Book Reviews 

John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney. 2013. The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-
Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China. New York: 
Monthly Review Press. 224 pages, ISBN 978-1583673133 Cloth ($24.95). 

The economic crisis of 2007 has been the deepest and most enduring economic downturn of 
the past half-century. The immediate trigger for its onset seems to have been the very 
practices that mainstream economics endorsed, for years, as mechanisms that would ensure a 
further rationalization of the market. The new-fangled instruments like Collateralized Debt 
Obligations, Mortgage-Backed Securities, and the institutions that generated them, were all 
extolled by so many neoliberal economists who argued that they would further deepen 
financial markets and smooth out economic uncertainty. So, when the whole house came 
crashing down, one might have thought that it would trigger some churning within the 
economics profession - a criticism of the free-market fundamentalism of the past decades, 
and the blind faith in models based on fantastic assumptions. What did we see? Other than a 
momentary wringing of the hands by a few, in a very small number of media outlets, no such 
self-criticism occurred. Astoundingly, neoliberal economic theory is no less secure today 
than it was ten years ago. 

Given the blind intransigence of mainstream economics, people looking for sober and 
realistic analyses of the crisis would do well to pick up a copy of John Bellamy Foster and 
Robert McChesney's latest book, The Endless Crisis. Foster and McChesney present one of 
the most arresting accounts of how the global economy descended into collapse in 2007. But 
even more, they embed their story in an alternative economic theory, not just of the recent 
past but of twentieth century capitalism. 

Foster and McChesney have for years been associated with the venerable journal, 
Monthly Review, founded by Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman, and later joined by Harry 
Magdoff Sweezy was one of the shining lights of the economics profession in the 1930s, 
who turned to Marxism after living through the Great Depression; Magdoff was an economist 
working in the New Deal administration. Working closely with Stanford economist Paul 
Baran, they developed a theory of the modern capitalist economy that departed sharply from 
mainstream assumptions. Foster and McChesney draw upon that theory, and argue that this 
crisis was no accident. It was, instead, a direct outgrowth of the systemic weaknesses of 
capitalist growth. 

Two claims about late capitalist development are at the heart of the argument in The 
Endless Crisis. First, and most importantly, the economy is dominated by monopolies and 
oligopolies, so that it systematically departs from the model of competition advertised by 
neoclassical economics. Second, this monopoly capitalism suffers from a chronic problem of 
overcapacity, and hence, a shortage of outlets for investment. The attenuated competitive 
drive, and the slowdown in investment naturally results in a slow choking off in growth rates, 
and hence in a long-term tendency for the economy to stagnate. But as economic growth 
settles into a lower-growth path, and firms cannot sink their funds into new plant and 
equipment, they turn increasingly to financial markets as a place to park their monies. This 
leads, in turn, to the phenomenon known as financialization, which has come to dominate the 
economic landscape over the last quarter century or so. 

Foster and McChesney are building here on arguments by Baran and Sweezy in 
Monopoly Capital. and the path-breaking analysis of Sweezy in the 1980s, which was one of 
the first to point to the emergence of finance as a pillar of investment at the fin de siecle. 
They are able to make a credible case that the mountain of increasingly baroque financial 
instruments, and the mountain of debt that was built up through them, was a direct outgrowth 

Copyright©2014 American Sociological Association, Volume 20, Number 1, Pages 140-157, ISSN 1076-156X 



141 Journal of World-Systems Research 

of the growth model of late-century capitalism, which in turn was only the most recent 
mutation of monopoly capitalism. In this, they provide a very valuable antidote to economic 
orthodoxy. 

Even though the book is ostensibly a collection of previously published essays, they 
hang together very well. It begins with a clear summary of the main argument, so much so 
that readers in a hurry can get a very good idea of the core elements, just from a close reading 
of the Introduction. But there is a very definite benefit to be had from a leisurely perusal of 
the entire book. Perhaps the highlight is Chapter Five where Foster and McChesney offer a 
wonderful examination, and analysis, of the global reserve army of labor - the veritable 
ocean of the unemployed and semi-employed - who have flooded into cities across the world, 
sequestered into sprawling slums, living in unimaginably squalid conditions. Foster and 
McChesney focus on this phenomenon, pointing to it as a searing indictment of capitalism in 
its current guise. They surmise that when we add up the various categories of people who 
belong in some way to this category, it probably amounts to a staggering two and a half 
billion people. And there seems reason to doubt, they argue, that growth rates can ever reach 
the levels needed to absorb this army of labor into gainful employment - if we continue to 
stick to private profits as the motor for investment. 

As a criticism of mainstream economics, The Endless Crisis succeeds along several 
dimensions. But Foster and McChesney also wish to critique recent trends in heterodox 
economics. They note, correctly, that the framework developed at Monthly Review no longer 
has the influence it did in the 1960s and 70s. Much of the criticism directed at it has come 
from within the camp of heterodox and radical economics, particularly the claims for 
capitalism being dominated by monopolies. While the authors present a defense against these 
criticisms, they will probably fail to sway their critics on the Left. The arguments they 
mobilize are too short, the evidence too open to counter-arguments, for it to succeed. This is 
understandable, for the book is not intended to be a full-fledged defense of the argument for 
monopoly. It is more a brief introduction to that view, and a demonstration of how it presents 
a coherent framework for economic analysis. In this, it succeeds admirably. Readers 
wishing to understand the economic rhythms of our times would do well to start with this 
book. 

Vivek Chibber 
Department of Sociology 
New York University 
vivek.chibber@nyu.edu 

Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson. 2011. The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation and 
Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 280 pages, ISBN 978-0226476292 
Paper ($27.00). 

Over the last few years a number of influential books and articles have been published 
focusing on the dramatic and continuous decline, or even obsolescence, of war. Whereas 
previously intellectuals were involved in daydreaming schemes for a world without violence, 
many contemporary academics aim to show that we actually live in the most peaceful era of 
human history. Thus Steven Pinker, John Mueller, John Horgan and Joshua Goldstein, among 
many others, have made a case that all forms of organized violence are in steep decline. They 
point out that civil wars have replaced inter-state wars and that both models of warfare have 
experienced significant decreases, with a substantial drop in human casualties over the last 
four decades. Moreover they argue that there are fewer outbreaks of all types of political 



BookReviews 142 

violence (including revolutions, riots, genocides, terrorism, insurgencies etc.), and that most 
contemporary wars tend to be more localised, smaller and shorter than those fought in 
previous times. These findings are then used to speculate about the exceptional character of 
our era and about the war-free world of the near future. The main problem with this approach 
is that it tends to extrapolate on the basis of, historically speaking, a very short period of time. 
To fully understand the changing dynamics of warfare it is crucial to take a proper longue 
dur<ie view and analyze the relationship of war and society over the millennia, and not what 
Michael Mann properly calls 'the last five minutes of history.' 

Jack Levy and William Thompson's book provides exactly that kind of long-term 
historical analysis which makes refined generalizations on the basis of the most up-to-date 
research on war over the past ten thousand years. For Levy and Thompson the institution of 
war is characterised by periods of expansion and contraction, and what some scholars see as 
the unique and inevitable waning of war today is in fact just another historical episode of 
war's transformation. More specifically, to understand the contemporary context one has to 
take a bird's eye view of the past and explore the origins and different historical trajectories 
of warfare. Levy and Thompson argue that rather than being an innate human propensity, war 
emerges relatively late in human history with some evidence for its widespread presence ten 
thousand years ago and with solid and reliable proof of its global prevalence only for the past 
five thousand years. Furthermore they emphasise that war is historically variable, emerging in 
different places at different times, and has coevolved with many other social processes 
including changes in economy, military and political organisation, technology and the threat 
environment. 

