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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 53, 2004

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Éditeur(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History

ISSN 0700-3862 (imprimé) 1911-4842 (numérique)

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Citer cet article (2004). Reviews / Comptes Rendus. Labour/Le Travailleur, 53, 257–356.

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Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, Labour Before the Law: The Regulation of Workers ' Col­ lective Action in Canada, 1900-1948, by Todd McCallulm / 257 Peter S. Mclnnis, Harnessing Labour Confrontation: Shaping the Postwar Settlement in Canada, 1943-1950, by Tom Langford / 259 Laura C. Johnson, The Co-Workplace: Teleworking in the Neighbourhood, by Leah F. Vosko/261 Ian MacLachlan, Kill and Chill: Restructuring Canada's Beef Commodity Chain, by Cynthia Loch-Drake / 264 John Douglas Belshaw, Colonization and Community: The Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the British Columbian Working Class, by Robert Mcintosh / 266 Anthony Winson and Belinda Leach, Contingent Work, Disrupted Lives: Labour and Community in the New Rural Economy, by Alicja Muszynski / 268 Margaret C. Kechnie, Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1919, by Louise Carbert /271 Mathieu Denis, Jacques-Victor Morin, Syndicaliste et éducateur populaire, by Peter BischofT/ 273 Indhu Rajagopal, Hidden Academics: Contract Faculty in Canadian Universities, by Peter Krats / 275 Tom Mcintosh, éd., Federalism, Democracy, and Labour Market Policy in Canada, by Tod D. Rutherford / 277 Vanda R. Rideout, Continentalizing Canadian Telecommunications: The Politics of Regulatory Reform, by Sid Shniad / 279 Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance and Reserves in British Columbia, by John Lutz / 281 Donna Vogel, Challenging Politics: COPE, Electoral Politics and Social Movements, by Warren Magnusson /284 Kathryn Carter, éd.. The Small Details of Life: 20 Diaries by Women in Canada, 1830-1996, by Gail G. Campbell / 286 Roberta Hamilton, Sef//wgf/ie agenda: Jean Royce and the Shaping ofQueen's Univer­ sity, by Mary Kinnear / 288 Stephen Clarkson, Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the Cana­ dian State, by Steve Patten / 290 David Gagan and Rosemary Gagan, For Patients of Moderate Means: A Social History of the Voluntary Public General Hospital in Canada, 1890-1950, by James M. Wishart / 292 Justine Brown, Hollywood Utopia, by Robert Sklar / 294 Suzanne Morton, At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969, by Christina Burr / 296 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship, by Kate Masur / 298 Timothy J. Minchin, The Color of Work: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945-1980, by Bruce Nelson / 301 Michelle Brattain, The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Mod­ ern South, by Joseph A. McCartin / 303 Glenna Matthews, Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century, by Donica Belisle / 306 Charles D. Thompson Jr. and Melinda F. Wiggins, eds., The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers' Lives, Labor, and Advocacy, by Cecilia Danysk / 308 Charles P. Korr, The End of Baseball as We Knew It. The Players Union, 1960-1981, by Colin Howell/311 Katherine Frank, G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire, by Michael Uebel/312 Daniel W. Lehman, John Reed and the Writing of Revolution, by James Gilbert /314 David W. Noble, Death of a Nation: American Culture and the EndofExceptionalism, by Robert T. Schultz /316 Henry Veltmeyer and Anthony O'Malley, eds., Transcending Neoliberalism: Commu­ nity-Based Development in Latin America, by Fred Judson /319 Darlene J. Sadlier, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, by Rosana Barbosa Nunes / 321 Haia Shpayer-Makov, The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829-1914, by Greg Marquis / 323 Archie Potts, Zilliacus: A Life for Peace and Socialism, by Keith Laybourn / 325 Ray Hemmings, Liberty or Death: Early Struggles for Parliamentary Democracy, by Nicholas Rogers / 327 Alain Corbin, The Life of an Unknown: The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in 19th-century France, by Iorwerth Prothero / 329 Laura-Lee Downs, Children in the Promised Land: Working-Class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880-1960, by Roxanne Panchasi /331 George Cheney, Values at Work: Emmployee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragon, by George Melnyk / 333 Michael Melancon and Alice K. Pate, eds., New Labor History: Worker Identity and Experience in Russia, 1840-1918, by Sarah Badcock / 336 Stephen Crowley and David Ost, eds.. Workers After Workers States: Labor and Poli­ tics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe, by Michael Haynes / 338 Sous la direction de Gérard Duménil et Dominique Lévy, Crises et renouveau du capitalisme. Le 20e siècle en perspective, par Christian Deblock / 340 Daniel Jacques, La révolution technique: essai sur le devoir d'humanité, par Jean-François Auger / 343 Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870, by David Camfield / 345 Ronaldo Munck, Globalization and Labour: the new "Great Transformation, " by Altha J. Cravey / 347 David McNally, Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism, by El­ len Ramsay / 349 Barbara Hobson, Jane Lewis, and Birte Siim, eds., Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics, by Nancy Janovicek /351 Andy Merrifield, Dialectical Urbanism: Social Struggles in the Capitalist City, by An­ drew Herod /354 REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS

Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, Labour Be­ beginnings of the 20th century witnessed fore the Law: The Regulation of Workers ' an aggressive campaign on the part of em­ Collective Action in Canada, 1900-1948 ployers to use a combination of injunc­ (Don Mills: Oxford University Press 2001 ) tions and criminal law provisions to limit the effectiveness of strikes and sympathy LABOUR BEFORE THE LAW deserves a actions such as boycotts. British legal wide and appreciative readership. Fudge precedents, including the 1901 Taff Vale and Tucker offer compelling arguments decision, enhanced the effectiveness of about the increasing importance of the civil actions against unions. At the same law to the lives and movements of work­ time, the right of freedom of association ers and about the importance of labour re­ was not enforced, undermining the notion lations generally to the contours of state of state neutrality in labour relations. formation in the first half of the 20th cen­ Tucker and Fudge highlight the complex­ tury. Labour Before the Lay» nicely blends ities of governmental intervention during published accounts, unpublished gradu­ this period: responsible for the applica­ ate manuscripts, and an impressive tion and enforcement of criminal law, mu­ amount of original research. It ranges nicipal and provincial officials played a across the touchstones of labour history central role in the early years of the twen­ — yes, yet another account of the Indus­ tieth century, while federal officials fo­ trial Disputes Investigation Act (IDIA) — cused on creating bureaucratic mecha­ to lesser-known but highly revealing nisms of conciliation. Because of this di­ events such as the 1937-38 strike of lime vision, unionists were only too aware that miners in Blubber Bay, British Columbia, legislative victories, scant as they were, all the while maintaining an admirable could be easily eroded by magistrates consistency in its analysis. Fudge and with liberal definitions of watching and Tucker also convincingly demonstrate the besetting. descriptive power of a Marxist approach Labour Before the Law argues that the to the law itself. regime of industrial legality that emerged In the tradition of the famous Industry in the years before World War I combined and Humanity by Mackenzie King, La­ accommodation and coercion, not as al­ bour Before the Law is a long book, and ternatives but as mutually reinforcing will no doubt remind some readers of why strategies. The passage of the IDIA meant their choice to avoid law school was the that mandatory conciliation would be­ correct one. But if the detail is sometimes come the preferred mechanism of the fed­ too densely packed, the story is nonethe­ eral Department of Labour. At the same less thoughtprovoking. Fudge and Tucker time, the IDIA served to increase the begin their account with the rise of what power of the judiciary. Injunctions con­ they call "industrial voluntarism." The tinued to be a resort of employers looking to restrain union power, while magis­ Table of Contents for Reviews, pp. 5-6. trates frequently found themselves called 258 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

upon to chair IDIA conciliation boards. instruments of collective bargaining de­ Fudge and Tucker provide a succinct sur­ vised by workers. Mountie batons would vey of the workings of the IDIA, drawing never be used in board rooms. upon the work of Bob Russell and Jeremy Tucker and Fudge also deftly explore Webber. In particular, they highlight the provincial attempts to devise new re­ regional and occupational variations in gimes of industrial legality in the second the outcomes of the usage of the Act. Most half of the 1930s. These, however, fell far important, they suggest that the IDIA met short of a Canadian version of the Ameri­ with "pragmatic acquiescence" rather can Wagner Act. The most valuable con­ than "normative acceptance." Unions tribution of Labour Before the Law is continued to condemn the use of strike­ Chapter Ten, which covers the period breakers and restrictions on the right to from 1943 to 1948. This chapter should picket, all the while recognizing that oc­ find its way onto many course syllabi casional victories could be won through alongside time-honoured accounts of the federal intervention. Japanese internment and "wartime jitters The chapter in Labour Before the Law over femininity." These years witnessed a on World War I is the book's weakest. It is broad-based leftist renaissance, with or­ short, and limited to events and policies ganizing victories for the Congress of In­ that have been explored in detail by schol­ dustrial Organizations and electoral ars such as Greg Kealey. At the same time, breakthroughs for the Co-operative Com­ however. Fudge and Tucker should be monwealth Federation. In such a context, commended for their valuable rethinking policies like PC 1003, which compelled of the traditional chronology of labour bargaining, conciliation and arbitration, history. Chapter Five covers the period served to channel the labour movement from 1919 to 1925, challenging the tradi­ into a new set of administrative proce­ tional periodization that frames the labour dures. True, these procedures owed much revolt of 1919 in terms of wartime strife. to previous legislation, such as the IDIA's Obviously, there is a great deal of wisdom tripartite board and the ban on strikes and in the traditional periodization: Or- lockouts during the investigation period. der-in-Council government was one of Taken together, however, the strands of the central grievances of the leftist radi­ PC 1003 demonstrated federal willing­ cals who briefly held sway over the labour ness to trade the recognition of "responsi­ movement in western Canada. As well, a ble" unions for industrial peace, although host of other issues, from concerns with this new-found public legitimacy did not the rising cost of living to the resurgence radically alter workplace relations. of nativism, were inseparable from their Labour Before the Law persuasively wartime manifestations. Nonetheless, La­ argues for the continuing importance of bour Before the Law persuasively groups local state officials to the regime of indus­ the battle for Winnipeg in 1919 with the trial legality promoted by the federal gov­ fight for Cape Breton's coal mines in the ernment. It also serves as a reminder not early 1920s. Both dramatized the expan­ just that law in a liberal-capitalist society sion of state coercion and the indelible was shaped by class relations, but that its markings of class relations on the charac­ class-based dimensions were of funda­ ter of industrial legality. Fudge and mental importance. Just as important, this Tucker highlight the central contradiction book is predicated upon conflict: there is of this period: while demonstrating its not one hint of a Whiggish notion of linear willingness to use coercion against progress in the account offered by Fudge so-called "irresponsible" unions, the fed­ and Tucker. This speaks, I think, to the eral government shied away from using context in which the book was written. If similar measures against "irresponsible" nothing else, the past ten years have re­ employers who refused to recognize the vealed the very real limitations of indus- REVIEWS 259 trial legality as a political strategy. Rights book lacks the theoretical and analytical like collective bargaining, once thought coherence that would allow it to be more to have been won once and for all, have than the sum of its parts. now been demonstrated to be all too fleet­ The debate on reconstruction con­ ing, subject to the political designs of cerned both the shape of industrial legal­ neo-conservatives who would rewrite the ity and the nature of the nascent Canadian basic protections afforded by the Rand de­ welfare state. (84) Peter Mclnnis notes cision. that in 1945-46 the Canadian Congress of Most important, Labour Before the Labour (CCL) "viewed itself as the advo­ Law lives up to the promise of its title. cate not just of its own membership but of More than twenty years ago, Ian McKay the Canadian working class generally'' used the pages of this journal to lament the (58) and presented a broad corporatist vi­ seemingly never-ending expansion of the sion of the future that contrasted with the "Mackenzie King industry." While strong preference of most private compa­ clearly immersed in the minutiae of nies for a return to unfettered free enter­ King's legacy, Fudge and Tucker have, I prise. For a brief time, the result of this de­ believe, produced an account that rightly bate was quite uncertain; indeed, just puts workers front and centre. prior to the onset of the Cold War, "citi­ zens appeared ready to opt for a much Todd McCallum more corporatist society over the return to Dalhousie University business as usual." (64) Mclnnis argues that this "fervent debate... had the poten­ tial to secure an expansive welfare state." Peter S. Mclnnis, Harnessing Labour (47) He portrays the struggle in Confrontation: Shaping the Postwar Set­ Gramscian terms, pitting one ideological tlement in Canada, 1943-1950 (Toronto: bloc that "defended the hegemony of free University of Toronto Press 2002) enterprise" against a second ideological bloc that "proposed a counter-hegemony THIS BOOK PROVIDES information and of tripartite corporatism." (184) insight into the development of new con­ Harnessing Labour Confrontation sensual relations involving unions, em­ makes it clear that individual corpora­ ployers, and governments at the end of tions and business lobby groups took the World War II in Canada. At the outset of debate about reconstruction very seri­ Harnessing Labour Confrontation, Peter ously. In my own research on the Mclnnis argues that there "is a notable Crowsnest Pass, I have found some highly gap in our knowledge [of] the transition ideological advocacy advertisements that from all-out war to peacetime reconver­ ran in local papers just after World War II. sion" and promises "an investigation that An example is the quarter-page ad for the provides a more nuanced account of the Imperial Bank of Canada that appeared in immediate postwar years." (6-7) He de­ the Fernie Free Press on 5 September livers on this promise, particularly in 1946. Titled, "Canada's Way of Life," the Chapter Two, dealing with the broad soci­ ad noted the bank's services to retailers etal debate on reconstruction at war's end, and listed the bank's branches in Natal and in Chapter Four on the place of La­ and Fernie, BC. Its primary message, bour-Management Production Commit­ however, was that the needs of Canadian tees (LMPCs) in "consolidat[ing] a new consumers would be met by retail stores era of routine state intervention under the that epitomize the qualities defining the rubric of cooperation." (114) Harnessing Canadian way of life: "individual initia­ Labour Confrontation therefore has some tive ... free enterprise ... personal respon­ very strong components. Unfortunately, sibility ... the spirit of competition in ser­ as I explain at the end of this review, the vice rendered the public." Harnessing La- 260 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

bour Confrontation allows us to put such a further research is needed to establish the local advertisement in a national political ways that LMPCs articulated with union context. Mclnnis presents four advocacy organizing, shopfloor militancy, and ads purchased by four other major corpo­ strikes in particular workplaces. Such re­ rations that ran in the Financial Post in search would also shed light on the valid­ 1944 and 1945. (73-76) He argues, "That ity of Mclnnis's provocative assertion Canada's largest banks and leading cor­ that the willingness of Canadian unions to porations found it necessary to present participate in LMPCs and other coopera­ such images is a telling comment on the tive ventures with management "spurred perceived threat to the status quo." (72) the development of a 'split-level' econ­ The fact that this type of advocacy was ex­ omy that favoured the strongest trade un­ tended to the Crowsnest Pass, a bastion of ions." (144) support for industrial unions and socialist Harnessing Labour Confrontation in­ politics, confirms Mclnnis's conclusion. cludes reproductions of six intriguing The corporate offensive against un­ government posters produced in 1946 on ions and social welfare programs in­ the theme of "Produce for Prosperity." cluded the establishment of private insti­ (130-143) These posters implored Cana­ tutes that scrutinized and countered union dian workers to cooperate and increase legislative proposals. These institutes production in order to create more jobs promoted provincial jurisdiction over la­ and secure a higher standard of living. In bour legislation (78) and undoubtedly addition, the posters presented gendered lobbied very hard prior to the fed­ representations of labour, as did govern­ eral-provincial conference of labour min­ ment literature on LMPCs. Peter isters in October 1946 that discussed the Mclnnis's analysis of the gendered as­ possibility of a uniform labour code. De­ sumptions in these materials is another re­ spite considerable provincial support for minder of the speed with which, at the end a uniform code, the federal minister, of World War II, "gender politics were ... Humphrey Mitchell, actively discouraged returned to their prewar formation." (137) such a step. (159) Big Business proved to I have three main criticisms of this be a very active and successful lobby book, despite my appreciation of its many group in the mid-1940s, just as it has been accomplishments. Firstly, at a number of in recent decades. different points in the text the author la­ Peter Mclnnis portrays "Teamwork ments how the new system of industrial for Harmony," his chapter on Labour- legality "stifled spontaneous worker Management Production Committees self-activity." (191; SA 3 and 125) But he (LMPCs), as a corrective to existing post­ fails to theoretically or empirically link war labour histories that have concen­ this issue to the main theme in his narra­ trated on "overt conflict and intra-union tive, namely the hegemonic struggle be­ political rivalry." (115) The chapter is tween the supporters of free enterprise on quite successful because it presents rich the one hand and the supporters of tripar­ empirical materials within a strong theo­ tite corporatism on the other. Secondly, retical framework and posits interesting Mclnnis condemns choosing sides when conclusions. One of those conclusions is producing historical narratives (8) but that "LMPCs served to entrench a func­ then proceeds to choose sides at different tioning model of industrial democracy on points in his text (for example, the CCF's a micro-level, which in turn helped build "narrow class-collaborationist policies" confidence in the larger macro-level strat­ make a cameo appearance on page 69). egies under development for postwar in­ My problem is less with his choices than dustrial legality." (124) While this judg­ with his claim that history can eschew ment is supported by the sketchy docu­ choices. To my mind the best narratives mentary evidence available to the author, both focus on "complexities and ambigu- REVIEWS 261

ities" (8) and are explicit about political In the Co-Workplace, Johnson brings sympathies. together historical and contemporary as­ Finally, Harnessing Labour Confron­ sessments of the benefits and hazards of tation lacks the coherence that would home-based work for women, building on have been provided by a consistent theo­ her own previous scholarship on indus­ retical discussion or a unifying narrative trial homework and telework in the public of key events. From chapter to chapter, sector, and an inquiry into alternative vi­ and even within chapters, the book reads sions of work arrangements. The goal of like a collection of brief empirical studies the book is to explore possibilities for rather than an integrated study of the pe­ maximizing the benefits of working riod. These studies are effectively col­ off-site and minimizing problems con­ lected and organized by Peter Mclnnis, ventionally associated with home-based but they do not fit together as part of a big­ work by developing the concept of the ger picture. Perhaps this is less the fault of co-workplace. The co-workplace is a the author and more an indication of the neighbourhood-based facility combining difficulty of researching and writing a private workspaces and shared facilities critical labour history "on the 'national' and services. (4) Johnson's futuristic vi­ level of civil society."(9) sion involves a hybrid facility designed to enable the self-employed and waged Tom Langford workers to work independently yet break University of Calgary their isolation by connecting with their colleagues and clients through access to sophisticated telecommunications tech­ Laura C. Johnson, The Co-Workplace: nologies and the creation of new social Teleworking in the Neighbourhood. spaces of place-based interaction. Varia­ (Vancouver: University of British Co­ tions on this type of facility already exist lumbia Press 2003) in the telecommunications-equipped sat­ ellite centres operated by large and small PAID WORK is becoming increasingly firms, occupation- or industry-specific person- rather than place-based. centres, such as shared workspaces run as "Officelessness" is a defining feature of cooperatives for writers, artists, and de­ our times. These are the leading premises signers, and collective workspaces in of Laura C. Johnson's new book The co-housing developments. Johnson ar­ Co-Workplace: Teleworking in the gues that the co-workplace offers an anti­ Neighbourhood (2003). By focusing on dote to the challenges posed by a variety place of work and "new" work arrange­ of types of home-based work, from ments, The Co-Workplace makes a timely telework to industrial homework. She contribution to evolving understandings contends further that this type of facility of the changing nature of work. There is is well-suited to women home-based growing attention to the spread of forms workers given its capacity to reduce the of paid work deviating from the post-war stresses associated with co-location or the standard employment relationship, such attempt to engage in paid work and as self-employment, part-time work, tem­ care-giving in the same physical space porary work, and other dimensions of pre­ (i.e., the home). Johnson employs a carious employment in the Canadian multi-disciplinary and multi-method ap­ labour market. Yet there is a dearth of so­ proach to advance her arguments and to cial science scholarship on the types of develop the co-workplace concept. She work arrangements facilitated by techno­ relies primarily on secondary research logical change, the continuities and into the history of home-based work, changes shaping so-called new work ar­ open-ended interviewing, focus group re­ rangements, and their gendered character. search, and a survey of potential planning 262 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

initiatives. The most original chapters in work interruptions. Ultimately, Chapter the book explore workers' experiences of three finds many problems with the home offsite work, their ideal work arrange­ office due to the poor conditions of ments, and their evaluation of a set of six home-based work, teleworkers' experi­ alternative scenarios. Chapter two pro­ ence of the "electronic leash," and the po­ vides a brief history of homework in the rous boundary between work and home. west. Drawing on the work of Eileen Yet Johnson is careful to emphasize the Boris, Johnson casts the evolution of benefits of off-site work. Chapter four, in homework as a story of women's waged turn, explores these benefits, examining work being pushed in and out of the home, two forms of telecommunications- demonstrating that the process of indus­ equipped offices (i.e., the single-em­ trialization is not unidirectional but varies ployer satellite and the multi-employer by geography and industry. At a concep­ telecentre) and the organization of three tual level, the chapter establishes that the facilities (Canada's first suburban sexual division of labour and the idea of telecentre operated by BC Tel, a small "home" as the domain of women are basic telecentre established by a Canadian firm to the institution of home-based work. Es­ in a mid-sized urban centre, and a subur­ tablishing this foundation enables John­ ban telecentre in Washington DC devel­ son to highlight continuities characteriz­ oped by the US federal government). ing patterns of home-based work of ear- These case studies represent three distinct lier generations and patterns of the models. The BC Tel telecentre offers a current era, such as homeworkers' eco­ permanent workplace for workers from nomic dependence and inferior wages and different divisions of a single company. working conditions. It also allows her to The Washington-based telecentre repre­ reveal changes brought by new communi­ sents a more transitory workplace since it cations technologies. On the subject of was designed to offer workstations on an change, Johnson differentiates her ac­ as-needed basis to home- or office-based count by arguing that telework has pro­ workers. Finally, the telecentre in a duced a more diverse group of mid-sized Canadian city offers a hybrid homeworkers and, consequently, the mo­ model, providing some permanent tivations for homework have changed. workstations and some workstations that Among some professionals and some may be booked as needed. Based on inter­ workers using information technologies views with workers and managers, Chap­ in their daily activities (a group distinct ter four ends by affirming the telecentre from knowledge-workers), the pursuit of as a desirable facility since it "introduces home-based or off-site work is driven less a physical boundary between work and by employer demand and more by per­ home ... that helps some teleworkers to sonal preferences, including "balancing keep work from overtaking their lives." family responsibilities with paid work," (36) an aversion to long daily commutes, and the desire for local community. Johnson advocates developing co-workplaces sensitive to the desire of Complementing the dual emphasis on many (particularly women) workers to continuity and change in Chapter 2, Chap­ work near home but not in it. While Chap­ ter 3 examines the pros and cons of ter four issues the challenge of "reinvent­ home-based work. This chapter evaluates ing the office," (48) Chapters five two competing claims: Haddon's claim through seven explore the merits and that social factors counter any flexibility shortcomings of shared workspaces to de­ offered by telework, versus Duxbury et velop the concept of the co-workplace al 's contention that home-based work not and to test six scenarios with workers. By only offers workers flexibility in schedul­ examining various experiments with ing, but is less stressful due to the limited shared workspaces, Chapter five ad- REVIEWS 263

dresses the question: what do the resource in the concluding chapter, are laudable. centre for interior designers, the telecom My concern, however, is that despite the satellite, and the office wing of a housing inclusion of a focus group of industrial cooperative have in common? Chapter six garment workers, the model co-workplace shifts to test the co-workplace concept facility is driven by the norm of the pro­ based on focus group research conducted fessional or semi-professional worker. in conjunction with Women Plan To­ The occupational heterogeneity envi­ ronto, a non-profit community organiza­ sioned in this futuristic facility is innova­ tion. The main finding here is that occupa­ tive. Indeed, the concept holds promise tional and class dynamics, as well as ge­ for professional workers seeking inde­ ography, affect home-based workers' pendence, autonomy, and geographic views on the co-workplace concept; for proximity to home. Yet professional example, more than any other category of workers are just one segment of people workers, home-based garment workers engaged in these "new" work arrange­ are concerned with health and safety. Yet ments. Others are occupied by workers in there is general agreement among work­ precarious employment, whose employ­ ers on the merits of the co-workplace con­ ers may use work arrangements as dis­ cept. The workers surveyed find the loca­ tancing tools or vehicles for abdicating tion of the co-workplace in the neighbour­ responsibilities related to the provision of hood and the presence of shared facilities extended benefits, statutory benefits, and (i.e, daycares, meeting rooms, and collec­ occupational health and safety, as well as tive kitchens) appealing. Not surpris­ for downloading the costs of die equip­ ingly, given the six scenarios in Chapter ment and supplies onto workers. seven, including a large renovated house, The Co-Workplace: Teleworking in an industrial loft, a high-rise residential the Neighbourhood addresses important apartment, a community centre, a heritage and timely questions related to shifting bank and retail space, the focus groups spaces and geographies of work - it is re­ deemed the residential high-rise, fol­ quired reading for scholars studying the lowed by a converted heritage building in changing nature of work. However, for a location well-serviced by public transit, the co-workplace concept to truly reflect to be the most promising spaces for Johnson's desire for humanizing co-workplaces. The scenarios presented home-based work, a broader array of pol­ in Chapter seven are nevertheless ficti­ icy issues related to labour and social reg­ tious. Hence, the Co-Workplace: ulation require more focused attention. Teleworking in the Neighbourhood ends This call is particularly pressing given the with an assessment of obstacles to making two basic features of this institution that the co-workplace concept viable. For Johnson so skillfully raises at the outset of Johnson, the advantages of the the book - the sex/gender division of la­ co-workplace include its potential to sep­ bour and the idea of "the home" as the arate work and living spaces, create col­ providence of women. lective workspaces outside the single firm, encourage community economic de­ Leah Vosko velopment, reduce automobile use, and, York University above all, accommodate workers with family responsibilities. Yet zoning rules based on the separation of the private and public spheres, home and workplace, rep­ resent a profound barrier. Johnson's optimistic vision and con­ cern to humanize home-based work, raised throughout the book but especially 264 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Ian MacLachlan, Kill and Chill: Restruc­ persists despite sweeping structural turing Canada's Beef Commodity Chain changes in every link from farm to firm to (Toronto: University of Toronto Press final demand by consumers."(10) The 2001) study provides substantial analysis of the complex structural factors that reshaped THE ECONOMIC, political, and environ­ the beef-cattle industry during the 20th mental importance of Canada's beef in­ century. His approach, however, is one in dustry has become more apparent which the perspective and agency of following the discovery in 2003 of a sin­ workers is overshadowed by a celebration gle case of'Mad Cow' disease in Alberta, of shrewd owner-managers and their and contamination of Walkerton, On­ clever accounting practices. MacLachlan tario's municipal water supply in 2000, in also remains studiously noncommittal part because of its proximity to a cow-calf about government actions and policies, operation. Ian MacLachlan's study, Kill even though, as the author demonstrates, and Chill: Restructuring Canada's Beef they have always played a key role in the Commodity Chain, provides a industry's development. As a labour much-needed historical context for un­ study there is scope to deepen analysis of derstanding these events, particularly in the largely post-union era of the 1990s by light of a remarkable "metamorphosis" in linking reduced wages and declining key elements of the beef commodity chain working conditions more directly to eth­ since the late 1980s. nic, racial, and gender hierarchies. Simi­ MacLachlan, a University of larly, although MacLachlan demonstrates Lethbridge geographer, had good reason dramatic regional shifts and the growing to examine changes in the beef commod­ influence of the United States, he does not ity chain "from the calf to the hamburger" speculate about the larger significance of at this juncture. Lethbridge is located at these developments. the centre of "feedlot alley," a region of Kill and Chill is organized in three sec­ Alberta where intensive cattle-feeding on tions around the production, processing, factory-like farms with as many as 50,000 and marketing of beef. Some chapters are head of cattle has created cow pile prob­ more technical and will appeal to the spe­ lems of truly extraordinary proportions. cialist, but others, particularly his engag­ More troubling than the "apocryphal" ing analysis of "postmodern" marketing June wedding marred by the stench of strategies and fickle consumer attitudes, fresh manure, are the municipal will be of interest to anyone who shops for boil-water orders that "have become an meat. accustomed part of domestic life" in the The book's strength lies in the au­ region's communities.(86) The emer­ thor's careful elaboration of structural gence of massive meatpacking plants em­ factors that dramatically changed links in ploying thousands of unskilled workers in the commodity chain from the calf farm to the region because of its notoriously the supermarket meat counter, drawing anti-labour political climate is equally on a wide range of primary and secondary disturbing. sources. MacLachlan identifies regula­ This thorough and well-researched tory and technological changes as key study provides an effective overview of factors behind three "revolutions" in the Canada's beef industry from its origins in beef commodity chain during the 20th the late 19th century to the year 2000. century. Between 1890 and World War II MacLachlan's spatial and predominantly industrialization of the meatpacking pro­ economic framework of analysis demon­ cess through a division of labour and reli­ strates convincingly "the close relation­ ance on the railway fostered development ship between consumers, processors, and of an agroindustrial complex of fully inte­ producers in a long commodity chain that grated meatpackers and associated busi- REVIEWS 265

nesses at the heart of major urban centres sell finished slaughter cattle to a dozen or across the country. The federal Crow so meat-packing plants."(5) Yet, in his Rate, which discouraged the breeding and discussion of public allegations of profi­ feeding of livestock in the west, and the teering during World War II, MacLachlan difficulty of transporting dressed beef, defends meatpackers, emphasizing the in­ made central Canada the heartland for dustry's low margins. On the environ­ beef manufacturing jobs. In the postwar mental front MacLachlan describes the era efficient refrigerated truck cattle lin­ actions of an Alberta feedlot operator ers replaced railways and public stock­ who dumped 30 million litres of cattle pen yards, fostering direct-to-packer sales run-off in a tributary of the Bow River in and the construction of beef plants in 1997 as an "appalling" example of "negli­ smaller centres in the west, to bring the gence and irresponsibility." But he offers processing stage closer to the raw mate­ no comment to place in perspective a gov­ rial. ernment fine of $120,000 that resulted MacLachlan demonstrates that several from charges under both the provincial factors combined to rapidly transform the environmental and federal Fisheries Acts. feeding and meatpacking elements of the Similarly, MacLachlan does not la­ beef commodity chain in the 1990s: grad­ ment organized labour's loss of power in ual elimination of the Crow Rate since the meatpacking industry since the 1983, new irrigation technologies that ex­ mid-1980s. Using a Commons-style panded Alberta's capacity for cattle feed approach, MacLachlan's examination of crops and feedlots, the development of labour centres on the rise and decline of "boxed hermetically sealed beef," and the remarkably successful United Pack­ new American ownership. Centred in On­ inghouse Workers of America (UPWA) tario throughout much of the 20th cen­ and its successors during a forty-year hia­ tury, feeding and meatpacking shifted tus from the mid-1940s to the mid-1980s, west, particularly to Alberta. Between in an otherwise dismal century for 1976 and 2000 the proportion of Canada's meatpacking workers. MacLachlan at­ slaughter cattle herd located in Ontario tributes the union's strength to a labour dropped from 40.5 per cent to 18.4 per shortage during World War II, favourable cent, while the proportion in Alberta rose labour legislation, and postwar economic from 29 per cent to nearly 66 per cent. In­ growth, rather than emphasizing the dustry ownership, which had remained politiciz- ation, determination, and indus­ firmly in Canadian hands for nearly a cen­ try of workers as a result of their Depres­ tury, shifted to two large US-based con­ sion and wartime experiences. In the post­ cerns, IBP and Cargill Foods, "each oper­ war period workers forged an effective ating a single continental-scale beef plant system of pattern bargaining with the ma­ in the heart of Alberta's feedlot coun­ jor companies, who cooperated in part be­ try. "(329) It is no coincidence that these cause this form of bargaining took wages changes were accompanied by the col­ out of competition within the labour mar­ lapse of a once-strong and remarkably ket. By the 1980s UPWA's successors had successful union movement in the achieved skill-based wage rates that were meatpacking industry. virtually uniform across the industry and the country, which "made semiskilled MacLachlan takes an ambivalent meat-packing workers among the highest stance toward power dynamics within the paid manual workers in Canada in the cattle-beef industry. Using the term 1950s, 1960s and 1970s."(235) "oligopsony," he describes the beef com­ modity chain as among the most MacLachlan is critical of industry "imbalanced" of Canada's agroindustries leader Canada Packers for creating "in­ because "15,000 calf producers sell stability" by allowing wages to rise so feeder cattle to 400 feeders, who in turn high at mid-century. Yet he does not ac- 266 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

knowledge that low wages, high turnover, began to mine coal on Vancouver Island and high injury rates in post-1980s in the mid-19th century, after Aboriginals packinghouses have created a new kind of brought local deposits to its attention. For instability. Large-scale beef plants were the rest of the century, the industry was purposely located in small-town Alberta dominated by two companies, the Van­ where "a rural populist political culture... couver Coal Mining and Land Company, has never been supportive of the labour successor in 1862 to the HBC at Nanaimo; movement."(246) The author's celebra­ and the Dunsmuir family, which devel­ tion of greater ethnic diversity, a more oped collieries from 1869 at Wellington, youthful workforce, and a larger propor­ Extension, and Ladysmith; and further tion of women in the massive north at Union. The industry declined af­ meatpacking plants of the 1990s ignores ter World War I, although mining contin­ the correlation of this "progress" with a ued for another generation. substantial drop in wages and less worker Vancouver Island miners were note­ control over conditions of work. Re­ worthy for their heterogeneity: Aborigi­ peated attempts to unionize workers have nal inhabitants, Chinese and Japanese im­ failed. It also ignores the high social wel­ migrants, and newcomers of European fare costs and social tensions generated background all laboured at the mines. by large-scale immigration to small towns Among these groups, the ethnic British like Brooks, Alberta. formed a plurality. And it is on them that MacLachlan has provided a compre­ Belshaw focuses. hensive historical survey of the Colonization and Community is seri­ beef-cattle industry in Canada that raises ous and well-crafted, reflecting fifteen important questions about its social and years of reflection on the University of environmental costs, the political econ­ London dissertation on which it is based. omy of the west, particularly Alberta, and It fills a gap in the historical literature, the influence of the United States. It is which has paid scant attention to work­ also an engaging read for anyone who ing-class emigrants from the United buys and eats meat. For all of these rea­ Kingdom. And it is the unique scholarly sons Kill and Chill is a valuable addition monograph on Vancouver Island miners, to the I iterature on an industry that contin­ although it complements some fine popu­ ues to hold an important place in the na­ lar works — history written without foot­ tional historical narrative. notes — notably Lynn Bowen's two books. Cynthia Loch-Drake Belshaw also makes a strong contribu­ York University tion in his use of demographic data. He challenges the conventional view of this frontier mining community's overwhelm­ John Douglas Belshaw, Colonization and ing maleness and youth, offering evi­ Community: The Vancouver Island Coal­ dence of family migration to the region, a field and the Making of the British Colum­ significant female population, and high bian Working Class (Montréal and numbers of children. He also demon­ Kingston: McGill-Queen's University strates high levels of geographic mobility Press 2002) and occupational change among the min­ ing population. COAL WAS THE BASIC FUEL of the 19th The book is organized thematically: century. Highly prized as a source of chapters are devoted in turn to the devel­ power for factories, railways, and ocean opment of the Vancouver Island coal in­ steamers, it was also used to heat dwell­ dustry; the situation of potential emi­ ings, generate electricity, and provide grants and actual immigrants; the work of light. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) the mine and the standard of living it REVIEWS 267

