Copyright ©2011, American Sociological Association, Volume XVI1, Number 2, Pages 553-571 ISSN 1076-156X BOOK REVIEWS Foster, John Bellamy, Brett Clark, and Richard York. 2010. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press. 544 Pages, ISBN: 978-1- 58367-218-1 Paper ($17.95). Ecological degradation is the elephant in the room for many people; they are aware of its presence yet would prefer to ignore it rather than be forced to consider both its severity and possible remedies. This practiced ignorance occurs despite numerous problems, such as global climate change, species extinction, deforestation, overfishing, and dramatic disasters such as the recent oil “spill” from offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the radiation releases from nuclear power plants in post-tsunami Japan. This elephant is enormous, destructive, and cannot be imagined away. John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York have been taking on the elephant for years. Foster is renowned for his editorship at the Monthly Review and for his work in political economy and as an environmental sociologist, having published popular books such as The Vulnerable Planet. Clark and York are also well respected and broadly-published in the same areas. Together, they are a formidable trio whose work is influential and innovative. Their publication of The Ecological Rift was therefore a welcome event. The book is quite large, with almost 450 pages of text and nearly 90 pages of footnotes, many of the latter providing additional commentary along with the references. The range of scholarship is extensive, with nods to luminaries such as Aristotle, Darwin, Epicurus, Gould, Hegel, Lakatos, Lukács, and Marx, of course. The book contains a number of chapters that have been adapted from or are “extensively rewritten” versions of previously published articles and book chapters. Those quite familiar with the authors’ prior work will find The Ecological Rift to be, shall I say, partially recycled from post-consumer content. To be sure, there is a wealth of new material here. For example, the introductory chapter presents a cogent argument for the necessity of overcoming the limitations of the social sciences and humanity’s harmful relationship with the environment by entering a “Holoanthropocene” epoch of the “New Whole Human” (p. 49) and there is a nice section on the ecology of consumption (Chapter 16). More broadly, the synthesis of prior thought generates additional insights; therefore even the most ardent readers of Foster, Clark, and York will be rewarded by acquiring a single volume that unites the disparate pieces. For those unfamiliar with the work of Foster et al., the book presents an excellent single-source culmination and expansion of an impressive and important line of sociological thought on the political economy of the environment. Regardless of background, the book should be of interest to a wide audience. The main argument is that capitalism, and imperialism in its service, is irreparably and inevitably destructive of the biosphere due to its operational necessity of expansion and its thirst for cheap raw materials, both of which ignore or abuse the requirements for nature to survive. This creates an “ecological rift” between the global political economy and the Earth and its inhabitants since the life support system for the latter is being destroyed by the former. In the absence of ecological revolution that replaces capitalism with a mode of production that is aligned with natural laws—socialism—the current system will continue on its calamitous path BOOK REVIEWS 554 until sustainable solutions are no longer possible and future generations face a bleak existence, if any at all. This is an ominous message, but one that is indeed warranted. Foster et al. present myriad statistics and sources demonstrating the severity of the damage to the biosphere. Global climate change receives a large part of the focus, but species loss, deforestation, diminishing fresh water supplies, chemical pollution, and alteration of the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles are also pointed to as indications of the perilous situation in which we currently live and the dim prospects for the future. As they and others have argued, each of the known ecological problems are alarming if considered on their own; taken together they are an overwhelming array of concerns. And there are likely many more unknown threats. These problems likely have positive feedback loops and tipping points, creating thresholds that, when crossed, can produce rapid accelerations in the scale of known and unknown damages and become increasingly more difficult to remedy— if they are not irreversible. Moreover, extant “solutions” create additional problems, such as the application of chemical fertilizers to increase food production lead to dead zones in the water into which the fertilizer drains. We are left trying to plug increasing numbers of holes in a dam that should not have been built in the first place. There are alternative standpoints on the severity and causes of ecological degradation, and Foster et al. present and critique the well-known counterarguments. Most of those that they take on are from the neoclassical economic school—what Foster et al. also call “mainstream” and “orthodox” economics (see Chapter 3). Yale economist William Nordhaus, for example, is targeted for what is argued to be the common position that since economic growth is the utmost concern and climate change will have a minor impact on the economy, the latter should be addressed with a similar minimal amount of expenditure. Foster et al. argue that Nordhaus’s argument does not anticipate the true cost of ecological degradation because it uses a very limited measurement of wealth—GDP—and discounts the future value of life while overestimating the growth in the economy. Instead of this narrow monetary view, they argue for a holistic accounting of wealth, which was present in classical economics, in which the biosphere was incorporated in economic analysis and not externalized to the public or treated as another cost to be minimized in the pursuit of profit. The divorce of nature from the economy, and also the more general split of nature and society, is revisited in a number of the book’s sections as one of the major problems with our social system. And since, Foster et al. argue, neoclassical economists suffer as both the handmaidens of capitalism and from ecological ignorance, they fail to see the problem or are unconcerned if they do. This is particularly problematic since economists have a larger voice in social policy than other social and natural scientists. Economics has been criticized for years by other social scientists, particularly sociologists, for many of the same reasons that Foster et al. present. Economists create elegant mathematical models that unfortunately do not explain reality very well. This is certainly a problem when dealing with poverty and other social issues, but when pertaining to the viability of the global life support system the limitations seem worth reemphasizing. Yet, they point out that many disciplines, including sociology, suffer from the failure to integrate humanity with the non- human world in a dialectical manner. What is necessary is for a “realist constructivism” perspective in which the relationship between the two is seen as mutually influential and continually unfolding (p. 340-3). As Foster et al. point out, one of the most troubling issues in neoclassical economics, and similarly in modern accounting standards, is the undervaluation of the natural environment and 555 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH the corresponding ability to underexpense its degradation. This is the externalization problem; i.e., the ecological costs of private activity are accrued to the public, or at best, to the state for cleanup. This is a significant issue for healthcare, as particulate emissions from fossil fuel combustion are known to increase asthma rates, among other health problems due to low quality environments. The oil “spill” in the Gulf and the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan are only the most well-known of recent ecological costs that will be primarily borne by the public and nature. Foster et al. point to the loss of the distinction between value and wealth as the original sin here by occluding the appreciation of nature as having a value beyond what it can command in the marketplace. The “Lauderdale Paradox” is resurrected as indicative of the problem (Chapter 1). Named for James