In this evolutionary context of constant waxing and waning, they identify three 
momentous periods when the institution of war experienced revolutionary acceleration: 1. 
The Bronze Age southern Mesopotamia (late fourth and early third millennium BCE) where 
intensified urbanization, greater population density and expansion of agriculture fostered 
proliferation of inter-city wars; 2. The early Iron Age eastern Mediterranean and China (last 
half of the first millennium BCE) when rising economic and political competition between 
states generated incessant wars and corresponding increases in army sizes, weaponry 
development and production and economic growth; and, 3. The early Modern and Industrial 
Age Europe (roughly between 1500-1945) when another wave of state competition 
engendered technological development, protracted warfare, large armies and mass weaponry 
production. In this account, the history of war is understood in evolutionary terms with the 
hunter gatherers experiencing little organised violence and the two agrarian accelerations 
giving rise to protracted and more destructive wars. Ultimately industrial acceleration 
generated strong states able to wage total wars with historically unprecedented killing ratios 
and huge environmental devastation, threatening the very existence of the human species. 
For Levy and Thompson the three periods of warfare acceleration are all characterized by 
attempts to centralize political and military power, and the expansion of war went hand in 
hand with the development of large scale political and military organizations, weapon 
systems and political economies. However this does not mean that the entire world has 
undergone the same type of evolutionary transformation. In fact as much of the world did not 
directly experience industrial acceleration, it essentially remains more agrarian than industrial 
and as such bestowed with quite weak state structures. 

Levy and Thompson advance a complex, synthetic theory which traces the origins of 
war to the early generation of hunting-related military skills, the segmentation processes that 
helped create "identities larger than immediate families" (p. 13), agrarian-induced population 
growth and density, rising environmental constraints, and the expanded division of labour. 
They see all these factors as contributing towards simultaneous coevolution of war, 
political/military organizations, political economy, weaponry and threat environment. While 



143 Journal of World-Systems Research 

recognising the mutual interdependence of these different spheres of social action, they 
nonetheless emphasize the pre-eminence of material causes: "Ultimately, it was the 
interaction between political-economic complexity and scarcity that generated warfare" and 
hence their theory "gives priority to' ... the political-economic change in explaining 
fundamental transitions in behaviour over the very long term" (p. 13-4). 

There is no doubt that this book represents a major contribution to the study of war. 
Despite its brevity this is a dense, complex, and sophisticated analysis that brings together 
Levy and Thompson's decades of research on warfare. The book offers a compelling and 
original account of war transformation over millennia and the authors' theoretical insights are 
very well grounded in interdisciplinary evidence from all over the world. Nevertheless as 
with any attempt at building a bold, grand theory in this almost Promethean fashion, it is 
bound to invite a variety of criticisms. Some might challenge the falsifiability of 
evolutionary arguments about war; others are likely to question the very notion of a unified 
'Western military trajectory,' which, in Levy and Thompson's understanding, encompasses 
geographically and culturally diverse polities such as ancient Sumer, Egypt, Persia, 
Cartagena, and Rome as well as modern-era European and North American states. A 
number of scholars will be surprised to see that Levy and Thompson attempt to revive 
Desmond Morris's highly suspect idea that war originates in hunting. However there are two 
more substantial issues that require critical scrutiny. 

Firstly although Levy and Thompson clearly recognize the significance of different 
causal factors in the origin and transformation of war, they still espouse an overly materialist, 
and more specifically economistic, interpretation of warfare. In this context they explicitly 
downplay the role of ideology and culture, seeing them not as autonomous but as regularly 
embedded in material circumstances (p. 59). While it is certainly true that ideas without 
organizational structure are not particularly effective, one cannot simply dismiss ideological 
power as irrelevant for warfare. On the contrary, to fully understand the origins and dynamics 
of war one has to devote much more attention to the complex interdependence of ideological 
and organizational powers in history. Since human beings are complex creatures, and not 
only homines economici, the strength of particular political, economic and military 
organizations entails also their ability to create, foster and manipulate meanings. In other 
words, material interest, political power and coercive capacity work best when firmly 
grounded in legitimizing ideological doctrines and practices. Although war is first and 
foremost a material event, its dramatic proliferation and acceleration is in part rooted in the 
ability of complex social organizations to mobilize mass support and legitimize their very 
existence. There is no war without ideology. 

Secondly Levy and Thompson's understanding of social processes that accompany 
warfare is utterly underdeveloped. For one thing they operate with essentialist and, what 
Rogers Brubaker calls, groupist epistemology, perceiving ethnic groups and nations as 
unified, coherent and trans-historical entities rather than analyzing them as malleable, 
dynamic and processual categories of practice. Hence we can read how Celts, Etruscans, 
Greeks, French, Germans, etc. wage wars on each other throughout history and how different 
ethnic groups are engaged in incessant competition for power and resources. So instead of 
identifying the specific social organizations and movements that enable such essentialist 
claims (i.e. we fight in the name of our ethnic group) and dissecting such views, the authors 
take those claims for granted. Similarly Levy and Thompson tend to project contemporary 
concepts on to the pre-modern world. Thus the world of unsegmented foragers is 
characterized as consisting of "nuclear families," whereas the first settled populations are 
associated with "the construction of identities larger than immediate families" (p. 13). 
Anthropological archaeology has thought us well that foraging bands were nothing like our 
nuclear families but were instead highly flexible, mobile, fluid, unstable networks of 



BookReviews 144 

individuals characterized by weak ties. It is the development of social organizations that 
made the kinship bonds sturdy. There were no 'identities' in the universe of pre-modern 
humans, as an individual's place in the world was not determined by individual choice but by 
one's social and geographical location. To fully understand these complex processes it is 
necessary not only to take ideological power much more seriously but also to engage with the 
recent research in historical sociology. 

However notwithstanding these criticisms Levy and Thompson have produced an 
excellent book. This book gives us some hope that the debate on the presumed inevitable 
decline of war will move in a new direction: one cannot understand the dynamics of warfare 
without taking a long and hard look into the very distant past. 

Sinisa Malesevic 
School of Sociology 
University College Dublin 
sinisa.malesevic@ucd.ie 
www.ucd.ie/ sociology I staff/profiles/profsinisamalesevic/ 

Ian Richardson, Andrew Kakabadse, and Nada Kakabadse. 2011. Bilderberg People: 
Elite power and consensus in world affairs. New York: Routledge. 256 pages, ISBN 978-
0415576352 Paper ($28.95). 