yielded; class- and race-based conflicts in 1890, and 1901. In contrast to flourishing these coalfields; residential mobility and mutual aid societies, trade unions failed occupational change; and finally to the to gain a purchase in the Vancouver Is­ culture of the coalfields. land coalfields — in part because of the Considerable immigration was needed implacable hostility of the Dunsmuirs — to meet the strong demand for labour at until the Miners and Mine Labourers Pro­ the large mines in operation on Vancou­ tective Association emerged at Nanaimo ver Island by the 1870s. But as a site for in the 1890s. British emigrants, it had considerable Miners moved. They migrated from drawbacks: its extreme distance, the cost place to place. And, at least on Vancouver and discomfort of the voyage, the diffi­ Island apparently, they moved out of the culty in returning home. Success in luring mine to other occupations in large num­ immigrants was limited, as was the ability bers. Using a variety of evidence, to retain them once they arrived. Belshaw Belshaw concludes that roughly half of argues that British miners arrived with the mining workforce persisted over any high expectations — which were disap­ given decade. He claims additionally that pointed. They responded both with work­ "perhaps all [miners] — sought out alter­ place protests and by leaving the mines. natives to work in the pits" ( 160); and that Viewing high nominal wages as a ma­ one-half of Vancouver Island miners jor lure, Belshaw seeks to compare the moved themselves or their sons out of the standard of living of the immigrant Brit­ mine to operate farms and other small ish miners with their experience in the businesses like boardinghouses and United Kingdom. Because white boys shops, as well as to other occupations. were not nearly as widely employed in (165) Vancouver Island mines as they were in Belshaw's treatment of the miners' the United Kingdom (or in contemporary culture aims to demonstrate a colonial Nova Scotia for that matter), immigration "recalibration" of British practises. The failed to produce expected improvements rough and the respectable co-existed in in living standards because mining fami­ the coalfields: drink and gambling (pros­ lies had recourse to relatively few second­ titution is unmentioned) co-existed with ary wage-earners and faced a higher cost churches, friendly societies, the Me­ of living on Vancouver Island. chanics' Literary Institute, amateur thea­ Unique in late 19th century Canada tre, brass bands, schools, and the rituals of was the significant Asian presence in funerals. The displacement of cricket by British Columbia. Familiar with contem­ baseball is emblematic of how the British porary racist discourse, white miners lev­ became British Columbian. ied a series of allegations against their The book has weaknesses. Miners' Chinese counterparts: they depressed identity was tied closely to their mastery wages, took jobs from boys, discouraged of a craft, their control over entry to that European immigration, caused accidents craft, and the customs associated with in the mine, and acted as strikebreakers. their experience of the mine. All were European miners pushed for Chinese ex­ based on their experience underground, clusion — with mixed success. Between which Belshaw makes modest efforts to 1850 and 1914 there were over a dozen explain. Another aspect of his treatment significant strikes, reflecting a pattern of of miners' identity is problematic. The militancy in the coalfields in defence of claim that on Vancouver Island men's white miners' skills and their authority in identity as miners was "fluid and tempo­ the workplace. These strikes were fre­ rary" (174) undercuts the book's quently marked by violence: the over-arching argument about the making Dunsmuirs called in the militia to aid of the British Columbian working class. evictions from company housing in 1877, How can a working class be made if the 268 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

mine was a way station on the route to a Anthony Winson and Belinda Leach, farm or small business? Is Belshaw not Contingent Work, Disrupted Lives: La­ developing a position here on how the bour and Community in the New Rural working class of British Columbia failed Economy (Toronto: University of To­ to make itself? ronto Press 2002) I am also uneasy with the overtones of the condescension of posterity heard in CANADIAN POLITICAL economy, as a vi­ anachronistic observations of "squander­ brant academic and scholarly tradition, ing one's youth" (17S) as pit boys; and in has receded from view over the course of the description of "grimish clusters of the past few decades. The neo-liberal humble homes." (213) government agenda with its attendant he­ While the book is solidly researched, it gemonic discourse stemming from the reflects limited use of the extensive coal Mulroney era accompanied by the signing mining literature from Nova Scotia. of NAFTA and the heralding of Canada's While Belshaw rejects arguments about place as a prominent player in the drive to "western exceptionalism" in Canadian globalization among the G7 represents working-class history, he fails to develop one set of factors that might explain why the comparisons that would allow for an Canadian social scientists do not take authoritative treatment of the question. more seriously Canadian political econ­ The British-dominated Vancouver Island omy work and research. Another equally coalfields resembled in many ways con­ compelling set of factors is related to the temporary Nova Scotian coalfields. increased pressure on universities to play He also overlooks key 19th century a more prominent role in research that trade journals like the Canadian Mining will benefit government and corpora­ Review, the British Columbia Mining Re­ tions, accompanied by targeted funding cord, or the Transactions of the Canadian for such research and pressure to seek pri­ Society of Civil Engineers. The age of the vate corporate sponsors rather than con­ original research is reflected in the failure tinued reliance on public coffers for to use the 1901 manuscript census, acces­ university funding in general as opposed sible to researchers since 1993. Only the to specific programs and components. 1881 manuscript census appears to have So it came as a pleasant surprise to been exploited in depth. And there is a read this book and to find that the authors tendency to slip into examples from the situate themselves squarely within the United Kingdom when suitable evidence tradition. Chapter Two of the book, "The from Vancouver Island is wanting. Global and the Local: Understanding Despite these reservations, this book Globalization through Community Re­ warrants a place in the libraries of histori­ search," offers a thoughtful overview of ans of the working class. Canadian political economy, situating it within the larger critical tradition of the Robert Mcintosh effects of capitalism on labour forces, Library and Archives of Canada specifically those residing in rural towns and connected to manufacturing. While the authors remind us that global capital­ ist expansion is not new, their work does focus on what they refer to as the "new economy." Winson and Leach inform us: "Community is the crucible in which globalization finally works itself out. It is where the rubber hits the road." (43) The aim of the book is to explore the effects of the "new economy" of the 1990s REVIEWS 269

on the manufacturing labour forces in five ers, many of them able to secure Ontario rural communities. In 1992 the early-retirement packages rather than be­ authors began research in three communi­ ing laid off, but on young workers. The ties in Wellington County. At that time practice of young men working summers they interviewed workers laid off from while in school and then taking their the Canada Packers plant in Elora. Over places in the mill, often without graduat­ the course of the next two years they inter­ ing from high school, has virtually ended. viewed workers laid off in the towns of The main argument is that in all five Harriston (which lost its Canada Packers communities, secure well-paid jobs with dairy plant) and Mount Forest (the West- benefits have been lost and workers inghouse plant closed at about the same forced to take on "contingent work" in­ time). Chapter Three contains historical volving casual part-time or on call work at sketches of all five communities and re­ low pay and with few benefits. The au­ cords the histories of the chief employers thors outline the process in each of the in those towns. For example, they charac­ communities. While the types of industry terize the firm of Bissell which operated differ, the nature of the jobs has become in Elora from 1901 to 19S4 as "emblem­ increasingly the same, as companies atic of small town manufacturing," exem­ strive to lower costs by eliminating highly plifying the values of "industrial capital­ paid work involving acknowledged skills ism" practised by a class of indigenous by either shutting plants down (and mov­ manufacturers. (53-54) ing to lower-cost areas in the United In 1997 the authors expanded their States and Mexico) or by introducing studies to include the town of Amprior, technology that replaces one type of located in the Ottawa Valley, a new worker by another with an overall down­ "high-tech Greenfield site" due to its sizing in the total labour force employed proximity to "Silicon Valley" north. Be­ (especially in the case of Iroquois Falls). ginning as a single-industry town reliant While class and class consciousness on the huge McLaughlin sawmill and the are highlighted by the authors (the con­ timber trade of the late 19th century, the servative, often anti-union mentality, of town's labour force became reliant on em­ rural small-town southwestern Ontario is ployment in low-technology manufactur­ compared to the more militant commu­ ing (requiring relatively unskilled labour) nity of Iroquois Falls), Winson and Leach after the mill shut down in 1929. The com­ also note the importance of at least two munity passed through two subsequent other structural factors: age and gender. phases: manufacturing pipes for the nu­ Many women were able to find relatively clear power industry and the more recent well-paying stable jobs in the manufac­ location of a Boeing plant and two firms turing plants in southern Ontario, allow­ that manufacture hardware and software ing them a measure of independence that for electronic communications. The fifth many lamented when they lost their jobs community included in the study is the after having worked for several decades. single-industry town of Iroquois Falls in Because of their familial responsibilities, northeastern Ontario, the town with the including the care of children and/or el­ most consistent history in terms of reli­ derly parents and relatives, women were ance on a single industry; namely, pulp not as mobile as many of the men. Thus, and paper. Of the five communities, it is for women, contingent labour meant find­ also the one with the most militant union­ ing part-time minimum-wage work in the ized workers, and the authors argue that service sector (like fast food restaurants this factor has been important in preserv­ and grocery stores) or looking after the ing well-paid unionized jobs. However, children of other working parents (quali­ new technology and mergers have taken fying them as "small businesses" despite their toll, not so much on the older work­ the low financial rewards). When a major- 270 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ity of a town's labour force found itself relatives. The effect on the next genera­ unemployed, even this latter option was tion of workers is potentially devastating. no longer available. Men's search for em­ Jobs held in the community and passed ployment meant that they were often down through the generations have been forced to take two or three part-time jobs lost and young people are forced to relo­ that required travelling large distances. cate or to take low-paying temporary Even with several jobs, men reported work if they wish to remain in the commu­ themselves unable to earn the level of nity. This trend has been strengthened in wages they had previously enjoyed dur­ Iroquois Falls because government jobs ing their manufacturing careers. Along­ have also been lost as the public sector side lost jobs was the lost community of goes through retrenchment and a new work enjoyed when people had long histo­ round of centralization. ries with a particular employer or in a par­ Winson and Leach demonstrate ticular plant. In Arnprior, the location of through their five case studies the impera­ high-tech firms also introduced a tive of keeping the political economy ap­ "casual izat ion" of labour since many jobs proach visible and vital, especially during were contractual. In addition, workers this current period of globalization, peri­ commuted from outside to work in odic and cyclical recessions that lead to Arnprior and thus the expansion of jobs corporate mergers or relocations to with the location of new businesses did cheaper sites outside Canada, alongside a not necessarily mean work for the local la­ neo-liberal government ideology that jus­ bour force. In addition to statistical infor­ tifies such moves as somehow good for mation, the authors also provide informa­ the Canadian economy. This book ex­ tion gleaned from interviews with work­ plores the effects of these decisions on ers in all five communites. workers living in rural towns in Ontario. The factor of age has been mentioned The authors explore the effects on rural in regards to Iroquois Falls. Overall, communities and the impact on rural man­ many of those who were laid off in all of ufacturing populations in particular. This the communities studied had worked for is perhaps where the biggest weakness of several decades and were looking forward the work becomes apparent. While it is to retirement. It is difficult for these work­ clear that rural communities are threat­ ers, many without advanced education or ened by the loss of their major employers, skills outside of their particular work en­ there is not enough in the study that makes vironments, to find other jobs. Health these towns, and the people who live and problems also become more pronounced work in them, come alive on the page. for older workers and financial problems There are not many quotes from the inter­ are exacerbated with the loss of health views and those that appear are sketchy. benefits at work. Commuting long dis­ The reader does not get a sense of "com­ tances to work several jobs, including dif­ munity," reading this book. The Canadian ferent shifts, adds to stress levels and political economy literature contains health risks. Women reported stress good examples of case studies that bring caused by becoming reliant on their hus­ community case studies to life. The au­ bands for financial support, many for the thors had a rich source of interview data first times in their lives, in addition to re­ that they could have integrated into the duced self-esteem resulting from loss of a study in a far more interesting way. As it job and a steady income, as well as a hus­ stands there is much repetition rather than band who may also be laid off and sitting an analysis that focuses on the communi­ at home feeling worthless. Both men and ties themselves and on the people who women reported not even having enough live in them as unique individuals coping money to go and have a cup of coffee with with forces largely outside their control. friends or for gas to go visit friends and A final point has to do with the putting to- REVIEWS 271

gether of the volume by the press. Missing Canadian institution: one of those odd is the appendix and the majority of the beasts that are neither state fish nor endnotes in Chapter Three. civil-society fowl, but somehow seem to In conclusion, a critical approach that thrive in our particular climate. The On­ questions the received wisdom of corpo­ tario story brought to life by Kechnie was rations and governments on the benefits to a large extent mirrored throughout of globalization for the Canadian econ­ Canada as each province adopted the omy is sorely needed. We also need more same basic model and joined a national research on communities that tracks the federation. From Canada, the WI spread effects of these changes on working peo­ throughout the English-speaking world as ple and their families, in a manner that the Associated Country Women of the makes the communities come alive for the World, an organization whose global reader. reach and influence earned it observer sta­ tus at the League of Nations and thence Alicja Muszynski the United Nations. Throughout this past University of Waterloo century, the WI has been an important fix­ ture of rural communities in Canada and beyond. The formative events in Ontario Margaret C. Kechnie, Organizing Rural provide a basis for understanding the or­ Women: The Federated Women's Insti­ ganization's proliferation. tutes of Ontario, 1897-1919 (Montreal & The WI had its origins in the agrar­ Kingston: McGill-Queen's University ian-reform, country-life movement based Press 2003) at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. As a product of the late 19th cen­ MARGARET KECHNIE provides an his­ tury Progressive era, its goals were to torical account of the early years of the modernize agricultural production, to en­ Ontario Women's Institutes (WI), during courage young people to stay on the farm, which Wl grew from a single autonomous and thus to revitalize the countryside as local women's organization in Stoney the repository of democratic values. The Creek, to a province-wide network spon­ Department of Agriculture established sored by the provincial government. In the Farmers' Institutes in 1885 as the offi­ contrast to previous accounts of the WI cial vehicle for agrarian reform, but farm­ from "the bottom up" — i.e. from the per­ ers were suspicious of the agricultural ex­ spective of its grassroots membership - perts from Guelph. In an effort to bolster Kechnie recounts the WI's early years the Farmers' Institutes, the Department of from "the top down" — from the perspec­ Agriculture established a separate, paral­ tive of the men who were provincial gov­ lel women's organization. While the men ernment officials in charge of the new were instructed in agricultural tech­ organization and the female cadre of in­ niques, the women would receive instruc­ structors who were hired to disseminate tion in the new domestic science. the latest research in domestic science. The book ends in 1919 when the 900 sepa­ Kechnie debunks once and for all the rate branches with 30,000 members were WI's own account of its origins, according consolidated into the Federated Women's to which Adelaide Hoodless, the wife of a Institutes of Ontario, a province-wide or­ wealthy Hamilton industrialist, estab­ ganization which henceforth elected its lished the WI after her infant son died own officers, albeit under the supervision from drinking unpasteurized milk, and of a male superintendent employed by the made domestic science her life's work. Ontario Department of Agriculture. With what appears to be a touch of personal animus, Kechnie argues that As a state-sponsored, non-government Hoodless was marginal to the WI, and a organization, the WI is a quintessentially figure of ridicule among professional do- 272 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

mestic scientists employed at the Ontario ing a larger subsidy ($25 per branch in Agricultural College who designed the WI 1904, compared to $10 for the WI). An­ curriculum. More significantly, Kechnie other factor was the organization's offi­ demonstrates that the problem of contam­ cial non-partisan and non-sectarian man­ inated milk was in fact largely neglected date. While limited in practice by the Or­ by the WI, as women were rarely in­ ange-tinted universe in which the WI structed in basic home-pasteurization operated at that time, this mandate at least techniques. In part due to this neglect, enabled women of different Protestant de­ farm children continued to suffer from nominations to associate with each other. high rates of tuberculosis long after urban While the above factors aided the WI's children began drinking pasteurized milk proliferation, they were probably not suf­ from commercial creameries. While the ficient. One of the more interesting con­ creameries worked with government to tributions of the book is Kechnie's find­ solve the contamination problem quietly, ing that the organization took off when it they were anxious that lingering problems spread beyond the farm, and small-town not be publicized. Kechnie argues that women became active in the organization government sponsorship prevented the and gravitated to administrative and exec­ WI from tackling this and other contro­ utive positions. Under the influence of versial issues of agricultural industrial­ wives of small-town merchants and other ization. More typically, its version of do­ notables, the WI moved beyond its origi­ mestic science consisted of instructions nal narrow and uninspiring focus, and for a layette of Egyptian cotton (from took on broader issues relating to the Mrs. Adam Beck of Ontario Hydro fame) overall quality of rural life, such as rais­ or for "spotless napery" in the care of in­ ing funds for hospitals and libraries, and valids, with virtually no recognition of the campaigning for immunization. Thus the fact that few rural households had running WI became a fixture of small-town life, water, electricity, or cash for household more along the lines of the Masons or the amenities. Elks than an agricultural-producers orga­ The WI's original domestic-science nization, in spite of the intentions of the mission failed to elicit much enthusiasm Department of Agriculture. Kechnie con­ among farm women, who, for the most cludes that "for women in rural communi­ part, were more engaged in the fundamen­ ties ... to have been empowered and polit­ tal business of generating income to un­ icized by the process was something no derwrite the farm operation. Yet the orga­ one expected.... If anyone "stole" the WI nization expanded, for a variety of rea­ from the Department of Agriculture, it sons examined by Kechnie. State was the women of rural Ontario." sponsorship played an important role. ( 139-40) Such are the paradoxes of a gov­ Compared to other women's organiza­ ernment-sponsored, non-government or­ tions, the WI was exceptionally privileged ganization. in having patrons at the center of provin­ This book fills an important gap in the cial and national politics, access to tour­ small, steadily-growing literature on the ing professionals from Guelph, and direct Women's Institutes. Kechnie has con­ subsidies. Stable operational funding al­ structed an engaged narrative based on lowed the WI to be exceptionally accessi­ the abundant archives of the Ontario Ag­ ble; for example, the annual membership ricultural College, the Ontario Depart­ fee in 1911 was twenty-five cents, com­ ment of Agriculture, the Federated pared to one dollar for the Women's Women's Institutes of Ontario, and per­ Christian Temperance Union. But state sonal papers. Since she is the only scholar sponsorship alone cannot explain the WI's to have examined many of these archives expansion; after all, the Farmers' Insti­ in such exhaustive detail (and may be the tutes failed to proliferate despite receiv­ only person ever to do so) it seems a REVIEWS 273

shame that the book does not include ta­ passaient à l'enregistrement. Si la bles and charts to flesh out some of the spontanéité du dialogue pouvait en être quantitatively based generalizations. affectée, la clarté des propos au contraire Nevertheless, she brings an appropriate en bénéficiait grandement. À l'été 2001, sense of balance to the analysis. The im­ la version manuscrite des entretiens a été pact of Kechnie's findings goes beyond révisée par Morin pour préciser des dates the period covered, and beyond the WI it­ et vérifier certaines données. Finalement, self. The organization's early transforma­ le texte a été enrichi grâce au contenu des tion described in her book clearly helped archives de l'interviewé, déposées à to reinforce a growing culture of commu­ l'UQAM. nity service that subsequently contributed Le résultat est un livre très intéressant so much social capital to rural Ontario suivant les principales étapes de la vie over the past century. de Jacques-Victor Morin. Dans la première partie intitulée « La jeunesse, la Louise Carbert guerre et les débuts à la Co-operative Dalhousie University Commonwealth Federation », Morin parle d'abord de ses antécédents familiaux puisque ces derniers ont Mathieu Denis, Jacques-Victor Morin. influencé grandement sa personnalité et Syndicaliste et éducateur populaire ses choix de carrière. Né en 1921, il (Montréal: VLB éditeur 2003) grandit dans l'une de ces familles bourgeoises canadiennes-françaises actives L'OUVRAGE DE MATHIEU DENIS arrive sur la scène québécoise et ouvertes sur le à point. La dernière décennie avait vu la monde. Son grand-père Victor Morin, un parution d'études portant sur notaire et un intellectuel engagé, très actif les« grands » du syndicalisme québécois dans les sociétés nationales, fut l'auteur tels que Madeleine Parent, Michel du fameux« code Morin ». L'influence Chart ran d et Louis Laberge. L'attention de sa tante, Renée Morin, est est cette fois-ci tournée vers un cadre particulièrement importante. Cette intermédiaire, au passé certes moins femme, membre de la League for Social flamboyant, mais très révélateur sur le Reconstruction, du CCF et co-fondatrice mouvement ouvrier au cours des de la Société d'éducation des adultes du décennies 1940 à 1980. Québec, entraîna Jacques-Victor Morin Interrogé par Mathieu Denis et ses sur la voie de l'engagement social. Ce amis Albert Albala, Michel Sarath de dernier entra dans les jeunesses de la CCF Silva et YanicViau, Jacques-Victor en 1943, réorganisa sa section québécoise Morin nous livre un récit riche et vivant de et fut élu à sa tête deux années plus tard. son militantisme au sein d'organisations En 1948, il devint président pancanadien politiques et syndicales, et de sa contribu­ des jeunesses de la CCF et, en 1950, il tion à l'éducation des adultes. Six occupa le poste de secrétaire de la CCF au entretiens d'une durée de deux heures Québec. Il côtoya ainsi Thérèse Casgrain chacun, réalisés au cours de l'été 1998, sur laquelle il ne put s'empêcher ont été nécessaires pour amasser d'émettre quelques propos piquants. l'information. Jacques-Victor Morin Le militantisme syndicaliste et avait une semaine pour préparer ses socialiste de Morin est abordé en réponses au questionnaire structurant profondeur dans la deuxième partie de chacune des rencontres. Ensuite, une l'ouvrage qui a pour titre « Droits répétition générale de l'entretien humains, syndicalisme et action politique permettait d'identifier les éléments sous Duplessis ». On y apprend que principaux et de vérifier certains détails. Jacques-Victor Morin obtint son premier Puis Mathieu Denis et ses équipiers poste permanent dans le mouvement 274 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

syndical en 1947, lors qu'il devint Parti socialiste du Québec en 1963. Des secrétaire du Comité contre l'intolérance membres du comité exécutif, dont raciale et religieuse. « Notre but », lui-même, s'opposèrent néanmoins au raconte-t-il, « était de lutter contre la dis­ président Michel Chartrand sur des ques­ crimination chez les travailleurs, tions de principes. Après des démissions notamment par la présentation de films, en cascades, le parti se dissout en 1968 : américains, de l'ONF ou produits par le « le PSQ, c'était tout petit, vous savez. Comité canadien du film ouvrier.» (p. 86). Quand on se met à fractionner de petites En 1952, avec la fondation de la affaires, il ne reste plus grand chose » (p. Fédération des unions industrielles du 159). Mais heureusement pour lui, de Québec (FUIQ-CCT), il occupa le siège de brèves missions à l'étranger pour secrétaire exécutif de l'association, l'Organisation internationale du travail, responsable de l'administration générale, dans le cadre de l'éducation des adultes de la perception des cotisations, de (1961 et 1965), lui ouvrent de nouveaux l'organisation des comités, des congrès horizons En 1968, il décrocha le poste de et, bien sûr, du service d'éducation. « Je secrétaire général associé de la Commis­ crois », lance-t-il,« que ces formations et sion canadienne pour l'Unesco, un poste l'éducation politique ont véritablement qu'il occupa, à Ottawa, jusqu'à sa retraite contribué à miner le régime de en 1986. Travailleur passionné et Duplessis » (p. 91). Après quelques infatigable, il sera embauché par la suite années à la fédération, Morin devint, en sous contrat pendant deux ans par le 1956, permanent de la section québécoise Syndicat canadien de la fonction du syndicat nord-américain des Travail­ publique, pour relancer le service de for­ leurs unis des salaisons et denrées mation et d'éducation des membres. alimentaires. Le syndicat mena une Toujours passionné par la politique, il ira gigantesque campagne de syndi- même jusqu'à joindre le Parti québécois calisation, misant sur son rapport de force en 1995, dans la foulée de l'effervescence et non pas sur la Commission des relations des débats d'alors. ouvrières pour se faire entendre. Morin raconte également sa participation aux C'est donc un demi-siècle de souve­ tentatives de former un nouveau parti de nirs de son engagement social et politique gauche au Québec, devant I ' insuccès de la que Jacques-Victor Morin nous livre ici CCF dans la province. L'idée d'un parti dans cet ouvrage. Le regard jeté sur les fondé sur la coopération des trois grands bonzes du mouvement ouvrier, centrales syndicales, la FU1Q, la FPTQ et dont certains deviendront des politiciens la CTCC, et de courants libéraux, ne bien en vus et des sénateurs, est décolla cependant pas, sabotée, selon lui, particulièrement intéressant. Trop par des éléments opportunistes comme d'emphase a cependant été mise dans la Trudeau, Marchand et Pelletier. deuxième moitié du livre sur la question de l'émergence d'un parti ouvrier. Une Dans la dernière section de l'ouvrage réflexion sur l'évolution du titrée « Nouveaux partis, missions fonctionnement interne des syndicats sur internationales et années récentes », ce demi-siècle aurait été la bienvenue. Morin raconte que si la fondation du Que dire aussi de l'étatisation du système NPD-Québec a suscité beaucoup de l'enseignement, de l'émergence des d'espoirs chez lui et ses proches, ils ont CEGEP et du réseau des universités du rapidement déchanté. Tel la CCF avant Québec, sur la formation des travailleurs? lui, le NPD s'est montré très rébarbatif à la On peut aussi regretter l'absence d'index reconnaissance de l'existence des deux à la fin de l'ouvrage. Néanmoins,il faut nations et au droit des Québécois à l'auto­ applaudir à l'inclusion d'un répertoire détermination, malgré leur insistance. biographique de 21 pages très utile pour Morin a alors participé à la formation du identifier des militants ouvriers REVIEWS 275

mentionnés dans le livre. Il faut saluer their growing importance since the 1970s. l'initiative de Denis Mathieu et sesamis, As a result, she laboured long to develop a car le milieu ouvrier québécois des major statistical record intended to sup­ décennies 1940, 19S0 et suivantes a été port her study. The data is impressive; éclairé d'une autre perspective, celle d'un however, because the process took so cadre intermédiaire. long to come to fruition, many of her ob­ servations have the ring of the 1980s and Peter Bischoff early 1990s — something of a disappoint­ Université d'Ottawa ment in a book published in October 2002.To be sure, the citations, data, and the "multiple regression analysis" of the Indhu Rajagopal, Hidden Academics: statistics for the early 1990s are impres­ Contract Faculty in Canadian Univer­ sive. Recent material, in contrast, is less sities (Toronto: University of Toronto tightly focussed and more reliant upon an­ Press 2002) ecdotal and secondary sources. The book seems to teeter along with something of a FRUSTRATED PART-TIME Canadian uni­ "split personality,*' sometimes broadly versity faculty, as Indhu Rajagopal pains­ opinionated and wide-ranging; some­ takingly discovered, often see themselves times very much an academic's tome, re­ as marginalized in "a job that they love, plete with statistical commentaries and [where] they face obstacles in their supportive citations. day-to-day work that threatens to weaken Still, the evidence here is their spirit and proficiency. They are ex­ wide-ranging, the data analysis statisti­ asperated that the university denies their cally sophisticated and informative, the continuing presence. They feel that it ig­ findings impressive and convincing. nores their perspectives — their reasons Rajagopal reveals the gulf that divides for teaching part time, their aspirations, full- and part-time academics; no surprise their attitude towards their work, their there, but the analysis digs deep. Her con­ role in the universities, and their place in clusion that part-time issues need to be the collegium." (88) looked at within the contexts of the politi­ Rajagopal, Associate Professor of So­ cal economy — as a "class struggle cial Science at York University, set out to against the managerial powers" — is learn more about these frustrations and based on a strong understanding of the is­ the perspectives of these part-time profes­ sues and careful assessment of data of un­ sors, whom she labels "hidden academ­ precedented depth. She shows an aca­ ics." She is clearly sympathetic — she demic world where full- timers live in a was a part-timer for many years, (xiii) Her socially constructed, ideologically driven goal was to examine the impact of a setting where matters like collegiality and changing university teaching environ­ equality are a "powerful fiction." That ment on the rising number of "part-time "fiction,"that "construct" sees the profs," whom she identifies as an ex­ full-time professoriate simultaneously ploited class. The result, as presented in expressing concern for the fate of some 330 pages generously sprinkled part-time "colleagues" while serving as with more than SO tables and figures (plus "managers responsible for hiring, firing, academic paraphernalia), is at once en­ and administering" them. (236, 242) lightening and frustrating, opinionated Even more interesting, and less com­ and derivative, pertinent yet somehow mon, is Rajagopal's assessment of divi­ dated. sions within the part-time professoriate. Perhaps a mixed result was inevitable She recognizes that part-timers are a very — Rajagopal found that data on part-time diverse population in terms of gender, ex­ academics was remarkably sparse given perience, degree achieved, discipline, 276 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and university "type," among other fac­ part-timers report that they love their tors. Among her most effective ideas is "calling" and would make the same "ca­ that of "Classic" versus "Contemporary" reer" decisions again if given the chance. part-timers. "Classic" part-time teaching (169) Rajagopal's dealing with these — often at professional schools — is a complex issues through statistically so­ sound (if still often exploitative) use of phisticated analysis based on sound the­ "real world" personnel to provide specific ory deserves applause. "training." "Contemporaries," on the Rajagopal is at her most forceful in other hand, more often still dream of emphasizing the especially dire situations full-time positions and live a faced by female part-time academics. An hand-to-mouth existence by teaching entire chapter on "Invisible Women" is many courses, whether across disciplines, supplemented by discussion of or at various schools, a group accurately "feminization" throughout the book. The labelled by Rajagopal as "freeway fli- clear "voice" on women's issues is wel­ ers"(74) (The writer of this review has come, but Rajagopal tends too often to several hundred thousand kilometres of quote other scholars in making her case. such teaching experience). One might For instance, she quotes American re­ note, too, that the work assumes that searcher Shelley Park's view that the aca­ part-time pay is low — it is low compared demic "proletariat" is "disproportion­ to full-time academics, but one might ask ately female." Yet Rajagopal's statistics low-wage labourers for their opinion. We for Canada show otherwise. (65,68, 246) all live in socially constructed environ­ Obviously, international works should be ments. consulted, but the border remains a real Quibbles aside, recognizing that factor. Similar is useful but not identical. part-timers are not a monolith is a valu­ Overall, the book is replete with quota­ able feature of Rajagopal's book; so too tions; indeed, she closes the book with a are the revelations (based on her survey) rather unremarkable quote. (258) of the "mutually contrasting perceptions" Several other issues give one pause. ( 177) of part- and full-timers. She reveals Presentation is a particular concern. complex interactions born of a political Rajagopal's book is well organized; both economy that exploits part-timers for eco­ the introduction and each chapter make nomic and ideological reasons. Govern­ her intentions quite clear. But her writing ments reduce funding; so part-timers be­ often shows the worst features of statisti­ come necessary. Part-timers teach fre­ cally-driven analysis. Was it really neces­ quently, thus suffering "degradation" not sary to provide data within the text (in only of work circumstances but a brackets) when the same material was "deskilling" reminiscent of the impact of presented in tables ? Page 50, for in­ industrialization on crafts workers.(237) stance, offers over two dozen bits of in­ Surely, the full-time academic ideology formation in brackets, when the same data concludes, "real professors" would re­ follow in tabular form! (51-53) search and publish too !! Yet when Secondly, at times it seems that the part-timers research and publish (as is of­ hard-won evidence just "must" be heard. ten the case) Rajagopal concludes that The same testimony is heard severally full-time academics are either unaware (take the Quebec "freeway flier" quote re­ (social links are weak) or indifferent (that peated on page 145). And there is a sense is not what they were hired to do). The cir­ of "déjà vu" as one works through the cle is thus closed. Part-time status, for chapters — perhaps inevitably, one be­ most, becomes self-reinforcing, either be­ gins to anticipate the sections on "Clas­ cause it is what "Classics" do, or because sic" part timers, on "Contemporaries," on "Contemporaries" have to "make a liv­ the full-timer perspective and so on. All in ing." To add further complexity, many all, one might wish that Rajagopal had REVIEWS 277

paid slightly greater heed to the maxim support towards more active labour mar­ that evidence matters, but so does read­ ket measures and a drastically reduced ability. federal Employment Insurance (EI) pro­ These issues of presentation should gram which occurred as provincial gov­ not diminish Rajagopal's work. She has ernments cut social assistance programs made the "hidden academics" of Canada and redefined their eligibility criteria. Si­ more visible; here, the anecdotal observa­ multaneously, the 1990s witnessed a sig­ tions of part-timers gain academic confir­ nificant re-scaling of labour market mation. Will it matter? Rajagopal's work governance as the federal government on the human costs of "better managed" sought to offload many of its responsibili­ academic institutions deserves wide read­ ties to the provinces through a series of la­ ership among those interested in Cana­ bour market development agreements dian universities. Ironically, her book (LMDA). provides compelling clues that change is Federalism, Democracy and Labour not likely in our academic "ivory towers." Market Policy in Canada begins with In the main, part-timers will stay well chapters by Mcintosh and Haddow that "hidden." But at least Rajagopal provides review the book's central arguments fascinating and abundant evidence that while detailing the broad political and in­ change should come. stitutional context of labour market pol­ icy in Canada. Mcintosh argues that Peter Krats moves towards greater decentralization University of Western Ontario in labour market policy are not inherently neo-liberal, but rather must be seen as a redefining within federalism of how pol­ Tom Mcintosh, éd., Federalism, Democ­ icy frameworks are developed and imple­ racy, and Labour Market Policy in Can­ mented among governments. Haddow ar­ ada (Montréal and Kingston: McGill- gues that while employment issues are Queen's University Press 2000). clearly important to Canadians, labour market policy has not registered signifi­ THE 1990S WERE ARGUABLY the most cantly politically. Furthermore, despite significant period of change in Canadian some attempts in the 1990s to develop labour market policy since the end of the greater stakeholder representation and World War II. Federalism, Democracy democratic input into labour market pol­ and Labour Market Policy in Canada rep­ icy through the creation of labour force resents an important initial evaluation of development boards federally and pro- the scale and the significance of this vincially, their nearly universal failure change. As Tom Mcintosh makes clear in means that policy development remains his opening chapter, restructuring Cana­ the principal preserve of the political and dian labour market policy is inherently bureaucratic executives of government complicated by the fact that it involves the with only business having significant in­ disentangling of federal and provincial fluence on policy. jurisdiction of the programs of unemploy­ Mcintosh and Boychuck provide a ment benefit, income support, social as­ valuable review of the impacts of the dis­ sistance, training, and education. Indeed entangling of income support in Canada. in training alone, in the early 1990s over Cuts in El by the federal government oc­ 300 separate training programs were of­ curred at the same time social assistance fered by different levels of government. was restructured by the provinces. The re­ However complicated, during the 1990s cipients were increasingly composed of the major features of these changes in­ the long-term unemployed. Furthermore, cluded a move away by federal and pro­ as they stress, the redefining of EI and so­ vincial governments from passive income cial assistance has combined with trends 278 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