Maitland, the eighth Earle of Lauderdale, the paradox is that public wealth, which includes the natural environment, does not have exchange value in the absence of scarcity. With scarcity of natural resources—which could occur, for example, from privatization of goods such as water or from a decline in their availability through degradation or depletion—private profit could occur but at the expense of public wealth. Lauderdale feared that this would occur unless the public organized against what amount to private expropriations. While numerous formerly public resources have been privatized, most noticeably water, the public outcry has been in some cases relatively weak or in others ineffective against the more powerful corporations. And the under- or non-valuation of environment and the ecological cost of operations and the cleanup of damage facilitates capitalist expansion at the expense of the biosphere. Another historical figure is resurrected in Foster et al.’s discussion of Jevons paradox. In the mid-nineteenth century, the British economist William Stanley Jevons argued that increasing efficiency in resource use, coal in Jevons case, would lead to increased consumption rather than the decrease predicted by many economists. This paradox was due to the increased production that could take place with more efficient—and thus cheaper—use; e.g., more iron and steel could be manufactured in coal-fired plants. This same phenomenon is found in the paperless office paradox explained in the text; i.e., electronic data management leads to an unexpected increase in paper use. It is this paradox of development that forms the critique of modernization theory put forth by Foster et al. Like neoclassical economics, modernization theory assumes that economic growth is paramount to human success. Drawing upon Kuznet’s inverted quadratic curve of the relationship between economic growth and income inequality, modernization theory’s ecological component contends that economic growth may increase environmental degradation in its early stages, but at a certain point it will generate technological solutions or ecological enlightenment that will reduce the environmental impact. More growth is the solution, claim adherents to this theory. Unfortunately, little empirical support exists for this contention, and when it does occur, Jevons paradox holds so total resource use and degradation continue to increase. As expected from Foster, the writings of Marx and Engels are drawn upon throughout the book as the basis for much of the argument and the fundamental problems with capitalism. The elimination of the distinction between Marx’s use value and exchange value forms the critique of neoclassical economics as described above. Marx’s conceptualization of a metabolic rift between humans and the environment is another centerpiece of the book, and one Foster was instrumental in extracting from Marx’s writings. In short, Marx described the rupture that occurred, first as soil was degraded under agricultural intensification and the application of chemical fertilizers, which then continued to deteriorate as urbanization and industrialization created more pollution while robbing the countryside—and the laborers in both the city and country—of the nutrients necessary for sustainability. As an example of the metabolic rift due to capitalist imperialism, in BOOK REVIEWS 556 Chapter 15 Foster et al. tell a fascinating story of the international trade in guano from Peru. The guano, a rich fertilizer, was extracted by imported Chinese labor to meet the agricultural needs of Britain and the United States. They link the War of the Pacific at least partially to this demand for resources as a British-backed Chile and Peru fought for control of the islands containing guano. Marx, along with Engels, argued that a system of associated producers was necessary to end private property, capitalism as a mode of production, and restore harmony between humans and nature. Foster et al. extend Marx’s call for revolution throughout the book. They provide an “elementary triangle of ecology” (which they say follows Chávez’s “elementary triangle of socialism”) necessary for a sustainable society. The three of tenants are: “1) social use, not ownership, of nature; 2) rational regulation by associated producers of the metabolism between human beings and nature; and 3) the satisfaction of communal needs—not only of present but also future generations” (p. 115, 441). These components of a better society are relatively common in ecologically-conscious socialist thought such as that of James O’Connor and Joel Kovel. More specific means to address the metabolic rift are found in a concluding chapter on ecological revolution. The state could take a more active role by subsidizing sustainability and regulating degradation instead of supporting industries and practices that have created the mess, which is clearly the historical practice of the United States through its military spending and handouts to the oil, coal, industrial agriculture, and auto industries, among others. Internationally, they call for “contraction and convergence” in which the rich polluting countries pay their “ecological debt” by reducing their impact while facilitating sustainable development in the poorer countries. Socialist, or socialistic, countries are leading the way, and movements that are anti-capitalist and pro-environment can be found in many areas of the Global South. But Foster et al. assert that it will take a multi-class and global movement in order to adequately address the issues due to their severity for the planet. Moreover, they argue that socialism is the only viable social formation because of its inherent ecological harmony. There are some areas in which the book suffers. There is repetition throughout, which the authors claim to have tried to minimize, but their effort was not entirely successful. The arguments are also made forcefully and with passion, which, together with the repetition, suggests a manifesto. Depending on the reader’s receptiveness to the message, it will likely be criticized as an ideological tome or as a much-needed counter to the dominant discourse—and possibly both simultaneously. To this critic, there is no doubt that the points they make are worth making and they are made convincingly. Capitalism has had many centuries to convince us that its promise of paradise would be realized. The reality has been much less pleasant for much of humanity and the other inhabitants of the earth, and increasingly destructive for the planet itself. We do not know the effects of socialism on a global scale, but we do know that our current system is unsustainable. We urgently need to discuss and implement plans to change our trajectory. As a contribution toward that end, and a fine piece of scholarship, this book is too important to ignore. Kirk S. Lawrence Research Assistant, Institute for Research on World-Systems University of California, Riverside kirk.lawrence@email.ucr.edu http://www.irows.ucr.edu/kl/klhmpg.html 557 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH Berezin, Mabel. 2009. Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times: Culture, Security and Populism in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 324 Pages, ISBN 978-0521547840 Paperback ($36.00) In the last several decades, France and Italy have witnessed the rise and relative success of rightwing populist parties. In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front has routinely acquired mayoralties and European Parliament representation; and although eventually losing, Le Pen himself competed against Jacques Chirac in the April 2002, presidential run-off election. In Italy, Gianfranco Fini's National Alliance has maintained a strong political presence that peaked in 1994 with Fini's inclusion in Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government. Thereafter, Fini has held several national positions, including Minister of Foreign Affairs. Unsurprisingly, these phenomena have attracted the attention of political and social scientists. Building on her previous work on Italian interwar illiberalism, Mabel Berezin's "Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times" engages with these most recent examples of rightwing European populism. By synchronically comparing the electoral performance of the French National Front with the Italian National Alliance, she couples the French National Front's success with the pressures of globalization and Europeanization. Indeed, as the French rejection of the proposed European constitution in 2003 indicates, national