Since the appearance of Kees van der Pijl's The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class in 1984, 
a burgeoning literature has developed around the question of transnational elite formation, 
with an emphasis on the North Atlantic region. This book makes an important contribution to 
that field. Based on a doctoral dissertation completed in 2009 by Ian Richardson, this 
interview-based study illuminates the cultural, social psychological and in some respects 
political-economic practices through which a certain informal hegemony is constructed in 
and around the annual meetings of the Bilderberg group. 'Bilderberg people' have long been 
believed to exercise behind-the-scenes influence vis-a-vis national states and 
intergovernmental organizations. The private, low-profile character of the annual, by-
invitation-only meeting has nourished conspiracy theories, which the authors disavow in 
favor of a reading that combines structural analysis with social-constructionist interpretations 
based on in-depth interviews with 13 individuals who participated in the conference between 
1991 and 2008. The investigation is squarely positioned within the C. Wight Mills/G. 
William Domhoff tradition of elite studies, emphasizing the formative role that well-
integrated economic and political elites play in a process of "policy-planning". Within this 
process, what is crucial is that the elite constructs a moving consensus on the broad-stroke 
issues of the day, while garnering some measure of legitimacy in the eyes of citizens, who are 
excluded from the higher circles. 

Structural analyses of transnational elite networks have underlined the importance of 
Bilderberg as a central meeting place. What Richardson et al. contribute are thick 
descriptions and accompanying interpretations of how some of the key participants 
understand their contributions and the contributions of transnational elite policy forums to 
global governance in an era of neoliberal hegemony, capitalist globalization and endemic 
crisis and uncertainty. The study is limited of course by its small sample size, and further by 
the sample's homogeneity (all participants were male Europeans, equally divided among 
business, political, and media/academic fields). Still, given the norms of secrecy under which 
the Bilderberg conference takes place, the authors are to be commended for their efforts to go 
beyond secondary sources. 



145 Journal of World-Systems Research 

What the interviews reveal is an elite habitus which, once one gains admission to the 
club, bears a curious resemblance to a Habermasian ideal-speech situation, within which 
pluralistic beliefs, pragmatism and collaboration are valorized and dogmatism is met with the 
ultimate sanction - not being invited back. To be a Bilderberger, one must check one's 
particularistic interests and identities at the door and engage sincerely with one's 
interlocutors. Paradoxes abound in this exclusivist life-world which is at once a very private 
retreat and a bourgeois-cosmopolitan public sphere. One recent participant opines that "it is 
very much in the public interest that powerful people get together in a private environment 
and exchange views" (p. 74). As an open space for the transatlantic elite (if not ruling class) 
Bilderberg intriguingly shares some of the features of the World Social Forum. It eschews 
specific policy outcomes, recommendations and lobbying in favor of open discussion as an 
end in itself. Yet a broad consensus both underlies and issues from these discussions. A 
participant with expertise in European policy matters plainly observed that at Bilderberg 
"you're not going to get the revolutionary communists .... It's not really consensus formation, 
I would say it's consensus reinforcement" (p. 110). And at the center of the consensus, 
beyond debate, is the free market, operating globally. As Viscount Davignon, long a member 
of the 35-member steering committee that forms Bilderberg's inner circle asked, "Who 
questions the free market today? Nobody" (p. 76). In the Bilderberg world view, the 
strengthening of structural economic ties through free trade and investment creates the 
conditions for greater harmony between states, and vice versa. Richardson et al. deftly 
explain how this specific world view and standpoint are, at Bilderberg, naturalized and 
universalized. Not surprisingly, it is only among the few participants from semi-peripheral 
states like Turkey that the agenda and discussion are recognized as slanted towards "the 
western view" (p. 114). The prevailing liberal-internationalist consensus is viewed by most 
attendees as objective, rational and "superior to the more parochial considerations of 
nationalists and protectionists" (p. 207). 

The book is especially in its element when recounting the often subtle, even 
unconscious practices by which power operates in a mobilization of bias. Bilderberg appears 
to be an open space for wide-ranging, pragmatic discussion of global issues. Yet it is 
enclosed within a selection process governed by those at the heart of the network and by the 
explicit rule of non-disclosure as well as codes of elite conduct that function as "prerequisites 
for network inclusion" (p. 212). And although Bilderberg people insist that the group does 
not stand for anything, nor does it wield power, its steering committee and advisory group 
form an old boy's club of permanent members, while its periphery, whose composition turns 
over regularly, is subjected to the informal dynamics of elite social control. Within the 
context of elite collaboration, the desire to be invited back after making a good impression 
carries important implications related to "the unconscious absorption and dissemination of 
dominant forms of consensus" (p. 137). The conferences, in short, have educative value for 
capitalists, politicians, journalists and academics alike. Behind closed doors, among the elect, 
there is openness. Indeed what is prized most at Bilderberg is the ability to think 
independently, differently and abstractly as well as the willingness to detach oneself from the 
demands of "constituents or stakeholders in order to engage in a transcendental form of 
discourse" (p. 120). The mobilization of bias works on attendees dialogically and affectively, 
not didactically. Within the conference one experiences detachment from the quotidian, 
conviviality, and an intimacy that bonds invited participants with established members. After 
the conference, attendees are free to interpret and take whatever they choose back to their 
local contexts and constituencies, without overt interference or manipulation by the 
permanent insiders to the network. "The process is extremely soft, and practically impossible 
to control or measure in any way" (p. 205). In tracing out this process, Richardson et al. 
document a specific modality of hegemony within global civil society. As they conclude, 



BookReviews 146 

"elite policy networks are biased at source and, consciously or otherwise, have the effect of 
amplifying their biases" (p. 213). 

This engaging book helps dispel two myths that have been influential in narratives of 
transnational power: first, that of a shadowy elite, wielding power to satisfy its immediate 
material interests; second, that of a global civil society whose protagonists are irrepressibly 
opening up spaces for popular empowerment and democratic globalization. Bilderberg 
People adds texture and detail to our understanding of how transnational elite networks 
function as aspects of the multifarious governance apparatuses of global capitalism. 
Bilderberg is one of several transnational elite forums that are themselves interconnected, 
forming a network of networks and underwriting the development of common narratives 
within "a transnational policy community comprised of no more than a few hundred 
individuals" (p. 185). While consistent with the notion of a transnational capitalist class, and 
of a wider transnational historical bloc, the book's conclusion also emphasizes the regional 
character of elite transnationalism. In this respect ( and despite the rise of challenger states, 
particularly China), Bilderberg's continuing significance lies in giving "a peculiarly Atlantic 
flavor to emergent global governance systems" (p. 217). 

William K. Carroll 
Department of Sociology 
University of Victoria 
wcarroll@uvic.ca 
http :! /web. uv ic.ca/~wcarroll / 

Salvatore Babones. 2013. Methods for Quantitative Macro-Comparative Research. New 
York: Sage. 288 pages, ISBN 987-1412974950 Paper ($70.00). 

Salvatore Babones, a senior lecture r in soc iolo gy and soc ial poli cy at th e University of 
Sydney, h as produced a book suitable for student s and app lied researchers engaging in 
comparison of structures and processes across nations. Although this book is about 
quantitative macro -compar ative research (QMCR) , the focus lies in the interpretation of 
advanced stat istical methods, and exp lanation s are kept non-t echnical. The goal is to improve 
the meaningfulness of research results by avoiding mistakes and to advance data analysis in 
QMCR, whereby Babones advocates an "empirically ground ed, int erpret ive approach to 
model-building" (p. xii). To get there, he summar izes the main sources for country data, how 
to interpret, transform and organize them in a dataset, and then discusses the numerous 
model s routinely app li ed in soc ial science QMCR . Besides the se very practical insights, the 
reader learns to think more carefully about his or h er own research and the methods applied 
in macro-comparative research. 