in the labour market towards part-time Thus the promise of cost savings and in­ and contingent employment and more creased sensitivity to local labour market dual-income households and led to an in­ needs may prove hollow, with equity creasing proportion of the workforce be­ compromised by "creaming" as training ing left without coverage by both EI and is focused on the most trainable, and social-assistance systems. But while the equality and labour mobility among dif­ authors explain how governance of in­ ferent provinces and regions declines. come support has been disentangled in Relatedly, while LMDAs may reduce fed­ both policy framework and implementa­ eral-provincial conflict, a lack of na­ tion terms, they present little information tion-wide agreement on training stan­ about the impacts of these changes on the dards may lead to declines in the portabil­ increasing percentage of workers not cov­ ity of skills. ered by either EI or provincial social assis­ While the dominant narrative of the tance. 1990s was a withdrawal of the federal Klassen's chapter examines another government from direct involvement in feature of this disentanglement — the se­ training delivery, McBride and Stoyko's ries of Labour Market Development chapter on youth and the social union Agreements (LMDAs) which occurred as makes clear that this remains one area in the federal government sought to transfer which the federal government has re­ its responsibilities for active labour mar­ tained the initiative and is remaining ac­ ket policies such as information provi­ tive. Indeed, they argue that while the sion, job training, and subsidized or cre­ 1999 Social Union Framework ostensibly ated employment. These agreements co­ sets out rules for federal-provincial infor­ incided with a marked decentralization mation-sharing and a commitment to a within Human Resources Development co-operative federalism, there are some Canada (HRDC) which cut the number of who view the federal government as using local offices while giving greater discre­ the vagueness of the agreement to expand tion to local officials and contracting out their role in the youth field. This is in part services to the private sector and due to the fact that, unlike shared-cost non-profit groups. HRDC also moved programs, youth initiatives give the fed­ from block funding to community col­ eral government a high visibility. They leges for EI recipients to direct grants and also allay concerns within the govern­ loans to individuals on EI to purchase ment that radical cuts in social transfers training. The process, however, has been by the Liberals have undermined the pros­ very uneven. Different provinces have pects of younger workers that are evident come to different agreements with the from the latter's much higher than aver­ federal government ranging from full age unemployment. This being said, like transfer of responsibilities in the cases of other chapters in Federalism, Democracy Quebec, Alberta, and New Brunswick to and Labour Market Policy in Canada, co-management and strategic partner­ McBride and Stoyko's contribution sees ships in British Columbia and Nova Sco­ current trends as leading away from tia. However, no agreement has yet been unilateralism towards a more sophisti­ negotiated with Ontario since there con­ cated regime of intergovernmental col­ tinue to be significant disagreements be­ laboration. tween the province and Ottawa over the amount of funds to be transferred. Fur­ Federalism, Democracy and Labour thermore, as Klassen emphasizes, while Market Policy in Canada then offers an LMDAs have beenjustified on the basis of important overview to the shifting of fed­ increased accountability, efficiency, and eral-provincial governance structures of effectiveness, there are risks that such labour markets. Especially useful is the moves may not accomplish these goals. chapter by Mcintosh and Boychuk who document in detail the extent to which Ca- REVIEWS 279 nadian workers are increasingly being left of the mid- to late 1990s, will mean that exposed to the vagaries of the labour mar­ increasing numbers of workers will be un­ ket as EI and social assistance are rolled protected in the next economic downturn. back. However, the book has some short­ Seen in this light, the disentanglement comings. It is largely descriptive and process during the 1990s may be less a ra­ while Mcintosh makes some allusion to a tional re-ordering of federal-provincial shift from Fordism to post-Fordism there responsibilities than setting the context is little reference to broader theoretical for the next crisis. perspectives as to what is driving the re­ structuring of labour market policy gover­ Tod D. Rutherford nance in Canada. More importantly, I Syracuse University would disagree with Mcintosh that the de­ centralization of labour market policy in Canada is just a complex redefining of Vanda R. Rideout, Continentalizing Ca­ federal responsibilities, rather than one nadian Telecommunications: The Poli­ that is neo-liberal in character and cri­ tics of Regulatory Reform (Montreal and sis-driven. As Jane Jenson wrote over a Kingston: McGill-Queen's University decade ago, class politics and Press 2003) neo-liberalism in Canada have often been expressed in the form of redistributive OVER THE PAST twenty years, govern­ conflicts within federalism. Thus, much ments of every political stripe have pur­ of what many of the authors in this contri­ sued neoliberal policies that cumulatively bution view as governance disentangling have transformed Canadian society. In is also consistent with many aspects of that time we have seen the deregulation of neo-liberalism or what Jamie Peck has airlines, trucking, and financial services; termed a "centrally orchestrated erosion drastic reductions in spending for social of the work-welfare regime from below." programs, health care, and public educa­ For example, LMDAs are less a rational tion; an undermining of the country's Un­ re-ordering of governance responsibili­ employment Insurance system; a ties than an instrument of the federal gov­ weakening of Old Age Pensions and child ernment's desire to reduce its deficit. benefit programs; reduction in the mini­ They can be associated with significant mum wage; privatization of public ser­ cuts in funds transferred to the provinces. vices; sharp reductions in public sector Furthermore the rhetoric and the policies employment; and relentless attempts to of both federal and provincial govern­ enable the corporate sector to take over ments has encouraged both labour market the country's public health care system. flexibility and the individualization of This comprehensive domestic program employability. Finally, the impact of has been complemented by the promotion workfare programs, which is not ad­ of international trade agreements whose dressed in great detail in this volume, is purpose is to enshrine capitalist priorities not simply about redefining eligibility and to ensure that governments whose criteria for those on social assistance, but policies conflict with those priorities face about reducing the marginal wages of the threat of international trade sanctions. workers in the lower echelons of the la­ Aside from those working in and bour market. studying telecommunications, few peo­ ple noticed when corporate forces began To their credit many of the authors in to promote radical changes to the system this volume realize the contradictions of of regulated telephone monopolies that policy disentanglement. Thus Klassen prevailed across North America 30 years and others point out the dangers that EI ago. This model, created at the turn of the and social assistance cuts, largely con­ 20th century, arose in response to wide- ceived during the employment recovery 280 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

spread abuses of phone companies' un­ the system of social regulation by sup­ regulated monopoly power, which was porting the introduction of competition in being exercised in a manner that left en­ long-distance phone service. tire groups of customers without service Continentalizing Canadian Telecom­ and which subjected those provided with munications provides an invaluable his­ service to widespread price gouging. In a tory of corporate efforts in both the US few instances — notably in Alberta, Sas­ and Canada to undermine social regula­ katchewan, and Manitoba — govern­ tion and to substitute an approach that ment-owned phone companies were es­ prioritizes meeting corporate communi­ tablished in response to these corporate cations needs. This history is important in abuses. But the approach that was applied its own right. But given what has tran­ most widely involved compromise with spired over the past twenty years as the corporate power. This model of regula­ neoliberal tidal wave has washed across tion, which was introduced across North North America and the rest of the world, America, entailed a trade-off that granted the fact that the corporate-driven attempt legal protection to privately-owned tele­ to transform society was first applied in phone companies' monopoly status in ex­ this sector imbues its history with special change for their acceptance of the require­ importance. ment that they provide service to all cus­ Much of this has been chronicled else­ tomers within their operating areas at where. But Rideout's unique contribution reasonable (i.e. socially regulated) prices. lies in her decision to focus on the popular Rideout explains that the heart of this response to corporate efforts to under­ social model lay in the system's series of mine social regulation of communica­ internal subsidies. Under the regulated tions and to put a corporate-dominated scheme, regulators allowed monopoly model in its place. She explains how pop­ phone companies to charge premium ular forces in the US, including unions and prices for their long-distance service, consumer organizations, greeted the which was until recently used primarily prospect of long-distance competition by corporations and wealthy individuals. with open arms because they believed it In exchange, the monopolies were re­ would lead to a reduction in prices and quired to use a significant portion of the constrain the power of companies like revenues generated by their pre­ AT&T. What these activists did not realize mium-priced service to provide local ser­ is that as the system of social regulation vice at affordable rates throughout their was destroyed, they would lose the lever­ operating areas. age they enjoyed over the industry. Corporate users were never happy When competition was introduced in with this arrangement, which effectively long-distance service, prices for that ser­ required them to pay for the provision of vice did, in fact, decline. At the same phone service on a universal, affordable time, however, the price of local service, basis. But for decades they had no realis­ which had been kept low thanks to subsi­ tic alternatives. By the 1960s, however, dies from socially regulated, pre­ the advent of new technologies offered mium-priced long-distance service, sky­ corporate users the possibility of escaping rocketed. In addition, once competition from the socially regulated model in pur­ and deregulation took hold, monopolies suit of a system that offered them lower allowed the quality of their local service, long-distance rates and that would be which had been closely monitored under shaped to their needs rather than those of the socially-regulated system, to deterio­ the general public. To this end, corporate rate. And once these companies no longer communications users in the US formed needed the same number of people to enormously powerful lobbying groups maintain a high standard of service qual­ that focused their efforts on undermining ity, American phone companies issued REVIEWS 281 pink slips to tens of thousands of phone vides readers with a comprehensive his­ workers. In short, the experiment with the tory of the corporate-driven introduction of deregulation and transformation of the country's phone long-distance competition proved to be a system as well as the extensive popular corporate dream and a social nightmare. efforts that were made to resist it. In the The finalsectio n of Rideout's work fo­ process she offers readers invaluable in­ cuses on the different response that Cana­ sights into the corporate strategy that was dian unions and consumers' organiza­ applied early on to communications and tions took when the issue of competition later in other sectors to create the busi­ and deregulation arose in this country. ness-dominated arrangements that domi­ Benefitting from the American experi­ nate society today. Social activists inter­ ence, these groups made common cause ested in reclaiming the world from these with Canada's provincially-owned phone forces would do well to familiarize them­ companies to oppose the introduction of selves with Continentalizing Canadian deregulation and competition when the Telecommunications: The Politics of CNCP company applied for permission to Regulatory Reform. compete in the provision of long-distance service in this country in 1984. The com­ Sid Shniad bination of strong cooperation among the Telecommunications Workers Union social groups opposing the CNCP applica­ Burnaby, British Columbia tion and the relatively weak corporate ef­ fort on behalf of CNCP — an effort that was much less elaborate than the effort on Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colo­ behalf of competition and deregulation nialism, Resistance and Reserves in Brit­ that had been mounted in the States — re­ ish Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press sulted in a denial of CNCP's application 2002) bytheCRTCinl985. Unfortunately, the story's ultimate THIS IS A MAJOR WORK in Canadian his­ ending is not a happy one. Learning from tory, already acknowledged by its having their mistakes, the corporate sector won the Canadian Historical Associa­ mounted a second effort to introduce tele­ tion's 2003 Macdonald Prize. The book phone competition and deregulation in documents the creation of Indian reserves Canada that was much more serious and in the province of British Columbia sophisticated than the first. By forming through various phases from 18S2 to corporate users into pro-competitive co­ 1938, arguing that the lines demarcating alitions, lobbying the government, adver­ "Native space" are the "primal lines" tising and promoting their position upon which modern British Columbia is through corporate-funded think tanks based. Although focused on "space" and while they applied sophisticated di- boundaries, the book deftly links space vide-and-rule tactics among the organiza­ and labour and so is of importance to the tions that had formerly opposed competi­ study of labour and Canadian history, tion and deregulation, the forces promot- generally. ing the overhaul of Canadian Harris is an exceptional writer and telecommunications were ultimately suc­ reader. In his last book, The cessful. Re-Settlement of British Columbia, he We have been exposed to such an elab­ brought an international literature on orate and extensive array of corpo­ power and colonialism to bear on Cana­ rate-driven political and propaganda cam­ dian history. Making Native Space is in­ paigns that it is easy to forget how things formed by that same post-modern litera­ used to be and how we have arrived at the ture but takes a step back, wanting "not to current conjuncture. Vanda Rideout pro­ get too fancy with colonialism." Here, he 282 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

prefers to see how historical events were sponse by the British Colonial Office, and inscribed onto maps, then onto the land­ later the federal government. He de­ scape which now determines the "haves scribes the weak oversight of the colonies and have-nots" of British Columbia soci­ by a thinly staffed Colonial Office, and ety. Over 50 maps in the book by cartogra­ then follows, with meticulous research, pher Eric Leinberger leave little doubt the ebb and flow of Indian policy on the about the residual nature of the one third ground from Confederation to World War of one percent of British Columbia that is II. now "Native space." Labour is also important in that, when Labour, it turns out, was central to the the majority of the reserves were laid out shrinkage of Native space. Canada is in the 1880s, most Aboriginal people founded, Harris says, on "the displace­ worked seasonally as labourers in the cap­ ment of a people from their land and its re­ italist work force. As Harris points out, possession by others." (xxiv) This blunt reserves were placed where Aboriginal inequal ity has been papered over, not only people lived and that was where they had to justify it, but to make it seem a positive access to a wage economy. When the virtue. The justification drew on notions economy changed, and mills or canneries of ownership provided by the great politi­ closed, the Native spaces did not. Fixed in cal economist John Locke. Locke argued a location that was relevant to the 19th that property can only be owned when it is century, they became impoverished in the removed, through the investment of la­ 20th century. bour, "out of a state that nature hath pro­ The book offers many conclusions, vided." some of them surprising. It makes a strong It is through the ideas of Locke and case that state paternalism served Swiss jurist Emeric de Vattel that space Aboriginal people better than a set­ and work become linked. Aboriginal peo­ tler-dominated responsible government. ple did labour, but, in European eyes, they It clearly demonstrates that from the start did not invest it appropriately. Hunting and through the changing colonial poli­ and fishing, even slash-and-burn agricul­ cies, there has been a consistent assertion ture, did not improve nature, rationalized by Aboriginal people to ownership of the the agrarian Europeans. As de Vattel ar­ land they were being pushed off. Harris gued: "Those who still pursue this idle also demonstrates that colonialism and mode of life [hunting and gathering] ... colonists were complex, often in conflict [have] no reason to complain if other na­ among themselves, and rarely speaking tions ... come and take possession of a part with one voice. He highlights Indian of those lands." Displacement was actu­ Commissioner Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, ally good for Aboriginal people, in a who went against the grain. Sproat re­ Lockean view, because it introduced them minds us of possibility and urgency of in­ to private property and commerce, to ternal dissent when a majority moves un­ Christianity and law; their losses would fairly against a minority. be more than compensated by the en­ Already 300 pages, the book has made hanced value of their labour and any rem­ a powerful contribution to understanding nants of their land they laboured on. how colonialism worked. So it is not so Harris lays out the debates that swirled much a critique as an observation that it is around the displacement of indigenous really about only one side of a conversa­ peoples in the 18th and 19th centuries but tion. Although the subtitle is "Colonial­ emphasizes that philosophy was less the ism, Resistance and Reserves ...," the fo­ cause and more the rationale. The dis­ cus is on the link between the first and the placement of Native people had more to last. Although he does not ignore resis­ do with a potent settler land-hunger which tance (and makes good use of Native testi­ overwhelmed the weak paternalistic re­ mony before the McKenna-McBride REVIEWS 283

Commission), the colonial sources that work-force experience of Aboriginal peo­ the book is largely based on do not accord ple. Aboriginal movement on and off the it much prominence. Harris is led to con­ reserve, their use of Crown land, impor­ clude Aboriginal resistance had little ef­ tant especially in the sparsely settled fect. Perhaps, but this bears more explora­ north, Native space in urban areas and tion. work sites, like canneries or hop fields, all Recent studies on manifestations of lie outside its focus. Yet, these have al­ colonialism have emphasized the dialogic ways represented an important aspect of nature of the process, that it was not Native space up to today when half the one-sided. Scholars of missionary registered Indians in Canada do not live proselytization like John and Jean on reserves. Comaroff and Michael Harkin point to the Although the notion of Native space is interactive aspect of colonialism. With re­ rather circumscribed, as a study of the co­ spect to a dialogue around land, under­ lonial side of the creation of the reserve standing Aboriginal notions of space and system, the book is superb. It deserves to ownership seems critical to understand­ be read by historians and Canadians inter­ ing the unfolding encounters of Aborigi­ ested in the history and resolution of nal people and Europeans. Aboriginal claims to just treatment. Har­ Pre-European boundaries between ris dedicates his book to an uneasy colo­ Aboriginal people, cultures, and re­ nist, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, who in sources determined the distribution of 1860 pushed Native people off their land Aboriginal people in British Columbia, at cannon point to build a sawmill, but their wealth, and their willingness to en­ who, by 1880, was one of the province's gage the newcomers. The book docu­ few defenders of Aboriginal rights. There ments the etching of the primal lines of is an obvious reflection of the conflicted colonialism, but there are earlier bound­ colonist in Harris, whose family aries that underlay the reserve system. homesteaded Native space in the These are the real primal boundaries. Ab­ Kootenays. A self-acknowledged benefi­ original people in British Columbia were ciary (with all non-Aboriginal Canadi­ not amalgamated in reserves far from ans) of the appropriation of Aboriginal their homelands as in the United States, space and rights, he concludes with an ex­ they were not confined by the pass system tended chapter dealing with contempo­ as they were in the Prairies, and they were rary Aboriginal land issues. Here he pro­ not dissuaded by laws banning their cere­ poses "a politics of difference" which ac­ monies, including those that transferred knowledges that settler society is here to property. The history of colonialism is stay but includes, on moral and practical lopsided if we focus on the colonial ar­ grounds, a redistribution of land and chive and the role of Europeans. Aborigi­ wealth to Aboriginal people. After read­ nal engagement and resistance with colo­ ing this carefully documented book, most nialism account for what survives as non-Aboriginal Canadians will join the "Native space." Colonization has super­ Sproats and Harrises in the ranks of un­ imposed others on former Native spaces. easy colonists. But when modern treaties get signed or Aboriginal rights become more clearly John Lutz delineated, it will be along, at least in part, University of Victoria the primal boundaries established by Ab­ original peoples. As a result of the focus, what Harris' notion of Native space does not capture is the mobility through space that has been so much a part of the pre-contact and then 284 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Donna Vogel, Challenging Politics: the early 1980s. Unfortunately for COPE, COPE, Electoral Politics and Social the NDP provincial government lost popu­ Movements (Halifax: Fernwood Books larity very quickly, and COPE itself suf­ 2003) fered disastrous defeats in the 1993 and 1996 municipal elections (it only slightly THIS BOOK is a welcome addition to the recovered in 1999). Vogel began her re­ handful of academic studies of contempo­ search in 1992, when COPE was trying to rary municipal politics in Canada. Its fo­ open itself up to the new social move­ cus is on the major party of the Left in the ments in hopes of establishing a wider and City of Vancouver. That party, called the more effective coalition. She brought her Coalition [originally the Committee] of study to an end after the new-style COPE Progressive Electors (COPE), has been an suffered its second great defeat in 1996. important force in Vancouver politics There is a brief postscript to the book since it was formed in 1968. It shared that deals with COPE's stunning and in power in a centre-left coalition on the mu­ many ways surprising success in the 2002 nicipal council in 1982-86 and controlled elections. The reader who wants to under­ the School Board in 1980-82 and 1984-86 stand how COPE re-built itself after it (although the provincial government dis­ reached its nadir in 1996 will not find an missed the Board and put it under trustee­ answer here. The focus is very much on ship mid-way through the latter term). the political issues and experiences of the After more than a decade and a half in op­ 1980s and early 1990s. Vogel sees that the position, COPE came back to power in No­ challenge COPE faced in that period was vember 2002, winning control of the much the same as the one that other ortho­ School Board, the Parks Board, and the dox, labour-based parties of the Left had municipal council. Larry Campbell — the faced. The new social movements de­ model for feisty coroner, Da Vinci, on Da manded a new politics, but it was not clear Vinci's Inquest on CBC — became mayor, how that new politics could be accommo­ and as such is now the most prominent dated without abandoning the core con­ "progressive" politician in the province cerns (and the core constituency) of the of British Columbia. old socialist movement. Vogel does a good job of summarizing the differences The fact that there is any sort of party between a Marxist or labourist perspec­ in control of its municipal council makes tive on the one hand and new social move­ Vancouver unusual. The city has had a ment theory on the other. Her prose is party system of sorts since the late 1930s, clean and clear, which is not often the case although there have been long periods in in discussions of this kind. She sets out which the right-wing NPA (Non-Partisan her own, neo-Gramscian position as an al­ Association) has been overwhelmingly ternative, and brings that perspective to predominant. Vogel's book focuses on a bear in analyzing similar cases elsewhere period of great hope and massive disap­ (Eurosocialism, American civic radical­ pointment for the Left in Vancouver. In ism, the Montréal Citizens' Movement), 1990, Jim Green of the Downtown as well as the case that particularly con­ Eastside Residents Association (DERA) cerns her. She offers a good brief sum­ ran for mayor under the COPE banner and mary of the political history of Vancou­ gave the incumbent, Gordon Campbell, a ver, and connects her story to the chang­ close race. COPE took half the seats on ing economy and demography of the city. Council, and hoped to build on that There is much that is useful here, espe­ strength in the next election. The follow­ cially for those who are relatively unfa­ ing year, the NDP took control provin- miliar with Vancouver or with debates on cially under Mike Harcourt, who, al­ the Left after the 1960s. though never part of COPE, had worked closely with it as Mayor of Vancouver in REVIEWS 285

That said, the empirical core of the within COPE that has never been ade­ book is in its study of the internal politics quately filled." (82) Indeed, but what a of COPE in the 1992-97 period. Again, thing it was that this relatively main­ there is much that is of interest, but the ac­ stream political party relied so heavily on count is surprisingly brief and thin, given Communist organizing — not in the that Vogel did so much primary research 1930s and 1940s, but in the 1970s and (archival study, interviews, and direct ob­ 1980s. The organizers were relatively or­ servation). The main struggle was be­ thodox Communists, not Maoists. How tween those who wanted to keep COPE did they do it, when their comrades else­ true to its organizational and ideological where were so obviously failing? Vogel principles and those who wanted to open gives us no insight, because she treats the it up to a broader range of progressive so­ Communist role as an unremarkable fact cial forces. The people in the second about COPE. It was an open secret in Van­ group got their way, but there was no elec­ couver that the Communists were a major toral or organizational pay-off in the short force within COPE, and yet this had much term. Vogel interprets this failure in less effect on the party's electoral appeal neo-Gramscian terms, but there is not than one might have expected. enough detail in her account to make this The other curious omission is any dis­ interpretation convincing. The larger cussion of the role of local government. question to which her story relates is the Municipalities do not have the same con­ connection between parties of the Left stitutional status as provinces. Their leg­ and the new social movements (environ­ islative powers are limited, their fiscal re­ mental ism, feminism, multiculturalism, sources are meager, and they are ex­ Native rights, gay and lesbian rights, tremely vulnerable to the policy decisions etc.), but Vogel tells almost nothing about of the senior governments. In Vancou­ the organization and activity of social ver's case, the city proper includes less movements in Vancouver. She says al­ than a quarter of the population of the most nothing about the substantive issues metropolitan area. Many of the key local that people were discussing at the time. services are under direct provincial con­ She scarcely says anything about the NDP, trol. The challenges faced by a progres­ even though the NDP were in power (with sive municipal government — be it the a predominantly Vancouver leadership) Harcourt-led council of the early 1980s or throughout that period. The federal NDP the one controlled by Larry Campbell and caucus gets even less attention. It is as if COPE now — are qualitatively different COPE were a huge, powerful organization from the ones that a provincial or federal that dominated politics on the Left, rather government faces. The COPE activists than a weak municipal party struggling were aware of this, but Vogel gives us lit­ for survival. Vogel recognizes that weak­ tle sense of where that awareness led. ness implicitly, but she seems not to see that her neo-Gramscian approach de­ A neo-Gramscian perspective leads to mands a much wider analytical frame than the recognition that politics is ultimately she offers us. a struggle for hegemony. Municipal poli­ tics can only be one element in such a One curious feature of the book is that struggle, but it is nonetheless an impor­ it fails to recognize how extraordinary it tant element. Vogel is right to see that the was that the Communist Party of Canada success or failure of COPE is a crucial part had played such a "key role in COPE from of the story of the Canadian Left. She its inception in 1968 until the early might have written a big book on the sub­ 1990s." (81) Vogel notes the deleterious ject: a book that viewed the wider politics effects of the split in (and ultimate col­ of theLeft in Vancouver through the lapse of) the CPC in 1989-92. "In a real prism of COPE and that related that wider sense, the end of the CP created a vacuum politics to the politics of other communi- 286 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ties. Such a book might have enabled studies, and educational studies to some new thinking about political possi­ dramatic theory, reflect today's broad in­ bilities. The book she has actually written terdisciplinary interest in diaries, did just is smaller and less challenging. It frames that. the struggles within COPE in the same In her introduction, Carter anticipates terms that were being used fifteen or potential challenges, providing a thought­ twenty years ago. Up to a point that is fine, ful justification for all the reservations but it ought to be evident now that the readers may have, yet without quite re­ frames we used then were more defective solving the issues in which those reserva­ than we knew. VogeFs book poses two tions are grounded. To the purist who important challenges: to broaden and wonders at the inclusion of Dorothy deepen the study of local politics, so that Duncan MacLennan, wife of the redoubt­ we begin to understand how and why peo­ able Hugh, a woman raised in the United ple are mobilized politically; and, to States, who, in many ways, considered rethink the simplistic nostrums of Left herself an "outsider," she responds that politics (not excluding the ones now asso­ this is a "collection of excerpts from dia­ ciated with Gramsci's name). ries written ... by twenty women who are Canadian or who wrote in what is cur­ Warren Magnusson rently called Canada." (4) "The selections University of Victoria are not meant to be equivalent to one an­ other in any sense," but rather "represent some of the widely varying functions of Kathryn Carter, éd., The Small Details of diary writing and constitute an eclectic Life: 20 Diaries by Women in Canada, group designed to stimulate discus­ 1830-1996 (Toronto: University of To­ sion."^) Scholarly and general readers ronto Press 2002) will appreciate the editor's decision to in­ clude "chunks of diaries," rather than ed­ WITH THIS VOLUME, Kathryn Carter ad­ ited excerpts. (8) Acknowledging the dresses "the need for a Canadian collec­ need, or perhaps anticipating the schol­ tion of women's diaries." (ix) "The arly reader's desire, for an overarching or premise underlying this work is that the even an underlying theme, Carter resorts best history is biography and that reading to "two fictions to structure this collec­ the details from lives of individual tion," first a narrative, "the story of an art­ women can do much to broaden and chal­ ist's [diarist's] growth to maturity." (10) lenge our understanding of Canadian his­ Thus we move from "turbulent begin­ tory." (6) The professional historian will nings" through "conflict and confusion," demur that it does not necessarily follow "hesitation and pause," "exploration," that the best history is autobiography, in "love, loss, and work," to "reflective end­ which category diaries, insofar as they are ings." This might have worked effec­ a construction of self, rightly belong. Yet tively had the editor not resorted to the Carter is moving beyond a narrow schol­ second fiction, a chronological implica­ arly understanding of history, and "en­ tion organization, on the grounds that "di­ couraged contributors ... to get away from aries are in dialogue with history." (10) the notion that the diary is of service The inescapable implication that early di­ mainly to social history," directing atten­ arists represent "turbulent beginnings" tion instead "to the ways in which and the while present-day diarists represent "re­ conditions under which these texts are flective endings" is not altogether satisfy­ written." In their separate and distinctive ing. ways, her contributors, whose back­ ground and expertise, ranging from Eng­ Yet The Small Details of Life is a thor­ lish literature through history, women's oughly enjoyable book, testimony that "the dense, rich fruit of the diary is the REVIEWS 287

seemingly minor details nestled among Sissons, Caroline Alice Porter, or Mary "big" events." (20) The diaries are made Eidse Friesen, all of whom, like Hill and more accessible by the introductions; Staebler, kept diaries over long periods. clearly, the contributors were in dialogue On another level, as Carter points out, with their diaries. Perhaps for this very "the expectations and norms of a culture reason, the introductions are as eclectic or community at a given historical mo­ and varied in their approaches as are the ment will inflect diary content." (10-11) diaries. This does not mean that they are How then, to reconcile the striking con­ uneven, for they are all engaging and use­ trast between the diaries of two women ful. Indeed, Carter deserves high praise writing at the same historical moment, in for the quality of the editing, with each 1901 ? Rosalind Kerr characterizes the di­ contribution a separate little gem. I found ary of Constance Kerr Sissons as fairly no errors of style and only one of sub­ typical of a period when women's jour­ stance: universities opened their doors to nals were "expected to enhance the public women in the 1870s, not in the 1860s, reputation of the family of the writer." with Mount Allison leading the way in (186) Writing in the same year, Phoebe 1872.(15) Mclnnes, unlike Sissons, fails "to censor The approach is multidisciplinary scandalous family secrets." (186) Per­ rather than interdisciplinary despite a few haps the explanation lies in class or com­ specific points of meeting among the con­ munity. Yet K. Jane Watt's introduction tributors. All attempted to provide a sense to the Mclnnes diary provides compelling of the historical milieu in which the diary evidence of women's new freedom and was written. Most also considered the ex­ changing societal attitudes during an era tent to which their particular diary repre­ that saw the advent of the bicycle and a sented a construction of self. S. Leigh concomitant change in women's fash­ Matthews' introduction to the 1830 diary ions. That new freedom signalled in­ of Frances Ramsay Simpson succeeds in creased opportunities for women, re­ situating Simpson very effectively within flected in the growing number of career the broader historical context, while also women after the turn of the century, a so­ raising just enough issues about Simpson cietal shift mirrored in the lives of the vol­ herself and the cultural and personal ume's later diarists: journalist Miriam forces at work. More often, however, the Green Ellis, poet and book illustrator balance is tenuous. The academic reader Dorothy Choate Herriman, novelist Mar­ might have wished that the contributors ian Engel, and writer Edna Staebler. had read each other's introductions, as it This is truly a Canadian collection is only through cross-pollination that and, taken together, the diaries tell a interdisciplinarity can reach full flower. uniquely Canadian story. The diarists rep­ Dialogue among contributors might have resent a broad spectrum of Canadian soci­ served to highlight consistencies or to re­ ety, ranging from the wealthy Mina Wylie solve apparent contradictions. Robynne to Elsie Rogstad Jones who came of age Rogers Healey, in her introduction to the on a Depression-era Saskatchewan farm, diary of Sarah Welch Hill, offers the use­ from the well-known author Marian ful caution that "single diary excerpts Engel to the otherwise invisible Mary should not be taken out of context and as­ Dulhanty preparing for life as a "working sumptions made about an entire life based girl" in the 1920s. Above all, these on one or two entries," (57) a point rein­ women reflect the shifting Canadian de­ forced by Edna Staebler's comments with mographic. Among the early diarists, reference to her own diaries. (454-56) The only New Brunswick's seagoing Amelia reader wonders whether this caution Holder had long-established roots in her would apply equally to the Crease community. Sarah Welch Hill was one women, Susan Nagle, Constance Kerr among many British gentlewomen of her 288 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

generation to settle in southern Ontario. The drama arises from the ending of In the far west, British Columbia was col­ Jean Royce's career as Registrar at onized, first by the British, represented Queen's University after over 30 years. In here by the Nagles and the Creases, and the early 1960s Jean Royce virtually em­ then by central and eastern Canadians, bodied the university. Powerful and influ­ such as the Mclnneses. On the Prairies, ential, she was almost universally ad­ Caroline Alice Porter, whose diaries mired. When in 1968 after her retirement "give us an extraordinary glimpse of a she was awarded an honorary degree, in prairie family," (242) was raised in Prince the company of other recipients including Edward Island. She and others like her Pierre Elliott Trudeau, it was she who re­ helped "Canadianize" the American, Nor­ ceived the only standing ovation. The cer­ wegian, and Mennonite settlers who came emony was a generous and apparently fit­ after, represented here by the Puckettes, ting tribute to a woman who had come to the Rogstads, and the Friesens. As symbolize one of Canada's great educa­ Kathryn Carter states in her introduction, tional institutions. Yet in fact Royce had "this is a book for anyone who has stood in not retired voluntarily. She had been dis­ a cemetery reading the brief epitaph of an missed. Her friends discreetly kept this unknown woman, wondering at the de­ knowledge secret until 1992, ten years af­ tails: What pleasures did her body know? ter her death. Roberta Hamilton delves What losses did she survive? What was behind the mystery. Why was Royce so the rhythm of her day?" (4) It will, as important? Why was she fired? Why did Carter hoped, stimulate discussion. she keep quiet about the circumstances of her departure from office? Gail G. Campbell While the author generates curiosity University of New Brunswick and tension from these rhetorical ques­ tions, she sets out other issues which en­ lighten readers about important social Roberta Hamilton, Setting the Agenda: trends of 20th-century Canadian society: Jean Royce and the Shaping of Queen's lifestyles of single women, changing pat­ University (Toronto: University of To­ terns of academic life, women and the ronto Press 2002) professions, social mobility, feminism between the times of suffrage and the THIS EXCELLENT book fulfils the test of women's liberation movement, and a a good historical biography. It reveals im­ close look at the development of a good, portant aspects of the subject's world; and "sometimes very good," Canadian uni­ it is constructed and written faithfully ac­ versity. The biography bears out the au­ cording to an archival base. thor's confidence that Jean Royce's life Roberta Hamilton inherited a rich and reveals important and tantalizing plentiful hoard of archives, both the writ­ glimpses of areas which have only re­ ten and spoken word, and as well, gener­ cently become part of historical enquiry. ated many more by her own search for the Jean Royce spent her youth in St. significance of her subject. Jean Royce in Thomas, Ontario, born in 1904 to David times gone by may have been considered Royce, a cooper at the local flour mi II, and an unlikely protagonist but Hamilton rec­ his wife Katherine, a housewife. Jean's ognized in her life an opportunity to dis­ sister Marion was the "star sibling," good play important and novel insights about at exams and editor of the high school women, universities, Canadian society, magazine, who won a scholarship to and gender. Her introduction sets a scene McMaster University. Jean's grades were which is both analytical and dramatic. not good enough for a university scholar­ The biography subsequently flows in a ship. So she trained to be a librarian and more or less chronological narrative. worked for a while before registering as a REVIEWS 289