autonomy concerns French citizens. Without these structural-cultural insecurities, Berezin asserts that Le Pen could not have secured political success. Pulling from both Jeffrey Alexander and William Sewell, Berezin focuses on the cultural structures that direct the collective public evaluations of particular events. However, she departs from Alexander's patented cultural determinism by underscoring how particular actors and social processes can indeed shape civil discourse. In doing so, she includes "the 1997 Strasbourg congress and the demonstrations against it, the 1998 regional elections and the World Cup victory, the 2002 elections and the defeat of the European constitution in France, played against the presence of the Italian willingness to absorb Gianfranco Fini into its legitimate politics" (57). Methodologically, she accesses these events through French newspapers, National Front publications and an occasional presence on the scene. Although she provides no systematic statement on her selection process, three French daily periodicals largely govern her analysis: Le Monde, Libération, and L'Humanité. By focusing on events, Berezin asserts her ability to examine "structure and culture, institutions and actions ... [since] events as actions in time and space are transparent" (12). In her opinion, previous research has neglected culture and hence "fail[s] to account for why a hyper- nationalist movement should be the outcome of the fear of unemployment ... [when it] could as easily trigger a reinvigorated European left" (44). Her analysis then centers on French national identity. Berezin argues that France represents a "hegemonic consolidation regime," characterized by both a strong state and a strong national identity. Such regimes are most vulnerable to exogenous pressures, which jeopardize their "moral ontologies [or] collectively defined ways of being in the world" (46). Globalization and Europeanization thus represent threats to both a strong French state and a strong French identity. In response to them, Berezin argues that undecided and non-partisan voters have turned to the National Front, that is, when "[the National Front's] issues become French issues" (131). Throughout its early years, Berezin presents the National Front as a marginalized party that maintained support from only a small but loyal group. In fact, she notes the usual bloc of right-wing supporters: the "non-urban," lower-middle class and xenophobic (100). This is not BOOK REVIEWS 558 entirely surprising given Le Pen's earlier penchant for publicly belittling the Holocaust's significance and scapegoating Turkish and other immigrants. However, as Le Pen has moderated his extremist language, he has also devoted more general attention to French national autonomy. What is more, he proved adept at constructing a strong French narrative out of seemingly debilitating events. As Berezin shows, Le Pen rearranged the immigrant-led French World Cup victory into a narrative on how immigrants could become respectable French citizens, that is, if they followed the legal channels. This is to say nothing too about how well 9/11 and religious fundamentalism factored into his platform. The lion's share of Berezin's book focuses on the unanticipated results of the 2002 elections and the French rejection of a European constitution. Likewise, Berezin attributes both to national insecurities. In 2002, "Contingent events, such as the attack on the World Trade Center, combined with the push for a more expanded version of European integration" paved the way for Le Pen's initial victory. Theoretically, Le Pen provided the only voice for anti-Europeanization. However, Berezin infers that the national insecurity that facilitated Le Pen's success also provoked a fresh one: the possibility that Le Pen could represent the French. Subsequently, the "shock" of Le Pen's initial victory eventuated in a landslide victory for Chirac in their final run- off. Nonetheless, Le Pen's success signifies the importance that European integration holds for French voters, as they later rejected a European constitution. Although Berezin provides an interesting interpretation of the French National Front's trajectory, I take issue with several components of her analysis. First, her emphasis on the "transparency" of events betrays her own interpretive lens. While events assuredly involve "actions in time and place," they are never without interpretation. In fact, there are several alternative interpretations that we could generate based on the evidence she supplies. For example, she herself supplies two interpretations of the National Front's trajectory all at once: the National Front as marginalized-come-mainstream and the National Front as permanent fixture. More concretely, she begins her analysis with the National Front's European parliamentary success followed by a national legislative success and several mayoral victories. However, she then depicts the National Front's 2002 presidential bid as a clear departure from its previous showings. In 2002, Le Pen received 15% of the national vote. This is not inconsistent with their earlier electoral performances - presidential or otherwise. To be fair, the National Front received a short setback in 1998 with Bruno Megret's departure, Le Pen's main accessory. Still, this does not radically offset an interpretation of the National Front as routinely securing a steady percentage of votes. Second, Berezin bases the popularity of rightwing populism on electoral outcomes alone. Although she mentions protests and marches, these are confined to those orchestrated by political parties. Moreover, with the exception of few quotes from periodicals, individuals are largely absent. To be sure, she includes the voices of elite political actors and journalists. However, one of Berezin's main conjectures is that French voters turned to the National Front due to insecurities related to their national identity. Methodologically though, we have no evidence for why French citizens voted the way they did. Last and briefly, this work could stand alone without the final comparisons with Italian rightwing populism. Although the initial European setting is warranted, her final comparisons feel underdeveloped. Berezin's emphasis on globalization and Europeanization is timely and deserved. Undoubtedly, both processes are altering the European political landscape. Yet, their role in the National Front's success seems ambiguous. Without question, this event is also deserved of 559 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH inquiry. However, it is clearly not as transparent as Berezin initially asserts. In addition, her inclusion of culture does not go far past information gleaned from newspaper articles and electoral outcomes. In doing so, Berezin interprets only a restricted set of French interpretations. If we want to account for the National Front's 2002 voting bloc, why not approach them? If not, the answer will remain cloaked by structural processes that may or may not impinge as monolithically as Berezin suggests. Even now, Le Pen's 2002 success appears weighted by other factors not the least of which includes left-wing fractures. In the end, she produces some interesting hypotheses concerning the rise of alternative political parties and social movements. As researchers, we can use them, but only as start points along the way. Timothy M. Gill University of Georgia timgill1984@gmail.com Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and Timothy Patrick Moran. 2009. Unveiling Inequality: A World-Historical Perspective. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 192 pages. ISBN: 978-0- 87154-483-4 The advent of globalization has urged many social scientists to explore how this process impacts the pattern of global inequality. While many converge on the view about the universal rise of intra-national income inequality across the world, some debate on whether global income inequality, as a combination of intra-national and international inequalities, increases or decreases under globalization. The authors of this book are keen participants of that debate, publishing some of the most cited papers on the topic. In Unveiling Inequality, Korzeniewicz and Moran move on to break new groundw in the studies of global inequality. They take a longer historical view to examine how international and intra-national inequalities change over the last two centuries, and how the two inequalities are interrelated. Their first major argument is that both intra-national and international inequalities, despite all the changes in recent decades, have been very stable over the long run. Second, intra- national inequalities in individual countries are related to international inequality, as countries with higher income tends to manifest low intra-national inequality, while low-income countries tend to have higher inequality. Backed by carefully compiled data and clearly constructed graphs and tables, the authors’ first major argument that intra-national inequalities remains stable in most countries is compelling. It shows that the recent increase in intra-national inequality everywhere is in fact minor change and looks more like trendless fluctuation from a long historical perspective. In explaining such long-term stability, the authors employ the concept of equilibrium and outline how institutional forces would act to restore the equilibrium when inequalities move away from it. The equilibria of inequality vary from country to country, but they tend to cluster into two types, that is, high inequality equilibria (HIE) and low inequality equilibria (LIE). Countries with HIE manifest relatively high level of inequality (usually with gini more than 5) over a long period of time. In contrast, countries with LIE manifest low level of inequality (usually with gini lower than 0.35). BOOK REVIEWS 560 Most countries with HIE are characterized by institutions that exclude large population from property ownership and education in their early history of modern development. Plantations in South America are examples of such institutions. Once these institutions and the corresponding high inequality become entrenched, the countries concerned will find it very difficult to reduce inequality, as any such attempts will be easily rolled back by the established elite who fight hard to defend their ascribed privileges. In comparison, countries with LIE, mostly Western countries, are usually endowed with relatively equitable property and political rights early on. Such an institutional set up would induce the countries concerned to continuously expand its franchise and establish a redistributive tax system that further reduces inequality. When the meritocratic distribution of wealth is established as a norm, these countries will maintain its LIE for a long time. Discussion about recent rise in inequality in OECD countries, for example, is somewhat exaggerated. Despite all the attention to increase in inequality in selected European countries like Britain, the average inequality among all European countries in fact remains more or less unchanged in recent years (p. 11). When it comes to why institutions accounting for HIE are mostly concentrated in low- income countries and why institutions leading to LIE concentrated in high-income countries, the authors take a step beyond the typical world-systemic explanation, according to which core countries impose coercive mode of labor control, like plantations, on peripheral countries that hindered growth and created high inequality. To Korzeniewicz and Moran, direct imposition of coercive economic organizations accounted for only part of the HIE-LIE divide. More important is a “relational mechanism” through which countries with LIE successfully shift its internal competitive pressure to countries with HIE (p. 72). An elaborate example of such mechanism is the case of migration. Historically, the transfer of population from poor to rich countries has helped reduce income gap between countries (p. 85). But when migrant workers increased competitive pressure among native workers in high income countries and started to drag down wage level and enhance inequality, such high income countries would adopt anti-immigration policies to reduce the competitive pressure, maintain workers’ wage level, and contain inequality growth. But such measure, with anti-immigration legislations in early-twentieth-century US as an example, “accentuated competitive pressures in labor markets elsewhere in the world and in the process eliminated for much of the twentieth century one possible mechanism for reducing the income gap between countries” (p. 85). The authors’ emphasis on migration continues in the book’s last section on the “three paths of social mobility” in the global system. The three paths for an individual to improve his or her own relative living standard in the world include upward mobility within the national system of stratification, economic development of the nation to which the individual belongs, and migration of the individual from his or her country of origin to a higher-income country. While the first two paths have been discussed in many other works, bringing in the issue about international migration as a remedy to high global inequality is both original and provocative. One would expect more elaborate discussion about how far migration could reduce systemic global inequality. Theoretically speaking, high international inequality largely could be eliminated if all poor population in all poor countries migrate to high income countries and share the relatively high wage there. But is that feasible? Where is the limit of international migration as means of reducing global inequality? 561 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH In sum, Unveiling Inequality is a succinct and incisive work that breaks new ground in the study of global inequality, bringing our attention to the stability of and interconnectedness between intra-national and international inequalities. It also opens up new area of inquiry awaiting further research, such as the role of international migration in systemic reduction in global inequality. All scholars, students, and practitioners concerned about global inequality and dedicated to its reduction cannot afford to miss this volume. Ho-fung Hung Department of Sociology Johns Hopkins University hofung@jhu.edu Darwin, John. 2009. The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World –System, 1830-1970. New York: Cambridge UP. 814 pages, ISBN 978-0-521-30208-1 Cloth ($39.00). The Empire Project is John Darwin’s Fourth book on the subject of empire building and the history of the world system (Britain and Decolonization, 1988; The End of the British Empire: the Historical Debate, 1991; and After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405, 2008) and is his most ambitious and comprehensive effort to date. The book is enormous both in scope of history covered and in physical length, which is what one would expect from any attempt to summarize and analyze the forces at work during the time period from 1830 to 1970. Darwin’s previous works focused on similar issues but in this book, he has attempted to focus on the interconnectedness of forces driving globalization over the 140-year time period covered in the The Empire Project. Darwin puts forth the theory that there were many forces -- both centrifugal and centripetal working simultaneously to both integrate and dismantle the British Empire by Intra-empire and International political, economic forces along with major socio- cultural events and trends. Darwin analyzes, examines, and explores the history of the British Empire, its rise and fall and its relationship to the developmental trajectory of the current world-system. Darwin’s task is monumental as is his effort to highlight and advance his ideas about how and why the British system developed, what forces kept it together, and subsequently pulled it apart. He accomplishes this by not only focusing on what was happening in London (the center), but also what was happening in the rest of the British world-system. One of the novel features of his most recent historical treatment of the British Empire is Darwin’s comprehensive focus on the role of international factors of colonial competition within continental Europe culminating in World War I and II that impacted policies and events at the center and periphery of the empire system. While other authors have focused on the international aspects of the British Empire, Darwin also focuses a great deal of the book on the impact of “settler” nations such as New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and Australia as well the ascendancy of the United States on the direction and ultimate demise of the British world-system. On top of these major areas of focus is his expert analysis of role of the crown jewel of the Empire, India, along with the peripheral elements of the empire in Africa, Asia and Asia Minor. Clearly, the comprehensive, integrated approach that Darwin employs is the strength of this work and gives it a unique perspective on a highly unique, complicated and complex subject. BOOK REVIEWS 562 Darwin does a masterful