Babones starts by setting out the 'one-world problem' that is at the heart of QMCR 
(and world-systems theory). As there are only some 200 countries in the world, we do not 
have the possibility to draw a random sampl e from that population again and again to test 
hypothe ses usin g new data. Furth ermore, it is not even clear to what extent we can tr eat eac h 
country as an indi vidual case, or whether it would be mor e appropriate to think of regions as 
the appropriate unit of analy s is, or even the whole world as one single case. In Babone s' 
v iew , this is why QMCR has to adopt an interpreti ve approach, rather than a positive one, for 
QMCR cannot live up to the positivist standards of falsification and out-of-sample validation. 
In discussing these considerations , the author touches on the philosophical foundations of 
soc ial science analy sis, thereby familiari zing the reader with the speci al nature of QMCR and 
providin g some indication of the challen ges ahead when puttin g our hand s on the data . Thi s is 



147 Journal of World-Systems Research 

a fruitful approach from a didactic point of view, for students are obliged to think about the 
nature of the data and the research questions posed in the social sciences from the very 
beginning, something traditional (econometrics) textbooks on quantitative research often 
leave for the last chapter - or leave out completely. 

The book, which is divided into two parts, first addresses the available data sources 
for QMCR, the operationalization of theoretical concepts, and measurement error in cross-
national data. Built up in this manner, Babones takes the student by the hand and guides her 
through the main steps from a research idea to an empirical project. He starts with a valuable 
overview of the different country data widely used in QMCR and readily available to 
researchers. This will be most helpful for students new to comparative country research. 
Besides pointing out the advantages and caveats of different sources, such as the World 
Bank's World Development Indicators, OECD country data and standardized individual 
survey data, he discusses how the dependence on data collected by international agencies, 
which follow their own institutional requirements, determines the QMCR research agenda. 
Especially cultural data but also political data is either non-existent or very limited in scope 
and country coverage, thereby restricting QMCR in these areas. 

Next, attention is turned to data operationalization, normalization and standardization. 
In a simple manner Babones explains what a well-behaved variable is, not only for 
continuous variables but also for indicator variables typically found in QMCR. 
Standardization by population and national income are illustrated using several practical 
examples. Normalization by log and logarithmic transformations is explained in an intuitive 
way along with the instance of when to use them. However, the problem of how to deal in 
practice with values at the boundaries of zero and one when using logarithms is not 
addressed. Babones devotes a complete section of the third chapter to the operationalization 
of national income, where he not only discusses technicalities like the use of market 
exchange rates versus purchasing power parities (PPP), but also the appropriateness of using 
national income to operationalize many concepts in the social sciences. These are questions 
researchers unfortunately tend to overlook in practice, often using the data prevalent in their 
respective fields. 

Before moving on to the second part of the book dedicated to statistical modeling, 
Babones addresses the different measurement errors inherent in cross-national data. He points 
out that often information is not directly measured, or indicators are not actually measured for 
the particular years that are attached to them, or they are simply measured with error. These 
issues are problematic in QCMR models especially when errors are non-random, for example 
when data quality is systematically lower for poor than for rich countries. The chapter 
discusses the construction of datasets, weighting by population, treatment of points in time or 
periods, how to deal with missing observations or cases, and questions of case selection and 
representativeness of cases. These are all matters that should be addressed before starting 
statistical modeling, yet they are often left out in practice, and Babones does a good job in 
pointing them out. Only when explaining some of the characteristics inherent to country data, 
such as autocorrelation and lagged correlation (p. 100), his explanations get a bit scant, due to 
his effort to keep things simple. 

Babones clarifies the misconception that in the QMCR context, where research 
normally is conducted on the whole population of relevant countries, not on a sample, it 
would be inappropriate to make statistical inferences. The error in regression analysis does 
not only come from sampling, but is also due to measurement error and omitted variables, 
which is why statistical inference in QMCR is just as essential as elsewhere. He lays out the 
implications of these two sources of error in regression models in an intuitive and non-
technical way; however, the reader needs to be familiar with regression analysis and 
statistical inference to understand these concepts and their implications for inference. This is 



BookReviews 148 

why it is somewhat surprising to then find a simplistic explanation of a linear regression 
model, written for readers who are not familiar with simple regression analysis at all. 

After an introductory discussion of the concept of causality in social sciences 
following Hume, different model designs for establishing correlation, precedence and non-
spuriousness are presented. While the Instrumental Variable Approach is well explained in a 
non-formal way, the section on difference models suffers from simplicity, and briefly 
introducing Diff-in-Diff Models at the end of the chapter probably causes more confusion 
than clarity for the inexperienced reader. Time Series, Fixed Effects and Random Effects 
Models are presented as ways to overcome the problems arising in the context of repeated 
measures, where the standard assumptions made with respect to the error structure are 
violated. Babones gives an overview of Fixed and Random Effects Models without any 
technicalities, yet again it remains unclear how well someone not familiar at all with these 
models will understand the idea. What he describes well is the difference between Random 
and Fixed Effects in a QMCR setting. However, his conclusion is that in QMCR none of 
these methods does a satisfactory job, as they require strong assumptions, which in QMCR 
are normally violated. His suggestion for students and practitioners is to use Slope-Slope 
Models when dealing with repeated measures and trended data. This is a simple, yet so far 
not often applied research design, which "may point the way forward" (p.186) in QMCR 
research where data often are not suitable for highly refined repeated measure designs. 

After reviewing the data and the different methods available in QMCR to analyze 
them, the question remains how to deal with the contradictory results found throughout the 
literature. Babones discusses this question comprehensively, mapping out different 
philosophical views on the existence of objective reality(ies) and on the proper way to do 
science, including Popper's empirical positivism (which Babones rejects for QMCR), 
Comteian logical positivism seeking verification, and grounded interpretive research. In 
QMCR, Babones strongly advocates the last of these "based on data description and the 
bottom-up building of theories from data" (p. 200). He further questions the use of ceteris 
paribus interpretations in QMCR, due to the endogeneity of most variables used, which 
makes it impossible to implement the counterfactual model of causality in practice. 

In his conclusion, Babones makes a case for the interpretive research method. He 
argues that space should be made to report all, not only the positive results of our research, 
since all results describe reality by looking at it from different angles. To advance science 
further, more studies of such a comprehensive scope are needed; yet negative results are hard 
to publish and as the academic research industry values the number of publications more than 
their depth, researchers have an incentive to stress the positive results of their work to get 
published. Nevertheless, Babones encourages social science researchers to "smuggle a 
paragraph or two summarizing negative initial results into a paper that publishes at least some 
positive results" (p. 218). I strongly agree with this recommendation. 

This is a well-written book, pointing out to students and researchers alike the 
problems and issues in QMCR. These issues are due to both the practical implementation of 
statistical models and to the logic of academic productivity. The book is structured so as to 
make it easy to identify and understand the author's main messages. It is appealing that a 
book about quantitative research is written in a non-technical manner, illustrating what the 
statistical models are able to explain with the data at hand, and what they cannot. However, 
students should be aware that statistical knowledge is required for a thorough understanding 
of the book. This work aims at a more intelligent implementation and interpretation of 
statistical models in QMCR. Even though quantitative knowledge is indispensable, the 
interpretive approach, coined to country-level research, adds value to the existing literature. 



