical context, it even seems unaware of how real world patterns of capitalist restructuring shape the interests of developing economies vis a vis relationships with markets that the US deems not ready to be opened until the US deems them so. James A. Russell’s contribution, written on the eve of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, perhaps most honestly states what is at stake from the unilateralist perspective, namely how intervention in a post-Saddam would affect regional stability. This matter is considered primarily (and unashamedly) in terms of ‘reasonably priced’ oil access for the US. Yet how to reconstruct a “Post-Saddam” Iraq in a way that would bring stability and the growth of Iraq’s contribution to oil development is regarded by Russell as a sticking point that neither he nor the Pentagon/State Department have figured out how to execute going on over 5 years now. It is a lack of confidence in US capacity to pull off this hat trick that drives the authors featured in the volume’s second half. Their perspectives range from skeptical toward unilateralists’ underdeveloped sense of practicality to more critical of the underlying motives of US foreign policy that drive pre- (subtle) and post-911 (out of the closet) strategies for empire. And it is in this section that more serious effort is finally spent in theorizing matters of complexity. As Celeste Wallander notes, no serious theory of US foreign policy can take place without acknowledging the limits of US influence in key regions of the global political-economy, instead of apriori taking for granted a ‘need’ for increased exertion of US military power in ‘hotspots.’ Other contributors likewise point out the glaring contradictions in the presumptions of the unilateralist empire ‘re’building project. Stephen Zunes points out that the US might argue that it is defending against the expansion of “WMD”s in the Mideast, but this holds little purchase for those in the Mideast who know the role of the US as the leading arms (i.e., WMD) seller in that region and the rest of the world. Zunes argues, in line with other contributors who address contradictions and fault-lines in the unilateralist project in Latin America and South Asia, that it is the departure from the values of ‘human rights, democracy, the rule of law,…” that prevents the US from “increas(ing) its influence and promote its strategic and economic interests in this important region” (pg. 249). This seems, as a Noam Chomsky would remind us, to beg the unanswered matter of whether those interests are necessarily as given or desirable for the majority of the world’s peoples as Zunes seems to take for granted. In any event, it is not at this level that the ‘alternative’ perspectives chosen for this volume are strongest. Rather, it is where we find due attention the banal reality that inequality of economic power within and among nation-states shapes US strategies of empire in both its ‘softer’ and ‘harder’ forms. Chalmers Johnson’s essay is one of the most powerful contributions BOOK REVIEWS 130 in the sense of the word ‘alternative.’ Johnson contends that today’s policy of military expansionism merely continues the Cold War US strategy of developing ‘thousands of overseas military installations’ to encircle the Soviet Union and China. Noting the case of Japan, Johnson argues that US military bases were exchanged for Japan’s access to US markets. Such access was denied to most of the developing economies during the Cold War and that contradiction was hardly lost on their peoples. Herein lays the source of much of the ‘instability’ and ‘resentment’ facing the US as it strategizes not how to build empire anew, but how to maintain that empire. While the global treaties maintained ‘peace’ during the Cold War, US foreign policy makers face a number of real threats, all tied to the instability of world capitalist markets. Inequalities between nations grow as ‘foreign aid’ declines, resentment and conflicts over resources emerge between rich and poor internationally, intensified global competition among transnational capital in deregulated markets, and violent responses from non-state entities to the volatile consequences of these as combined social processes. We live in an age when US capitalism faces not only heightened concerns about new economic competitors in (ever more volatile) global markets, but unpredictable forms of political violence in the form of ‘international’ terrorism. Thus, Johnson correctly warns, panics about terrorism and ‘rogue states’ now replace the Red Scare as the means to distract the American populace from how the political-economic origins of global instability impact their lives in ways made immediately palpable on September 11 th , 2001. Yet Johnson also seems to assume that the US foreign policy making establishment acts in a self-delusional fashion, declaring that “There is no reason why an economically prosperous China should threaten American vital interests” (pg. 177). I am not so sure. Presumably this would depend on the definition of such interests, in which case the link between strategies for global hegemony and itchy matters such as secular declines in rates of profits, overproduction, and the attendant conflicts that these give rise to have to also come into consideration before assessing such interests objectively; i.e. global capitalist markets must be studied not as they should be, but as they are. It is here that this collection, whether in its ‘unilateralist’ or ‘alternative’ halves falls short. Of all of the contributors, Johnson takes most seriously the need to explore the link between global political economy and foreign policy choices. It might well be that the seeming disasters created by the unilateralists have merely reflected realistic concerns about maintaining US dominance in a world economy that generates decreasing rates of growth, overcapacity, greater levels of inequality, and the possibility down the road that China will, via ‘unfair’ means, challenge US hegemony in global markets. And it is here where the ‘alternative’ vision expressed in this book misses the point; this heightened state of anxiety is one shared by the anti- unilateralist wing of the US foreign policy making establishment. One need only listen to the rhetoric of the Democratic presidential candidates on the ‘China problem’ or their uniform support for Columbia’s recent incursion into Ecuador to see that the architects of empire in the post-911 period, whether unilateralist or multi-literalists, are not listening to (or taking seriously) alternative visions of US interests. A discussion that debates the origins and consequences of both pre-and post-911 empire making projects needs to ask which powerful actors and institutions in US capitalism both uni- and multi-lateralists and listen to and why. Then, and only then, can we make alternatives to pre- and post-911 empire projects, whether they are dressed up in unilateralist or multi-lateralist sheepskins. 131 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH Stephen Philion St. Cloud State University Department of Sociology and Anthropology sephilion@stcloudstate.edu Stahler-Sholk, Richard, Harry E. Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker (eds.) Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power and Democracy. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 393 pages, ISBN 0-7425-5646-8 Cloth ($85) 0-7425-5647-6 Paper ($34.95). As I read this book, the global financial meltdown was beginning to unfold, providing an intriguing backdrop to the analyses raised by the authors of this volume. Latin American Social Movements provides multiple lenses on questions about popular mobilization in a region that has become a source of hope and a catalyst for change in the global economic order. Given that Latin Americans have long experience with the downsides of economic globalization, we in the United States may find ourselves looking to accounts such as those in this book for inspiration and guidance through this time of economic turmoil in the core of the world economy. The book is a collection of three reprints from two 1994 special issues of Latin American Perspectives (edited by David Slater), nine papers from a 2007 special issue of the same journal, and seven original chapters. The papers have been edited from their original versions into short and concise chapters that raise important themes in the study of social movements, Latin American politics, and economic globalization. The editors provide a short introduction to each of the book’s seven sections. It is fascinating to see how much the chapters written in the early nineties anticipated the developments and themes of today’s movements for economic justice. And in many ways, it is also frustrating to see that we still have some distance to go in confronting what Slater called the “ethnocentric universalism or ‘Euro-Americanism’” of Western social science (p. 28). Latin American social movements have, according to the editors, “challenged scholars to rethink old categories, push debates deeper, and advance new ideas for understanding [social realities]” (p. 340). Slater’s chapter situates Latin American movements in a global and historical context, while problematizing basic analytical categories such as class, identity, and social movements. His discussion sets the stage for the subsequent analyses of particular movements. While each chapter engages with important theoretical debates—such as the use of ritual and culture in social movements (Issa), race, gender, and identity processes (Mora, Becker, Dixon, Perry), democratization (Vanden, Hellman) and the learning and socialization processes (Schild, Swanger, Villalón, Alcañiz and Scheier), the people and movements of Latin America are at the forefront of this rich collection. Each chapter situates the case within the global historical context, but some chapters go further than others to show the relationships between global economic and political processes and local contexts. Overall, though, the book reflects a good balance of theory and case material that strengthens its value as a course text. In addition, while a central goal of the editors was to explore Latin American movements in light of their relationship to the world- system and the contemporary globalization project, important meso- and micro-level dynamics within movements—such as those related to identity-building and learning—remain the focus of several chapters. BOOK REVIEWS 132 The book includes multiple different chapters on some of the more prominent movements, such as Brazil’s landless worker movement, the MST, and the Zapatistas of southern Mexico. And many readers will be familiar with the piquiteros, cacerolazos, neighborhood assemblies, and barter clubs that arose in response to the financial crises in Argentina in the 1990s and 2001. Readers in the U.S. will also be familiar with the femicides in Ciudad Juárez, and will in any case be drawn in by Swanger’s account of an anti-domestic violence group and its role in advancing alternatives to neoliberal models of economic and social life. In addition, Latin American Social Movements provides accounts of less well-known indigenous, environmental, and resource-based movements in Ecuador and Bolivia. The book’s final section on transnational dimensions of social movements explores the global networks of the Zapatistas and the emergence of Via Campesina as well as the regional transnationalism reflected in the Foro Mesoamericano. Swords’s analysis of how groups operating within the broader Zapatista network maintained their autonomy and distinct programmatic identities while still engaging with and supporting the larger struggle provides insights into contemporary global justice networks. Indeed, the challenge of cultivating local ownership and commitment to struggles defined in global terms is central to the success of any attempt to transform global capitalism, and the Zapatista movement has been an important source of insights and models for action in this regard. Via Campesina is a particularly interesting organization, based as it is on a social category that was to have disappeared with advanced capitalism. This global peasant movement has succeeded during its rather short existence in advancing the notion of “food sovereignty” to the global policy agenda. As the global food crisis we are now seeing continues, the conceptual and organizational resources of Via Campesina may prove to be invaluable for both communities and policy makers. The editors provide a helpful summary of the lessons from the cases in Latin American Social Movements as they identify important challenges ahead. Numerous cases explored in the volume emphasize the role of historical memory and learning in the evolution of social movements. Another prominent theme in the book’s cases is the ways challenges to neoliberal globalization expand activists’ “political imaginations” (p. 339), considering the ways global structures and processes impact local experiences and possibilities for social change. Although enmeshed in sometimes overwhelmingly oppressive social relations, activists were able to imagine alternatives and identify steps towards their realization. Their work continues in contemporary struggles in Latin America and elsewhere. Finally, the most important consequence of the movements explored in this volume is that they helped challenge proponents of global neoliberalism by demanding a place at the table. They were claiming “the right to have rights,” (p. 339) and in doing so they both inspired and helped pave the way for future movements against global capitalism. One question that I was left with after reading this book is how these streams of activism across Latin America have contributed to ongoing struggles against neoliberalism that extend far beyond this region. Clearly Latin American activists and movements have played key roles in the contemporary global justice movement and the Zapatistas and the World Social Forum process are the most prominent, but certainly not the only, examples of this. A task for a future volume may be to trace the connections between Latin American feminist, indigenous, anti-racist, and economic justice movements and the global networks that help constitute the counter-hegemonic bloc known as the global justice movement. 133 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH Latin American Social Movements is an enjoyable book to read. As part of Rowman & Littlefield’s Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom series, and I believe it will be a very useful and highly accessible text for a variety of courses. Jackie Smith Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies & Department of Sociology University of Notre Dame Jsmith40@nd.edu Volume15Issue1Reviews