job of filling in the detail of the specific histories of each area and interweaving each of the historical regional narratives into a holistic history of the British world-system and its relation to the rest of the world. He states his main point throughout the book and re-iterates it in the conclusion: The argument of this book has been that the fate of the world-system in which the British Empire was embedded was largely determined by geopolitical forces over which the British themselves had little control…Perhaps they might have hoped to ride out the storm. But the strategic catastrophe of 1938 to 1942, and its devastating impact on the central elements of their system, were together so crushing that recovery (after 1945) was merely short-lived remission. Of course, the British were not just victims of blind fate, benign or malign. They had taken a hand in prompting the geopolitical changes from which they gained, although (as at Trafalgar) perhaps more to ward off an imminent danger than to create a main chance (pg. 649). He uses a vast array of historical data and references to support his main theme analyzing nearly every aspect of the British Empire focusing on the trends in free trade, international capital and finance, changes in public opinion in all sectors of the empire as well as larger international trends, and developments all around the world with particular attention on political and military events in Europe. The book has two main parts, each containing seven chapters. The first section focuses on the early development of the British Empire and world-system until the beginning of the First World War, which includes extensive analysis and description of the role of London as the head of the beast and the Imperial possession as part of the larger body of the British world-system. He also gives a detailed descriptive analysis of the impact of Edwardian and Victorian traditions and ideologies that shaped the direction and impetus for empire building. Darwin spends much of the first section of the book analyzing the actions of imperial agents in London, their relationships with the public, the impact “settler” colonies on the development of a distinct “Britannic” culture that kept the empire united and divided, but still a holistic entity. He also focuses on the other parts of the Empire with particular emphasis on the impact that India and South Africa had on the development of the global empire and how the British lost their tenuous grip on the colonies in the center and periphery of the Empire. He examines the actions of leaders in each section of the British Empire not just in London. He also hints at future issues of weakness and dissolutive forces by using South Africa as “the weakest link.” Darwin balances this evidence by examining what was occurring at the ground level in each of the major areas of the British world-system especially in voting patterns, actions of local figures, and to a lesser extent the lives of those at the grassroots level of the Empire. In chapter three, Darwin discusses the major commercial elements and forces that were crucial to the early development of the British system of ‘free trade’ and ‘global trade.’ He examines the action of commercial enterprises all over the globe, the ideas of those involved, and the attempts to use ‘jingoism’ in the popular political world to justify the continuation of the imperial system to the general public in London and the rest of the Empire as well. This desire to continue, maintain, and expand the Empire would take a toll on the people and regions of the Empire in terms of national treasure, international standing and human life. These sacrifices were 563 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH all justified and rationalized by many of the leaders of the Empire at the time, but fought against by many others. Darwin returns repeatedly to the conflicting and countervailing forces that shaped the trajectory of the Empire in the pre and post-World War I era. In particular, with South Africa, Darwin challenges the idea that South Africa was a solid “British colony” by showing that the British only controlled the coast and the ports while the interior was being contested by many competing forces (Afrikaners, native populations and British settlers). Throughout the first section he analyzes each area of the empire singularly and holistically then shows how each contributed to the rise of the Empire until the start of World War I. Such attention to the processes in the peripheral areas of the Empire has been rare. In the second section of the book Darwin turns his attention to what he calls the “sinking of the great liner,” the forces that led to the downfall of the British Empire and world-system. Darwin weaves together an integrated narrative of the monumental events of World War I, the depression, World War II, and de-colonization. He argues that it is possible to tie these events together and show the slow and highly complex factors involved in the decline of the British world-system. In chapters 12, 13, and 14 he highlights the growing concerns of the British people and government over the slow evaporation of the empire brought about by forces beyond their control. He also reveals an ambiguous almost contradictory feeling among many in the British Empire (both in the core and periphery) that they lamented the death of the Empire, but were reluctant to abandon the empire project completely. Among many in the Empire there was a sense of pride and status that came with being a part of the empire project that they still valued despite all the problems and issues that it caused for those involved. The spiraling economic issues that surrounded the depression and Britain’s subsequent move from being the world’s dominant creditor to a debtor nation and from the dominant player in international trade and finance to losing that title to the United States and the Soviet Union. Via the “great liner” analogy the British Empire was leaking fluid from all quarters. A myriad of centrifugal forces made it nearly impossible for the leadership or the people of the Empire to stop it. On the surface the Empire seemed to move in a linear manner from strength to weakness from integration and growth to disillusionment and disintegration – Darwin makes it clear in his exploration of events that this process of “empire building” was interspersed by periods of retrenchment and strengthening followed by periods of intense evaporation of support from the people for the Empire, monetary resources and the power that it brought as well as the shear number of possessions in the sphere of influence that made up the British World-System. Darwin more-or-less succeeds in his task, but there are some few issues that should have been addressed. First, although he hints at exploring the meaning and ideologies behind the idea of the “world-system” there is a lack of in-depth theoretical analysis when it comes to examining the theories of modernization and world-systems/dependency theory. His arguments would have been strengthened had there been a more robust discussion of the role the ideologies of modernism and British cultural imperialism played in the development of the British Empire project. Part of what allowed the British to accomplish what they did in their empire project was due to British advances in both technological and economic development. These forces played into the desire of those in the Empire to push forward, stay a part of and eventually to move away from the British world-system. Darwin does this in some parts by using specific historical trends and moments to illustrate how these ideologies were used to justify the expansion and maintenance of the world-system. The lack of discussion of deeper theoretical issues is a weakness in the work. BOOK REVIEWS 564 Second, despite many descriptions, there could have been more on the impact of these historical processes on day-to-day life of individuals. I wanted to read more about the ethnographic details of the impacts and aspects of the British Empire. There seems to be an imbalance in Darwin’s attention to major figures, like regional and national leaders, and their actions as contrasted with examining what the people on the grassroots level were going through and thought about the Empire. The book’s main arguments would have been strengthened if this information had been included in greater in more detail. Third, in some places the book tends to jump from one subject to another and can be hard to follow. At the end of section one and the beginning of section two the jumps from India to the settler nations to the Middle East to Asia to Africa can be difficult to follow. Still, the book is a masterful presentation of a highly complex historical process. Darwin has created a seminal work that will stand for many years as one of the best references on the British Empire and the development of the world-system in general. For a reader who knows little of the history of this era and subject matter this book is daunting. However, The Empire Project is a valuable narrative of the British Empire. Gary Maynard Department of Sociology SUNY@ Stony Brook gmaynard@ic.sunysb.edu Bedford, Kate. 2009. Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality and the Reformed World Bank. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 292 pages, ISBN 978-0-8166-6540-2 Paper, ISBN 978-0-8166-6539-6 Cloth. Kate Bedford’s Developing Partnerships chronicles the shift in global governance from the coercive imposition of neoliberal capitalism on the developing world through structural adjustment programs to a more consensual and cultural means of ensuring neoliberalism’s global hegemony. Through a careful analysis of the World Bank’s Gender and Development (GAD) projects in Latin America and the Caribbean in the “post-Washington Consensus” era, Bedford illustrates the primary role that gender and sexuality play in embedding neoliberal logic into the cultural fabric of everyday lives in the global south. She demonstrates that it is through the promotion of heteronormative partnerships that the World Bank attempts to stabilize economic markets. As such, the book makes a compelling argument that links the promotion of normative intimacy with shifts in the global political economy. In response to world-wide critiques and protests against the impact of structural adjustment on the economies and livelihoods of people in the global south, the World Bank changed its development strategies in the 1990s to focus more on good governance, civil society, social safety nets, poverty eradication, and equity. These new strategies of governance are much more difficult to contest and have been adopted as the “new common sense of our times” (p. xx). The World Bank’s GAD projects essentialize gender binaries, suggest that liberalization naturally leads to a more equitable household division of labor, and promote normative families as the “ultimate marker of good development” (p. 200). Bedford seeks to trouble and disrupt the 565 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH hegemony of the gender and sexuality regimes being promoted through this post-Washington Consensus. Bedford argues that in its 1990s transition, the World Bank paid heed to the specifically gendered effects of its 1980s neoliberal policies, namely the crisis of social reproduction produced by the feminization of the labor market, which both overburdened women and led to a “crisis of masculinity” amongst poor men in the global South who, the argument goes, were increasingly driven toward violence and alcoholism with the loss of their identities as breadwinners. The Bank seeks to resolve the tension between unpaid and paid labor through an emphasis on loving partnerships and strong family values. Under this new model, women are encouraged to enter the work force as a means of achieving autonomy and empowerment, whereas men are encouraged to take up the unpaid social reproductive labor women no longer have time to do. In this way, the family becomes a key mechanism for providing the social safety nets seen as crucial for poverty alleviation, and relieves the state of responsibility, thereby ensuring the continued privatization of social reproduction. Drawing on Nikolas Rose’s critique of contemporary neoliberalism (Powers of Freedom, 1999, Cambridge), Bedford suggests that the Bank’s GAD policies target women for entrepreneurialization and men for responsibilization – in order to turn them both into citizens who will govern themselves in the wake of the state’s retreat. Bedford argues that these new World Bank policies are deeply problematic because they are based on unjust characterizations of both poor men and women living in developing countries and because they sideline the important issue of child-care. Let me take each critique in turn. First, assumptions that poor, “Third World” men “act out their wounded masculinity through violence and drunkenness … echo colonial assumptions about lazy natives and barbaric brown men” (p. 31). In addition, the many unemployed men who contribute to unpaid household labor and the many absent husbands and fathers who migrate in search of work and contribute to the household income through remittances are rendered invisible by the Bank’s assumptions of masculinity in crisis. “Making groups legible requires turning those who do not fit the frame into pathologies or anomalies that need to be transformed” (p. 85). In the chapter detailing the ethnodevelopment loan given to rural indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian communities in Ecuador, Bedford illustrates the ways in which the Bank’s gender development projects often promote and sustain racialized hierarchies. In addition, these projects make distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate performances of indigeneity based on the extent to which communities are willing to (or are perceived as willing to) assume the ideals of sharing and monogamous partnerships. The second primary critique Bedford makes of the Bank’s GAD projects is in reference to the promotion of women’s employment as a means of achieving empowerment. In the chapter focusing on Ecuador’s flower industry, Bedford uncovers a fundamental contradiction in the Bank’s policy on women’s employment: “on the one hand regarding women as self-interested autonomous actors enabled through wages to pursue their own erotic destinies, and on the other regarding them as necessarily attached, by enduring love, to specific others with whom they will altruistically share their income” (p. 109). And in the chapter mentioned above on the Ecuadorian ethnodevelopment loan, Bedford shows how the Bank’s desire to prove that women’s employment leads to empowerment requires Bank employees to ignore the fact that many indigenous women were already working before the loans were introduced (p. 142). Finally, Bedford points out that the Bank’s new GAD projects sideline the question of child-care. Although the provision of child-care seems the most logical policy response to the BOOK REVIEWS 566 crisis of social reproduction (and one which women in developing countries overwhelmingly called for), such an initiative could not be supported by the Bank because it would require governmental intervention and social spending. Husbands become the only agents available to relieve women of their overburdened double duty because they do not cost the state a penny. In addition, engaging in housework and child-care is supposed to make men more “responsible,” thus shielding them from their proclivities toward alcoholism and violence. As such, the World Bank “hails gender balance to intensify the privatization of social reproduction” (p. 203). With all of these important critiques, it is somewhat surprising that Bedford overlooks another crucial point. While the Bank congratulates itself for incorporating feminist critiques into its post-Washington Consensus gender and development projects, these policies remain grounded in a patriarchal logic which undervalues women’s labor. The Bank accepts the assumption that women deserve to be paid less than men and that the low-wage jobs being created in many developing countries (such as service work, call centers, or sweat shops) should be “women’s work.” Bedford could have done more to demonstrate that the feminization of the labor market has occurred, in part, because jobs stigmatized as feminine are underpaid and insecure. Bedford’s methodological approach combines a discourse analysis of speeches and World Bank reports, interviews with World Bank staff at regional and local levels, and case studies of particular World Bank initiatives in Ecuador and Argentina. As such, she engages in what David Mosse has termed an “ethnography of policy and practice” Cultivating Development, 2004, Pluto) examining institutional bureaucracies and practices, the knowledge-production process, staff interactions with and interpretations of policy, and the ways in which these policies are both enacted and contested. Also important is her attention to the World Bank as a knowledge regime. In the second chapter, Bedford shows that the research that goes into World Bank reports