full-time student at Queen's, supporting of her experiences for her book club back herself financially, at the age of 23. Dur­ in Kingston. She was a staunch member of ing summers she worked in the university the International Federation of University library and then got a job in the Regis­ Women and would organize trips to coin­ trar's Office. After graduation Royce cide with their triennial meetings. eventually worked as an assistant to Reg­ Remaining single, she did not lack istrar Alice King and after her death was friends, both male and female. One of the appointed to the position. most interesting domestic details docu­ The position was pivotal for both stu­ mented by Hamilton is Royce's regular dents and administrators. Royce was re­ dining arrangements. For many years she sponsible for admissions and student lived in an apartment in a house on the awards and generally oversaw the prog­ Queen's campus and every evening she ress of students through their academic dined with a couple of friends, the meal careers, counselling thousands of stu­ cooked by May Macdonnell, Professor of dents in personal meetings. At the same Classics. Setting the Agenda provides a time her office was "the centre of aca­ fascinating insight into the way a single demic housekeeping" and smoothed the woman could forge convenient and satis­ way for countless academic committees fying support systems. and administrators. In the words of Ham­ This is an important and appealing ilton's title, Royce "set the agenda" and study and my only regret is that Hamilton seems to have been quite omnipotent in was reticent about how she became in­ the Queen's administration until the ap­ volved. A biographical project began in pointment in 1961 of Dr. J.A. Corry as 1991 when five women decided to record Principal. This was a time of huge expan­ Royce's achievements at Queen's. Ham­ sion and restructuring in universities ilton later inherited this incipient record, across North America, and the new princi­ which was augmented by responses to ap­ pal wanted fresh staff to direct these new peals for information, interviews and con­ developments. In 1964 he tried to get versations, and intensive archival re­ Royce to leave but she soldiered on. Even­ search. Hamilton also mined an oral his­ tually in 1968 the Principal dismissed the tory project undertaken by the Dean of Registrar. The pill was sweetened by dis­ Women in the 1970s, "Hidden Voices: cretion, the awarding of an honorary de­ The Life Experiences of Women Who gree, and Royce's appointment to the Have Worked and Studied at Queen's Board of Trustees. University," which included half a dozen Nevertheless the experience was per­ interviews with Royce herself. Hamilton sonally devastating for Royce who suf­ duly acknowledges the help from hun­ fered illness and depression. Eventually dreds of people but does not explain what she bounced back: her identity was not it was that drew a professional sociologist completely dependent on paid work. to this lifestory. "Engaged, sometimes Throughout her life she had a full life obsessed, for several years," Hamilton in away from the office, and her resources of her book now allows a multitude of read­ character enabled her to overcome the ers to become acquainted with Jean shock and disappointment of her final Royce's achievements and her deep and days on the job. rewarding personality. Travel was a regular enjoyment. She first applied for a passport in 1933 and Mary Kinnear practically every summer after World St John's College War II travelled to Europe, both alone and University of Manitoba with friends. She went to cities in the United States and liked to visit art galler­ ies and the theatre, often writing accounts 290 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Stephen Clarkson, Uncle Sam and Us: Stephen Clarkson is a well-known Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the University of Toronto political economist Canadian State (Toronto: University of with a history of political commitment to Toronto Press 2002) Canadian nationalism and the motivating ideals of Just Society liberalism and so­ STEPHEN CLARKSON's Uncle Sam and cial democracy. While he forswears nos­ Us is, without a doubt, an important con­ talgia for the Keynesian welfare state tribution to Canadian political economy. (KWS) and claims to reject the notion that Proceeding with theoretical sophistica­ there are certain roles the state "should" tion and impressive empirical detail, play, he is explicit about using the KWS as Clarkson aims to clarify how, and to what the standard by which he measures and as­ extent, external forces associated with sesses the neoconservative turn. Indeed, globalization and transnational integra­ the numerous personal anecdotes offered tion have affected the Canadian state. Ex­ in Uncle Sam and Us suggest that it is pre­ amining both the structural changes that cisely Clarkson's nostalgia that has led have transformed the political framework him to ask whether Canada is losing con­ of the Canadian state and the paradigm trol of its destiny in the face of globaliza­ shift from postwar Keynesianism to tion. Clarkson is troubled by the extent to neoconservative governance, Clarkson which the Chrétien Liberals embraced provides a comprehensive and insightful neoconservative policy prescriptions. As analysis of the often greater causal impor­ such, the real purpose of his effort to un­ tance of the choices and policy decisions derstand recent history lies in his desire made by domestic political actors during for a better future. By clarifying the rela­ the period when economic globalization tive importance of the external versus the was accelerating. domestic roots of the neoconservative state in Canada, Clarkson hopes to deter­ Uncle Sam andUs confronts simplistic mine whether it is possible to save the versions of the now popular "globaliza­ Canada that he and others were commit­ tion thesis" by rejecting the suggestion ted to building during the heyday of the that the demise of Keynesian welfarism KWS. If the neoconservative paradigm and the transformation of advanced capi­ shift was domestically determined and talist states was the inevitable conse­ the social achievements and sense of na­ quence of external forces associated with tional identity associated with Canada's economic globalization. Clarkson reveals KWS have not been completely eviscer­ just how important domestic political and ated, then domestic politics really do mat­ ideological choices have been to the ter and there is hope for a progressive re­ transformation of the Canadian state over sponse to globalization. the past two decades. External causation is not denied. Indeed, Clarkson contends Few treatments of the rise of the that institutions of continental and global neoconservative state in Canada are any­ governance, such as NAFTA and the WTO, where near as comprehensive as Uncle now serve as a "supraconstitution" that is Sam and Us. With no fewer than twenty at the very heart of structural changes to discrete chapters, the range of political the Canadian state's political framework. and policy changes that Clarkson ably All the same, the book's principal mes­ analyzes is quite impressive. The first sage is that the functional changes associ­ section of the book explores several di­ ated with the neoconservative turn in state mensions of recent structural changes to policies and governing practices are best the political framework of the Canadian explained endogenously, with reference state. In these chapters Clarkson weaves to the decisions of domestic political ac­ together an understanding of the emer­ tors. gence of institutions of continental and global governance with a longer-term his- REVIEWS 291

torical perspective on the Cana­ foreign policy. The general conclusion dian-American relationship as a "consti­ that flows from these detailed and insight­ tutional order" and an understanding of ful chapters is that it was the embrace of how many recent changes in Canadian neoconservatism by Canadian politicians federalism — such as the Agreement on and bureaucrats that explains the substan­ Internal Trade — constitute the domestic tial, and often parallel, policy changes ingestion of globalizing principles. By that ushered in a dramatically altered ap­ examining the growing significance of proach to governance beginning in the global governance and its impact on the early 1980s. structure of the Canadian state, and then Clarkson's theoretical starting point is exploring the redistribution of federal, a Weberian notion of the sovereign terri­ provincial, and municipal powers within torial state. In keeping with the traditions the Canadian state, Clarkson builds a con­ of Canadian political economy, he notes vincing case for embracing the notion of that even before the current era of acceler­ the state as a "five-tiered governing struc­ ated globalization, the broader "constitu­ ture" in which the character and extent of tional order" of the Canadian state was state activity at the municipal, provincial, determined by our position in the interna­ federal, continental, and global levels tional and continental political economy. change over time in an interrelated man­ Analytically, Clarkson embraces the sig­ ner. It is from this perspective that Clark- nificance of distinctions between struc­ son understands recent structural changes ture and agency, as well as between the to the Canadian state. While he discusses causal processes associated with large ex­ Canada's participation in the construction ternal forces and the decisions of domes­ of the new forms of continental and global tic political actors. One of his overriding governance, Clarkson purposefully high­ goals is to highlight the causal signifi­ lights the role of these institutions of cance of the agency of domestic deci­ global governance as "external" sources sion-makers. In doing so, he hopes to con­ of structural change to the Canadian state. vince readers that a way forward toward a Fully two-thirds of Uncle Sam and Us more progressive and democratic politi­ focuses on dissecting postwar develop­ cal order can be imagined and realized. ments in major areas of Canadian public By advancing this analysis he does a ser­ policy. Concerned as he is with the rise of vice. Clarkson reminds us that politics neoconservatism, Clarkson puts his en­ and the state do, indeed, matter, and the ergy into revealing, and then understand­ way we are governed is determined by ing, policy changes associated with the agents that the public ultimately controls. functional workings of the Canadian This is a politically powerful and impor­ state. With the postwar KWS as his refer­ tant message. ence, he explores how the state in the Mulroney/Chrétien era fulfills functions At times Clarkson's focus on deter­ that came to be expected of it in the mining the relative importance of global­ Diefenbaker/Pearson/Trudeau era. The ization as an external force versus economic policies Clarkson examines in­ neoconservatism as a domestic force clude macroeconomic policies such as has the effect of overstating the extent taxation and monetary policy, the regula­ of the distinction between external and tion of sectors such as banking and tele­ internal causal forces. To argue in fa­ communications, trade and investment vour of emphasizing the ideological de­ policy, and interventionism in the form of cisions associated with the rise of do­ industrial policy. But he does not stop mestic neoconservatism is to ignore the there. Uncle Sam and Us goes on to exam­ "global character" of the neoconserva­ ine the neoconservative paradigm shift in tive turn. Clarkson's own introductory social, labour, environment, cultural, and discussion of the empirical realities of globalization draws attention to "global- 292 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ism" as the justifying ideological corol­ the tale of the transformation of the Cana­ lary of globalization, and he often uses dian public general hospital, in which the phrase "neoconservati ve 19th-century medical charity was re­ globalism." With this in mind, more shaped in the fires of scientific medicine could be made of the "relationship" be­ and industrial efficiency. In the late tween globalization and domestic 1880s, Canadian urban elites who were neoconservatism. Neoconservative glob­ dismayed by the poor physical state of the alism is a globalized paradigm that can be underclass and inspired by philanthropic understood as both a domestic and an ex­ zeal created charitable institutions to ternal expression, depending on how we nurse the indigent ill. As these institu­ identify its ideational roots and social tions and their sponsoring cities grew in base. The Canadian political elite are in­ size and capability, however, so too did creasingly influenced by globalized the aspirations of voluntarist hospital ad­ epistemic networks. Thus, even as we em­ ministrators and allopathic physicians. phasize domestic political choices, the Gagan and Gagan set the early 1920s distinction between domestic and exter­ as the point by which the medical welfare nal is blurred. Even apparently domestic institution was transformed into a factory institutional changes, such as the increas­ to mass-produce health care for all social ing control of the Department of Finance classes. The charitable mandate, though over social policy during the 1980s, are a muted, was still fulfilled, as patients were part of a global trend. It is for this reason reconceived as customers whose fees pro­ that some observers identify Clarkson's duced enough profits to dispense a grudg­ neoconservative turn as the emergence of ing, no-frills, "free" service to those who a "globalized state form." could not pay. Trustees collaborated with Uncle Sam and Us is a compelling doctors to establish hospitals as the centre book with a message of some political im­ of the medical economy, using emotional portance. It is deeply analytical, impres­ marketing campaigns to attract customers sively comprehensive, and highly read­ to an expensive panoply of medical and able. It deserves the attention of all those nursing services and promising them "All who wish to understand, or influence, the the Comforts of Home Without the Errors character of the Canadian state. of Love." (42) Along the way, doctors' grip on medical monopoly strengthened Steve Patten as they negotiated the near-exclusive University of Alberta right to use hospitals as their workshops and proving grounds. In a surprisingly short time, however, David Gagan and Rosemary Gagan, For in spite of the application of indus­ Patients of Moderate Means: A Social trial-sector cost-saving measures, exploi­ History of the Voluntary Public General tation of apprentice nurse labour, and in­ Hospital in Canada, 1890-1950 (Mon­ tensive lobbying to increase government treal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's Uni­ funding, the skyrocketing costs of hospi­ versity Press 2002) talization overwhelmed the resources of "patients of moderate means," whose AFTER SEVERAL DECADES of lament cash payments for private rooms and spe­ from Canadian medical historians regard­ cial extras constituted the backbone of ing the lack of an analytical history of Ca­ hospital revenues. In the crucible of the nadian hospital health care, David and Great Depression, when income from pa­ Rosemary Gagan have produced a timely tients, philanthropists, and municipalities and well-argued survey of a major facet of dried up, and newly indigent patients in this history: the rise and fall of the secular desperate need filled admitting rooms, voluntarist hospital movement. They tell many public hospitals found themselves REVIEWS 293

struggling to stay afloat This resulted, in Doctors, who had little to gain financially the authors' analysis, in a "failed vision" or professionally by the practice of social of accessible hospital care that met the medicine or the treatment of incurables needs of neither patients nor doctors until and indigents, likewise sought to estab­ its rebirth through universal insurance lish the hospital as a site for quick, lucra­ initiatives beginning in the 1950s. tive, and increasingly specialized proce­ A key strength of the text is its useful­ dures. The aged, the insane, and the ness in contextualizing current dilemmas chronically ill, who were found dispro­ regarding health care funding and distri­ portionately among the indigent, were bution. What mission should health care persona non grata at the "temple of sci­ institutions and medical knowledge serve ence," especially by the 1930s. (60) In the in society? Who deserves to benefit from political economy of health care in the medical expertise and technology? Who interwar period, the modernized hospital should pay, and how much? (181) These was reserved first for persons whose ill­ dilemmas, the authors demonstrate, re­ ness represented an immediate and re­ mained unresolved through the first half versible productive loss to society, or a of the twentieth century, and were by no potential profit to health care providers; means put to rest by the advent of federal those deemed beyond the reach of imme­ involvement in health care. What was de­ diate medical intervention were shunted termined between 1890 and 19S0, as this to under-funded custodial or convales­ book unequivocally shows, was the inad­ cent care, where such existed. equacy of a health care system that relied Gagan and Gagan approach their "so­ primarily upon philanthropic largesse, cial history" with the assertion that "the miserly governmental contributions, and social realities of the modern hospital be­ revenue extracted from the already-sick came a microcosm of the social struc­ citizen. The cost of illness had to be dis­ tures, processes, and conditions of every­ tributed among the healthy in order to en­ day life." (7) In the service of this institu- sure accessibility to care, a realization tion-as-mirror perspective, they outline that inspired many hospital authorities to the roles and relationships of philanthro­ lead the movement towards health insur­ pists, administrators, physicians, nurses, ance. and patients, theorizing that social rela­ The historical evidence laid out by tions and divisions outside the hospital Gagan and Gagan also serves as a critical shaped relations within it. For example, reminder of the tendency for orthodox as the authors explain, a highly-visible medicine and North American society in legacy of this period of Canadian hospital general to invest heavily in short-term cu­ history was the multi-tiered approach to rative technology at the expense of "med­ patient care, in which patients were spa­ ico-social," "alternative," and preventive tially and administratively segregated ac­ services that might more effectively ad­ cording to their social class and some­ dress the determinants of health and qual­ times race. Patients from the lowest social ity of life. Hospital administrators, whose rungs could expect to experience similar spreadsheets tallied average patient stays, disadvantages and discriminations inside per diem costs, and above all cures, envi­ the hospital as they did in their daily lives. sioned the hospital's role as "an efficient But the hospital, a prestigious institution factory for the production of scientifically run by community elites and supported by mitigated health for public consumption local and provincial governments, did at a fair price commensurate with its more than passively reflect outside social value." (11) They strove mightily to di­ structures. Systems of segregation and vest the community hospital of responsi­ regulation embedded in hospital architec­ bility for all but financially healthy, ture, management, and policy (at times acutely ill, and quickly curable patients. subverted by individual health care pro- 294 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

viders), recreated the ideology of "less el­ tive practice appeared most strikingly in igibility" in the realm of health care and the floor plans and décor of buildings like reinforced the notion that social hierar­ the ornate Private Patients Pavilion at To­ chies were natural and just and fiscally ronto General, or at the Muskoka tubercu­ necessary. If hospital authorities imag­ losis hospital with its private and public ined their institutions as guardians of wards half a mile distant from each other. Canada's physical and economic health, The lack of photographic material is to they also understood it as their public ser­ some extent offset by a set of statistical ta­ vice duty to shore up the existing social bles that well illustrate many of the au­ order. Superior services available for a thors' points, and will be of considerable fee reassured paying patients that even in interest to researchers in the field of hos­ times of poor health their respectability pital history. and privilege would be upheld; unsavoury All told, For Patients of Moderate public wards, means tests, and "free" sec­ Means fills an oft-stated need for a critical ond-rate treatments reminded the indi­ survey of a key period in Canadian medi­ gent ill oftheir dependency and of the def­ cal history, synthesizing a large number erence owed to their benevolent betters. of smaller studies and older literature. To summarize, Gagan and Gagan seem to Packed with detail, and drawing from a theorize segregation in the hospital pri­ wide array of primary evidence, the text marily as a conservative strategy to ad­ will undoubtedly prove useful to students dress the economic pressures caused by of medical and social welfare history, and the necessity for treating indigent pa­ would serve well as an addition to public tients. It also needs to be identified as a policy reading lists. manifestation of an ideology of class dif­ ference predicated upon the idea that the James M. Wishart needs and wants and rights of individuals Queen's University differed according to their social posi­ tioning. The significance of this assertion is amplified as we witness the erosion of Justine Brown, Hollywood Utopia (Van­ our idealistic (yet always incomplete) couver: New Star Books 2002) universal access health system in Canada. The neo-liberal claim that the survival of PURSUING AN INTEREST in the Utopian universal access demands free market dis­ communities of North America's West tribution of the best health care masks an Coast, Justine Brown, who previously ideology that measures human worth and wrote on such experiments in British Co­ deservedness in economic terms. lumbia, explores the visionary aspects of In a history in which the built environ­ southern California's "movie colony" in ment and workplace culture figure so this slim, deftly written book. Her story prominently, the absence of images in this begins, however, a decade before the first book is disappointing. Hospitals in this motion pictures were made in Hollywood era produced reams of self-promotional and a hundred miles further south, at material, much of it in image form, com­ Point Loma near San Diego, where in memorating or announcing various 1897 disciples of Theosophy set up events or public rituals. These produc­ Lomaland as a society in which to prac­ tions were part of the deliberate effort by tice and espouse their spiritual doctrines. hospital boards to justify the exalted place Theosophy in fact shapes the narrative oftheir institutions in the community and framework and principal themes of the nation, and to sell their products and ser­ book's concern with Hollywood. This vices to individuals and governments. philosophical and religious movement Moreover, the social divisions that the au­ was founded in 187S by a Russian thors see reflected in hospital administra­ woman, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, with REVIEWS 295 three key aims: to form a nucleus of the which chronicles the sexual licentious­ universal brotherhood of humanity with­ ness and other amoral excesses that were out distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, unleashed in a raw community where or colour; to promote the study of compar­ beauty, youth, wealth, and unbridled free­ ative religion, philosophy, and science; dom prevailed. Instead, she finds evi­ and to investigate the hidden mysteries of dence of Utopian optimism in Hollywood, nature and the psychical powers latent in of a positive desire to develop humanity's man (here I have slightly altered Brown's possibilities to achieve a semblance of the terminology with wording from other divine. "The sun-soaked California sources). After Mme. Blavatsky's death dream and the exciting potential of the in 1891, leadership of the Theosophical new medium of film were quickly inter­ society passed to a British woman, Annie twined and grafted together, soon becom­ Besant, among whose beliefs was that ing inextricable," she writes. "What bears California held the potential to become a emphasis here is the degree to which cer­ site for a new age of humanity, more tain film people became imbued with a healthy, enlightened, and fulfilled than sense of mission [her italics]; the prophe­ what had come before. Lomaland was in­ cies related to California loaned their ac­ tended as a showcase for these potentiali­ tivities a certain glow of predestination." ties. (58-59) After establishing this context, Brown Who were these missionaries, she goes shifts her attention northward to the on to ask, and to what degree did they in­ west-lying suburb of Los Angeles that, at fluence Hollywood history? There are the turn of the 20th century, consisted five figures on whom she primarily fo­ largely of open agricultural fields dotted cuses. The first is D.W. Griffith, the pio­ with a few residential bungalows. But neer film director whose epic film on the pre-cinema Hollywood also had its Theo­ US civil war and Reconstruction period, sophical aspect, she notes, with its own The Birth of a Nation (1915), established small community of Annie Besant's fol­ motion pictures as a form for artistic ex­ lowers, called Krotona. In 1909 it also be­ pression and national myth in the United came the home of L. Frank Baum, author States. Next is Natacha Rambova, a of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), self-made exotic (named Winifred who was a Theosophist and, in the view of Shaughnessy at birth in Salt Lake City) several critics, including Brown, es­ who married Rudolph Valentino, de­ poused Theosophical principles in his signed movie costumes and sets, and, ac­ many Oz books. In 1914 Baum estab­ cording to Brown, played a role in defin­ lished the Oz Film Manufacturing Com­ ing Art Deco style. Then comes Sergei pany and supervised and wrote the scripts Eisenstein, the great Soviet director who for three feature films based on his books visited Hollywood in the early sound era produced in that year. and became involved in an ultimately di­ Krotona soon packed up and moved sastrous project to make a filmi n Mexico, north and inland to Ojai, California, and financed by the California socialist Upton Baum's personal involvement in feature Sinclair. The fourth is William Randolph filmmaking encompassed only a single Hearst, the newspaper tycoon who built year. Yet a Theosophical thread winds his own private Utopia, a repository for through Brown's further account of Hol­ myriad art treasures of Europe that he col­ lywood's rise to world dominance as a lected, at San Simeon up the California moviemaking capital. She contrasts her coast. Last is Aldous Huxley, the British approach to that of a book that empha­ novelist, author of Brave New World, who sizes, as she puts it, the "dark and un­ became a Hollywood screenwriter and canny" (28) side of Hollywood's origins, seeker of higher enlightenment through Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, drugs and occult religions, a quest that in- 296 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

evitably brought him into contact with ically, of course, silent cinema, with its Theosophy. emphasis on visual communication rather From the perspective of an academic than words — as a Universal Language film historian, this is a quirky grouping, that could break down barriers among but never less than interesting and re­ peoples, promote harmony, unite the freshing. In part they weave together world in peace: goals Brown links to The- through a series of connections to each osophy's ideal of universal human broth­ other, and, as noted, to Theosophy. erhood. Many film historians would ques­ Eisenstein might seem out of place, for tion the book's upbeat treatment of this example, but he's significant in part be­ theme, or at least wish to see acknowl­ cause of the fascination he developed for edged what Miriam Hansen in her book Mexican mystical religious practices and Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in also because of Sinclair's role in the tragic American Silent Film (Cambridge, MA and senseless destruction of the Russian's 1991) describes as its "complicity with Mexican film. Sinclair becomes a figure the most advanced forces of expansion of secondary interest as a maverick out­ and monopolization," (186) that is, Hol­ sider who unexpectedly won the 1934 lywood's successful drive to become, not Democratic Party gubernatorial primary part of universal brotherhood, but the with his End Poverty in California (EPIC) overwhelmingly dominant power in program, which might be considered a po­ world cinema that it is today. Justine litical form of utopianism, and who was Brown does not entirely ignore what she then crushed in the general election by, calls the "ugly and uninspired" (152) as­ among other factors, the implacable op­ pects of Hollywood, but her purpose is to position of the Hollywood establishment remind readers that there are glimmers of and Hearst's newspapers. Hearst, besides Utopian potential in its past, which may inviting the Hollywood elite for yet be made to shine again. sleepovers at San Simeon, was carica­ tured in Huxley's satirical novel, After Robert Sklar Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Huxley, New York University so to speak squaring the circle, became friends with Jiddu Krishnamurti, who as a teenager in India was anointed by Annie Suzanne Morton, At Odds: Gambling and Besant as a kind of messiah-figure for Canadians, 1919-1969 (Toronto: Univer­ Theosophy, only later to renounce that sity of Toronto Press 2003). role and settle in southern California. Outside this chain of connections, A TODDS is a groundbreaking study of the Rambova's importance derives from her history of gambling regulation in Canada. practice of spiritualism and her role, Suzanne Morton sets out to explain along with the screenwriter June Mathis, changes in attitudes toward gambling be­ in creating the Valentino myth. "Between tween the end of World War I and the pas­ them they invoked a thrillingly powerful sage of the federal government's god: Eros," Brown writes. "Rudolph Omnibus Bill in 1969, which permitted Valentino was unquestionably the most lotteries under certain conditions. During potent manifestation of Eros that Holly­ this period, gambling underwent a trans­ wood had ever produced. In fact, it may formation from a moral vice to an accept­ still be unrivalled." (74) able activity regarded as necessary to fund the Canadian welfare state. I have left to the end the first of the au­ thor's quintet, because her utilization of Morton explores the public debate Griffith may be the most contestable part about gambling in five provinces: Nova of her book. Griffith is central to her the­ Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and sis because he promoted cinema — histor­ British Columbia. While she is interested REVIEWS 297

in national history and tackling the "big that emphasized a man's role as family picture," Morton is sensitive to provincial breadwinner was enshrined in the Crimi­ differences, particularly those of ethnic­ nal Code of Canada and the masculine ity and religion, and distinct provincial ideal espoused by the anti-gambling economies that affected attitudes towards movement. Gambling, however, encour­ gambling and hindered efforts by the fed­ aged another competing form of mascu­ eral government to amend the Criminal linity, one associated with bachelor sport­ Code. She uses a wide variety of sources, ing culture and the qualities of courage, mostly left by anti-gamblers, including audacity, and risk-taking. Morton draws those generated by governments, on the research of historians who have churches, public inquiries, and police used urban space to illuminate how het­ commissions. erosexual women and gay men forged Part One examines the moral concerns gender identities. She explains how about gambling expressed by its oppo­ semi-public male spaces associated with nents during the first seventy years of the gambling were used to reinforce hetero­ 20th century and considers the context of sexual male privilege in Montréal. The gambling activities between 1918 and city was selected for an in-depth case 1945. Morton argues that there was a dis­ study because of its association with the sonance between law and behaviour and a evolution of male sporting culture in Ca­ widespread ambivalence towards gam­ nadian historical writing. Privileged men bling. A powerful segment of An­ traversed Montreal's urban space without glo-Celtic Protestant middle-class pol­ boundaries, while gambling among the icy-makers consistently opposed gam­ working class was closely policed and tar­ bling, while at the same time private race geted in the rhetoric of the anti-gambling tracks and gambling clubs for the rich and movement. penny gambling among the working class Bingo, with its largely female work­ were widespread. She suggests that un­ ing-class clientele, was an exception to even prosperity, the expansion of com­ the male environments associated with mercial leisure, the Depression, and most forms of gambling. The World War II all fostered the development anti-gambling movement saw bingo as a of environments that tolerated gambling. threat to women's responsibilities as At times Morton's line of argument, that wives and mothers and consumers. Mor­ ambivalence rather than change charac­ ton argues convincingly that for many terized the Canadian view on gambling, married working-class women, bingo limits the analysis. For instance, Morton held out the potential of consumer notes briefly that Canada was static and durables such as vacuum cleaners, which ambivalent in its stance on gambling for many were unaffordable. With the ex­ while other countries legalized gambling pansion of the welfare state in the 1960s much earlier in the 20th century. This the anti-bingo discourse shifted from raises questions about the peculiarities of working-class women who were married Canadians. Why were Canadians appar­ with children to welfare mothers and se­ ently conservative in their views on gam­ niors. bling, while other countries were more Morton further explores the role of liberal and tolerant? ethnicity and religion in shaping oppo­ Part Two probes the ways in which nents' understanding of gambling gender, race, and religion structured the through case studies of Americans, Jew­ meaning of gambling in Canada. Morton ish Montreal, Chinese Canadians, and the probes the multiple constructions and re­ role of religion in Catholic and Protestant sponses to gambling and how competing attitudes to gambling. Previous to the social values were negotiated. A defini­ emergence of commercialized gambling tion of masculine domestic respectability and American organized crime in the 298 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

1940s, the gambling problem in Canada gambling was an instinctive aspect of hu­ was associated with the Chinese man nature marked a change from the community, composed largely of single premise of the progressive reformers of men. In one of the case studies, she illus­ the early twentieth century. During the trates how the association of Montreal's 1960s the debate about lotteries as a Eastern European Jews with bookmaking source of revenue for the welfare state could at times fuel French-Canadian emerged as the dominant theme. Three anti-Semitism. Morton also contributes to groups were identified as putting pressure the historical writing on the political ten­ on the federal government for legal lotter­ sions between Catholic Quebec and the ies- service clubs, municipal and provin­ rest of Canada. One of the strengths of the cial governments, and taxpayers. Morton analysis is the attention Morton gives to suggests that a willingness to embrace differences among Catholics in their new, more tolerant attitudes toward gam­ views on gambling. The Catholic Church, bling and the growth of consumerism she argues, was not unanimously in fa­ marked the end of Victorian Canada. vour of bingo and other games of chance. At Odds fills a significant gap in the Nevertheless charitable gambling took Canadian literature on political institu­ place at the local level despite the disap­ tions and state bureaucracies with its in­ proval of Church officials. After World sight into policy development on moral War II attacks on charitable bingo became issues. Morton's story is one that is as a way for Anglo-Protestants to express much about continuity as it is about both anti-Catholic and anti-Quebec senti­ change. She provides an important contri­ ments. bution to Canadian social history by sug­ Part Three of the book focuses on the gesting that the moral standards of the post-World War II period and the move to largely English-speaking, Protestant, amend the Criminal Code by linking gam­ middle class extended beyond the 1920s, bling with both the welfare state and char­ traditionally conceived by historians. As itable fundraising. Morton argues that Morton's study of gambling in Canada il­ during this period the definition of the lustrates, the final demise of Victorian problem of commercial gambling under­ Canada did not occur until the 1960s. went a change. Critics were less likely to Morton also points to the complexities worry about the moral consequences of and inconsistency with which moral is­ gambling and instead concentrated on its sues were approached by policy makers impact on civic society. Morton's analy­ and social reformers in late-19th and 20th sis of the gambling probes of the 1950s il­ century Canada. lustrates that by transforming the gam­ bling problem to one associated with pro­ Christina Burr fessional criminals, critics recast the University of Windsor public debate, and a distinction between criminal gambling and charitable gam­ bling emerged. The connection between Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Free­ gambling and charitable fund-raising dom: How Race and Gender Shaped made possible the legalization of gam­ American Citizenship and Labor (Cam­ bling in Canada in 1969. Morton is sensi­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press tive to the other issues that factored into 2002) post-war changes in views of gambling, although creation of the "compulsive IN UNEQUAL FREEDOM, Evelyn Nakano gambler," and the adoption of the rhetoric Glenn demonstrates, deftly and often of gambling as a medical problem by the quite brilliantly, that labor relations and anti-gambling lobby is discussed only citizenship have been mutually reinforc­ briefly. The ascendancy of the belief that ing and that ideologies of race and gender REVIEWS 299 have fundamentally shaped both. In an ac­ Having laid this conceptual ground­ count focused on the period 1870 to 1930, work, Glenn offers detailed case studies this book offers both theory and narrative, of the dynamics of citizenship and labour as well as a serious challenge to the East from 1870 to 1930 in three primarily agri­ Coast, black/white bias in scholarship on cultural regions: the South, the South­ US race relations. This is an important west, and Hawaii. The South, where book that deserves widespread attention. whites subjected African Americans to Unequal Freedom balances a sociolo­ increasingly systematic regimes of share- gist's attention to structure and theory cropping and racial segregation, was the with an historian's interest in thick de­ most rigidly structured of these three so­ scription. In her opening chapter, Glenn cieties. Mexicans in the Southwest, like proposes an "integrated framework" for African Americans, were technically rec­ analyzing gender and race. One cannot be ognized as citizens by the federal govern­ understood without the other, she argues. ment. But Mexicans' racial status was Moreover, categories of race and gender more ambiguous: in some contexts, some — including blackness and whiteness, people of Mexican origin were under­ maleness and femaleness, Mexicanness stood to be "white" and therefore entitled and Angloness — are interdependent. to more rights and respect than were peo­ One half of each pair cannot be under­ ple of colour. Hawaii, with its minuscule stood without reference to the other. middle class, was the most dramatically Moreover, the meanings of such terms are stratified of the three regions. In her anal­ constantly being remade. An accurate ysis of Hawaii, Glenn focuses on relations study of power relations and difference in between Japanese immigrants and white United States history therefore requires elites (haoles). She shows that the second an approach that looks at real relation­ generation of Japanese residents (Nisei) ships among people, as they happened in — born in the US and therefore citizens— particular places and times. were critical in claiming new rights that allowed many to escape an exploitative Glenn next provides a useful synthesis plantation labour system. The many dif­ of recent scholarship on citizenship and ferences among these regions notwith­ labour in two narrative chapters. Her standing, Glenn shows that in all three overall argument is that "the concepts of cases white elites used their power in po­ liberal citizenship and free labor devel­ litical and economic life to build (often oped and evolved in tandem and in re­ through coercion) large, non-white la­ sponse to political, economic, and social bour forces to do the grueling work of pro­ transformations over the course of the ducing wealth. nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." (2) Her discussion of citizenship empha­ To her credit, Glenn looks at racial ide­ sizes the contradictory history of Ameri­ ologies as well as material circumstances. can universalism, implied in the idea that Across regions, she shows, elites mobi­ "all men are created equal," and exclu­ lized ideas about racial difference to serve sion, as manifested in the decidedly un­ their own ends. They found ways of justi­ equal treatment of women, poor people, fying the denial of basic rights by arguing and people of non-European origin. A that non-white men were — variously — linked chapter on labour traces the inter­ uncivilized, lazy, dirty, or weak, while twined histories of "freedom and coer­ non-white women were exotic, loose, in­ cion" in US history, emphasizing that the sensate, or incompetent. Such ideologies ideology of "free labour" often masked a helped elites to reconcile the universalist- reliance on the labour of people whose ic promises of American citizenship with choices were so severely circumscribed the exclusionary practices of American as to make them only nominally free. capitalism. 300 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Unequal Freedom is more than a story night. (158) Ray Stannard Baker, famous of raw exploitation, however. As Glenn for his study of the Jim Crow South, com­ demonstrates, Mexicans, African Ameri­ pared the haole elite in Hawaii to the cans, and the Japanese resisted oppres­ white planter class of the "Old South." sion both directly and indirectly. They mi­ (205) Were the South and black/white re­ grated away from repressive conditions, lations a template for racial formations committed violence against employers or elsewhere in the US? Unequal Freedom overseers, formed labour organizations, suggests that we need to know more about and went on strike. They also took steps to how people imported and exported racial strengthen their own communities by, ideas and practices among US regions. among other things, advocating for It is worth mentioning that some of schooling, cultivating civic associations, Glenn's analytical and organizational de­ and publishing community newspapers. cisions lead to telling omissions. Her Glenn shows that racialized communities choice to analyze a dyad of race relations were complex and often divided among in each of three regions precludes, for ex­ themselves. Gender relations were con­ ample, an examination of the role of Na­ tested and remade within these communi­ tive Americans (whose status as a ties, for instance, and middle-class lead­ racialized group was enormously impor­ ers argued over strategies for educating tant in this period) or of the complex, mul­ the population. tiethnic nature of society in Hawaii. Per­ This work of synthesis makes impor­ haps more problematic, however, is the tant interventions in the existing litera­ almost complete absence of poor white ture. Glenn's analysis of gender provides people from Glenn's discussion of a useful correction to studies that posit or "whites" and "Anglos" in the South and imply that race is "genderless." Her insis­ Southwest. Historians have long been tence that labour relations shaped citizen­ preoccupied with the role of poor whites ship is a valuable antidote to a growing lit­ in shaping citizenship and labour rela­ erature on citizenship that often disre­ tions in the South in this period. Steven gards economic relations. And perhaps Hahn and J. Morgan Kousser, among oth­ most important, Unequal Freedom dem­ ers, have shown that elite whites used onstrates that racial formations in the US white supremacist ideology not just to op­ were far more than a drama in black and press African Americans, but also to draw white. While Glenn is certainly not the reluctant poor whites into their camp. In first person to make this argument, her use this critical struggle to forge a cross-class of comparative analysis and the breadth white identity, elites were forced to make of this work should prove beyond any significant compromises in their own doubt that, well before the policy changes agenda. And as historian Neil Foley has that transformed immigration in the sec­ demonstrated, white elites in Texas were ond half of the 20th century, people far from convinced that poor whites were thought of Japanese and Mexicans, of "white" in the first place. Indeed, analyz­ haoles and Anglos — as well as of blacks ing poor whites (as well as upwardly mo­ and whites — when they thought about bile people of color, whom Glenn does "race" in the US. treat in more detail) forces a consider­ ation of just how messy and intertwined Glenn treats all three regions as dis­ the categories of gender, class, and race tinct entities, but there are intriguing hints have been. Including poor whites would of an interconnected history here as well. have complicated Glenn's already formi­ For instance, Carey McWilliams de­ dable task, but it would also have yielded scribed the recruitment of Mexicans in a richer and somewhat less schematic Texas to grow sugar beets in Colorado as study. an "underground railroad" in which grow­ ers' agents spirited away labourers at REVIEWS 301