149 Journal of World-Systems Research 

Isabel Martinez 
Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic Research 
University of St. Gallen 
Isabel .martinez @unis g. ch 
http: //www.siaw.unisg.ch /de/Team /Assistenten 

Kenneth Worthy. 2013. Invisible Nature: Healing the Destructive Divide Between People 
and the Environment. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 396 pages, ISBN 978-
1616147631 Paper ($19.00). 

In Invisible Nature: Healing the Destructive Divide Between People and the Environment, 
Kenneth Worthy seeks to understand the historical roots of, modem iterations, and potential 
solutions to, what he calls our dissociation from nature. He argues that this separation 
mystifies humanity's dependence on the natural world. Material manifestations of our 
detachment from nature take the form of separation of production and consumption , divided 
landscapes (such as border fences), and the rationalization of labor via mechanization. All of 
these conditions elevate certain types of relationships and values that are counterintuitive to a 
healthy connection with nature. Worthy argues that these material disconnects are rooted in a 
particular way of thinking about the world-namely the dualisms found within the Western 
worldview , such as mind /body , culture /nature , master /slave , male /female , etc. These 
dualisms, which th e author claims are inher ent within Western thought, are also imbu ed with 
value judgments that elevate one position over the other. For example, nature and female 
exist on a low er plane than humans and males. Within this book, there exists a tension 
between the material forms and ideationa l roots of separatio n that contribute to the relative 
strength s and weaknesses of I nvisible Nature . On the one hand, there are many fanta stic 
insight s that are invaluable for und erstandin g the relation ship between the global economy 
and our alienation from natur e. On the other hand , though, th e general framing that the root s 
of dissociation are within the realm of Western mechanistic thought is problematic. 

Worthy begins Invisible Nature with an exce llentl y crafted chapter about the 
"Bana lity of Everyday Destruction. " With per spicacit y, he discusses a number of example s of 
contemporary detachments that are woven into our everyday existence. Change s in the 
organization of production and consumption are happ ening on a global-scale and are th e 
result of macro-level proc esses . Economic and ecological consequences, Worthy not es, are 
disproportionately shou ldered by people livin g in poorer areas of the world far away from the 
lifesty le choices and consumptive habits of people in wealthi er countries (p. 36-39). The 
env ironm ental degradation associated with the economic system is outside of many people' s 
imm ediate and direct ex perience. One of th e most compelling way s that Worthy shows the 
dis sociation of humans from nature in our everyday life is through th e growth of electroni cs 
and, subsequently , electronic waste. 

Electronics have become ubiquitous features of daily life for a large portion of the 
American population. In 2010 , approximately forty million laptop s and twenty-three million 
de sktop computer s were sold in the United State s. Furth ermore, American s purchased over 
two hundred million cell phones, thirty million t elevisions, and over tw enty-nin e million fax 
machine s and printer s (p. 39) . Worthy asserts that electronics simultaneou sly organize our 
daily lives and experiences with nature and are shaped by the long commodity chain needed 
to obtain raw material s and cheap labor necessary to produce them at an 'affor dable ' price. In 
doin g so , Worth y hi gh lights the intense material and ener gy commitments necessary t o make 
the se electro nic goods ; how ever, later in the book electronic s are re garded as one of the ways 
to increase our knowl edge of natur e and resolve cert ain dissoc iation s, illumin ating one of the 



BookReviews 150 

problematic aspects of Worthy's larger argument. Given the increasingly impressive 
computing power of smaller and smaller circuitry, more purity is demanded in the 
manufacturing process, leading to the intense use of energy and water, and the utilization of 
toxic chemicals. Throughout his discussion, Worthy examines a number of ways in which 
consumers and even producers are dissociated from the harms associated with electronics 
manufacturing. 

High-tech devices are manufactured in sealed-off rooms in order to avoid 
contamination and the spread of toxic chemicals. Worthy highlights that workers for some 
electronics firms, such as IBM, are at higher risk for various cancers, injuries, and mortalities 
than workers in other industries (p. 43). These facts are kept within the files of companies and 
are rarely reported. As a result, the link between high-tech manufacturing and health risks is 
relatively unknown. While Worthy does not expand on the social organizations, forces, and 
barriers that prevent this news from becoming public knowledge, he does begin to highlight 
dynamics that other environmental sociologists address. By exposing these contested 
illnesses, it is possible to reveal social inequalities, power differentials, economic structures, 
and organizational dynamics that benefit the dominant economic system (Cable, Shriver, and 
Mix 2008). 

In the electronics discussion, Worthy discusses the global dimension and unevenness 
of electronics recycling, or E-waste. He points out that the vast majority of electronics that 
are consumed in the United States are recycled outside of its borders, mostly in Asia (p. 51 ). 
As a result, people who have few opportunities, power, and protections shoulder the burden 
of toxic waste. For people in the United States, E-waste is truly out of sight, out of mind. The 
constitution and organization of space within the global economy, Worthy explains with great 
insight, reflects existing ideas and histories of societies (p. 218). 

How space is organized is important for understanding certain types of dissociations. 
Worthy illuminates that space, in modern, Western societies, reflects the broken, fragmented, 
and compartmentalized ideas of Western thought. Relying heavily on the spatial ideas of 
Henri Lefebvre, Worthy examines how space is organized to alienate people from the land (p. 
221). This diremption of people from the land does not allow for humans to directly 
experience and engage with nature, which, Worthy argues, is one of the foundational and 
most problematic dissociations in the modern world. Compartmentalizing space promotes 
certain values and practices over others. Breaking down the landscape into small, private 
parcels tends to reduce diversity and limits space for community engagement. By separating 
people from each other and nature, we reduce our ability to know and experience one 
another. In a cogent summation, Worthy writes, "material networks connect us like enormous 
tentacles out to the larger world, dispersing our consequences far and wide, mixing them with 
those of many other people. Nature has become an abstraction, and so, too have our social 
and environmental problems" (p. 241 ). 

Although the material relations that manifest dissociations are important, Worthy 
argues that they reflect a hazardous philosophical tradition that is fragmentary and 
mechanistic. Furthermore, he suggests, the roots of Western thought teach us to create 
unnecessary divisions between humans and nature while reducing the importance of the 
natural world to simply meeting human needs. Worthy contrasts this distinctly Western way 
of thinking, which is relatively devoid of context, to that of Eastern thought, which tends to 
takes larger contexts into account. In order to do this, Worthy presents a brief history of 
Western thought from Greek philosophers through Sir Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes and 
more contemporary thinkers. Surprisingly, his explanation of Eastern thought is limited to a 
few pages where he discusses its central tenets. For him, the major differences between the 
two philosophical orientations are that Eastern thought embraces notions of change, 
contradiction, and holism over Western concepts of fixity, noncontradiction, and mutual 



151 Journal of World-Systems Research 

exclusion (p. 141 ). Throughout this discussion, Worthy is critical of Western, mechanistic 
thought-and to an extent, rightfully so-however, he does not extend the same critical lens 
to Eastern thought. His lack of systematic engagement with Eastern thought creates an 
unbalanced analysis which, in some places, falls short of a sophisticated, nuanced discussion 
of philosophical traditions that exacerbate or diminish dissociations. 