and policy documents is often heterogeneous and complex, but “as research travels up the internal hierarchy of texts … this nuance tends to get lost, as the findings that resonate with certain framings of the gender-policy problem become increasingly prominent” (p. 60). Given an object of analysis as monolithic as the World Bank, Bedford proceeds with great skill and attentiveness, paying heed to the “contingencies” and “frailties” of policy, while simultaneously unveiling hidden assumptions and the operations of hegemony. Such a rich, careful, and multi-layered methodological approach is worthy of emulation and significant in its findings. In the conclusion, Bedford admits that she has attempted to combine a glass-half-full reading of Bank policies that acknowledges the important ways in which feminists have had a hand in transforming the Bank’s development approach as well as the creative ways that people have used Bank loans to promote feminist projects with a glass-half-empty critique that “pays attention to the dangers of the new common sense we are naturalizing about gender, sexuality, class and race” (p. 213). While I appreciate the difficulties that arise from trying to maintain such a tension throughout the book, there were several points in Bedford’s analysis that called for a harsher critique of the economic impact of the Bank’s policies. The maddening contradiction that really characterizes the so-called “reformed” World Bank is that while paying lip service to poverty alleviation and equity, its bottom line is still the protection of free market liberalism which promotes corporate profit through the super-exploitation of the poor and the steady eradication of all social welfare. The subjectivities forged by the post-Washington Consensus model of development which insist on both entrepreneurial and responsible citizenry allow for the displacement of blame for poverty alleviation. Subjects of this new neoliberal regime are required to assume certain disciplined behaviors in exchange for social safety nets and the price to pay for 567 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH failure is destitution and neglect. In addition, the Bank’s new attempts to respond to the crisis of social reproduction very deftly deflect attention away from the fact that few new jobs have been created and existing jobs are both precarious and poorly remunerated. In fact, I would argue that Bedford’s lack of attention to the Bank’s primary economic motivation serves to naturalize the hegemony of neoliberalism, as if there really are no (longer) any alternatives. That being said, Kate Bedford’s argument that neoliberalism’s global hegemony cannot be fully understood without a lens focused specifically on gender and sexuality is an essential contribution to the literature on international development, globalization, and neoliberal macroeconomics. Claire Laurier Decoteau Department of Sociology University of Illinois at Chicago decoteau@uic.edu Francis Shor. 2010. Dying Empire: U.S. Imperialism and Global Resistance. New York: Routledge. 208 Pages, ISBN 978-0-415-77823-7 Paperback ($44.95). [Editor’s note: this review was completed January 13, 2011]. Dying Empire is a timely and highly engaging book that may become essential reading for scholars, students and practitioners struggling to make sense of the dramatic changes happening before our eyes. Shor, a historian and long-time peace activist, draws from a wealth of cultural knowledge and political experience to craft an analysis that places culture at the center of our analysis of U.S. hegemonic decline. Shor stresses that those hoping to help make possible alternatives to a world dominated by U.S. imperialism (or the chaos that will result from its inability to implement its imperial project) must struggle first and foremost against the “imperial culture” of the United States. It is the imperial culture of the United States that makes it a “highly privatized space and hyper-consumerism” where political activism of all kinds -- and perhaps especially radical political activism -- is difficult if not impossible to sustain. Shor examines the racist and patriarchal ideologies that have been used to justify the “civilizing mission” of the U.S. as enacted around the world from before the Vietnam war to the Iraq war. These same ideologies have helped mask the reality that the “American way of war” has typically flaunted international law, thereby undermining U.S. moral leadership. This point is particularly salient today as we hear of the latest Wikileaks releases of U.S. State Department cables. What is often underplayed in mass media interpretations of these memos is the blatant disregard U.S. officials have for international law — even as they demand that other states abide by such laws. Such is the way of imperial culture. Shor identifies three specific “counterhegemonic articulations”: the European model; the post-colonial model, represented in Latin American leftist governments; and the post-modern model reflected in the Zapatista movement and more recently in the World Social Forum process. I found this classification interesting and useful for thinking about the state of contemporary challenges to U.S. hegemony, although I was hoping for a bit more systematic engagement with these different counterhegemonic streams throughout the book. Nevertheless, the key point of the BOOK REVIEWS 568 book is to document and analyze the “post-modern” counterhegemonic struggle and to show both its historical roots and the contradictory forces that have reduced its effectiveness so far. Drawing from his direct participation in Central America peace and antimilitarist activism and other social justice movements in the United States, Shor examines the ways transborder activism in these movements helped foster new awareness and understandings of the U.S. role in the world. At the same time, these movements’ location in the United States complicated activists’ ability to recognize the fundamental connections between U.S. militarism and interventionism and its economic policies, obstructing expressions of transnational solidarity. Examining in particular the work of Habitat for Humanity and anti-sweatshop activism, Shor argues that the strategic and political contradictions in these movements have "scarred expressions of global solidarity while undermining the necessary struggle by those in an imperial culture against the privileges and mystifications that define that culture" (p. 50). Imperial culture stripped third world people of agency even in the minds of those who were committed to working for a better world. In the course of the book, it becomes clear that Shor’s major intention is to give voice and recognition to the vibrant and persistent struggles in the global South against U.S. empire. By doing so he challenges a key edifice of the imperial culture that requires the diminution of non- U.S., if not non-core, people in order to justify various forms of intervention -- ranging from humanitarian assistance to aggression — all aimed at reinforcing U.S. hegemony. Shor’s analysis helps make sense of the "paranoid togetherness" that characterizes the “imperial enclosures” of the post 9/11 United States especially. Since imperialism is a desire to control all, it necessarily generates fear both as a means of justifying the military expenditures that empire requires or as a response when such control is impossible. To counter this tendency towards fear, and the violence it generates, U.S. activists, teachers and scholars need to work towards changing the “mental landscapes of enclosure” that are increasingly prevalent in U.S. society. This point again is made particularly poignant as I write this review, amidst media reports of the shootings of Arizona Congresswoman, Gillian Giffords, and her supporters. The diminishing of citizenship, trivialization of electoral politics, and the civic enclosures that fracture civil society in this country are key features of our imperial culture which have obstructed sustained resistance to U.S. hegemony. Recognizing the effects of imperial culture on activists is, Shor observes, vital to developing a sustained and relevant peace and justice movement in this country. But what will be more important to overcoming U.S. empire is not the conversion of U.S. activists and publics to new ways of thinking about their country’s role in the world, but the movements of resistance in the global South. Shor documents the various “counterpublics” working to fundamentally transform social relations as a means of undoing U.S. empire and making another world possible. He explores the various transnational organizations, campaigns, and networks that have given shape to today’s alter-globalization or global justice movement, demonstrating how these efforts have shaped the hybridized identities seen within this movement as well as the movement’s understandings of political power and the role of the state and its models for alternatives to globalized capitalism. A highly notable contribution of Dying Empire is Shor’s successful demonstration of the relationships between structural dynamics in the world-system — U.S. hegemony and hegemonic decline — and various forms of cultural expression. He offers an extensive consideration of a variety of cultural material ranging from works by Marge Piercy, James Baldwin, Bob Marley, 569 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH among others. It is this feature of the book that many readers will find most appealing, and that makes this text one that will be highly effective in undergraduate and graduate courses on contemporary world politics and global social change. Jackie Smith Department of Sociology Jsmith40@nd.edu www.nd.edu/~jsmith40 [THROUGH JUNE 30, 2011—After June 30—Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh] Böröcz, József. 