This dilemma should be instructive to Nonetheless, his book offers a formidable those who call for fewer case studies and — often devastating—challenge to those more synthesis: Is it possible to convey historians who have praised the progres­ the complexity of history while, at the sive role of (predominantly white) unions same time, covering large swaths of time on issues of civil rights and who have per­ and space and advancing new ideas? ceived that alleged role as the logical out­ Overall, Glenn has met this challenge come of what some have called "work­ with great panache. Unequal Freedom is ing-class interracialism." Moreover, an exceptional work that not only co­ Minchin provides a ringing vindication of gently summarizes existing literature but the black union activists who ultimately also makes original contributions of its turned to the federal government to seek own. redress of their longstanding grievances. Bitter experience, over many years, had Kate Masur taught them that instances of "work­ University of Maryland ing-class interracialism" were few and far between. On the contrary, black workers' demands for equality, in the workplace Timothy J. Minchin, The Color of Work: and the larger society, usually encoun­ The Struggle for Civil Rights in the South­ tered massive resistance from manage­ ern Paper Industry. 1945-1980 (Chapel ment, white workers, and white unions. Hill: University of North Carolina Press Thus, as a black worker from Moss Point, 2001) Mississippi, recalled, "We couldn't do it by ourselves. We had tried everything. IN THE COLOR OF WORK, Timothy We had to go through the government." Minchin points out that the paper industry (107) has received "very little attention" (2) Drawing on more than sixty oral his­ from labour historians, even though it was tory interviews he conducted in the late a major industrial employer, especially in 1990s, and on the court documents pro­ the South, for most of the 20th century and viding the testimony of African American was almost 100 percent unionized. It thus plaintiffs in the many lawsuits that threat­ offers the opportunity to analyze the role ened to overwhelm the paper industry and trade unions played in relation to ques­ its unions after 1965, Minchin paints a tions of racial discrimination and civil vivid portrait of segregation in the work­ rights, and to address the "class-race" de­ place and of black workers' growing de­ bate that has animated labour historians in termination to overturn the system that recent years. Minchin's main focus is the kept them subordinate. "When I first went experience of black workers in the south­ there [in 1951]," Sidney Gibson recalled ern paper industry. He documents the con­ of his long experience at the International ditions they faced and the struggles they Paper Company (IP) plant in Natchez, waged in rich detail. But he also pays Mississippi, "you didn't do anything but close attention to the role of employers, whatever a white person didn't want to unions, white workers, and the state in de­ do." (33) Or as State Stallworth, from IP's veloping, and partially dismantling, the Moss Point plant, put it, "We got all the industry's rigidly segregated regime. low-paying jobs and the hard jobs and the Although Minchin challenges some of back-breaking jobs and the dirty jobs." the class-essentialist premises that have (34) Gibson and Stallworth were not ex­ characterized the "new southern labor aggerating. Blacks were uniformly as­ history," his engagement with the in­ signed to the "dirty" jobs in the "process­ creasingly acrimonious literature engen­ ing" segments of the industry, while dered by the broader class-race debate is, whites worked at "clean" jobs in produc­ for the most part, cautious and limited. tion and maintenance. In the "black" jobs 302 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

there were no significant opportunities To those who would lament this for advancement; African Americans "race-based" strategy, Minchin offers a were assigned to "lines of progression" compelling rejoinder. Although a few that led nowhere. But in the "white" jobs, whites did offer covert support for their there were complex lines of progression black fellow workers' demands, "work­ that offered opportunities for significant ing-class interracialism" was largely a upgrades in pay and skill. fantasy in the southern paper industry; "National" corporations such as Inter­ and the regulatory state, for all of its defi­ national Paper and Crown-Zellerbach ciencies, was an indispensable ally of the were every bit as relentless as "local" forces of change. firms such as the St. Joe Paper Company One of the most telling themes of The of Port St. Joe, Florida, in enforcing this Color of Work is the character and scope discriminatory regime. But what about of white resistance to black demands for unions? During the upsurge of unionism justice. For white paper workers, as for so in the 1930s and 1940s whites organized many southern whites, the civil rights rev­ their own racially exclusive locals. When olution was "like Armageddon." (171) blacks also demanded the right to orga­ When black workers and their allies be­ nize, they were shunted into separate and gan to develop affirmative action pro­ unequal locals of their own. Given the grams that threatened to dismantle segre­ larger pattern of segregation in the region, gation in employment, whites "thought it and the fact that whites made up 80 to 85 was the end of the world." ( 172) But they per cent of the industry's workforce, un­ fought, often viciously, to defend their ions served to reinforce the status quo, or, turf against black encroachment. When in Minchin's words, to "formalize and new plantwide seniority agreements fi­ codify patterns of segregation that com­ nally made it possible for veteran black panies had initially established." (26) workers to transfer to more skilled and Does this mean that the black locals better-paying jobs, they encountered so were powerless, or worse? Certainly not much harassment (and, sometimes, sabo­ worse. Minchin points out that black tage) that many returned to the depart­ unionists, many of them World War II and ments and positions they had been eager Korean War veterans, had begun to agi­ to abandon. When employers finally tate for change long before the passage of opened up "white" cafeterias, shower the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But their un­ rooms, and recreational facilities to black ions were, he acknowledges, "something workers, whites often boycotted the inte­ of a paradox." (73) They provided a forum grated terrain. As a black worker at in which black leadership could develop. Crown-Zellerbach's Bogalusa, Louisi­ Moreover, they became vehicles of effec­ ana, plant recalled, "They stopped using tive protest when they joined forces with the bathrooms, ... they quit taking a civil rights organizations and federal shower. We moved in, they moved out." agencies. But within the framework of the ( 136) All the while the companies and the industry and its international unions, they unions hastened to inform their white were ultimately powerless to effect constituents that they had acted to enforce change. new federal mandates only because they had to — because continued defiance of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which the law would mean the loss of valuable outlawed racial (and gender) discrimina­ government contracts and, hence, white tion in employment, became the legal jobs. weapon black paper workers wielded against the companies and unions that If there is room for more than passing kept them down; and the NAACP and the criticism of Minchin's book, it comes at federal Equal Employment Opportunity the points where he engages, or fails to en­ Commission became their greatest allies. gage, the existing literature on what he REVIEWS 303

calls the "interracial unionism debate.*' several articles and essays that served to (2) In his relatively few references to this reinforce his evidence and conclu­ debate, Minchin sometimes seems to be sions—so much so that reading The Color reinventing the wheel—that is, he fails to of Work and listening, especially, to black acknowledge the extent to which his evi­ workers' testimony therein, offered a dence reinforces, and his arguments coin­ vivid echo of familiar voices and parallel cide with, the work of other scholars. For histories. example, he pays little attention to the Ultimately, none of these criticisms scholarly work and historical role of Her­ are meant to deny that The Color of Work bert Hill, who served as labour secretary is an important book that merits a wide of the NAACP for more than a quarter of a readership among labour historians and century and was a key figure in building other scholars of class, race, and the the alliance among black workers, the American South. Timothy Minchin has NAACP, and the EEOC that Minchin dis­ already published one award-winning cusses in such illuminating detail. Even book, Hiring the Black Worker: The Ra­ before he left the NAACP in the early cial Integration of the Southern Textile 1970s, Hill had developed a formidable Industry (1999). The Color of Work is a scholarly reputation, and he has since be­ worthy successor. come a major critic of the "new labour his­ tory." Minchin does make several brief Bruce Nelson references to Hill in his text and notes, but Dartmouth College considering the fact that The Color of Work bears out — and validates — not only Hill's scholarly perspective but the Michelle Brattain, The Politics of White­ strategies he developed as a civil rights ness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the activist, the references are few and far be­ Modern South (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ tween. versity Press 2001) Moreover, several studies of the steel industry, including my own, have ex­ THE FAILURE OF US unions to organize pressed a perspective that is remarkably southern industry since the New Deal was similar to Minchin's. In December 1986, one of several setbacks that later ac­ Robert J. Norrell's pioneering article on counted for the diverging fortunes of un­ "Caste in Steel" appeared in the Journal ions on opposite sides of the US-Canada of American History. Although there were border. Having failed to establish a strong differences between the paper and steel foothold in the south, private-sector industries — there was only one union in American unions saw themselves isolated steel and it was, formally at least, "inte­ geographically and politically. While Ca­ grated" — Norrell demonstrated that the nadian union density held steady or in­ contracts negotiated by the United Steel- creased after the 1950s, US union density workers of America (US WA) served to rat­ continuously declined to the point that by ify, and sometimes intensify, the patterns 2002 one half of American membership of racial inequality that had long pre­ was confined to just six states. And no in­ vailed in steel, and that black workers ulti­ dustry foretold the post-war travails of US mately felt compelled to turn to federal unions in the south better than textiles. agencies — and against the US WA — in Michelle Brattain argues in this well their struggles for justice. My own book, written, exhaustively researched, and ju­ Divided We Stand: American Workers dicious examination of textile workers in and the Struggle for Black Equality Floyd County, Georgia, that the politics (2001), was not available to Minchin of race are in fact crucial to explaining when he was writing The Color of Work, textile unionism's failure. Brattain but in the early and mid-1990s I published grounds her book in recent literature 304 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

which sees the construction of "white­ this now ubiquitous concept to explain ness" as crucial to US working-class con­ what it cannot explain. Rather, she gener­ sciousness and behaviour. She argues that ally lets her narrative speak for itself. The the southern textile industry "began, and inadvertent result may be that she teaches remained for much of its history, wholly us less about the explanatory promise of captive to race" (5) and even "though whiteness analysis than its limited poten­ southerners in the early twentieth century tial as an analytical tool. did not use the term," whiteness "was Brattain's modest approach is well ad­ deeply embedded in social relations, poli­ vised, for references to the politics of tics, and class formation." Nor was white­ whiteness in fact do not explain some of ness instituted from above. Working- the central issues taken up in her narra­ class whites participated in its construc­ tive. Whiteness ultimately tells us little tion: none more so than southern white about how and why white mill hands re­ textile workers, who "inscribed and gave sisted their white employers by unioniz­ meaning to working-class whiteness." (7) ing and striking, what conditions fa­ By embracing whiteness, white workers voured or undermined their actions, or made clear that they "did not in fact share why the Textile Workers Union of Amer­ identical interests with black workers" in ica (TWUA) in Floyd County was "ini­ the racialized south. (5) tially at the forefront of changes in race Brattain uses the analytical tool of relations...long before the passage of the whiteness as well as any labour historian Civil Rights Act." (232) Nor do refer­ has used it to date. Her narrative opens ences to the whiteness of textile workers with an account of the making of the explain why they were less likely to sup­ southern textile mill workforce, as the port the rabidly racist politics of Eugene process unfolded in northwest Georgia's and Herman Talmadge than were their ru­ Floyd County. The arrival of the cotton ral white neighbors. mills in the early 20th century "seemingly Indeed, Brattain's narrative suggests reunited the interests of all classes of that if whiteness bounded the arena of southern whites" who were "sorely di­ Georgia politics, it did not determine vided" at the time, she writes. (35) The ex­ what happened within that arena, where clusion of black workers from the vast class and regional dynamics exerted enor­ majority of textile mill jobs (other than as mous pull. The example of Georgia's De­ janitors) meant that just as "janitorial pression-era governor, Eugene work was associated with blackness, tex­ Talmadge, who exploited race politics as tile work became associated with white­ well as anyone in his time, provides a case ness." (47) Brattain argues that whiteness in point. An anti-New Deal governor, consequently helped define what it meant Talmadge played the race card heavily to to be working class in the south. Indeed, cover his betrayal of white workers dur­ she contends that "whiteness in the South ing the 1934 national textile strike, when became something that largely deter­ he used the National Guard to facilitate mined the ability to become part of the in­ strike-breaking only days after seeking dustrial working class." (5) labour's vote to win a decisive gubernato­ Yet because Brattain is such an adept rial primary. Yet in the first campaign historian, some of the limitations of the Talmadge ran after his 1934 treachery, whiteness paradigm become clear as her there is little evidence that textile workers finely detailed narrative unfolds. To a fell for his racist charade: they helped de­ greater extent than her title suggests, the feat him in a 1936 Senate race. Though politics of whiteness serves as a periodic Talmadge won an election again as gover­ referent or touchstone rather than the or­ nor in 1938, his victory had less to do with ganizing principle of Brattain's entire his appeal than the self-destruction of the narrative. Wisely, Brattain rarely uses incumbent administration. When he tried REVIEWS 305 to use demagoguery to get re-elected in many votes as Democrat Hubert H. 1942 by race-baiting President Roose­ Humphrey. velt's Fair Employment Practices Com­ These concluding chapters would be mittee, he failed to win either Floyd stronger, though, had they considered the County or Georgia. And when he mounted textile industry's larger market dynamics yet another campaign for governor in and the severe limitations the industry's 1946, mingling red-baiting with his fa­ economic forces placed upon textile miliar racist conjurings, Floyd County workers and unions in the post-World voters helped thwart his bid. If anything, War II era. But the post-1948 portion of Brattain's evidence suggests that this book gives no attention to the eco­ "lintheads" responded more tepidly than nomics of the industry, focusing instead other Georgians to Talmadgism's appeals on electoral politics, civil rights, and inte­ to whiteness during the 1930s and 1940s. gration. Thus, one learns only in the Similarly, Brattain explains the defeat book's penultimate paragraph that be­ of the CIO's Operation Dixie after the war tween 1946 and 1960, 202 southern tex­ by referring to the dispersed structure of tile mills closed (including S unionized the south's textile industry, the Floyd County mills), eliminating 54,290 anti-unionism of local authorities, and jobs. (280) Had these facts been inte­ employers' red-baiting more than she re­ grated into Brattain's analysis, rather fers to the politics of whiteness. And in than inserted into her conclusion, she explaining post-war strike defeats in might have arrived at different conclu­ Floyd County she cites "workers' vulner­ sions regarding Wallace's appeal to ability to regional under-employment, Floyd County whites. She might have hostile local officials, and the failure of considered the degree to which whites felt federal labor policy" as decisive factors imperilled not only as a racial elite whose (194), not race politics. Yet because system of apartheid was threatened, but as Brattain crafts her argument about the workers whose economic futures were in central ity of whiteness with a light touch, doubt. In short, she might have looked be­ such facts tend to qualify — rather than yond whiteness to more fully grasp contradict — her thesis. Wallace-ism's dynamics. To her credit, Brattain offers much ev­ As it is, those not already won over to idence to undercut any exclusive claim whiteness literature are not likely to be for the centrality of the politics of white­ converted by this book. Thankfully, how­ ness to the textile labour history. And she ever, one does not have to embrace white­ is too faithful to the evidence to bend her ness analysis to appreciate this as an out­ entire narrative around constructions of standing historical narrative. Michelle race. Thus she relies on her final chapters, Brattain's wise and well informed ac­ detailing the "Republicanization" of count throws a bright new 1 ight on the fai 1- Floyd County whites in the wake of the ure of unionism in the US south, raising is­ civil rights revolution of the 1960s, to seal sues that scholars are likely to debate for the argument that whiteness was ulti­ years to come. mately a determining force in the history of textile workers. These chapters detail Joseph A. McCartin how warmly Floyd County's "lintheads" Georgetown University embraced "the most recent incarnation of whiteness," the racist populism that George Wallace promoted in response to the civil rights movement. (267) As Brattain reports, Wallace easily out- polled Republican Richard Nixon in Floyd County in 1968, and drew twice as 306 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Glenna Matthews, Silicon Valley, italize on Stanford University's techno­ Women, and the California Dream: Gen­ logical resources and to cater to military der, Class, and Opportunity in the Twenti­ spending. Several major defense contrac­ eth Century (Stanford: Stanford tors located in the area, providing University Press 2003) high-paid, mostly unionized jobs for men and women of varying ethnic and racial AS CAN BE EXPECTED from a book that affiliations. By 1967, "60 percent of all originated as a dissertation at Stanford in electronics orders nationally were placed 1977 and then gestated over the next 25 by the Pentagon or the National Aeronau­ years, Glenna Matthews' Silicon Valley, tics and Space Administration, with Cali­ Women, and the California Dream is both fornia's aerospace industry being the sin­ broad-ranging and challenging. Ques­ gle largest receiver of components." tioning "how it could be that the prosper­ (125) ity generated by Silicon Valley has been Numerous technological inventions so maldistributed," (I I) Matthews argues accompanied the rise of the military com­ that globalization, the decline of union­ plex, the most important ones being the ism, unplanned urban development, tech­ integrated circuit in 1959 and the micro­ nological innovation, and the processor in 1971. These in turn revolu­ segmentation of the labour force into tionized the electronics industry, paving gendered, racial, and ethnic enclaves con­ the way for the development of personal tributed to the contemporary situation in computers and the turn of the high-tech which "Silicon Valley's rewards are ... industry away from the defense market disproportionately going to the haves at and towards a consumer one. Seeking the expense of the have-nots." (258) more scientific freedom than military Matthews begins her chronicle 100 spending offered, and wanting to escape years ago, when San Jose was neither ur­ the federal government's slow bureau­ ban nor high-tech but home to hundreds of cracy and rigorous labour regulations, orchards. A "great ethnic diversity" (36) electronics companies began developing characterized the area, with Irish Catho­ products to be sold to private buyers. lics, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Latin Quickly dividing their rapidly expand­ Americans, and Mexicans labouring in ing workforces into two tiers, namely, fields and fruit factories. As in most other small numbers of scientific employees industries during this time, women were versus large numbers of repetitive ones, considered unskilled and were given major companies like IBM, HP, and Intel low-paying and feminized jobs. Yet even initiated a proletarianization and though ethnic, racial, and gendered preju­ feminization of the high-tech industry. dices existed, families of varying ethnici­ Around 1970, electronics firms started ties and races achieved stability, security, hiring predominantly immigrant women and prosperity. They did so by operating from Asia (especially the Philippines and small businesses in their homes, buying Vietnam), Latin America, Mexico, and real estate, and encouraging their children Portugal for low-paying manual jobs. to attain high education levels. Unioniza­ These firms used — and still use — a tion, however, was the chief method by number of strategies to keep their which affluence was secured, and during workforces cheap and loyal, including fir­ the late 1930s most of the Valley's can­ ing potential unionists and closing union­ nery workers became members of the ized plants. To keep their overhead low, AFL. they also operated factories in low-wage During the Depression, San Jose's countries and outsourced much of their fruit industry began to decline. Casting assembly work to "subcontractors," who about for new opportunities, the city's were often individual employees who elites decided during World War II to cap­ bring components home to be assembled REVIEWS 307

by family members. For low-wage work­ Also commendable is the author's ex­ ers, these exploitations were made worse plicit focus on the determinants of through exposure to other undesirable socio-economic inequality within capi­ conditions — both within the high-tech talist formal democracies. Silicon Val­ industry and throughout the Valley. ley's methodology is especially helpful in These included health hazards caused by this regard. By focusing on one region the toxins used in electronics production over a hundred-year period, Matthews is as well as exorbitantly high housing costs able to trace inequality's historical pat­ caused by a mixture of unplanned urban terns: how and why inequality changes, development and a recent population ex­ but also how and why it stays the same. plosion. She shows us that first-generation immi­ Hence Santa Fe's transition from a ru­ grants in the 1920s were able to buy ral, unionized region to an urban and homes and thereby achieve upward mo­ largely non-unionized metropolis has det­ bility, but that first-generation immi­ rimentally affected the distribution of grants in the 1990s find living quarters ex­ prosperity in the area. Whereas 65 years ceedingly difficult to purchase. She also ago workers could achieve stability and reveals that while contemporary mid­ affluence, now working people's chances dle-class women have achieved some of attaining the "California Dream*' are socio-economic success, particularly in elusive. What is needed to redress this sit­ mainstream politics and in some manage­ uation, according to Matthews, are orga­ ment positions, working-class women nizing initiatives geared towards elec­ continue to face barriers to economic and tronics workers. She also believes that un­ political empowerment. ions should join forces with other groups What would make Silicon Valley a in the area, including "progressive local stronger work, however, would be more politicians, social justice-oriented reli­ theoretical attention paid to the themes of gious institutions, environmental groups, opportunity, wealth, and human fulfill­ [and] grassroots community activists." ment. When Matthews argues that Santa (255) Fe's citizens must join together and fight The most valuable aspect of Silicon for more equitable resource distribution, Valley is Matthews' analysis of the diffi­ she implies that she wants to reform Sante culties of unionizing the high-tech sector. Fe's political economy, but not to change Her informed observations on the decline it. Thus she is less interested in exploring of unionism in the postwar years, the indi­ the political and economic philosophies vidualist work culture in high tech, high- that support industrial market capitalism, tech's hiring of employees unfamiliar and more interested in the introduction of with unionism, high-tech's outsourcing small modifications to existing social in­ of manual labour to contractors, and stitutions. For example, in her discussion high-tech's tendency to shut down fac­ of women assuming management posi­ tories where the voices of unionists are tions within the high-tech industry, she making themselves heard are topics im­ says that Intel's 1988 appointment of a fe­ portant to all who wish to make life better male vice president represents "genuine for those whose labour sustains our cur­ progress." (209) Therefore, rather than rent "information age." On a broader critiquing the existence of high-tech in­ level, they also encourage readers to re­ dustry, she suggests instead that it should think not only their own personal con­ be made more equitable. Since Matthews' sumption of high-tech commodities but purpose is to show why power and re­ also the international consequences of sources are distributed inequitably within global commodity production and distri­ Sante Fe, it is perhaps logical that she bution. should focus on social inequality's short-term determinants. Yet Matthews' 308 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

avoidance of philosophical issues relating to say here that many of them are harmful to contemporary liberal capitalism raises to the environment, facilitate possessive troubling questions about her book's un­ individualism, and encourage political derlying assumptions. In particular, conservatism. Matthews does not question whether the Hence Silicon Valley, Women, and the social opportunities that she advocates California Dream should be read for the are in fact desirable in themselves. To re­ valuable empirical content it contains, as turn to the previous example of women in well as for the innovative historical meth­ high-tech management, she does not odology it employs. It should not be question whether women should want viewed, however, as a guide to the formu­ such positions in the first place; rather she lation of critical perspectives on our con­ assumes that it is positive when women temporary political economy. Along with attain them. Similarly, Matthews does not Matthews, we should urge that human life reflect upon the implications contained in become more egalitarian, and we should her notions that people should want to especially advocate the elimination of own their own homes, should want to par­ discrimination based on understandings ticipate in mainstream politics, and of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. should want to achieve upward social mo­ But we should also be attentive to the bility. Instead, she assumes that all of broader philosophical assumptions that these desires are inherently beneficial, sustain North American social and mate­ and conducive to the fostering of human rial life. Most of all, we must question happiness. whether human fulfillment can really be Since Matthews makes these assump­ attained by pursuing social equality tions, it is apparent that she believes that within the contexts of liberal democracy, the philosophical underpinnings of liberal technological enterprise, and industrial industrial capitalism are positive. And it development. is here where her analyses become short­ sighted. In supporting more opportunities Donica Belisle for women in high-tech management, for Trent University immigrants' home ownership, for women and non-whites in mainstream politics, and for women's and non-whites' ave­ Charles D. Thompson Jr. and Melinda F. nues of upward mobility, she is in fact Wiggins, eds., The Human Cost of Food: suggesting that industrial development, Farmworkers ' Lives, Labor, and Advo­ acquisitive individualism, non-radical cacy (Austin: University of Austin Press forms of democracy, and mainstream sig- 2002) nifiers of social status are themselves de­ sirable. Thus when one takes her argu­ STUDIES OF MIGRANT farm workers in ments about equality to their logical con­ the United States consistently place them clusions, it becomes apparent that on the bottom rungs of the economic lad­ Matthews' understanding of an ideal soci­ der. Farm work is onerous and dangerous, ety is based on a vision that includes some pay hovers at the bottom of wage scales, potentially negative aspects, including living conditions are substandard, and ac­ international industrial enterprise, cess to such essentials as health care, edu­ large-scale production and consumption cation, and legal justice is severely of commodities, conventional political limited. Many farm workers are illegal machinations, and the pursuit of conven­ residents in the United States, compound­ tional social status. Though this book re­ ing their exclusion from government pro­ view is not the appropriate place to elabo­ grams and contributing to the dis­ rate why these phenomena may not be crimination they face as migrants and mi­ conducive to human fulfillment, suffice it norities. Nor has their situation improved REVIEWS 309

much since Cesar Chavez's grape boycott tions. The message is clear and strong: and the farm workers' union organizing readers must become educated about drives brought their plight to the attention working and living conditions in food of consumers and activists. production and they must become activist The Human Cost of Food details the advocates for ethical treatment and jus­ exploitation of migrant farm workers and tice for farm workers and their families. their families, concentrating on the south­ The message, supported by specific in­ eastern United States, but it takes the ar­ struction, is underscored throughout the gument beyond the academic realm. volume. Contributors include farm work­ Readers are urged to become educated ers and SAF interns, academics, and spe­ consumers and social activists, to help cialist professionals in such fields as his­ end "farmworker exploitation and injus­ tory, law, health, housing, education, and tices that persist today." (3) This book is a labour organizing. Always, the emphasis call to action and a practical guide for is upon listening to the needs of farm farm worker advocates. workers, working in tandem with them, Student Action with Farmworkers and facilitating their empowerment. (SAF), one of the growing number of Readers are first introduced to the cul­ advocacy groups in the United States, tural context of farm workers and their commissioned this anthology from farm families. Although Latinos predominate, worker advocates and specialists. Alejandra Okie Holt and Sister Evelyn Emerging from a 197S activist course at Mattern emphasize cultural diversity and Duke University on social problems in the the complex ways farm workers adapt to rural south, SAF today has a nation-wide and influence other cultures. Religion, reach linking university students and farm family, and cultural expressions sustain workers with community activists through farm workers, but often marginalize them internships, leadership training, social and and target them for social and economic legal supports, education and career coun­ discrimination. Combined with migrancy selling, and other programs to improve the and language barriers, cultural distinc­ lives of farm workers and their families. tiveness challenges advocates to work as (http://www-cds.aas.duke.edu/saf7) SAF's translators between farm workers and em­ emphasis is upon working with, rather than ployers, agencies, and local communities. for, farm workers. The historical context illustrates persist­ Translating this worthy goal into a ing farm worker exploitation. Charles D. teaching tool is not without complica­ Thompson Jr. compares the agricultural tions. The authors are to be commended histories of the American south and Mex­ for grappling with and, for the most part, ico, detailing how the growth of agribusi­ achieving a balance between SAF's phi­ ness resulted in a dramatic "loss of eco­ losophy of engagement with and respect nomic democracy" (56) for small farmers for farm workers as activists, not victims, and growing streams of Mexican migrant and practical advice for helping those de­ labour to the United States. Cindy fined by their need of guidance and assis­ Hahamovitch's more concentrated histori­ tance from non-farm-worker experts. As a cal study examines interactions between text for increasing public awareness and south Florida growers and farm workers for use in university courses on farm during the 1930s and World War II. In her worker advocacy, The Human Cost of persuasive and well-documented chapter, Food is designed to provoke concern and she reveals how a range of government pro­ direct activism. It does both admirably. grams sought, variously, to regulate and Editors Charles D. Thompson Jr. and control or to protect and assist farm work­ Melinda F. Wiggins catalogue the prob­ ers. Ultimately, though, the well-being of lems besetting farm workers and outline farm workers took second place to that of the necessary steps toward their solu­ growers and, especially in the hothouse 310 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

wartime economy, agricultural production Farm workers are most actively in­ trumped farm worker gains. volved in their own advocacy through ed­ Currently, farm workers face a host of ucation and labour unions, with some­ legal disabilities, trapping them in a cycle times contradictory goals. Education is of powerlessness and poverty. Garry the key to escape from farm work. Ramiro Geffert examines the use of foreign-born Arceo, Joy Kusserow, and Al Wright look migrants. The H-2A Guestworker Pro­ primarily to the children and the youth, gram was designed to regularize wages detailing the barriers of language, culture, and working and living conditions to en­ poverty, and migrancy they face in school sure temporary aliens would not displace and the economic demands that keep them American workers. The opposite has out. Activists must counter these prob­ taken place. Poorly enforced, the program lems and demonstrate the value of educa­ is used by employers and agribusiness tion to the children, their parents, and lobbyists to increase the foreign migrant their communities. But for the great ma­ labour pool and to undercut wages and jority of farm workers, the road to im­ standards of the native-born. Greg Schell provement lies in union organizing. Paul details the specific exclusion of farm Ortiz paints a dramatic picture of farm workers from most labour legislation and worker exploitation and resistance from workers' legal rights. He argues that farm slavery to the present, outlining the Her­ workers and their advocates cannot match culean efforts of farm workers and orga­ the resources of large agricultural em­ nizers. Unionization is an elusive goal, ployers and agribusiness lobbies in fights but its greatest chance of success is over specific conditions. Instead, they through alliances between farm workers must work to eliminate the larger legal and their advocates. principle of farm worker exceptionalism. The Human Cost ofFood is a prom is- Living conditions cannot be separated ing guide for farm worker advocacy. from farm work. Christopher Holden doc­ The brief quotations, poems, and writ­ uments the substandard housing of most ings by farm workers and SAF interns farm workers and their families, insisting invoke sympathy and concern. The that only systematic records can ensure tightly focused articles present a com­ effective allocation of scarce resources. mon analysis, with the activist message Armed with up-to-date surveys of hous­ clear on every page. Additional tools ing problems, advocates must pressure reiterate the book's purposes, with ap­ legislatures, government agencies, em­ pendices on advocacy training, a ployers, and local communities to provide 14-week interdisciplinary syllabus housing that is "safe, decent and afford­ with readings, films, speakers, activi­ able." (193) Health hazards facing farm ties, and assignments, a lengthy list of workers and their families extend well be­ addresses and websites for farm worker yond the dangers of substandard housing, related agencies and organizations, and as Colin Austin points out in his examina­ a recommended reading and video list. tion of a wide range of health issues. The full bibliography and index, un­ Heavy and stoop labour, unprotected common in essay collections, are very equipment, and exposure to chemical useful. pesticides and fertilizers pose direct dan­ This is not a book to provoke de­ gers, compounded by chronic health bate. But its chilling documentation of problems due to inadequate health care, the ways public policy buttresses and poor diets, and substandard housing. Ad­ combines with private power to main­ vocates must ensure that cultural differ­ tain inequities underscores the ur­ ences are incorporated into health care gency of its message, and its practical objectives and directed with the partici­ strategies inspire confidence in the ef- pation of farm workers and their families. REVIEWS 311

ficacy of advocacy with and for farm much for the owners to handle. Working workers and their families. collectively to reform the player-owner relationship, baseball players brought Cecilia Danysk about "the end of baseball as we knew it," Western Washington University and in the process helped transform the professional sport industry throughout the world. Although the book focuses primarily Charles P. Korr, The End of Baseball as on the period between 1960, when the We Knew It. The Players Union, Players Association opened a permanent 1960-1981 (Urbana and Chicago: Univer­ office, and the 1981 players' strike, the sity of Illinois Press 2002) story begins earlier. At the end of World War II baseball owners exercised massive SOME 40 YEARS ago baseball columnist control over their players, supported by a Furman Bisher expressed sentiments that, sympathetic sporting press and public except for the dollar figure attached, re­ that romanticized the idyllic lives of those main commonplace today. Why, he playing a boy's game for money. Tied to asked, "should anyone have sympathy for their clubs by baseball's reserve clause, men who are paid an average of players had little leverage in negotiating twenty-two to twenty-three thousand dol­ salaries, working conditions, or pension lars a year, get to live in fine hotels, and benefits. Owners dealt cavalierly with spend each spring in Florida?" (44) Even "trouble makers" and ignored player today, many people have difficulty think­ grievances. During the 1950s, a number ing of major league baseball players as of players' representatives, among them workers in the conventional sense. Seem­ Ralph Kiner, Allie Reynolds, Harvey ingly exorbitant salaries, the seasonality Kuenn, Bob Friend, and Robin Roberts, of the game, the relatively short careers of worked hard on behalf of the players, able professional athletes, and the difficulty in to do so only because of their stature as comprehending how the business of sport star players. Even then, however, owners reconstitutes play as work, all contribute treated them dismissively. When Kiner, a to the understanding of professional sport slugging outfielder on the last-place Pitts­ as a unique industry. burgh Pirates, complained that his 1953 contract included a 25 per cent pay cut de­ In this compelling history of the emer­ spite his having drawn many fans to the gence of the Major League Baseball ballpark, Pirate owner Branch Rickey Players Association, Chuck Korr rejects brushed off his complaints. Rickey's re­ the idea of sport's exceptionalism. In­ sponse, "we can finish last without you," stead he addresses how professional base­ delighted baseball writers, most of whom ball players — like workers in other in­ shared the widespread anti-union senti­ dustries — organized themselves into a ments of the owners. union, and used the collective bargaining process to overcome the exploitative Players of the 1950s and early 1960s, practices of owners. Korr's sympathies Korr points out, had limited expectations. clearly lie with the players. Baseball's So did the first full-time executive direc­ owners, he argues, failed to comprehend tor of the Players Association, Judge Rob­ the limits of their power and lacked the ert Cannon, hired by the players in 1965. ability to work together to defend their According to Korr, Cannon misinter­ own interests. Players on the other hand preted the owners' willingness to lessen intuitively understood the importance of the control they exercised over the play­ team-work and of winning. Once con­ ers. His belief that he could cultivate a vinced of the need to come together to de­ harmonious relationship between the two fend their interests, the players proved too parties was built upon a mixture of wish- 312 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

fui thinking, a romanticized vision of the mately ushering in the idea of free owners as benevolent patriarchs with the agency. Despite the ruling of arbitrator best interests of the game in mind, and Kenneth Seitz that granted Jim "Catfish" perhaps even a desire to become Commis­ Hunter free agent status (and subsequent sioner of Baseball at some future date. cases of a similar sort), Korr argues that Cannon's collaborationist position the owners refused to understand the im­ stood in sharp contrast to the hard-headed plications of the decision, and attempted pragmatism of his successor, Marvin to proceed as though nothing had Miller. Miller's willingness to confront changed. As owners dug in their heels, the owners resulted in his vilification as eventually acquired strike insurance, and "Comrade Miller" or Marvin Millerinski, prepared for the defeat of the union, the and as an evil Svengali who supposedly players were driven reluctantly to con­ mesmerized and brainwashed his players sider the strike option. The result, accord­ into believing that they were mistreated. ing to Korr, was a defensive strike that the (43) According to Korr, Miller deserves players won, but which turned public to be considered one of the most effective opinion against them. Of course, the labour leaders of the 20th century. His struggles between players and owners earlier experience in the steel industry, have continued to the present, until many his familiarity with labour law, his negoti­ baseball fans have wished a pox on both ating expertise, his quiet demeanour, and their houses. democratic sensibilities gained the re­ In sum, this is a fine book that makes a spect of the players, as he urged them to significant contribution to both sport and identify what issues were most important labour history. At the same time, it should to them and the future they envisaged for be noted that the very strength of the book themselves. Miller approached bargain­ (i.e. its ability to address the baseball ing as would any other union official, as­ players' union as it operated within the serting that both parties in the bargaining conventional framework of collective process were equal and that agreements bargaining) is also its weakness. Korr had to be negotiated. gives short shrift to some of the excep­ What is particularly impressive about tional or atypical characteristics of the this book is its presentation in a clear and professional sport industry. For example, coherent manner of the tangled legal and the very principle of free agency, even technical issues that owners and players limited free agency as it is in this instance, fought over. Drawing upon interviews suggests the uniqueness of a union which with most of the participants, exhaustive creates through the collective bargaining archival records, including correspon­ process the ability of individual workers dence between the principals, and press to negotiate their own contracts. It would and magazine commentary, Korr con­ also have been helpful if Korr had more structs a marvelous overview of the emer­ effectively addressed the complex emo­ gence of the players' union in the troubled tional ties players have with a game that period leading down to the 1981 strike. serves as rite of passage from childhood The most important issues arising out of and adolescence to adulthood. In many the collective bargaining process in­ ways, that same trajectory revealed itself cluded the development of grievance and in the development of the players' union arbitration procedures, the reserve and itself. option clause, and ultimately the princi­ ple of limited free agency. Korr takes us Colin Howell through the struggle that followed Curt Saint Mary's University Flood's unsuccessful court challenge of the reserve clause, and the importance of the option clause and of arbitration in ulti­ REVIEWS 313