Worthy traces the roots of modern dissociations to the development of Greek 
philosophy. He argues that this philosophical tradition is based on a fractured understanding 
of the world that conceived of the world "and living in it as a profoundly disconnected 
place." As a result, Greek philosophers tend to think "of themselves as completely 
independent" of nature (p. 164). In general, Greek philosophy is individualistic; it separates 
people, animals, and nature from one another, stripping away their rich interconnections. 
Worthy's prime targets are Plato and Aristotle. Plato's focus on Forms portrayed the sensual 
world as an illusion of a larger, invisible eternal and true world. Essentially, allegories such 
as Plato's The Cave showed that the natural world, as we perceived it, was not to be trusted 
and, therefore, he placed little value on it. Aristotle, while elevating nature more so than 
Plato, still devalued the importance of the lived experience. 

This discussion, essentially, is a rehashing of the arguments made by philosophers 
such as Val Plumwood and J. Baird Callicott. While it provides an investigation of the roots 
of Western thought, it does not seem to add much to earlier discussions of its development. 
Additionally, by focusing primarily on Plato and Aristotle, Worthy misses out on the 
complex intellectual environment of Greek philosophy. Ionian philosophy is only briefly 
mentioned and the entire contributions of the Atomists and of Epicurus in particular, who did 
not think about the world in the idealist ways of Plato and Aristotle, are missing. 

In his discussion of modern dissociated thought, Worthy examines the mechanism of 
Bacon, Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. He argues that the mechanistic view allows thinkers 
to divide the world more easily by creating different categories that are imbued with power 
differentials. In discussing Bacon, Worthy relies on critiques developed by philosophers such 
as Val Plumwood and Carolyn Merchant who saw Bacon's instrumentalism as a means of 
dominating nature. While there is certainly an element of truth to this, such arguments fail to 
take into account the larger context in which Bacon was writing and, therefore, do not see 
how Bacon's position might not be as incompatible with sustainability as it is made out to be 
(Foster 2000). For Descartes, Worthy focuses on the dualistic style of thinking that has 
become known as Cartesian. He indicates that Descartes divided the world into mechanistic 
parts, eliminating focus on interconnections. Worthy suggests that the intellectual heritage of 
the ancient Greek philosophers and Enlightenment thinkers places less value on direct 
experience of the natural world and moves away from the idea that nature and humans are 
interconnected. Recent scholarship offers a counter position, but it is not engaged in this book 
(see Marx and Engels 1975, vol. l; Clark, Foster, and York 2007). 

In discussing ways to overcome our dissociated thought patterns, Worthy calls for an 
increase in thinking that focuses on interconnections and relationships-more akin to Eastern 
thought. He suggests that holism, as developed by numerous scientists and philosophers 
working in the realm of ecology, most specifically Jan Christian Smuts, offers a useful 
position. Smuts was a statesman who developed a holistic perspective rooted in "the idea of 
interconnection." This conception was to serve as an alternative to mechanistic worldviews. 
Reflecting on this position, Worthy writes, "holism integrates wholes temporally in a flux of 
time, implicitly challenging Aristotle's law of identity, which presupposes a sort of stasis" (p. 
279-280). In this, Worthy uncritically accepts holism as an unproblematic approach towards 
dissolving dissociations in the modern world. He is not aware of the social, racial, and 
historical context that influenced Smuts's philosophy. As a result, Worthy misses Smuts's 
belief that there is a hierarchy of wholes that exists in the natural and social world. Smuts 



BookReviews 152 

engaged in a double transference where he looked to nature to find justification for social and 
racial inequalities in society. Smuts viewed the more advanced wholes as being less 
dependent on their immediate environment. In the South African context, this conception was 
used to excuse white domination of the African population (Foster and Clark 2008). This 
uncritical assessment ofholism presents a serious shortcoming in Worthy's argument that the 
development of Western thought is a primary contributor to modern day dissociation. 

Invisible Nature attempts to understand the contemporary divide between humans and 
the environment through examining its intellectual roots within the history of Western 
philosophy. While it fails to engage in a nuanced discussion of Western and Eastern 
thought-resulting in its problematic emphasis on a non-dialectical holism, particularly that 
of Jan Christian Smuts-it does provide intriguing insights into the nature of modern day 
dissociations. In Invisible Nature, Worthy illuminates the complex set of social relations, 
particularly those associated with the global economy that contribute to and perpetuate 
dissociations between humans and nature. Importantly, Worthy reveals that environmental 
problems are social problems. 

References 

Cable, Sherry, Thomas E. Shriver and Tamara L. Mix. 2008. "Risk Society and Contested 
Illness: The Case of Nuclear Weapons Workers." American Sociological Review 
73(3):380-401. 

Clark, Brett, John Bellamy Foster, and Richard York. 2007. "The Critique of Intelligent 
Design: Epicurus, Marx, Darwin, and Freud and the Materialist Defense of 
Science." Theory and Society 36(6):515-546. 

Foster, John Bellamy. 2000. Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: 
Monthly Review Press. 

Foster, John Bellamy and Brett Clark. 2008. "The Sociology of Ecology: Ecological 
Organicism Versus Ecosystem Ecology in the Social Construction of Ecological 
Science, 1926-1935." Organization and Environment 21(3):311-352. 

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1975. Collected Works, Volume 1. New York: 
International Publishers. 

Daniel Auerbach 
Department of Sociology 
University of Utah 
daniel.auerbach@soc.utah.edu 

Amy Quark, 2013, Global Rivalries: Standards Wars and the Transnational Cotton Trade, 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 282 pages, ISBN 978-0226050676 Paper ($24,50), 

Global Rivalries is an important contribution not only to the growing literature on the role of 
standards in governing global trade, but also to institutional theory and international political 
economy more generally. The book is a pleasure to read: well-written and logically-
organized, it weaves seamlessly different logics of capital accumulation and other macro-
structural trends with the minutiae of negotiations and struggles over quality standards, 
benchmarking and arbitration in transnational cotton trade. 

Combining broad-stroke pictures of the changing shape of the global economy and its 
geopolitical features with rich interview material and archival work, Amy Quark manages to 
bring to life conflicts and shifting alliances around cotton standards in three historical 



153 Journal of World-Systems Research 

periods: (1) an earlier period of internationalization (1870-1922) dominated by British cotton 
merchants and their association (the Liverpool Cotton Association, LCA) in the context of a 
British-led project of economic liberalism; (2) a period of gradual consolidation of U.S. 
interests through the assertion of 'standards power' by the U.S. Department of Agriculture 
(USDA) (1922-2004), in the context of a U.S.-led project of embedded liberalism and 
unequal market liberalization; and (3) the current period (2005-), following the establishment 
of the WTO and the phasing out of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA), which is 
characterized by the ascendancy of China and industry consolidation. 

Quark's main argument is that institutional change can only be properly understood 
by embedding the analysis of changing strategies by key actors (businesses, their 
associations, and state agencies) in a more general understanding of broader political projects. 
By examining conflict, resistance and compromise that flare up around definitions of 
standards, inclusion and exclusion of key parameters, measurement devices, and the design of 
arbitration measures, Quark is able to explain trajectories of institutional change that are 
necessarily incremental and often create hybrid forms of governance. 

For each historical period, Quark provides three useful orientation devices that make 
the book approachable even to non-specialists. First, she organizes the discussion of relevant 
changes in cotton standards along three distinct elements: definition of quality; 
benchmarking; and arbitration of dispute settlements. Although these elements often 
intersect, they have their own individual features that lead to sometime unique outcomes. 
Second, she highlights the changing fault lines of conflict between: state and business; 
different types of cotton industry operators (producers, ginners, merchants, spinners, textile 
manufacturers); operators of different size and economic might; operators based in different 
countries and regions; and national and transnational jurisdictions. Third, she analyzes 
strategic intent and outcomes along three themes: redirection strategies employed by 
emerging rivals that attempt to change standards controlled by dominant players; 
preservation strategies that dominant players roll out to either fight back or partially 
accommodate these attempts; and protection strategies activated by marginalized actors 
trying to improve their situation. The end result of this approach is a sophisticated, fine-
grained analysis that ultimately leads to a solid and convincing argument. 