2010. The European Union and Global Social Change: A Critical Geopolitical-Economic Analysis. 242 pages, 978-0-415-59517-9 (Paperback) ($39.95) Sociologist József Böröcz’s new book not only carries to new heights his empirical investigations into postsocialism and the eastern enlargement of the European Union—so far appearing only in articles and in an electronic book—but also greatly advances a relational perspective in history, that sees the former First, Second, and Third Worlds as mutually constitutive rather than as part of a mono-hierarchical and mono-directional world-system. The book is far richer in empirical and conceptual arguments than I can explore in the space of a short review; therefore, I will restrict my summary and comments to its key thesis concerning the proper conceptualization of the European Union. The book is a long overdue corrective to the social science scholarship on the European Union that treats this supranational organization’s history as a series of developments internal to western Europe.1 With postwar decolonization, European integration and a new flexible politics of size came to be adopted as the primary strategies for overcoming smallness. Through a creative According to Böröcz, we will not understand the history of the European Union unless we understand two things about western Europe: 1) that the smallness of its countries—in terms of territory, population, and, primarily, economic output--had been a long-standing and recurring obstacle to the region’s geopolitical influence; and 2) that colonizing overseas territories was a strategy to overcome this problem. By making good use of “new economic sociology”— employing concepts such as embeddedness, thick vs. thin ties; but also echoing Latour’s analysis of “actor networks” and their logic, in which distance and size matter greatly—the author demonstrates that “detached” empires led to a “segmental system of global governance” in which west European polities were entirely shielded from the negative consequences of their states’ actions in the colonies. This would not have been possible in traditional contiguous empires. Such a bifurcation of public space meant that different, if not diametrically opposed, political principles dominated in the metropole and in the colonies, respectively, corroborating the argument of postcolonial studies that western Europe’s democracy and, later, welfare state was conditional upon its colonizing past. 1 I am following the author’s principle in spelling and capitalizing the name of this region, which is consistent with his intention to emphasize the geographical rather than the moral meaning associated with the capitalized term “Western Europe.” BOOK REVIEWS 570 statistical analysis, Böröcz shows that the EU and its continued expansion produces a concentration of power and increase in inequality whose proportions exceed the rate expected based just on the number of countries that joined. EU expansion matters for global social justice not only because such a concentration of economic weight creates unfair advantages for non-EU entities but also because the EU exercises a strategic flexibility in acting either as an N=1 or as an N=27. For example, it reaps the benefits of having as many as 27 votes in the UN even though often and increasingly those votes are “harmonized” and thus really represent only a single entity. At the same time, the fact that the EU is not a single state (since it fails the Weberian test of statehood on the criterion of the legitimate exercise of violence) means that the EU escapes the accountability and expenses that accrue to traditional political authorities endowed with executive power, and, more concretely, to the operation and maintenance of the army and the police— institutions of legitimate violence that remain under the purview of NATO and individual members states, respectively. Through these and other analytical moves, the EU emerges as a) the political equivalent of a market monopoly abusing its economic weight; b) as a redistributive form of authority, in Polanyi’s sense, thus creating clientelism rather than the “equality” and “freedom” of market exchange; and c) as a complex and non-transparent assemblage of direct and indirect relations of authority, in which the “dirtiest jobs” are subcontracted to actors far removed from the visible and accountable centers of power. Consequently, this analysis undermines what Böröcz calls the “moral geopolitics” of official EU discourse and of much of the mentioned scholarship that paints the EU as a force of goodness in the world. Let me now make a few comments by way of evaluation. While according to Böröcz the absent executive power creates an advantage for the EU by affording it the kind of nimble, “lean- and-mean” functioning that is a key condition of success in neoliberal conditions, I wonder how he would explain recent attempts to establish an EU Presidency? Why pursue an EU executive power, a unified foreign policy, and an EU Constitution, if there are greater benefits to operate without them? This question already speaks to a larger concern: the conceptual relationship between objective interests and agency. When writing about the strategies of size, the author attributes agency either to west European public authorities (states or state-like entities) or to the bourgeoisie—whether as emergent merchant class or as fully formed ruling class. When describing another strategy to overcome size limitations, that he calls “rate-ist,” he attributes agency to societies as a whole: “societies of western Europe also invented and implemented on a global scale a geopolitical system in which, in addition to unit size, performance measured in rates of accumulation is also a significant determinant of a unit’s welfare and a market of its success” (52). Explaining the emergence and spread of capitalism as the result of geopolitical, rather than domestic/indigenous interests is thoroughly consistent with world-systems theory, but it doesn’t do away with a need to describe the mechanisms of change that transform objective interests (in overcoming size limits) into successful action (colonizing and creating the EU) by a class, a state, or a society. Engaging Timothy Mitchell’s analysis of “the object of development” and the “making of the economy” or Donald MacKenzie’s arguments of the performative aspects of economics might help bridge this gap. Böröcz opens up exciting new directions for research on the European Union and provides novel analytical and quantitative tools for social criticism. As such, the book will be very useful to graduate students and, thanks to the clarity of its arguments and language, even to advanced undergraduates in history and the social sciences. I anticipate that students of state and postsocialism will also be inspired to carry out analogous inquiries into the relationships between 571 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH the former Second and Third World. Overall, this is a must-read for students of globalization, colonialism, and postsocialism, and it will certainly hold great appeal to scholars interested in world-systems theory, economic sociology, postcolonial studies, and comparative-historical methods. Zsuzsa Gille Department of Sociology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gille@illinois.edu Volume17Issue2Reviews