Katherine Frank, GStrings and Sympa­ line" self free of obligation and commitments, thy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire a desire for "adventure" by mingling with Oth­ (Durham: Duke University Press 2002) ers who are seen as "wild" or visiting spaces believed to be "dangerous," a desire to feel de­ sirable (at least in fantasy), or a desire to have a THERE ARE OVER 3000 strip clubs in sexualized relation with a woman that does not North America, sometimes generating involve the vulnerability of actual sexual activ­ revenues of over $5 million, and offering ity. (118) a wide range of "adult entertainments" for men: stage shows, table dances, lap The contradictions underpinning male dances (frottage), sex shows, and, rarely, desire in the strip club are profound. Here prostitution. This insightful and lively are men often choosing to pursue fanta­ book makes the rather counterintuitive sies in defiance of reality — the reality of and, I believe, wholly justifiable claim their own social status, attractiveness, that these clubs are not fundamentally and aggressive sexuality. about sex at all. Rather they are about sex­ The question of what drives men to ual and gender identity, specifically, how seek experiences and pleasures that are men's fantasies are constructed more deeply contradictory is addressed by around conflicting goals such as intimacy Frank on several fronts. There is, for ex­ and the distance of voyeurism than around ample, what Frank calls "touristic prac­ sexual gratifications and conquests. tice," an experience of the strip club Frank, a professor of cultural anthro­ where the very elements characteristic of pology and former exotic dancer, takes a geographical tourism are in play: the gaze close look at how and why men consume becomes significant; experiences are the eroticism of the strip club. Strip club sought through interactions; and "es­ "regulars," whose repeat visits and at­ cape" fantasies are at work. Some men tachments to particular dancers differen­ generated all sorts of fantasies pertaining tiate them from other patrons, Frank ar­ to the transgressive nature of where they gues, are consuming two erotic forms: were. For some middle-class, or higher, spectacle and intimate interaction. The men who enjoy visiting lower-end clubs, consumption of eros in the strip club is fantasies of vice and danger were in play, thus made possible by an industry that is with all the obvious racial codings. Other becoming simultaneously more spectacu­ men fantasized about what really happens lar and more individualized. The com­ in the infamous "champagne room," a pri­ modities clubs are "selling" include pri­ vate or semi-private room where dancers marily bodies, as mass objects of the male and patrons interact. Such fantasies be­ gaze, and private identities. It is the cate­ came marks of distinction, a form of "in­ gory of identities that Frank does such a sider knowledge," in the upscale clubs. fine job of articulating. Basing her con­ Another front along which Frank ana­ clusions on conversations with hundreds lyzes the regular's experience of the strip of male customers and thirty primary in­ club is the seemingly innocent, if not pe­ terviewees, Frank states that she "can say destrian, explanations typically produced with confidence that I do know what men by the men to explain their investments, were willing to pay for each night." (7) emotional and financial.Perhap s the most What these men are essentially paying for commonly heard reason for visiting strip each night is a cluster of fantasies that clubs is the main title of the book's third serves to support their desires. These de­ chapter, "Just Trying to Relax." What sires involve notions of self and other, Frank shows so adroitly is how complex male and female, and sex and its negation: the seemingly straightforward "I'm just trying to relax" explanation really is. In Men's consumption practices in strip clubs are this desire to "relax" are mixed the plea­ thus premised on a range of desires, such as a sures of escape from, say, emotional in- desire to publicly display a particular "mascu­ 314 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

volvement and the wish to make the habit­ traordinary book is that she is able to give ual desirable again. It is as if "relaxing" is voice, through her many interviewees, to not actually repose at all but a process of the complex fabric of masculine desire as securing one's identity and desires in a it is staged in the strip club. Revealed in changing world. her study is a deeply conflicted masculine One of the biggest challenges facing self, one that, for example, searches for men who visit strip clubs regularly is how some authentic experience of intimacy to handle their own desire to be voyeurs. like friendship while maintaining at the The strip club dramatizes the contradic­ same time a healthy cynicism rendering tion between the desire to look at women staged performances transparent. In the without being labeled a misogynist or end, the strip club is not some marginal "pervert" and the real wish to look, a wish cultural phenomenon, even if it is con­ some men define, Frank discovered, as signed to the margins of the metropolis. It natural, an inherent masculine drive. is one of the finest laboratories available Men, in other words, are often quick to for studying male privilege, pleasure, and draw from pop psychology a justification fantasy. of their voyeuristic behavior, perhaps pre­ It must be said that Frank is an espe­ cisely because of the feminism they have, cially gifted writer. Her critical prose is however imperfectly, internalized. Part of lucid, compelling, and accessible to the appeal of the strip club then is the es­ non-specialists. But in this book Frank cape it offers from confusions about con­ also displays her talents as a writer of fic­ temporary masculinity and the expecta­ tion. Three fictional interludes serve to tions that govern it. Remarkable in elaborate a few of the book's central is­ Frank's account is the repeated claim by sues, such as bodily identity and inti­ men that strip clubs are therapeutic in na­ macy, and are presented from the ture: "It's almost like therapy," one pa­ first-person perspective of the exotic tron remarks; while, as Frank notes, dancer. "many sex workers also frequently joke about really being 'therapists.'" (119) Michael Uebel Men might appeal to the language of ther­ University of Kentucky apy and an essential biological nature, as Frank suggests, because they wish to be absolved of responsibility, to deflect any Daniel W. Lehman, John Reed and the anxiety about being a customer in a Writing ofRevolution (Athens: Ohio Uni­ commodified sexual service, and to ex­ versity Press 2002) press the idea that, for these men, sexual arousal is an emotionally meaningful ex­ UNDERSTANDING THE CAREER and rep­ perience. utation of John Reed has long been a pre­ The greatest contribution to the under­ occupation of American historians and standing of men's investments in the strip literary critics primarily because it is not club scene is, I believe, a critical engage­ readily apparent where to place him and ment with the fantasies men have about his work. The subject of several biogra­ their own identities and the women whose phies as well as shorter evaluations in labour they enjoy. The vast majority of so­ works about Greenwich Village intellec­ ciological and anthropological studies of tuals and the forerunners of literary radi­ strip clubs are focused on the dancers, calism in the 1920s and 1930s, Reed their working conditions, and the atti­ continues to occupy a central if disputed tudes they have toward their work. Rela­ place. As a writer, a romantic hero, a re­ tively little critical understanding of the bel, a journalist, as well as a participant in men who visit these clubs has been ad­ two of the great revolutions of the 20th vanced. The real power of Frank's ex­ century (Mexico and Russia), he remains REVIEWS 315

a figure of interest and controversy. On larger project is to restore Reed to a cen­ this last point Reed's allegiance was tral place in the literature of American claimed by supporters and enemies of the journalism. Soviet Union. Because he died just as the Given the contemporary journalistic Communists were consolidating their controversy over "imbedded" war corre­ hold on Russia, Reed's future loyalties spondents and the rather longer existence could not be known: all the more reason to of participatory journalism created by speculate. Would he have joined his such novelists as Truman Capote and friend Max Eastman as a bitter critic, or Norman Mailer several decades ago, it is would he have gulped back his objections instructive to see just where this tendency and become a defender of Stalin? began. Quite clearly Reed as well as Ste­ Reed's writings have also been the phen Crane were originators of this mod­ source of varying evaluation. Some crit­ ern technique. Abandoning the pose of ics have found his production uneven and neutrality, Reed stitched his enthusiasms lightweight, sometimes careless. He also and political opinions into his sketches. has his admirers, among them. Professor Indeed, to get the story itself, he became Lehman whose work is both an attempt to an advocate and even a participant in the defend Reed against his critics as well as events he was sent to cover such as the explain exactly in what ways Reed con­ Mexican and Russian Revolutions. This tributed to modern journalism and litera­ put him at odds with the prevailing biases ture. His book thus takes up the argument of American journalism. In particular, around several important works: Insur­ this affected his view of World War I gent Mexico and Ten Days That Shook where his critical reports alienated his The World, his war correspondence on the most important benefactors, publishers, European Front in 19IS, and shorter es­ and journalistic friends. Believing that says such as the sketch of Billy Sunday the causes of the war were nationalistic during his Philadelphia religious crusade. expedience, international intrigue, and The book also reprints two samples of class antagonism that sacrificed millions Reed's reporting: "In the German of men to a cause they did not share, Reed Trenches" and "Back of Billy Sunday," lost most of his publishing outlets except both of which were published by Metro­ in radical journals, themselves subject to politan Magazine in 1915. censorship and repression. For Lehman, the question here is not bias or overt opin­ While the outline of this réévaluation ion. After all, being pro-war was a bias of Reed is more or less chronological, that shaped most of the journalistic re­ Lehman does not strictly adhere to a ports. Rather, it is what Reed accom­ time-line, principally because he is more plished with his journalism that intrigues interested in defining Reed's style and the author. working habits. This purpose encourages him, at numerous points in the book, to In explaining why Reed's writing compare Reed's on-the-spot notes with should be considered pioneering and ex­ his later journal manuscripts. In other emplary, Lehman spends considerable words, he attempts to depict the way the time evaluating style: for example, the author employs metaphors, opens up and metaphors chosen and the development of generalizes from experience, and embel­ characters. In his ability to sketch excit­ lishes and invents dialogue. At the same ing scenes and crisp dialogue, Reed time, Lehman carries on a running debate seems to have matured and toward the end with other biographers of Reed such as of his life had mastered ways to give vital­ Robert Rosenstone, Eric Homberger, and ity to elusive characters, even anonymous Christine Stansell - his purpose being to working men and women. As Lehman defend Reed's stylistic and methodologi­ concludes, "Reed writes with lively, cal choices. Quite clearly, Lehman's crafted diction; builds immediate de- 316 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

script ion into larger truths; constructs ef­ wich Village, even if he carried it much fective scenes from skillful dialogue; ma­ further. nipulates point of view and structure ef- In some respects, this makes Ten Days fectively; establishes his personal Thai Shook the World somewhat more presence to guide his readers toward difficult to understand and evaluate. Here self-discovery; and reveals the power of Reed is an unabashed advocate of the rev­ his stories to affect his subjects and read­ olution he described. Thus the tone of ers." (63) There is little to question about irony is repressed in favour of celebra­ this summary. In many respects it cap­ tion, and the book becomes as much testa­ tures what Reed was up to in his journalis­ ment as journalism. There are many tic style. But if Reed was the innovative things that Lehman might have explored reporter he seems to be, there is perhaps at this point, but one seems crucial since more to be said than this defensive list of Reed's experience was a foretaste of the prose attributes provides. Lehman does hundreds of travelers' accounts of posi­ not, for example, consider the question of tive experiences that surrounded the So­ audience and Reed's relationship to it — viet Union from its inception. Lehman except insofar as the journalist found out­ does not explore how it was that Reed lets for his writing or suffered censorship. came to identify emotionally with the Yet this is a crucial question for Reed as Revolution, why, in fact, he went so far well as other practitioners of participatory and how this might help us understand journalism. The participant, himself, in what others would see. In fact, however, this genre, is both observer and audience. there are strong hints in Reed's account: That is why he appears in the first place, to his personification of the masses; his register reactions to the scenes he ob­ wide-eyed admiration for Russian cul­ serves. Thus his response is intended to ture; his delight in decisive action; his es­ shape those of the audience. In many teem for Lenin and Trotsky; his sense that cases, Reed's pose was one of heightened the mundane world was being reshaped innocence, shaped by a credulous belief in by high moral principle. fair play, justice, and democracy. Con­ fronting the terrible contradiction to such But how much of this did Reed actu­ values in real life - in the random slaugh­ ally see? How much existed in transla­ ter of World War I and the hypocrisy of tion, through his enthusiasms, and from a Billy Sunday, or, more abstractly, the im­ language that he did not understand com­ plicit assumptions of readers about revo­ pletely? (Lehman never confronts the lan­ lution, Reed constantly invokes an ironic guage barriers Reed experienced in Rus­ mode in his narrative. Sometimes this sia and Mexico). Certainly, the author means that Reed subjects himself to sa­ might have pursued some of these ques­ tiric presentation, but far more often, he tions further, but he is too often trapped in uses irony to strip away pretence and liter­ a defensive posture. In the end, he suc­ ary obfuscation to reveal — much in the ceeds in making a case that Reed was a manner of contemporary naturalist novel­ self-conscious stylist and an innovator in ists — the bleak landscape of reality. In journalistic techniques. But the harder many respects, the point of much of case remains elusive: whether Reed ought Reed's journalism is the exploration of to be remembered as a literary artist and getting the story itself and the distance he not for the romantic and tragic story of his traveled in this pursuit: from the elite life. classrooms and social high life of Har­ vard's ivy halls to the muck of trench war­ James Gilbert fare. It was a predisposition he shared University of Maryland, College Park with many writers and artists of Green­ REVIEWS 317

David W. Noble, Death of a Nation: out of which the United States developed. American Culture and the End of In the postwar years, 20th-century artists Exceptionalism (Minneapolis: University and intellectuals confronted the reality of Minnesota Press 2002) that the United States was and always had been an expanding capitalist country, one IT IS NOT AN OVERSTATEMENT to say that contained many cultures, and one for that this book is David W. Noble's mag­ which an exceptional and homogeneous num opus. Between the covers is a national story could not be composed 301 -page narrative filled with the provoc- without a major dose of self-delusion. ative ideas, insightful and honest (The delusion persists, of course, in pub­ self-reflection, and breadth of knowledge lic discourse.) Hence the abstract expres­ that mark this historian's more than sionism of Jackson Pollack replaced the half-century career as a scholar and regionalism of his mentor, Thomas Hart teacher of the cultural and intellectual his­ Benton; the cultural pluralism of Richard tory of the United States. Death of a Na­ Hofstadter replaced the cultural homoge­ tion represents the intellectual life cycle neity of Charles Beard; and the universal of an influential scholar and teacher. For internationalism of postwar architects re­ Noble both expands on ideas he has devel­ placed the universal nationalism of Louis oped throughout his career and incorpo­ Sullivan and the organic nationalism of rates into this broad cultural history some Frank Lloyd Wright. of the research of former graduate stu­ Strains of the postwar reorientation dents he has influenced at the University had appeared in the late 19th and early of Minnesota. Noble's scholarship, like 20th centuries. Noble does not try to his life, is rooted in connections. claim otherwise. European styles and The argument is familiar to those of us techniques had influenced photographers who know and have been influenced by and the Ash Can School painters. Archi­ Noble's work. The intellectual crisis of tects who had hated the architecture of the 1940s that, in The End of American capitalist cities in New England devel­ History (Minnesota 1985), Noble demon­ oped new and what they assumed to be strated had caused postwar "consensus" democratic and American designs for the historians to separate themselves from just-as-capitalist cities of the Mid-West. their Progressive mentors, takes central Novelists had created characters who stage again here. In Death of a Nation, lived unfulfilled lives of despair, charac­ however, Noble expands his analysis to ters for whom the American promise was, include novelists and literary critics, in Theodore Dreiser's words, an "Ameri­ painters, architects, and musicians, as can tragedy." well as his traditional subject, historians. Noble therefore does not posit that ev­ These various artists and intellectuals eryone shared an uncontested set of as­ participated in a cultural reorientation in sumptions before World War II and then the 1940s when their assumptions about embraced an equally uncontested and dif­ an isolated national culture bounded by ferent set of assumptions after the war. the geographic space of the United States Rather, he demonstrates that following were shattered. Artists, musicians, writ­ the internationalism associated with ers, and intellectuals had illustrated, com­ World War I, American exceptionalists posed, and written of an exceptional na­ were elated when the United States failed tional landscape rooted in the provincial­ to join the League of Nations. Then, at the ism of the New England Romantics of the onset of the Great Depression, they hoped 1830s and 1840s. This WASP nationalism for the final victory of the producers' de­ was thought to keep at bay the destructive mocracy they had coveted for so long. "Old World" and, therefore, un-American They now awaited the death of interna­ features of the trans-Atlantic capitalism tional capitalism. Consequently, Thomas 318 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Hart Benton's paintings of the 1930s cele­ communism, the bloody struggles for brate the productivity of a virtuous, indus­ civil rights and Black Power, the trious, and homogeneous national citi­ women's movement: the various aspects zenry. Frank Lloyd Wright hoped that in­ of the social and cultural crises of the ternational capitalism would collapse and 1950s and 1960s made it clear to all but Americans would be virtuous producers the most diehard ideological advocates of rather than greedy profiteers. The prole­ a universal national cultural landscape tarian fiction of the Depression decade that the nation had always been diverse pits virtuous workers against the agents of and the economy had always been capital­ distant capitalist employers whom they ist. never see. And literary critics openly de­ While the "death of a nation" (the fined themselves as Marxists. World War death of the idea of a universal national II, however, shattered these hopes and as­ landscape) has been accepted, for the sumptions. most part, in the academy and in the arts, Consequently, the holy trinity (Henry it is of course alive and well in public dis­ Nash Smith, R.W.B. Lewis, and Leo course. Those who defend narratives of Marx) of the postwar symbol-myth-image the national landscape assume that such school of the 1950s and 1960s could write narratives are the only legitimate narra­ only about the 19th century. They could tives, the only ones that have meaning. To not write about a romantic national land­ them, the only true meaning is to be found scape rooted in New England provincial­ in the universal national. That position, ism if they studied 20th-century litera­ Noble proclaims, "has always been the ture, for 20th-century literature does not position of bourgeois nationalists." represent that provincialism. Their books, (285-286) George W. Bush, for example, then, were "Elegies for the National would hate this book if he could read it. Landscape" (the title of chapter four). Those who want to claim the name Smith, Lewis, and Marx mourned the cul­ "American" still want to own the term for tural landscape's demise. They also quit a particular people in a specific national teaching graduate students, students who landscape. wanted to study authors commented on Two central ironies pervade these and increasingly represented the multi­ pages. The first is that bourgeois national­ cultural reality of the United States. Marx ists evoke the metaphor of a universal na­ accepted positions at institutions where tional landscape while they simulta­ teaching undergraduates became his pri­ neously embrace an expansive capitalist mary responsibility, Smith went to Berke­ economic system that transcends national ley to work with the Mark Twain papers, boundaries. The second involves the in­ and Lewis remained at Yale but his new ternational capitalist system that emerged work represented traditional literary criti­ with the growth of the colonial Atlantic cism rather than the type of broad cultural economy, that ripped Africans from their study he attempted in The American homes to produce profitable New World Adam. crops for their Euro-American masters, For most intellectuals, writers, and art­ and that tried its damnedest to destroy in­ ists, the idea of a universal national cul­ digenous people. That system created, tural landscape died on the altar of inter­ through blood and conquest, the multicul­ national capitalism. They now realized tural societies despised by the advocates that a multicultural society had emerged of homogeneous national landscapes and from the conflicts between profit-seeking applauded by David W. Noble. Euro-Americans and the ethnic and racial This is a highly readable and informa­ minorities who refused to melt in the na­ tive book that is a must read for students tional pot. The Cold War that pitted inter­ of the cultural history of the United States national capitalism against international and for people interested in the intellec- REVIEWS 319

tuai connections between historiography cesses of democratization appeared de­ and other areas of cultural studies. finitively to displace the latter. Abject failures, stagnation, and de-industrializ­ Robert T. Schultz ation eroded the former. Economic glob­ Illinois Wesleyan University alization, with its predominantly neoliberal foundational and policy princi­ ples, occluded statist and Keynesian ver­ Henry Veltmeyer and Anthony O'Malley, sions of national development projects. eds., Transcending Neoliberalism; Com­ But at the moment of neoliberalism's doc­ munity-Based Development in Latin trinal triumph, it could not rest easy. In America (Bloomfield: Kumarian Press Latin America, in particular, the 1980s, 2001) the first decade of full hegemony for structural adjustment and economic liber­ FOR SOME TWENTY YEARS, diverse voices alization, was a "lost decade." And when have pronounced development studies to growth occurred, it was neither stable nor be at a theoretical impasse, if not com­ continuous, neither regional nor shared, pletely superceded. Post-structuralists neither equitable nor ecologically sus­ and those infused with post-modern and tainable. post-colonial critiques of social science Long a laboratory for diverse official generalizations insist that diversity, iden­ and societal development projects, Latin tity, and multiple-subject status of Third America has manifested an array of popu­ World peoples had been ignored or sup­ lar and community-based "alternative" pressed. The epithets "Euro-centric" and development experiences in the inter­ "modernizationist" frequently character­ stices of that neoliberal hegemony. Born ize these perspectives on the discourses as much from local struggles to survive as and policy projects of the development from the creativity and imagination ex­ era. Critical and Marxist political econ­ pended in Latin Americans' search for so­ omy traditions charged that development cial justice and popular democracy, these had been driven by the imperatives of cap­ experiences constitute the practices ital accumulation in the dominant capital­ Henry Veltmeyer's and Anthony O'Mal­ ist economies, amounting to "the pillage ley *s edited book terms "another develop­ of the Third World," even to a new imperi­ ment." Transcending Neoliberalism of­ alism, a neo-colonial global order. At fers closely informed, sympathetic but best, development was dependent and critical coverage of specific commu­ cynically oriented to the political nity-based experiences (in Costa Rica, prerogatives of global anti-communism, Chile, El Salvador, and Bolivia) in four of and it tended to reproduce the abuses and the nine chapters. In the other five chap­ social disruptions of the early industrial ters (three by Veltmeyer, one by David revolution and commercialization of agri­ Barkin, and a concluding one from culture. The prescriptions from these tra­ O'Malley), the book provides rich con­ ditions ranged from socialist central textual and theoretical discussion of the planning to combinations of statist, concepts, principles, and performance as­ corporatist, and welfare-state models. sociated with those experiences. The re­ Differentiation among developing sulting counterpoint is effective in con­ economies brought many observers to re­ veying what is shared among (and be­ ject both the modernization and the politi­ yond) the very diverse cases and the cal economy perspectives. The stagnation caution needed in advancing any general­ and collapse of socialist and central plan­ izations about them. ning versions of development, the ex­ Readers with the broad premise that haustion of revolutionary energies in neoliberal economic models do not serve much of the global South, and the pro­ the majority of Latin Americans at re- 320 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

gional, national, and local levels will find in Chile, and from Aquiles Montoya on easy and immediate confirmation in Tran­ community economic development- scending Neoliberalism. But those want­ bring complementary contributions. ing to "just say no to neoliberalism" and to Varied in style and case-specificity, they have a democratic, local, empowering, convey the breadth of community devel­ and ecologically-sustainable alternative opment in Latin America in conception, clearly and programmatically laid out social composition of actors, and perfor­ will be disappointed. But they should per­ mance. Each brings into focus a slice of severe. The authors are well aware that relatively unknown but relevant "alterna­ development historically has been con­ tive development" literature. Macdonald tested terrain, discursively constructed considers the activity of international and and deconstructed, often a project embed­ national NGOs involved in participatory ded in another, for example, development development, particularly through the as Cold War anti-communist strategy or lens of discourse analysis. Veltmeyer and privatizing the public sector in order to Tellez examine Bolivia's state-propelled provide new arenas for private capital's popular participation infrastructures expansion in a sustained crisis of accumu­ through their familiarity with 30 years of lation. Henry Veltmeyer, in particular, generally market-serving reforms and has been for decades a trenchant critic of with specifically Latin American social all forms of development subjected to the movement literature. Aquevedo Soto primacy of capitalist accumulation, and highlights the heterogeneity of poverty in his several chapters are no less critical of the Bio-Bio region of Chile as "a product neoliberalism. All the contributors articu­ of quite diverse socioeconomic and cul­ late the need for "alternative" develop­ tural processes," (118) placing that pov­ ment and express solidarity with those erty and the government strategies for lo­ subjects, especially the local community, cal development in the region within the trying to advance it. At the same time, narrative of Chile's last thirty years. State they have all absorbed the post-modern decentralization and devolution to munic­ obvious: avoid simple dualisms and po­ ipalities by dictatorship decree provide larities in the social sciences; acknowl­ the backdrop for considering poverty, edge plural and shifting identities of ac­ community development, and the eco­ tors; expect diversity of intention, prac­ nomics of the region within a liberalized tice, and outcomes; embrace complexity and transnationalized Chilean economy. and contradiction. Montoya summarizes the findings of a survey of community economic develop­ In such a spirit, the editors and authors ment, also called the 'new popular econ­ in Transcending Neoliberalism show omy,' in 100 Salvadorean communities of themselves historically and conceptually "repatriated, demobilized or relocated informed. In chapters worthy of close at­ persons." (179) He concludes that varied tention from students of development social, political, and economic factors thought and practice, Veltmeyer, O'Mal- make the "new popular economy" both ley, and Barkin provide the contexts for necessary and viable, though often con­ both the emergence of neoliberalism's su­ flicted and fragile. Together the case stud­ premacy and its inchoate contestations in ies lend social concreteness to the broad community-based development. The case conceptual matters of critical concern to study chapters-from Laura Macdonald on the editors and the other contributors. NGOs and participatory development dis­ course in Costa Rica, from Veltmeyer and Politically and paradigmatically, Tellez on state-promoted participatory Transcending Neoliberalism is commit­ development in Bolivia, from Eduardo ted to alternative, democratic, socially Aquevedo Soto on state-fostered local de­ equitable, and ecologically sustainable velopment ostensibly focused on poverty community development; all the contri- REVIEWS 321 ».

butors would certainly want neoliberal- periods of his life and his films. The book itm and strictly market-driven economic also presents two interviews which were activity at the community level to be tran­ done with Dos Santos in 199S and in scended. Their collective experience and 2001. knowledge result in critical scrutiny of Sadlier notes that Dos Santos has been die discourses and inter-conceptual link­ a prolific director for about SO years. For ages of modernizationist, political econ­ instance, Dos Santos' first feature film, omy, and neoliberal thought and practice. "Rio, 40 gratis" (Rio 100 Degrees), was a They place squarely before the reader, 1956 production and his last film, "Cin­ and before the literatures they engage, ema de Lâgrimas" (Cinema of Tears) was the alternative development glossary. finished in 1995. Dos Santos has also di­ Notions of how varied actors define and rected a series of short films and docu­ use development, community, deci­ mentaries, has been involved in televi­ sion-making, decentralization, sion, and is considered one of the fathers sustainability, civil society, the "sub­ of the "Cinema Novo" movement in ject," even "the social" are subjected to Brazil. This was an artistic movement in informed intellectual historical Brazilian cinematography to produce contextualization, deconstruction, and films that were socially conscious and reconstruction. Community-based econ­ "eager to raise the consciousness" of the omies and their development are consid­ people. (30) ered in their articulation with globalizing Sadlier attempts to give the reader an capital accumulation; along the way overview of Dos Santos's work and the readers may find themselves groping to­ impact of history and political ideologies wards a renewed "social market" vision, on this work. As Sadlier states in her pref­ one with significantly more local, eco­ ace, "I have attempted to give a full-scale logical, gender, and popular content. chronological overview of Nelson Pereira And Transcending Neoliberalism keeps dos Santos's films and a sense of how his in the foreground the old and deceptively work has evolved and been determined by simple question: what is an economy for, various historical political, and cultural after all? influences." (XI) Sadlier does well in showing the de­ Fred Judson votion of Dos Santos to making films University of Alberta about the people, especially those from Brazil's northeast, the poorest region of the country. Sadlier also points out how Darlene J. Sadlier, Nelson Pereira dos dos Santos was highly influenced by Santos ( Chicago: University of Illinois Marxism in his work and how he has por­ Press 2003) trayed social inequality and racial prob­ lems within Brazilian society. Indeed, as THIS BOOK FILLS a gap in North Ameri­ another important film director in Brazil, can studies on Brazil's cinematography. Glauber Rocha, stated in 1981, "Rio, 40 It is especially relevant because it is the graus" "might be regarded as the devel­ first one published in English on this fa­ oping world's first revolutionary film, mous Brazilian film director. The book is since it exploded onto the scene even be­ a volume in the series, "Contemporary fore the Cuban Revolution." ( 18) In fact, Film Directors," edited by James social issues related to poverty and race Naremore. have been a constant in Dos Santos's The major section of the book, "A Cin­ work. In a 1995 interview he stated that, ema of the People," is divided into nine "As I have said race is a theme that be­ smaller sections that are organized chro­ cause of my upbringing is incorporated nologically and concerned with different into my existence." ( 159) He added that, 322 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

"The other great issue, poverty, which is Secas" (Barren Lives, 1963), too much very linked to race, is a permanent theme reference is made to the book by in all my films; it's not possible to think Graciliano Ramos from which the film about national identity without including was based on. Sadlier should have fo­ the very serious problem of absolute pov­ cused more on the film since this compari­ erty in some parts of Brazil." (159) He son is relevant only if the reader is famil­ also considers that "the essential point in iar with the novel as well as with the film. the struggle of anyone who wants to Another weakness in the book is the men­ participate in the social movement of tioning of too many names of people, Brazil is the elimination of poverty." which breaks the flow of the book, espe­ (140) cially for people who are not familiar with Yet, even though dos Santos's ap­ the Portuguese language. proach to his work was strictly Marxist, However, the unique value of this Sadlier noted that in his later films he had book is the information on and analysis of changed his approach in order to ac­ a very important Brazilian film director knowledge the impact of popular culture and the acknowledgement of the influ­ and of religion in the lives of the poor, es­ ence of his work on the social and politi­ pecially the Afro-Brazilian religions, cal issues of Brazil. Moreover, Sadlier such as Umbanda and Candomblé. In this provides an excellent analysis of "Como fashion, as Sadlier pointed out, Dos Era Gostoso o meu Frances" (How Tasty Santos changed his political approach Was My Little French Man, 1972). She from an orthodox Marxist to a left-wing shows how the film extrapolated from the populist. Indeed, Dos Santos became crit­ re-telling of a historical event in early co­ ical of orthodox Marxists who ignore the lonial Brazil to a more critical analysis of aspects of the people that do not interest Brazil's society in the 20th century. The them. When commenting on a character, film is based on the German explorer, "a university professor," in one of his Hans Staden's chronicle Brazil: The True most recent films, "Tenda dos Milagres," History of the Wild, Naked, Fierce, made in 1977, Dos Santos stated: "[The Man-Eating People written in 1557 professor] represents the orthodox Marx­ which describes his capture by the canni­ ist who throughout the years has been just balistic native group, the Tupinambâ, as colonizing as the non-Marxist colo­ when he was living among the Portuguese nizer because he has not been able to in the region encompassing today's Rio transfer the mode of thought but has in­ de Janeiro. Sadlier clearly shows Dos stead merely transferred the observations Santos's objective of linking cannibalism achieved through that method... I am crit­ with worker and Native resistance in the icizing myself as well, because I have capitalist world of the 20th century. As fallen into the same trap... An intellectual she states, "Although the major historical like the professor ... envisions the trans­ trauma it exposes is a familiar one of Eu­ formation of society ... [However] His ropean domination and genocide, it sug­ background, his class, and position pre­ gests that this irreducible violence keeps vent him from including truly popular returning and repeating itself in the here manifestations — specifically religion — and now; meanwhile, it converts the trau­ in his cultural universe." (96) matic event described in Staden's text — the cannibalistic act — into a provocative The major weakness of this book is metaphor for the resistance to a modern that the description of films and of Dos society of global capital and foreign con­ Santos's early life can be a bit tedious and sumption." (59) confusing to read due to the large quanti­ ties of detailed information. For instance, My overall impression of the book is in the section devoted to the analysis of that it is an important contribution to the one of his most important films, "Vidas better understanding of Brazilian issues REVIEWS 323 in North America and it is also an impor­ cials, the LMP reported to the Home tant source for anyone interested in Secretary. world cinematography. In this way, the The author argues that despite the book fulfills the objective of the series, working-class origins of recruits, and an "Contemporary Film Directors," which initially authoritarian management style, is to "broaoe» our awareness of impor­ by the time the LMP had grown to 22,000 tant artists, to give serious critical atten­ men in 1914 occupational culture had cre­ tion to their work, and to illustrate the va­ ated a distinct esprit de corps. In the riety and vitality of contemporary cin­ 1830s and 1840s, the police had encoun­ ema." (II) tered considerable working-class resent­ ment and resistance. By 1914, deployed Rosana Barbosa Nunes in 22 divisions, the force policed a popu­ Brock University, and lation of 7 million, most of which, accord­ Glendon College/York University ing to Shpayer-Makov, accepted the po­ lice as a necessary service. As the public image of the force improved, so did its Haia Shpayer-Makov, The Making of a morale and personnel turnover rates. Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Recruitment patterns changed some­ Force in Metropolitan London, what over the decades, but they were dis­ 1829-1914 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate tinct and fairly deliberate. The early com­ 2002) missioners favoured young, unskilled farmers and farm workers, who were STUDENTS OF LABOUR and work­ thought to have the proper physical capa­ ing-class history occasionally encounter bilities and temperament, as well as lack the police in accounts of industrial dis­ of urban experience, to be transformed putes, political dissent and plebeian cul­ into reliable constables. Semi-skilled ture. The "new" police emerged during workers and clerks were also valued. Un­ the transition from commercial to indus­ like large North American police depart­ trial capitalism and there is growing liter­ ments, sons rarely followed their fathers ature on its role in class relations. One of into the service. Veterans of the Royal the first modern constabularies in Eng­ Navy and Marines were prized recruits; land for example, the Thames River Po­ ex-Army types were less valued because lice, was organized to seize control of of their associations with drink and fast traditional labour practices surrounding living. Candidates were expected to be lit­ the valuable West Indies trade. In labour erate and "respectable." Although native studies, the police often are depicted as Irish and Scots were hired, most recruits agents of control. Studies of the police as hailed from southern England. By the workers, and police organizations as early 20th century, regulations narrowed work forces controlled by management, recruitment age to 21 to 27 and single men are rare. Thanks to Shpayer-Makov, we were preferred. And despite the inten­ now know much about police workers in tions of the 1830s architects of the LMP, one of the world's most famous constabu­ the force increasingly hired Londoners. laries, the London Metropolitan Police Because of strict recruiting standards, (LMP). The LMP, founded in 1829, was most applicants were turned away. not only a model for other jurisdictions in the Anglo-American world; it was also a In addition to initial recruitment and large, complex and conflicted body of successful completion of a probationary workers, governed by intricate formal and training period, advancement depended informal control mechanisms. Unlike upon written examinations. Compared to other urban and rural police in England continental European constabularies, a who were under the authority of local offi­ distinct officer class was almost non-existent. According to the author, the 324 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