Theoretically, Quark targets institutionalist approaches to governance, crediting them 
with unfolding uncertainty and hybridity in institutional transformation, but also critiquing 
their lack of explanation of why institutions change (see Chapter 1). To provide an answer to 
this question, she proposes to analyze conflict, changing alliances, and compromises that 
emerge "out of the concrete class relations and material and ideological circumstances 
characterizing the actually-existing capitalist system" (p. 7). While the specific focus on 
institutionalism ensures a tighter theoretical framework, it also misses opportunities of debate 
with other relevant analytical approaches. Strangely for a book dealing with quality 
standards, Quark's coverage of the rich literature on this topic (spanning international 
political economy, economic sociology and economic geography) is tentative and superficial. 
The same can be said about global commodity chain (GCC) analysis, the Regulation School 
and world-systems analysis, which she mentions only in passing. This problem spills into 
methodology as well: Quark claims to use GCC analysis (p. 31) without explaining in much 
detail what it entails. More information about the breakdown of interviews by type of actor 
and location, and about the challenges and limitations of her research approach, would have 
also been helpful. On the other hand, she provides a convincing claim of why we should care 
about standards, and about cotton, in order to understand where the global economy is going 
and "what kind of integration is desired and on whose terms in a period of hegemonic 
struggle" (p. 5). 



BookReviews 154 

Chapter 2 is the best empirical chapter of the book. It deploys the analytical 
framework provided in Chapter 1 to explain struggles over cotton quality standards from the 
1870s to 1920s. Quark chronicles the rise and formalization of private standards within a 
British-led project of economic liberalism. She shows how merchants in Liverpool came to 
claim authority to define cotton quality, benchmarking and dispute settlement. At the same 
time, she highlights how the liberal project also generated new patterns of social conflict that 
came to destabilize the Liverpool standards, leading to redirection strategies by increasingly 
powerful U.S. merchants and protection strategies by impoverished U.S. cotton producers. 
These strategies became embedded in a technocratic state-building project centered around 
the USDA. As Quark underlines in the following chapters as well, one of the main features of 
these conflicts is that emerging rivals face the problem of overcoming institutional 
dependence - they need to rely, at least for a period, on the very same institutions they are 
seeking to replace. Therefore, it was only after World War I that the USDA was able to start 
imposing its standards, and only after having engaged in a "process of bricolage, grafting the 
elements of most concern to Liverpool merchants" (p. 74). This shifted "quality governance 
from private, transnational standards centered in Britain ... to public, transnational standards 
centered in the United States that would ultimately prefigure the goals of embedded 
liberalism" (p. 77). 

Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the various elements that reconfigured cotton quality 
standards in the post-World War II period up through 2005. Chapter 3 examines the "project 
of uneven liberalization" that the U.S. was able to deploy to serve the interests of the U.S. 
cotton industry. This project was implemented through the negotiation of the Multi-Fibre 
Arrangement (MFA) in 1974; the promotion (via the World Bank and the IMF) of structural 
adjustment programs in other cotton- producing countries (especially in Africa); and the 
establishment of a comprehensive system of subsidies at home. Most importantly, Quark 
shows that the introduction by USDA of a new, mechanized measurement system for cotton 
quality marked a significant shift from the existing manual classification system. USDA 
portrayed this new system as "more scientific," reliable, and faster. In reality, it included 
some measurements that were of advantage to U.S. cotton producers, while omitting others 
that would have been of advantage to hand-picked cotton producers, especially in Africa. 
Chapter 4 focuses on the impact that the establishment of the WTO ( and the phasing out of 
the MFA) and China's accession had on reconfiguring conflict and strategic action. It shows 
how China started challenging USDA's quality classification system and how USDA 
responded by challenging the "scientificity" of alternative approaches. 

Chapters 5 and 6 focus on cotton quality struggles in the 2000s. Chapter 5 is strangely 
short and could have been usefully merged into Chapter 6, which contains too much 
empirical detail even for the specialist reader. Quark examines how the Chinese state first 
sought to import the technology and related institutional arrangements that USDA had 
developed, and then challenged USDA on its own turf. Eventually, however, USDA and 
transnational merchants addressed some of the key concerns posed by the Chinese state in an 
attempt to keep control of the cotton classification system and standards, leading to a new 
hybrid institution-"standards with Chinese characteristics." 

In the concluding chapter, Quark provides helpful updates on how the financial crisis 
has led to increased price volatility and to further consolidation in the cotton industry, which 
"sharpened cotton players' focus on . . . [homogeneizing] quality standards and associated 
rules for dispute settlement" (p. 223). She also points out that tensions over US cotton 
subsidies continue to simmer, weakening the legitimacy of the U.S. as leader in the sector. 
Quark concludes that "institutional change in the global capitalist system is inevitably 
incremental in nature due to institutional dependence" (p. 232). This dependence can create 
constraints but also opportunities for emerging rivals - they can effectively redirect existing 



155 Journal of World-Systems Research 

institutions, instead of starting new ones from scratch. Overall, Quark shows that "private 
authority is enmeshed in . . . geopolitical tensions" (p. 242), suggesting that transnational 
firms, rather than becoming 'placeless,' are anchored in state-firm alliances that shift and take 
new forms. In leading the reader through the transitions from a British-led to a U.S.-led 
hegemonic coalition on cotton standards, and from the latter to a new coalition in which 
China and transnational firms figure prominently, Quark allows us to "conceptualize specific 
instances of institutional change as constituted by and constitutive of broader transformations 
in the organization of the global capitalist system" (Ibid.). This is a book worth reading. 

Stefano Ponte 
Department of Business and Politics 
Copenhagen Business School 
sp.dbp@cbs.dk 

Salim Lamrani. 2013. The Economic War Against Cuba. New York: Monthly Review 
Press. 142 pages, ISBN 978-1583673409 Paper ($12.95) 

For more than fifty years the United States has maintained a comprehensive economic 
embargo on Cuba that makes most financial and commercial transactions with that country 
illegal for U.S. citizens and severely restricts U.S.-based travel to the island. In The Economic 
War Against Cuba, Salim Lamrani offers a concise yet informative study of these economic 
sanctions. He sheds light on the historical evolution and the goals of sanctions, their far-
reaching effects, how they contravene international law, and the main reasons why they are 
still in place today. An anachronistic holdover from the Cold War, the U.S. embargo against 
Cuba ( or "blockade" as Havana's authorities and Lamrani call it) remains a key tool of 
American foreign policy nearly a quarter-century after the collapse of the former Soviet 
Union. During this period, the United States normalized its relations with communist 
countries like China and Vietnam but, as Larnrani fairly claims, "Washington has never 
hidden its determination to subvert, by whatever means necessary, the established order in 
Cuba" (pp.14-15). Arguably the most insightful part of his book, Larnrani documents the 
serious harm U.S. embargo restrictions have caused the Cuban people by considerably 
limiting Cuba's ability to import medicines, medical equipment, and technologies essential 
for preventing and treating a wide array of illnesses. In his words, "economic sanctions are, at 
their core, a war against public health" (p.49). 