LMP was a pioneer of the merit system, 1829 and 1860, roughly half resigned and which was a tool for building worker loy­ nearly a third were dismissed. Although alty and workforce stability. Despite the pay was steady, the rate (below that of ar­ lure of a supervisory position (a patrol tisans and skilled workers) was a long­ sergeant was responsible for roughly two standing grievance, particularly as mar­ dozen sergeants and constables), 80 per ried policemen aspired to live in respect­ cent of the men who remained never ad­ able working-class areas. They also vanced beyond the lowest rank. Few po­ resented having to live in close proximity licemen reached the ranks of the middle to station houses. In addition, their class. spouses, in the interest of respectability, In order to attract and retain first-class were forbidden from working outside the police workers, administrators resorted to home. Given that most constables by the carrot-and-stick methods. Although a late 1800s were married, this meant hard­ largely unarmed force under civilian con­ ship for police families. The 1890 strike trol, the LMP was governed by a militaris­ resulted in legislated pension reform, tic discipline and chain of command. Sin­ which based eligibility not on age but to­ gle constables, for example, had to live in tal years of service. Patrol work with ex­ section houses and opportunities to air posure to the elements and the risk of as­ grievances in a formal fashion were rare. saults and injuries, and 60-70 hour work Despite strikes in 1872, 1890, 1918, and weeks, were physically demanding. 1919, affiliation with trade unions was il­ Health problems often led to early retire­ legal. The Police Federation, established ment, particularly in the 19th century in the wake of World War I unrest, was not when only a small minority of recruits a union and was not permitted to delve succeeded in completing 25 years of ser­ into promotion or discipline. As servants vice. Until 1910, the police had only one of the Crown, constables were expected to day off every two weeks. be neutral in terms of class relations and But policemen received free medical politics, which is why they were unable to services and financial assistance for time vote. lost due to sickness, a rarity in most Shpayer-Makov identifies vestiges of workplaces. Paid vacation leave also was aristocratic paternalism, combined with available. The author explains that hu­ the "middle class individualism" of the manitarian reforms such as pensions, free merit system, as the basis of management medical care, and sick pay enhanced the style. A contributory pension scheme be­ public reputation of the LMP as an "em­ gan as early as 1839 but its scope was lim­ ployer" and helped to build institutional ited and decisions were made by manage­ loyalty. The end result of the "making" of ment in a discretionary manner. Drunken­ policemen was that police workers in­ ness continued to be the most common creasingly identified with their occupa­ reason for dismissal and there is evidence tion and their organization. that punishments became less severe over Surveillance and regulation of work­ time. Nevertheless, even with the ing-class culture had been one of the chief institutionalization of internal mobility, aims of the LMP when founded in 1829. hostility toward the higher ranks flared up Policemen were discouraged from fre­ from time to time. quenting the basic working-class social Despite official rules against protest, institution, the pub. To instill discipline labour actions, contact with sympathetic and camaraderie, and insulate the Members of Parliament, and evidence rank-and-file from the community, the heard by Parliamentary committees re­ police authorities attempted to create a vealed worker dissatisfaction. The most distinct police culture through recreation common act of resistance was departure. and leisure activities. These included the Of the 100,000 men who joined between Police Christian Association, reading and REVIEWS 325

recreation rooms, sporting activities, cialist. But then he was an unusual British dances, banquets, music, amateur theatri­ socialist. cals, and family activities such as picnics. Zilliacus was born in Japan in 1894, of Top administrators and social elites at­ a Swedo-Finnish father and an American tended police events as spectators, but not mother of Scottish descent, as a result of participants, reflecting the British class the exile of his father who was a promi­ system. nent figure in the Finnish independence This reviewer has few quibbles with movement. Konni's early years were such a thorough study. One possible addi­ spent living in Japan, Finland, and Swe­ tion would have been greater discussion den before his mother, who left his father of the residential neighbourhoods of po­ in 1908, took him to live in England. On lice families within the social geography her re-marriage in 1912 he went to live in of metropolitan London. Hopefully this the United States where he attended Yale, work will encourage other historians of finishing with a first in his class with a labour and the working class to take a sec­ PhD in 1915. Having concentrated in sci­ ond look at the police. ence for his first two years, he spent his third year studying social sciences and Greg Marquis history. Truly international in his experi­ University of New Brunswick, Saint John ence, a master of eight or more languages, it is natural that he should have become involved in international affairs. By the Archie Potts, Zilliacus: A Life for Peace end of World War I, however, he was once and Socialism (London: Merlin Press again domiciled in Britain and Europe. 2002) Zilliacus was involved in a range of in­ ternational posts for more than twenty KONNI ZILLIACUS was an important in­ years. He was active with the Supreme ternational socialist of the 20th century, Allied Council which, in 1918, had the the Labour MP, Sydney Silverman, ven­ mission of establishing whether or not turing to suggest, on his death in 1967, Britain and the Allies should invade Rus­ that he was "the greatest international so­ sia on the side of the White Russians. cialist of my time." ( 193) Archie Potts' bi­ From 1919 onwards he was on the Secre­ ography of this partially forgotten figure tariat of the League of Nations in Geneva is a timely reminder of the international and at the hub of international develop­ developments of the turbulent years be­ ments. Not always happy with the various tween 1918 and the 1960s the years of the actions of the League, or British states­ League of Nations, World War II, and the men, he wrote numerous books, pam­ Cold War — which convulsed world poli­ phlets, and articles for The Guardian, un­ tics. Bravely attempting to offer interna­ der a variety of pseudonyms. In particu­ tional solutions to immediate difficulties, lar, he was alarmed at the way in which Zilliacus earned the distinction, in 1949, Britain, and other countries, veered away of being refused a visa to both the United from taking collective action against Ja­ States and the Soviet Union, and of being pan after she invaded Manchuria and cre­ expelled from the Labour Party. In many ated the puppet state of Manchuko, was respects this was because whilst he was alarmed at the actions of the British gov­ influenced by Marxist ideas he was com­ ernment over the Abysinnian crisis, and mitted to international peace through the was particularly critical of the appease­ collective security of the United Nations. ment policies of Neville Chamberlain's Zilliacus was certainly an unconventional National Government. socialist and, that rare thing in British mainstream politics, an international so­ Zilliacus's own solution to fascism was to organize a Popular Front against the National Government to remove it 326 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

from office and replace it with a People's upon foreign policy, to oppose the exis­ Government which would form an alli­ tence of NATO, and to support the Cam- ance with France, the Soviet Union, and paign for Nuclear Disarmament. the USA in a Peace Bloc which would be Although he was briefly suspended as a forced to defeat fascism in the war he ex­ Labour MP in 1961, he remained Labour pected. However, this never occurred and MP for Gorton until his death in the sum­ during World War II he was employed in mer of 1967, vehemently attacking the Britain's Censorship Division, particu­ Labour government's policy of support larly briefing Swedish journalists at the for the United States' policies in Vietnam beginning of the war. and advocating peace to the bitter end. In the post-war world Zilliacus was His ashes were returned to Finland, where largely concerned with British domestic they rest near the remains of his father and politics, his opportunities within the in­ brother in the Sandudd cemetery in Hel­ ternational community being restricted in sinki. the Cold War climate. To begin with, hav­ In relating the life of Zilliacus, Archie ing been returned as Labour MP for Gates­ Potts has certainly written a readable head in Labour's landslide general elec­ book of a complex and, hitherto, ne­ tion victory of 1945, Zilliacus found that glected socialist political figure. It is a the new Labour government was more in­ good book but I wonder about the balance terested in domestic than foreign policy, of it and its reluctance to assess Zilliacus. which was left to a few Labour leaders and Many of the 28 chapters begin with a de­ presided over by Ernest Bevin, the fa­ tailed study of international or domestic mous trade union leader who branded him politics and then Zilliacus's role and atti­ a Communist. Inevitably, Zilliacus was tude is discussed. I feel certain that much drawn into condemning "Labour's policy of this introductory material could be re­ as a dead end" (95) and as being too duced and that more focus could be placed closely allied to that of the United States. on Zilliacus's views, with his ideas and He was thus involved in attacking Bevin's career being the driving force of the bi­ foreign policy in the House of Commons ography. In addition, there is too much of and in the unsuccessful amendment de­ a tendency to let Zilliacus speak for him­ bate led by Richard Crossman in Decem­ self and too little desire to evaluate and ber 1946. It was at this stage that he vis­ assess his role and influence in politics. ited Stalin, attempted to justify the Com­ If he was such an important international munist takeover in Czechoslovakia in socialist, why was he so important and early 1948, and was deeply impressed by what was his impact? Most certainly, the Tito and the elections in Yugoslavia. With concluding chapter needs to be more the estrangement of Tito from Stalin, than simply a relating of the valedicto­ Zilliacus was increasingly viewed with ries offered by leading Labour figures at suspicion by the Soviet Union. the memorial meeting held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London on 27 In Britain, however, his criticism of July 1967. It does need to assess his con­ Ernest Bevin's foreign policy, involve­ tribution rather than repeat the homage ment in the Nenni Telegram affair, oppo­ paid to him. Nevertheless, this is a good sition to moves to create NATO, and other read on one of the ubiquitous figures of similar events led to his expulsion from British and international politics in the the Labour Party in 1949, along with sev­ 20th century and, as Tony Benn writes in eral others of Morgan Philip's "Lost his Foreword, this biography "deserves a Sheep," losing his Gateshead seat in the very wide readership, not least in the 1950 general election. He was readmitted ranks of New Labour, which seems to to the Labour Party in February 1952, and lack any knowledge of, or interest in, the became Labour MP for Manchester Gorton in 1955. He continued to focus REVIEWS 327 history «f our movement or even in the facilitate an ongoing union between Brit­ history of our times." (viii) ain and America. It was the American ex­ perience that radicalized Cartwright, Keith Laybourn leading him to advocate universal man­ University of Huddersfield hood suffrage in 1776 and four years later, to found the Society for Constitu­ tional Information, an organization dedi­ Ray Hemmings, Liberty or Death. Early cated to broadening the frontiers of politi­ Struggles for Parliamentary Democracy cal literacy and to disseminating radical (London: Lawrence and Wishart 2000) tracts at subsidized prices. Cartwright's narrative is interwoven RAY HEMMINGS was a senior lecturer in with that of Thomas Hardy, the Scottish Mathematical Education at Leicester Uni­ shoemaker who nearly left for America to versity and in retirement has turned to the set up a shoe factory in New York but ven­ writing of history. In this short, readable tured instead to London where he helped book, he traces the struggle for parliamen­ found the London Constitution Society in tary democracy in England in the late 18th 1792. Hardy's story is, of course, better century. He does so by developing two known, having been central to the first parallel narratives of leading radicals: section of Edward Thompson's The John Cartwright, the founder of the Soci­ Making of the English Working Class. ety for Constitutional Information, and Hemmings does not add a lot to an already Thomas Hardy, the founder of the London well-trod story save that he stresses how Constitutional Society. the writings of Major Cartwright and the John Cartwright was the third son of a Duke of Richmond, who routinely moved minor country gentleman from the adoption of annual parliaments and Nottinghamshire who went to sea as a universal manhood suffrage in the Lords midshipman and saw plenty of service in during the 1780s, were central to Hardy's the Seven Years' War, rising to the rank of radicalism. His major contribution is his lieutenant. After the war he served on the concise and intelligible account of Newfoundland station for four years and Hardy's trial for treason in 1794, noting mobilized for war against the Spanish not only the legal intricacies of what trea­ during the Falkland Islands crisis of son meant in that era — whether it had to 1770-1771. He then returned home, involve an actual conspiracy to kill the greatly emaciated by his naval king or not — but also the drama of the endeavours, and during his convales­ event and its subsequent significance in cence threw himself into the looming cri­ radical memory. sis in domestic and imperial politics over America. He was a major in the Unfortunately for Hemmings, the year Nottinghamshire militia, a territorial of his book also saw the publication of army that was organized both as a coun­ John Barrell's Imagining the King's terpoint to a government-dominated Death, a brilliant investigation of the trea­ standing army and as a defence against a son trials and their meaning. Working possible invasion by the French after their from the original statute of 1351 which alliance with America in 1778. Like some made it treason to "compass or imagine other naval officers, he declined to fight [intend] the death of our lord the king," against the Americans, whom he regarded Barrell showed how the Crown prosecu­ as freedom fighters engaged in a just war tion, in its desire to suppress the radical against an oppressive government. In­ movement, stretched the meaning of trea­ deed, he openly advocated a form of son to cover "overt acts" which might American home rule as early as 1774, lead to the deposing or imprisonment of hoping that this major concession would the king. They invited juries to imagine the sequence of events and circumstances 328 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

that made such an attack upon the king's tional associations" to use Cartwright's authority likely if not inevitable. "Imag­ phrase, assumed as much importance as ining the king's death" thus took on new, electoral franchises and strategies to get sinister, and capacious overtones, with men of integrity into parliament. To focus topical analogies to the "imprisonment" so exclusively on the potentially inclu­ (and subsequent execution) of Louis XVI sive nature of parliament — in in France and by extension to the debate Hemmings' frame of reference whether over political representation that was working men were eligible or not to vote foregrounded by Burke's Reflections on and be elected — runs the risk of anachro­ the Revolution in France, where reason nism. The late 18th century was the age of and representative transparency are radical enlightenment, high political ex­ counterposed to tradition, law, and the pectation in the wake of new liberated na­ spectacle of majesty. Barrel I's elaborate tions, and also one which had to grapple contextualizing of the treason trials and with a moving frontier of political liter­ his play on the fluid signification of acy in which crowds were sometimes po- "imagine" at an acute crisis in British pol­ litically volatile and credulous. itics make Hemmings' account look Hemmings' inclination is to adopt a parched. What it underscores is Whiggish perspective, to see the changes Hemming's very insular approach to the and challenges of this era as part of the radical movement, his failure to see how long road to political democracy. This fil­ central the American and French revolu­ ters out millenarian expectation, revolu­ tions were to the aspirations of British tion, and radical revolt, and privileges radical endeavour. parliamentary probity. It highjacks com­ Hemmings' insular approach means plex debates about the nature of citizen­ that other opportunities are missed. His ship, public space and debate, the appro­ account of Cartwright's first democratic priation and reworking of old political statement, Take Your Choice, fails to ex­ languages or narratives, and the fate of amine how the militia major reworked the universalist. Enlightenment assumptions Country Whig tradition in the context of in an age of militant nationalisms. the American Revolution and looked for­ Also disconcerting is Hemmings' ten­ ward to dramatic changes in the British dency to contrast Cartwright and Hardy political landscape with an almost mille- and their respective institutions in class narian intensity, describing the British terms without appreciating the extent to polity as a system of corruption heading which these men and their fellow travel­ for a "Niagrian fall." Hemmings spends lers were part of the same emancipatory too much of his time criticizing Cart- project. Hemmings is hard on Cartwright wright for proposing a property qualifica­ for agreeing with other landowners to reg­ tion for MPs in a new democrati­ ulate the wages of itinerant workers on cally-elected parliament and not recog­ their farms. Fair enough. He does not nizing the novelty of his pamphlet, which, mention that Cartwright also saw the mili­ with its demand for equal electoral dis­ tia as a training ground for mass citizen­ tricts, payment of MPs, a secret ballot, and ship and believed that military service — annual parliaments, anticipated much of often imposed upon poor people — the Chartist program of reform in the next strengthened their entitlements to full century. Equally important, Hemmings participation within the British polity. does not seem to understand the dilemma Nor does he stress the degree to which that radicals faced in this age of revolu­ Cartwright's Society of Constitutional tions and prescient change, that of how to Information encouraged the formation of put radical "reformations" into effect. democratic clubs across the country in This is why issues of mass petitioning, re­ 1792-3, circulated radical literature to monstrances, conventions, or "grand na­ them, and assumed the leadership of the REVIEWS 329 radkai movement in May 1792, when the Alain Corbin, The Life of an Unknown: fledgling plebeian societies became in­ The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker creasingly vulnerable to government in 19 -Century France (New York: Co­ prosecution. lumbia University Press 2001) True enough, some leaders of the SCI like John Home Tooke abandoned the THIS WORK, which originally appeared radical wagon when things got hot. But in French in 1998, is a product of a re­ that was certainly not the case of all, least nowned historian's quest to study ordi­ of all Caitwright himself, who soldiered nary people instead of elites, members of on during the bleak years of radical blight the great majority whose obscure condi­ to help pioneer the Hampden clubs in the tion and illiteracy meant they conveyed post-war era. Caitwright may have been a nothing to future history, except inadver­ bit of a patrician, but he was a populist pa­ tently in administrative archives. Ar­ trician all the same who believed that the guing that the current social history of "poor peasant," specifically the poorest ordinary people is based on the traces left male peasant, was entitled to full political by very unusual people who are wrongly rights. How those rights might have been taken to be spokesmen for the rest, Corbin exercised in the economic sphere was not seeks to rectify this by studying someone something that Caitwright, or any other so obscure, unimportant, and anonymous radical of his era, addressed very system­ as to be totally unremembered. He chose atically, with the possible exception of the his native department, the Orne, picked agrarian Utopian Thomas Spence. out in it at random a tiny and obscure com­ Whether those rightscoul d encompass mune, Origny-le-Butin, and from its mu­ women or people of colour, an issue that nicipal archives chose, again at random, emerged with the confluence of abolition­ two late 18th-century names, from which ism with radicalism, were also unresolved he selected the one with a longer life. issues in this era of dramatic international Thus the focus of the book is one transformations. Historians have begun to Louis-François Pinagot (1798-1876), the unpack those issues in the wake of femi­ son of a carter, who lived on the edge of nist and multicultural agendas, but they the forest of Bellême. He worked mostly will not find much to work with in at making wooden shoes (sabots, a trade Hemmings' study. Although Hemmings translated in this book as clog-maker), but briefly alludes to Hardy's friendship with sometimes as a labourer. Pinagot married Olaudah Equiano and has two fleeting the daughter of a farmer at the age of references to Mary Wollstonecraft, he twenty, she bore him eight children be­ has no interest in these new perspec­ fore her death in 1846. tives, or in anything remotely connected Illiterate, leaving no written traces be­ to the cultural turn. This is a staid, yond scrawled crosses on voting regis­ pre-Thompsonian treatment of two radi­ ters, and often officially indigent, he van­ cal figures of the late 18th century, nicely ished totally without trace when he died. written, but dated. Corbin, however, sets out to collect and collate all traces of him, so as to organize Nicholas Rogers them into a picture of the outlines of his York University life, to reconstruct his times, family envi­ ronment (Pinagot's relatives are all also investigated), circle of friends, commu­ nity, probable values and beliefs, and to imagine the feelings, emotional relation­ ships, and forms of sociability that might have affected him. In this way Corbin hopes to understand this period in a 330 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

wretched part of one of the poorest depart­ cahiers for the Estates-General, ments in France. The book provides fully chouannerie, periods of dearth and popu­ researched accounts of the area, country­ lar protest (of which an account is given), side, agriculture, places, housing, trans­ conflicts over the local church, the im­ port, sounds, forms of exchange (with an pingement of the outside world in the in­ apparent assumption that dealings for vasions of 1815 and 1870-1, but not Na­ money actually meant money changing poleon. Corbin's defence of this hands), produce, diet, animals, popula­ "re-creation" through speculation is that tion, occupations, family structures, edu­ all historians speculate anyway, which cation, literacy, conversations, the social will make some readers uneasy. division between farmers and woodsmen, The main lesson of this book would the particular trades in which Pinagot seem to be the impossibility of knowing and his relatives worked (sabot-making, the thoughts of most of the people of the spinning, and glove-making), local quar­ past. While it is of some interest to know rels (with a long catalogue of disputes about Pinagot and his relatives, and this over such matters as land boundaries and little impoverished area and the overrid­ rights of way), standard of living, periods ing concerns of its inhabitants, it is not of famine, memory, celebrations, Na­ clear that a new perspective on history has tional Guard, and elections. been gained. The aim seems to be to get at Corbin wishes to make Pinagot part of ordinary people usually missed out in his­ the memory of the 19th century, which torical research, by going behind the mis­ can sound like a folie de grandeur. No leading partial pictures of them that arise doubt Pinagot will henceforth be referred from the usual sources and such excep­ to in historical works, so that, in the tional testimonies as those of Menetra and terminology of E.H. Carr, he has become Menocchio. This is to be done by looking a historical fact. In truth, not surpris­ at someone so obscure that we are freed ingly, little is discovered about Pinagot from any intermediary opinions, precon­ beyond the bare outlines of his life, and ceptions, or interpretations of him. No the probable greater comfort of his later such distorting and obscuring pictures get years. After the last bad time of 1853-4, as in the way, even from the man himself sabot-making became more remunera­ through such exceptional actions as giv­ tive, spinning was replaced by the ing us a written statement on anything. better-paid glove-making in the employ­ But because so little can, consequently, ment of female members of the family, ag­ be discovered about him, the reconstruc­ riculture was modernized, the forest tion has to be filled out with information better exploited, the economy more na­ on people like him in this small area, tional and fluid, and all his children of culled from the usual (suspect) docu­ working age. In 1856 he bought a little ments created by outsiders. Because these cottage with a small plot attached to it and have no direction connection with thus became a landowner, and in the Pinagot himself, they are used to specu­ 1870s his eldest son became a municipal late about him. Perhaps, instead, we councillor. As Corbin recognizes, a biog­ should be content to recognize the subjec­ raphy of Pinagot is impossible, and we tivity of our sources instead of trying to can only hope to create an evocation of his circumvent them, and agree, with life. Because of the lack of information, Collingwood and Bloch, that we seek to Corbin proceeds to speculate on such mat­ extract from the sources things they were ters as networks of solidarity, what not intended to tell us. What is really Pinagot could have seen and felt, and his gained by the focus on this one man re­ views of the past. This leads him to pick mains unclear, as it does not even lead, as out events Pinagot was likely to have biography does, to any understanding or heard or known about, including the recognition of individuality. Pinagot fig- REVIEWS 331

ures not as an individual but as a sort of future health of the French nation de­ vessel for some very generalized state­ pended on the well-being of its work­ ments and assertions that often obscure ing-class children. Encouraged by the multiplicity of the past. anxieties about depopulation and living conditions in an increasingly urban and Iorwerth Prothero industrial France, early colonies stressed University of Manchester hygiene as their central project. Trans­ planting poor, urban children to the French countryside for several weeks of Laura-Lee Downs, Children in the Prom­ fresh air and healthy activity, the colonie ised Land: Working-Class Movements experience could effect both individual and the Colonies de Vacances in France, and national rejuvenation by saving soci­ 1880-1960 (Durham, NC: Duke Univer­ ety's most fragile members from various sity Press 2002) forms of physical and moral "pollution." According to Downs, while the hygienic IN THE INTRODUCTION to Childhood in emphasis would never disappear alto­ the Promised Land, Laura-Lee Downs of­ gether, the pedagogic possibilities of the fers to "deepen our understanding of the colonies became more of a focus for orga­ meanings of childhood in contemporary nizers into the 20th century. Regardless urban culture." (12) The book fulfills this of the confessional and/or political moti­ initial promise by exploring the rich his­ vations behind each distinct colonie, the tory of the colonies de vacances in France twin concerns of hygiene and pedagogy from the end of the 19th century through formed a kind of double helix at the core the 1950s. This first, in-depth, historical of these urban-rural experiments through­ study of the colonies explores the sum­ out their history. mertime worlds, "rural collectives," and Towards the end of the 19th century, "toy republics" that adults across the po­ Catholic colonies developed out of an ex­ litical spectrum in France have created for isting system of apprenticeships for children for over a century. According to working-class youth known as patronag­ Downs, a network of diverse colonies de­ es. The Catholic colonie functioned as veloped out of a broad range of move­ "one key to maintaining a positive Catho­ ments in France: Protestant charity and lic presence in the lives of children and republican school programs, "Catholic their families" (90) who were otherwise defense" against state and societal secu­ "vulnerable" to the increasingly secular larization, as well as Socialist and Com­ distractions of the republican school and munist initiatives inspired by "leftist working-class culture. Articulating their rural ism" and the desire to build a Utopian mission in deliberate "opposition to the future by encouraging the healthy politi­ narrowly intellectual and overly material­ cal and social development of work­ ist mass education of the public schools," ing-class children. (86) Catholic colonie organizers devel­ Childhood in the Promised Land oped play-based models and practices traces the emergence of the colonies from that placed the child at the center of the their earliest incarnations as charitable learning process. In doing so, they func­ and public-health initiatives designed to tioned as some of "the first architects of a "repair the bodies" and "restore the souls" full-blown pedagogy of child leisure in of working-class children. Beginning in France." (108) Indeed, Catholic innova­ the 1880s, first Protestant charitable orga­ tion and programs helped with the gradual nizations, then republican projects to ex­ spread of child-centered, "active" meth­ tend children's educational experience ods and practices to later colonies and ex­ into the summer months (colonies tra-curricular activities for children in scolaires), shared the conviction that the France, including the growth of the scout- 332 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ing movement. Emphasizing the progres- health projects of earlier generations to siveness of Catholic colonie pedagogy, the machinations of bourgeois and state Downs disrupts assumptions made all too authorities, Downs defends these efforts often by historians of the "modern" pe­ as responses to a "genuine crisis" (37) in riod: that secularization happened all at industrializing France. Downs' discus­ once, and that the Church's role in "mod­ sion of the "participatory urbanism" de­ ern" societies in the west has been, always veloped in Suresnes also takes on the per­ and necessarily, "reactionary." ception of the working-class family as the Having traced the history of pre-World pure "victim" of state interference and War I colonies in France, Downs focuses bourgeois intervention. In both Suresnes on examples of colonies developed by and Ivry-sur-Seine, colonies developed two working-class municipalities on the as part of municipal, working-class politi­ outskirts of Paris during the interwar cal and social agendas. Later in the 20th years: the Socialist "garden city" of century. Downs argues, the development Suresnes and Communist Ivry-sur-Seine. of colonies for middle-class children was One of the strengths of this book is to part of a "trickle-up" movement from show how political difference did not ob­ working-class and local strategies to struct the sharing and borrowing of peda­ practices adopted more generally by the gogic models and strategies between dif­ growing welfare state in France. Finally, ferent groups, "even as they competed for Downs rejects what she refers to as "the the same children." (5) Another is the way jaundiced eye of Foucauldian suspicion" in which Downs' comparative study (7) that might read the colonies as expres­ traces strategic and practical differences sions of state, Church, or other forms of within the Left, differences between So­ "discipline." Downs insists that the colo­ cialist and Communist versions of the nies' history cannot be read in terms of colonie. In Suresnes, an entire network of "indoctrination" because of the funda­ social assistance and public education mental complexity of the play-centered linked the colonie to municipal plans to pedagogic models that came to dominate improve housing, education, and medical them. In their emphasis on freedom and treatment. The colonie was an important children's natural "capacity for moral part of an overall project of social engi­ reasoning," colonies "across the political neering managed by a growing group of spectrum" functioned as crucial testing "experts": social workers, doctors and ed­ and training grounds for a "modern," ucators. In the case of Communist Western citizenship predicated on "the Ivry-sur-Seine, the colonie functioned it­ development of an autonomous moral and self as a model of a future Utopian society. political agency in adult life." (236) The Communist colonie created an imag­ Indeed, the "Foucauldian" functions ined political community of children in in Downs' analysis as a kind of short form which games and exercises prepared par­ for a number of possible critiques of the ticipants for a political future they would colonies. While I think Downs suggests a bring about. Involving children in the viable alternative colonie also functioned as an important to any cynical judgment way of connecting working-class families of the colonies' "dark purposes," (37) 1 to the mission of the municipality's Com­ wonder if a more developed Foucauldian munist political leadership. reading of the phenomena treated in the book would necessarily take the simplis­ Throughout the book, Downs raises tic analytic form she anticipates and re­ important questions about how historians jects in defense of complexity. It would analyze vectors of power in discussions of also be interesting to explore further how class and politics. Decrying "the well-fed children participated in and responded to ... vantage point of the late-twentieth cen­ the models and practices used to organize tury" that might easily reduce the public their own childhoods. Downs includes ex- REVIEWS 333

cerpts from children's journals and adult compete globally. The question implies recollections of colonie participants that that there is an inherent tension between invite more discussion of how children market growth and employee democracy may have imagined, experienced and in which market demands result in a dimi­ helped to create the varied social and po­ nution of employee control. The author litical "promised lands" intended to en­ believes that the demands of productivity courage their growth and development. In and the requirements of democracy result the interpretive questions it raises, and in in a struggle over corporate identity. its insistence on the possibilities of work­ The Mondragon co-operative system ing-class agency and social change, that the author studied in the 1990s was Children in the Promised Land is a pro­ started in the 1950s (with roots in the vocative and hopeful book. 1940s) as a small manufacturing business that has grown into a variety of worker Roxanne Pancbasi co-ops, educational institutions, a large Simon Fraser University bank, and assorted consumer co-ops, in­ cluding a huge grocery chain. The ISO co-ops in the system have 42,000 employ­ George Cheney, Values at Work: Em­ ees, sales ©f $7 billion US, and constitute ployee Participation Meets Market Pres­ the tenth largest non-state enterprise in sure at Mondragon (Ithaca: ILR/Cornell Spain. This spectacular growth has been University Press 2002) both a source of pride for the worker co-operative movement and a challenge THIS BOOK is an "updated" version of a to democratic principles. It has also re­ work first published in 1999 and is based sulted in the Mondragon co-ops being the on research conducted in the 1990s. It most studied (next to the kibbutzim) identifies trends that encourage success­ model of co-operative enterprise in the ful worker co-ops like those at world. Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain The author's argument begins with an to imitate the behaviour of transnational outline of the ethos of multinational cor­ corporations, thereby undermining their porate capitalism in the 1990s, which he democratic roots. The original volume sees as being centered on the mantra of won the International Communication market demands. He contends that this Association's Best Book Award for ethos is a challenge to the principles of de­ 1999-2001. The author is Professor in the mocracy, equality, and solidarity that Department of Communication at the Mondragon represents. The author's University of Utah. The publisher is American universe is the world's most well-known for its series in labour stud­ hyped-up management culture with end­ ies, in particular, research into employee less concern with new approaches to in­ participation. creasing profit. This "how-to" culture A worker co-op is a business enter­ jumps from one management technique or prise owned by its employees on an equal buzzword to another. basis. It differs from other employee While living in the ethos created by ownership models because of its one this hyper-capitalism, the author also person/one vote principle. As a brings with him the values of a smaller, al­ non-capitalist enterprise, a worker co-op ternative American movement that pro­ offers an alternative business model. This motes democracy in business — every­ book tries to answer the question of how thing from employee profit-sharing to alternative social values, such as the par­ communal enterprise. The roots of this ticipatory democracy inherent in worker approach are populist, an emphasis on the co-ops, can be sustained in a complex voice of the people being heard in the business organization, which seeks to workplace. This movement fits with the 334 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

wider American view that the US repre­ kinds anywhere in the world is common­ sents a radical sense of democracy that place. Liberal democratic co-ops based does not exist in Europe and that it is a on the Rochdale model, the most common place where change, innovation, and ex­ co-op structure in the world, need to be perimentation are a priority. competitive with the capitalist environ­ The author finds the new Mondragon ment in which they operate. Paying mar­ deviating from its founding values as it ket salaries does not undermine Rochdale pursues a policy of aggressive growth. He principles. The radically democratic claims, as other researchers have, that wage ratios in the early years of Mondragon's ideology has compromised Mondragon reflected the communitarian its co-operative values. The structure of values and Christian egalitarianism of re­ the enterprises remains co-operative but form Catholicism and not co-op princi­ the reality of operations limits employee ples. participation. Earlier research into Another departure that Cheney ana­ worker-owned firms by Jaroslav Vanek lyzes is the establishment of new plants in pointed out that small worker-owned joint ventures outside of Spain and businesses tended to develop an Mondragon ownership of enterprises that anti-growth ethic once the needs of the are not co-operatives. Promotion of members for income and security were co-operatives is a co-operative principle satisfied. As workers, they lacked an en­ so one may conclude from this that the trepreneurial capitalist ethic of expan­ sanctity of the co-op model is not the es­ sionism and personal wealth accumula­ sence of Mondragon. In fact, Mondragon tion. Cheney suggests that a corporate has never exported its co-operative ideol­ growth model as embraced by the ogy outside of Spain. What the Mondragon co-ops is closer to capitalist Mondragon system has learned is that values than co-op ones. their co-operative form, like the kibbut­ The anti-growth ethos associated with zim in Israel, is sui generis. These models the worker co-operative model can be have grown out of a particular historical overcome by an elite with a wider interest situation and are grounded in a geo­ than just satisfying the members' basic graphic locale that does not make them needs. At Mondragon these goals came exportable in a universal way. They be­ originally from the social ideology of pro­ long to the culture and society in which gressive Catholicism, Basque national­ they were born and to which they are com­ ism, and resistance to Franco's centraliz­ mitted. ing fascism. These wider factors play only What the author has missed that is so a peripheral role in Cheney's discussion. crucial about Mondragon's success is Because of his preoccupation with work­ the importance of non-co-operative place democracy, his focus is the fate of values rooted in Basque identity. In employee participation. fact, Doug Lionais of the University One very important aspect signaling a of Durham argued in a paper given at pro-market ethic at Mondragon was an in­ the 2002 Canadian Association for crease in the pay scales from the original I Studies in Co-operation that it is the to 3 ratio (lowest to highest paid) to the non-cooperative features of community- current 70 per cent of market pay for its based business that are the key to success upper management. The author considers and longevity. Mondragon is successful this an important departure from because it has made pragmatic adapta­ Mondragon's original principles. This tions in defense of its regional may be a departure from original princi­ development and not because of its ples at Mondragon but the payment of co-operative principles. market-competitive salaries to managers Cheney has an essentialist view of so­ in co-operative enterprises of various cial values rather than viewing them as in- REVIEWS 335