Lamrani begins his study with a brief examination of the events that led the United 
States to impose an embargo on Cuba. Most economic and political ties between the two 
countries were severed after Fidel Castro's victory over Fulgencio Batista in early 1959. To 
be sure, it was neither Castro's record on human rights nor the lack of democracy in Cuba 
that worried Washington in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. At that time the Cuban 
economy was almost entirely dependent on the U.S. market. Indeed, 65% of Cuba's exports 
went to the United States and 73% of its imports came from that country. Furthermore, the 
island's economy benefited little from U.S. investments since the latter were carried out 
under conditions disproportionably favorable to foreign companies (p.19). There is no doubt 
that Fidel Castro's economic reforms were highly detrimental to American business interests 
in Cuba and reflected a strong rejection of decades of U.S. imperialist schemes and 
paternalism. Between May 1959 and October 1960, the Cuban government expropriated 
seventy thousand acres of property owned by U.S. sugar firms. It also nationalized the assets 
of numerous overseas companies, especially U.S. enterprises, in key sectors such as 
telecommunications, mining, oil, banking, and electricity. Albeit with greater interests at 



BookReviews 156 

stake than other nations ( among them Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland), 
the United States was the only country to refuse the settlement terms that Castro offered, even 
though the legality of the nationalizations was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 
case of Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino in March 1964 (p. 26). Most telling in 
Lamrani's account is the fact that the Eisenhower administration made a formal decision to 
topple the Cuban government in mid-March 1960, one month before the resumption of ties 
between Havana and Moscow (p. 23) and before Fidel Castro declared himself a 'Marxist-
Leninist' and intensified efforts to export Cuba's revolution throughout the Western 
Hemisphere. 

Lamrani's historical review of U.S. policy toward Cuba over the past five decades 
reveals not only that Washington has maintained the structure of economic siege against its 
communist neighbor largely unaltered, but also that U.S. sanctions clearly flout international 
law. The analysis of the embargo from a legal perspective in Lamrani's book is truly 
remarkable. Following the cancellation by the Eisenhower administration of Cuba's portion 
of the annual U.S. sugar import quota in July 1960, economic sanctions were significantly 
expanded. John F. Kennedy imposed a total embargo on U.S. trade with Cuba in February 
1962 that included a ban on drugs and food products in violation of international 
humanitarian law. Most importantly, sanctions took an extraterritorial turn also in conflict 
with international legal norms and the national laws of the affected countries (p. 63). Among 
various measures, the United States vowed to deny financial aid to every nation providing 
assistance to Cuba, successfully pressured all members of the Organization of American 
States (with the sole exception of Mexico) to break diplomatic and trade relations with 
Havana, and in 1966, during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, outlawed food shipments 
to any country that sold strategic or non-strategic goods to Cuba. Timid U.S. efforts toward a 
rapprochement with the Castro government in the second half of the 1970s during the Carter 
administration were replaced by a more bellicose policy with the rise of Ronald Reagan to the 
presidency in 1981. Committed to revive the goal of rolling back communism, Reagan 
reestablished the Cuba travel ban despite the fact that U.S. courts had upheld the 
constitutional right to travel, included Cuba on the list of terrorist nations, and ruled that 
foreign companies could export products to the island only if they contained less than 10% of 
U.S. components. 

The U.S. rationale for its embargo on Cuba has changed markedly over time. Initially 
justified as retaliation for nationalization, the embargo quickly became a punitive measure for 
Cuba's international behavior. Well into the 1970s, the United States conditioned the 
reestablishment of normal relations with Cuba on the end of Fidel Castro's efforts to spread 
the revolution in Latin America and the termination of his alliance with the Soviet Union. 
Then, in the second half of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the removal of Cuban troops 
from Africa constituted the main U.S. demand. It was only after the demise of the Soviet 
Union, as Lamrani notes, that the issue of human rights took center stage (p. 31 ). Allegedly to 
hasten democratic changes in Cuba and certainly galvanized by the dire situation of the 
Cuban economy, Washington further strengthened its sanctions against Havana in the post-
Cold War era. The Torricelli Act of 1992 forbade foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms to trade 
with Cuba and prohibited any vessel from entering a U.S. port for a period of 180 days if that 
vessel had hauled freight to or from a Cuban port. Flouting both U.S. and international law, 
the extraterritorial Helms-Burton Act of 1996 (which codified all existing embargo 
restrictions) allows U.S. citizens whose property was expropriated without compensation by 
the Cuban government, including those who were not citizens when the expropriation 
occurred, to sue in U.S. courts foreign firms or individuals that 'traffic' in that property. 
During his second term in office, Bill Clinton used his limited licensing power to ease some 
embargo rules; in 2000, he also signed historic legislation that allowed U.S. companies to sell 



157 Journal of World-Systems Research 

medicines and food products to Cuba. Since then, U.S. sanctions were tightened by George 
W. Bush and relaxed again by Barack Obama, who, in 2009, lifted all restrictions on Cuban 
Americans in terms of remittances and travel to the island. Lamrani concludes his study by 
pointing out that the international community widely opposes the U.S. embargo on Cuba and 
that even the American public is largely in favor of lifting these failed unilateral sanctions 
and normalizing relations with Cuba (p. 71). 

Two minor problems in Lamrani's book should be emphasized. First, notably absent 
is a discussion of the role of domestic politics in U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba. Between 
1992 and 2004, all major U.S. moves to intensify or relax economic sanctions against Havana 
occurred in presidential election years, when partisan bidding for Cuban-American votes (and 
money) in the politically pivotal state of Florida takes center stage. Even Barack Obama, who 
had called three years earlier for the end of the embargo, said on the campaign trail in 2007 
that he supported the preservation of such tool as an important inducement for change. While 
Lamrani is technically correct in writing that "the most severe recrudescences of these 
economic sanctions - except for the Bush administration - were generally the responsibility 
of Democratic administrations" (p. 45), the reality is that domestic politics influenced the 
U.S. approach toward Cuba in the post-Cold War era regardless of who was in White House. 
Second, Lamrani fails to recognize that despite a growing a consensus against the embargo 
within the American society there is currently no major domestic constituency (including the 
business community) in the United States willing to push hard for the resumption of normal 
relations with Cuba. It must be noted that Obama's decision to remove limitations on Cuban 
American travel and money transfers to Cuba, albeit well-intentioned, greatly reduced the 
potential role of the increasingly diverse Cuban American community as an agent of 
change in U.S.-Cuba relations. Recent Cuban migrants to the United States are more inclined 
to favor engagement with Cuba than older exiles. But the former can now more easily sustain 
strong family linkages with relatives on the island while the latter can still rally behind the 
embargo. 

Notwithstanding these problems, Lamrani's book is an invaluable addition to the 
literature on the Cuban embargo. It is a superbly written and cogently argued study that 
enhances our understanding of U.S. economic sanctions with respect to Cuba, exposes the ill-
conceived nature of Washington's plans and the questionable legal aspects of its measures, 
and provides substantial evidence of the dramatic impact that sanctions have had on the well-
being of the Cuban people. 

Paolo Spadoni 
Department of Political Science 
Georgia Regents University - Augusta 
pspadoni@gru.edu