Stntmerttai. He conceives of co-op princi­ and bureaucracies are hindrances to de­ ples as the central goal of Mondragon and mocracy, but they do not destroy it. The hi this he is wrong. Co-operative princi­ strategic thinking required of the manage­ ples and values were basic tools for ment cadre does not mesh easily with the achieving valued employment, social co­ tactical interests of workers. Entrepre­ hesion, regional regeneration, and other neurial risk, capital investment, market wider community values that were to forces etc. are the concerns of the former maintain the Basque way of life so impor­ group while pay, pensions, and hours of tant to its Catholic founder and visionary. work are the concerns of the latter. Only Co-ops were approved by reformist Ca­ in small-scale enterprises can the two be tholicism as a form of Catholic brought together in a formal way. Thus communitarianism expressing Christian one can achieve a Utopian ideal of the principles against models of communist worker-owner-entrepreneur but at a cost. state ownership and capitalist exploita­ What is crucial is that the management tion. Worker ownership and participation elite and Mondragon's worker-owners may be defining aspects of Mondragon have never sold their enterprises to capi­ but not its raison d'être. In Canada the talist competitors the way various suc­ New Dawn Community enterprises in cessful American worker co-ops have. Nova Scotia, also founded by a Catholic The system has maintained employment priest, use co-operative structures to in the region, has created new achieve broader goals of community sur­ co-operative jobs, and has secured the fu­ vival and integrity. There is a similar so­ ture of the co-op worker-ownership cial vision at New Dawn and Mondragon model like no other worker co-op in his­ that is deeper than the horizon of work­ tory. Enforcing stricter democratic prac­ place democracy. tices at Mondragon to preserve founding values could very well undermine this Cheney does a good job of document­ achievement and even lead to its demise. ing the threat to democracy at Mondragon forced by the ethic of growth. But growth Workplace democracy is a narrow def­ is not just a corporate value. It exists for inition of a human being. In large systems individuals, communities, and states. like that of Mondragon, individual power Mondragon has become the equivalent of is limited even on the job. Working in a General Motors in the Basque region large corporate structures means that peo­ through intense work, technical leader­ ple often seek personal satisfaction and ship, loyalty to the people of the region, control in areas outside of work — in what and the desire to be world-class in a glob- entertains them, in the sports they play or alized economy. To protect its watch, in the hobbies they have, the vol­ co-operative base Mondragon has had to untary groups they belong to, where they expand internationally to remain worship, and in those they love. It would price-competitive in a region where costs do well for investigators to think about keep increasing as the standard of living this and not be so restrictive in their defi­ goes up. Criticism that this has led to po­ nition of life and work at Mondragon. tentially exploitative relations outside the Cheney's research provides a valuable co-op structure is no different from criti­ synopsis of the broad issues facing the cism that co-ops in the Western world do Mondragon model, issues that not treat their employees fairly. It may be Mondragonians have been debating for a valid criticism but it is not necessarily several decades. The quotes from inter­ anti-cooperative in that the interests of a views he conducted with key players are co-op's members are paramount. useful and insightful. His in-depth discus­ Mondragon's longtime dependence on sion of workplace democracy is recent a managerial class is a bedrock of the sys­ and his knowledge of the extensive litera­ tem. Managerial classes, technocracies, ture on Mondragon and general work- 336 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

place democracy issues is excellent. In even in its present form, is more demo­ many ways he tries to be balanced in his cratic, more co-operative, and more egali­ assessment of the trends at Mondragon, tarian than anything else in the co-op pointing out both benefits and drawbacks. universe. Cheney's concern that But his conclusion that management's Mondragon may be turning into a capital­ emulation of trends in corporate capital­ ist wolf in co-operative clothing is unjus­ ism is undermining Mondragon's demo­ tified. Only when Mondragon stops being cratic cooperative achievements is over­ a co-operative system, can we cry wolf. I stated. He has an American-rooted evan­ doubt that will happen soon. gelical interest in workplace democracy that is not translatable to Mondragon. His George Melnyk criticism that Mondragon currently lacks University of Calgary someone to provide a counterbalance to the culture of globalizing capitalism is correct but, again, that earlier commit­ Michael Melancon & Alice K. Pate eds., ment came from a founding visionary, New Labor History: Worker Identity and working in a different business environ­ Experience in Russia, 1840-1918 ment. The managerial elite that drive (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica 2002) Mondragon today cannot be expected to be anything more than disciples, keepers THIS TIMELY COLLECTION of essays of the grail. That they have remained true makes an important contribution to our to the original vision to the flawed degree understanding of Russian workers in late they have is to their credit. I believe that Imperial and revolutionary Russia, and Mondragon workers would rather have a signposts the direction for Russian labour flawed system of workplace democracy history in this post-Soviet era. The contri­ and remain economically viable, than butors, drawn together by the "Allan K. have a radical democratic structure that Wildman Group for the study of Russian leads to collapse. workers and society," include eminent What would be interesting and revolu­ figures from the field, as well as up-and- tionary is having Mondragon's elite de­ coming scholars. Though the essays, velop a radical corporate model that the organized in a loosely chronological for­ great majority of the world's co-ops could mat, encompass a broad scope of different use for growth in a capitalist environ­ approaches, overall they chime a harmo­ ment. If the impressive mixed-ownership nious accord. model of second-tier co-ops at Boris Gorshkov's study on children Mondragon (workers, consumers, and the working in factories is an important con­ community) were adopted by the thou­ tribution to our understanding of Russia's sands of co-ops in the world, Mondragon working class, not least because it plugs would have caused a revolution in an important gap in the historiography. co-operative principles. Likewise, the Setting his study firmly in the context of maintenance of first-tier worker co-ops as developing civil society, Gorshkov dis­ the focal point of the co-operative experi­ cusses attitudes towards child labour, and ment remains radically innovative. The state responses to popular concerns, worker co-op element in the world which gradually set restrictions on child co-operative movement is a small and un­ labour through the 1880s and 1890s. I was important element compared to con­ disappointed that the author did not ex­ sumer, agricultural, and credit union plore the question of notions of child­ co-ops. There is nothing else like hood, and at what age youths were consid­ Mondragon in the world and it remains a ered adults, particularly as one of the later radical model for co-operation, even after essays (Steinberg 131) refers to this spe­ 50 years. In the last analysis Mondragon, cifically. REVIEWS 337

Page Herrlinger's illuminating piece self-organization that developed in the on factory workers and religion, specifi­ factories. While his first examples, which cally Russian Orthodoxy, places religious refer to organizations such as worship in the factory context, and in do­ zemliachestva and artels, which sprang ing so offers a fascinating perspective on directly from peasant ways of life, are the challenges of factory life, and on reli­ fine, the link between peasant collective gion in the continuity of social change. mentality and the elected elders' system Herrlinger openly challenges the and trade unions is less easy to support. oft-expressed dichotomy between work­ Alice Pate tackles the numerous failed ers and peasants, and uses religion to ex­ attempts to unify the Social Democrat pose the ways in which workers and their party, and argues, significantly, that the families breached this dichotomy. The party's activists and party workers practical problems of maintaining a reli­ broadly supported a united party, and gious lifestyle are clearly spelled out, thus were less conscious of the significance of offering an alternative explanation for the ideological differences, while the party's well-documented "loss of faith" of the ur­ divisions into Bolshevik and Menshevik ban lower class. Herrlinger also addresses factions were retained only by the machi­ the ways in which the church itself nations of the party's emigres, Lenin fore­ adapted and compromised to reach its most among them. Pate suggests that the flock. She makes a number of useful and domination of the discourse by underexplored connections, which it is to factionalist Social Democrat language be hoped will be pursued in future work: was what determined the eventual contin­ the positive connections between Chris­ uation of factionalism, despite the tianity and socialism, for example, the non-partisan realities for grassroots ac­ connection of interest in religion with a tivists. Pate makes her case convincingly, broader trend of interest in education, and if somewhat laboriously, and comes to the most interesting of all, the ways in which important conclusion that younger work­ Orthodoxy was sometimes channelled ers were not in fact moving towards into secular, radical, or political direc­ Bolshevism as was claimed by the semi­ tions. nal social historians, but that they were The next chapter, by Sergei Firsov, moving more generally towards Social also deals with workers and the Orthodox Democracy, in a more broadly conceived Church. I found this chapter the least sat­ form. isfying of the collection, and one that was Mark Steinberg's contribution takes a in some respects discordant with the col­ very different approach. Using as his lection overall. A number of Firsov's con­ sources worker literature of the late Impe­ clusions seemed to contradict those of rial period, Steinberg discusses the im­ Herrlinger in the previous chapter; he portance of conceptions of individualism, suggests an absolute conflict between suffering, and self in the development of church and socialism, and argues that the working-class identity. Rejecting notions church "struggled against urban influ­ of fatalistic Russian "masochism of suf­ ences," (68) in contrast to Herrlinger's fering," Steinberg nonetheless notes that more nuanced position. Firsov does not the "moral poetics of suffering preoccu­ link into some key Western historiogra­ pied Russian workers." (127) This is a phy, notably the work of Joan Neuberger sensitive and thought-provoking piece, on hooliganism in late Imperial Russia. which points up a number of ambiguities Mikhailov's chapter on self-organization and problems. Worker literature often in the workplace begins, rather ambi­ railed against the drunkenness, apathy, tiously, by suggesting a direct link and loutishness of the "working masses," between the collective mentality in the and in doing so the worker-writer identi­ peasant commune, and forms of fied himself as a "stranger": both a worker 338 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and yet outside the worker milieu. This Bolshevik affiliations, was in fact nothing 'outsider' mantle is highlighted by the more than a pragmatic response to the loss language used by worker-writers, which of factory administrators in the first days echoed Russia's high literary traditions, after revolution. Melancon convincingly rather than popular speech and folklore. suggests that pragmatism, rather than po­ Steinberg's concluding point brings us litical dogmatism, provides a far more back to political realities, pointing out convincing explanation for the ebb and that in a profoundly unequal society, rec­ flow of party political support in 1917 and ognition of self-worth was very danger­ 1918. ous. The importance of this 'recognition The final chapter, by Michael C. of self is reflected in the numerous Hickey, presents a detailed account of a worker appeals for respect of their human month- long strike that occurred in dignity. Smolensk during 1917. Hickey's exten­ I found it slightly puzzling that the edi­ sive work on revolutionary Smolensk en­ tors chose to place William Rosenberg's ables him to present a detailed and important essay towards the end of this nuanced picture here. He emphasizes the collection. Rosenberg's paper essentially importance of placing the Smolensk sets out a theoretical position which most strike, which broadly followed national of the essays here seem in some respects contours of labour unrest, in a specific re­ to emulate. This much is acknowledged gional context. He makes a number of im­ by the editors in the afterword. Rosenberg portant conclusions, notably the impor­ challenges the processes through which tance of the strike's failure as reflecting a we operate as historians, and suggests that broader rejection of the moderate social­ we reconsider and challenge the direction ists, and the rising heat of class rhetoric. of historical study. Essentially a defence This collection will be of great value to of social history against the encroach­ undergraduate and postgraduate students, ments of post-modernism, and post every­ as well as to specialists of Russian late thing else, Rosenberg's essay addresses Imperial and revolutionary history. the problem of the discrediting of class as a category, and points out that the collapse Sarah Badcock of the Soviet Union does not in itself ne­ University of Nottingham cessitate a redrawing of the past. Rather, new evidence and new theoretical para­ digms, such as have been produced by cul­ Stephen Crowley and David Ost, eds., tural and gender history, can do that. Workers After Workers ' States: Labour Michael Melancon's piece on the and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Petrograd factory committees between Europe (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield March and June 1917 debunks the myth of 2001) Bolshevik dominance of the factory com­ mittee movement. Through a typically de­ STEPHEN CROWLEY and David Ost have tailed study of the archival evidence, the edited a valuable collection of studies of conclusion drawn is that the committees labour and the Eastern European transi­ were consistently radical, but that they tion that has much to offer a wider audi­ were not Bolshevik. He furthers a position ence. The country chapters and the he has presented before very convinc­ editors' introduction and conclusion at­ ingly that party political affiliations were tempt to explain why, in the face of the of very limited importance to the opera­ horrific economic crisis, there has not tion of shop-floor politics. He points out only been little sustained labour protest that the factory committees' pursuit of but labour as an institutional force re­ "full-blooded workers' control," (183) mains weak. often assumed to be an indicator of REVIEWS 339

Although the editors did not impose a tors have also affected the capacity of un­ common framework, the authors elabo­ ions to reform, adjust and sustain activity rate similar themes which give the book at appropriate levels though the editors considerable coherence. One theme is im­ suggest that official unions did quite well plicit in all, namely that the "elites" that in the formal transfer of physical re­ consolidated their power did so at the ex­ sources. The biggest problem, Crowley pense of the mass of the population and and Ost suggest, is that of ideas and iden­ the transition was therefore about class is­ tities. They are led to this conclusion by sues. The question is why, in the face of the fact that despite the variation in eco­ this, did class formation not occur at the nomic conditions, state institutions, and bottom? organizational resources, labour organi­ One way of measuring class formation zations remain weak, suggesting that is in terms of social protest. Strikes have there may be a common third factor at work. taken place but they have tended to be This is a crisis in socialist ideology that what Crowley and Ost term "strikes of de­ has served to delegitimize class cleavages spair." These defensive actions have been in favour of identity-based cleavages. most evident amongst miners, transport As a group the authors share the view workers (especially rail), health and edu­ that this labour weakness has vitiated the cation workers but they have often had a possibly of a more democratic transition. lightning character. Workers as a whole Indeed several authors allude to the possi­ have not been able to turn justifiable bility that labour's weakness has helped grievances into a means of mobilization. to create a space for xenophobic national­ A second aspect of class formation is ism and far right politics to develop. But it more organizational. Why have trade un­ might also be argued ( with the possible ions proved so weak? Crowley and Ost exception of the former Yugoslavia and summarize the situation by noting that un­ even there organization on a nationalist ion density has dropped to about one third basis has been intermittent) that the fac­ of the workforce in Poland, Hungary, and tors that have weakened labour's capacity the Czech Republic, two fifths in Bul­ to mobilize have also made it difficult for garia, Romania, Slovakia, and Croatia, the far right to capitalize on the unfocused half in Serbia, and two thirds in Russia anger that the authors show exists. What and the Ukraine. In comparative terms is interesting in this sense is the compara­ these figures are not unrespectable and, tive freedom of manoeuvre that those run­ paradoxically, the reformed Communist ning these societies have had to manipu­ trade unions remain, in most countries, late the transition in their wider interest. the largest civic organizations. But real But a bigger issue surfaces at a number strength relies on the ability to persuade of points and this is reflected in the title of government, to have some national politi­ the book. Crowley and Ost begin by point­ cal representation, and to win collective ing out that many expected labour to be bargaining in the workplace. Here the re­ more prominent in the transition since la­ cord, as each author shows, is poor in ev­ bour appeared to be central to the old sys­ ery country examined. At the bottom tem. Yet at various points the editors and workplace representation is weak and at different authors also point to the way that the top unions have, at best, secured an labour suffered in the old societies and "illusory corporatism." how misleading were the propaganda To explain this the authors discuss claims, even about Yugoslav how material factors — real wage cuts, self-management. What then was the na­ wage arrears, unemployment, and mass ture of this system of "workers' states" in poverty — have undercut the capacity of which real workers played so limited a workers to resist a deterioration in their role? This is not just an abstract question. conditions. Organizational-resource fac­ If workers had been sold a lie, if they were 340 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

exploited, if they were denied the capac­ and many Western academics, much of ity for independent organization, then the advice and help that did come in the there was no reason to expect that they 1990s focused more on illusions of creat­ would have so strong a presence in the ing top-down tripartite structures. That transition. That could only come with sus­ these could not work without a real base is tained struggles at the base. Some spec­ evident from the discussions here. tacular explosions did occur in 1989-1991 But readers should be encouraged to but labour did not experience a sustained explore such themes for themselves and mobilization that could be translated into they will be better able to do so on the ba­ a strong and independent base. sis of the rich material in Crowley and But one possible implication of this ar­ Ost's collection. gument is that a top-down transformation or restructuring of both society at large, Michael Haynes and "trade unions" within this, was bound University of Wolverhampton to be alienating since what was really needed was a bottom-up change. In these terms labour has not fallen from grace ( as Crises et renouveau du capitalisme. Le a real indication of the position of workers 20e siècle en perspective (Laval: Presses in a "workers' state," [sic] consider the de l'Université Laval 2002) fact that nearly 200,000 workers were killed at work in the last two decades of L'OUVRAGE se divise en deux parties. La the old USSR when things were improv­ première partie examine quatre crises : ing). If this is right, although it is difficult celle des années trente (I. Joshua), celle to disagree with the pessimism of the des années 1970 (M. Husson), les crises book in terms of the problems of the mass financières contemporaines (M. Zerbato), of the population in the transition, per­ et la crise de la dette (É. Toussaint). La haps a more positive view could have seconde partie porte sur la nouvelle been taken both analytically and politi­ économie et le renouveau actuel du cally of the struggles that have occurred capitalisme. S'agit-il là d'un changement and continue to occur. It is out of these de cours du capitalisme comme ce fut le that we are likely to see a stronger labour cas après la Longue dépression (G. movement eventually emerge. Duménil et D. Lévy), d'un nouveau régime d'accumulation, « à domination How these struggles in the future financière » (F. Chesnais), ou encore might relate to the existing labour organi­ d'un nouveau cycle long dans une zations is an important problem. In the dynamique de longue durée qui arrive à first days of the transition it seemed as if son terme (I. Wallerstein) ? Le débat est new unofficial unions might displace the ouvert. Les deux parties sont précédées discredited state ones. But this has not oc­ d'une introduction et suivies d'une dis­ curred. Each of the national chapters cussion entre les participants. shows that they remain as weak, indeed often weaker, than reformed old organiza­ tions. To this extent any rebuilding of un­ Renouveau du capitalisme ou .... ions that does occur may have to start with the material at hand even if it is of doubt­ De la première partie, je retiendrai le ful quality. texte de Joshua, qui se démarque Perhaps the most effective help that nettement des trois autres, somme toute can come from outside is in showing the très « classiques ». L'auteur, en effet, value of basic trade union principles and propose une explication originale de la methods. But whether in the form of the crise de 1929 , développée plus en détail International Labour Organization, the dans son livre, La crise de 1929 et European Union, Western trade unions, l'émergence américaine (Paris, PUF, REVIEWS 341

1999). « La crise débute aux États-Unis, Wallerstein est l'un des rares auteurs franchit l'Atlantique, frappe l'Europe, et marxistes i avoir adopté la théorie des fait retour, amplifiée, en Amérique » ondes longues, avec ses deux phases, (p.l 1). Le schéma est fondé, dit l'auteur, d'expansion et de stagnation, d'une durée de mais cache l'essentiel : il n'y a pas eu une 25-30 ans chacune. Il fait trois constats : mais deux crises, l'une aux États-Unis et (1) « L'économie-monde capitaliste s'est l'autre en Europe, « dont l'addition des longtemps perpétuée, comme le fait effets donnera la grande dépression ». n'importe quel système, grâce à des L'origine de la crise américaine doit être mécanismes stabilisateurs, rétablissant recherchée dans l'essor rapide d'un l'équilibre chaque fois que les processus capitalisme moderne qui s'est fait au propres à ce système l'en éloignaient » (p. détriment de l'agriculture et de la produc­ 134). (2) «L'équilibre n'est, pourtant, tion artisanale et dans la chute brutale de jamais restauré immédiatement mais la consommation, amplifiée par la seulement à l'issue d'une déviation généralisation du salariat. La crise suffisante vis-i-vis de la norme. De plus, européenne est avant tout celle de la correction n'est, bien entendu, jamais l'Angleterre, déclassée par les Etats-Unis parfaite ». Et, (3) « l'équilibre n'est et incapable de soutenir le symbole de sa jamais rétabli i l'identique, car les correc­ puissance passée, l'étalon-or. En clair, tions impliquent certains changements pour l'auteur, les faits démentent dans les paramètres fondamentaux du l'hypothèse selon laquelle la crise de système. Aussi, l'équilibre se déplace-t-il 1929 serait une crise de suraccumulation. toujours, et le système manifeste des tendances séculaires » (p. 134). On est De la seconde partie, je retiendrai le très proche ici des thèses et de la méthode texte de Wallerstein. Ses dièses sont bien de Schumpeter, à la différence près connues et on les retrouve dans son texte. cependant que, pour Wallerstein, si la D'une certaine façon, Wallerstein prend à combinaison de cycles et de tendances contre-pied la thèse de Fukuyama sur la séculaires est « inhérente au fonctionne­ fin de la l'histoire pour essayer de nous ment d'un système, les tendances convaincre que l'économie-monde séculaires ne peuvent se prolonger à capitaliste est entrée dans une phase cri­ l'infini, et viennent buter sur des asymp­ tique, ultime. L'argument central de totes ... Dans de telles situations, les cy­ l'auteur est que les niveaux de profit cles ne parviennent plus à assurer le re­ subissent la puissante pression d'un triple tour à l'équilibre, et le système est alors processus : de déruralisation, d'épuise­ en difficulté ». (p. 134). Le système entre ment écologique et de démocratisation. Il « dans sa crise ultime et se trouve y aura évidemment réaction de la part des confronté à une bifurcation », à plusieurs capitalistes, et relance de l'expansion, routes possibles conduisant chacune à un mais le système est entré « dans une ère de nouveau système. turbulences chaotiques — sur les plans économiques, politiques et culturels » (p. 138), prélude transitoire d'un passage ... renouveau théorique ? à un nouveau système-monde dont, pour le moment encore, les contours restent à Pourquoi avoir retenu ces deux textes? dessiner. Évidemment, les thèses développées par L'auteur travaille avec deux cadres les auteurs sont contestables, mais elles temporels. Le premier est celui de la ont le mérite, dans le premier cas, de re­ longue durée, celui de l'histoire du placer les faits à l'avant-scène de la re­ capitalisme qui s'étend « d'environ 1450 cherche et, dans le second, de poser la à aujourd'hui », et le second est celui du question de la méthode. cycle Kondratieff « qui va de 1945 à Comme le dit Joshua, « guidés par une aujourd'hui ». Avec Ernest Mandel, approche marxiste, nous devons tenter 342 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

d'élaborer une théorie qui rende compte le résultat que l'on peut voir en lui aussi des données disponibles, et les citations bien un théoricien de la croissance, un de Marx ne peuvent remplacer une ana­ pionnier de la croissance dira lyse concrète » (p. 69). Revenir sur les Schumpeter, qu'un théoricien des crises. faits est en effet la raison d'être même de Les marxistes auraient tout intérêt à s'en la recherche. Il ne s'agit pas d'aller à la souvenir, parce que leur grande erreur a pêche pour conforter des conclusions déjà toujours été de n'étudier que l'une de ces toutes faites, mais de mettre de l'ordre deux facettes du système capitaliste, les dans les faits, de dégager les faits stylisés, crises. Au point de faire de ces dernières pour ainsi comprendre comment le une sorte d'état permanent de ce système système fonctionne. Mais encore faut-il et de la croissance un sujet d'étonnement avoir une grille de lecture. Les concepts, toujours renouvelé. certes, découlent toujours de notre per­ Wallerstein, que l'on soit d'accord ception du monde, et les modèles que ou non avec ses thèses, a le mérite de ne nous construisons sont davantage une pas tomber dans ce piège. Par contre, « représentation métaphorique » plutôt on peut lui reprocher ne pas prêter qu'une « description littérale de la réalité suffisamment d'attention aux institu­ » mais ceux-ci ont le mérite de rendre le tions, sinon pour leur donner un rôle monde intelligible. À condition toutefois purement fonctionnel et justifier leur de les mettre continuellement à l'épreuve émergence pour des raisons qui des faits, non pas pour les tester, ce qui relèvent de la survivance systémique, n'aboutit qu'à des certitudes, mais pour ce qui n'est guère très différent de la les faire évoluer, voire leur substituer théorie conventionnelle. Pourtant, d'autres modèles si les faits font émerger l'histoire n'est ni totalement de nouvelles intuitions. Aussi, tant et déterminée ni totalement anarchique. aussi longtemps que les économistes Elle est un construit, et ce qui lui donne marxistes continueront à se référer un sens, ce sont les institutions. C'est la uniquement à Marx plutôt que d'engager grande leçon de l'institutionnalisme. la recherche sur le terrain des faits, le Entre les acteurs et leurs débat ne peut être que stérile. Un peu comportements et les institutions il y a comme si, pour prouver qu'ils ont raison, interactions, et ce sont ces interactions les libéraux devaient toujours en appeler à qui font qu'il y a système, ou du moins Adam Smith et les keynésiens à Keynes ! que l'on peut en avancer l'hypothèse. Chesnay le montre fort bien d'ailleurs à Pour Marx comme pour Schumpeter, propos de la corporate governance. ce sont les facteurs endogènes qui doivent Alors, pourquoi, dans ce cas, ne pas expliquer les évolutions du système prendre les institutions au sérieux et les économique. Mais parler de système, étudier en détail, au plan des faits c'est déjà avancer une hypothèse de tra­ comme au plan théorique ? vail. Reconnaître qu'il existe des lois propres à ce système, en est une seconde. À défaut de poser les problèmes de En reprenant à son compte les concepts manière nouvelle et surtout de se d'équilibre, de cycle ou encore de trend pencher plus rigoureusement sur les séculaire, Wallerstein prend un risque, questions de méthode, ce n'est pas dans c'est certain. Mais comment rendre ce livre que le lecteur trouvera des anal­ compte de la nature particulière d'un yses convaincantes des ratés du système qui combine stabilité et capitalisme contemporain, encore changement, croissance et crises, cycles moins des transformations en cours. et transformations ? Marx fut le premier à Accordons lui cependant ceci : il pose le poser le problème sous cet angle. Et de débat. Souhaitons que celui-ci se manière très novatrice. Mais, sans lui poursuive, avec plus d'audace et hors apporter une réponse satisfaisante. Avec REVIEWS 343 des sentiers battus du marxisme véritablement universelle ! C'est dire que conventionnel. la réalisation des aspirations démocratiques à l'échelle mondiale Christian Deblock dépendrait de plus en plus d'une maîtrise Université du Québec à Montréal accrue de la technique ; car, après en avoir constaté les progrès au cours des siècles derniers, l'on se tournerait, Daniel Jacques, La révolution technique : fascinés, vers les promesses utopiques de essai sur le devoir d'humanité (Montréal : la technique, qui réduirait les souffrances Boréal 2002) les plus terribles, qui comblerait les désirs les moins assouvis, et qui, enfin, LES PHILOSOPHES ont effectué un virage réaliserait le bonheur à l'échelle important dans la compréhension de la individuelle. Domaine de réalisation des technologie. Autrefois, ils cherchaient i modernes, la politique se trouverait dès découvrir les conditions historiques et lors entièrement asservie à la technique transcendantales de la technologie ; et au terme de cette révolution... et c'est le c'est pourquoi ils en parlaient libéralisme triomphant qui en serait la théoriquement comme d'une force capa­ cause première : sous l'action des ble d'assujettir la nature aux désirs entreprises privées, l'utilité s'imposerait humains. En revanche, ils maintenaient comme une valeur centrale de l'activité qu'en plus de transformer foncièrement la politique. Il devient impératif, face i une société, la technologie agissait selon ses révolution technique à la fois inexorable propres déterminants. La thèse du et nécessaire, de repenser l'humanité, désenchantement du monde, qui d'autant plus que les progrès des sciences dénonçait l'effet réducteur de auraient détruit l'humanisme dans sa ver­ l'objectivité scientifique sur les valeurs sion classique. Pour s'y prendre, rien de humaines, coiffait alors l'édifice de cette tel que « l'humanisme noir », c'est-à-dire position philosophique classique. que les dérives inhumaines pourraient Désormais, les philosophes s'intéressent servir de repoussoirs vers des valeurs aux impacts des technologies sur la fondamentales. À ce propos, la mémoire société, dans leurs pluralités et leurs collective de l'Holocauste devrait faire spécificités. L'objet de leur étude naître en chacun de nous la compassion, le empirique porte sur la manière dont les contrepoids de l'utilité. pratiques sociales d'une technologie On se doit de reconnaître que l'étude donnée génèrent de la culture, de des rapports entre la technologie et la l'identité, des normes, etc. Quant aux politique demeure l'une des plus questions éthiques, elles sont formulées stimulantes de la philosophie. Si l'auteur dans les termes d'un raisonnement observe justement que les nouvelles tech­ pragmatique à partir duquel l'interaction nologies générèrent des utopies sociales, humaine produit des valeurs. On sera il se méprend toutefois sur la nouveauté déçu d'apprendre que le livre La radicale de ce phénomène. On sait révolution technique ne contribue pas à maintenant, par les études historiques et l'avancement de cette réflexion actuelle, sociologiques, que les utopies sociales car il se situe naïvement dans les lieux sont des invariants des nouvelles technol­ communs de la position classique. ogies, quelque soit le temps et le lieu d'où À en croire l'auteur Daniel Jacques — elles émergent. De plus, l'auteur mini­ qui se décharge de prophétiser quoi que ce mise le fait que les usagers ne demeurent soit — une révolution technique serait en pas très longtemps dupes des projets train de se dérouler sous nos yeux, tant et utopiques, puisqu'ils s'approprient, si bien que nous assisterons adaptent et modifient la technologie en prochainement à la première révolution fonction de l'usage réel qu'ils en font. 11 344 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

est en outre un peu exagéré de réduire des journées de commémoration, des l'imaginaire de la technologie à la désignations de lieux de mémoire et des littérature de science-fiction, dont musées de l'Holocauste, il y a très peu, certaines des œuvres ont été adaptées par voire pas du tout de rapprochement entre le cinéma, et, surtout, d'insister à localser les technologies (hormis les chambres à la source de leur création dans les gaz et la crémation) et l'extermination des laboratoires scientifiques. juifs, des tziganes, des homosexuels et Un autre aspect des rapports entre la des malades mentaux par le régime na­ technologie et la politique est la manière tional-socialiste. La plupart des gens qui dont les sociétés génèrent des règles. ne sont pas des spécialistes retiennent Alors que les gouvernements adoptent qu'il s'était agi de crimes graves au nom des lois et édictent des règlements, Daniel d'une idéologie prônant la supériorité Jacques semble persuadé que nous raciale. Ce n'est pas tant de technologie sommes dépourvus de valeurs communes qu'ils entendent à parler que de politique. face aux progrès engendrés par les tech­ Tout bien considéré, on voit mal comment nologies. C'est comme si l'on faisait ab­ l'humanisme noir viendrait à leur dicter straction la plus complète des valeurs une conduite morale dans l'utilisation des proposées par les groupes d'intérêts pour nouvelles technologies. solutionner les problèmes causés par la Dans l'éventualité — d'ailleurs peu technologie dans les domaines de probable — où l'humanisme noir aurait l'environnement, de la santé humaine et une efficace quelconque, il serait de la consommation. De plus, l'auteur essentiellement limité au cas des n'en pense pas moins non plus qu'à biotechnologies, en ce sens qu'elles l'heure actuelle, la science s'affranchirait peuvent servir de fondement à une de toutes contraintes morales, d'autant idéologie raciste. L'auteur a certes plus que la religion et l'humanisme ne martelé sur son clavier des mots tels que seraient plus là pour la maintenir à génétique, neurosciences, bio­ l'intérieur de gardes-fous. Et pourtant, technologie, mais l'exposé dans lesquels plus que jamais auparavant, les ils s'inscrivent se limite à une évocation scientifiques sont soumis à des anecdotique et superficielle des faits. En­ procédures de contrôle éthique dans tre autres exemples, quand le propos porte l'attribution des subventions, dans la pub- sur les techniques de contrôle du vivant, lication des résultats et dans l'auteur évacue cavalièrement les l'administration d'enquêtes portant sur problèmes que pose l'eugénisme depuis des sujets humains. Enfin, l'auteur s'en son apparition à la fin du dix-neuvième prend avec raison aux promoteurs de la siècle. Il occulte ainsi le fait pourtant bien sociobiologie, de la robotisation humaine connu que l'hygiène raciale s'est le mieux et de la vie cybernétique, car leurs idées épanouie dans les régimes démocratiques matérialistes assèchent le sens de la vie du monde anglo-saxon tels la humaine. Il ne faudrait toutefois par Grande-Bretagne, les États-Unis, exagérer la portée de ces projets l'Australie et le Canada jusque dans les utopiques, qui sont des positions années 1970. À tout prendre, il ne faut pas marginales loin de faire consensus au sein s'attendre à trouver dans ce livre une con­ des communautés de scientifiques et tribution originale de la manière dont les d'ingénieurs. biotechnologies posent des problèmes éthiques. Quant à la solution de l'humanisme noir, il n'est pas dit par l'auteur comment Quoiqu'il n'y ait pas d'exemples la mémoire de l'Holocauste, approfondis de problèmes posés essentiellement limitée à l'Europe et à actuellement par la technologie, il se l'Amérique du Nord, gagne les autres trouve en revanche des commentaires continents. Et même en Occident, où il y a pénétrants d'oeuvres de grands auteurs de REVIEWS 345

la philosophie politique qui composent Most remain on the defensive, though the l'essentiel des références du livre. Cela international wave of resistance to explique sans doute pourquoi plusieurs neo-liberalism has led to significant mass questions que posent les philosophes de la strikes and protests in Western Europe technologie à l'heure actuelle ne sont pas and Latin America. For some, labour's re­ abordées dans cet essai. Dans les faits, le treat and the real and alleged changes in propos s'étend longuement dans les mots global capitalism subsumed under the de la philosophie depuis Platon d'Athènes term "globalization''justify bidding fare­ jusqu'à Alexis de Tocqueville (dont well to workers' movements as a force for l'auteur est incontestablement l'un des social change or even farewell to class it­ spécialistes), en passant par Michel de self. Although few readers of this journal Montaigne, Thomas Hobbes et Nicolas are likely to agree, important questions Machiavel. On s'étonne toutefois qu'à remain about the future of labour move­ cette réunion d'imminents personnages, ments. l'auteur n'ait pas convoqué Francesco Beverly Silver's Forces of Labor aims Petrarqua. Dans le De sui ipsius e to engage with current debates in labour multorum ignorantia (1347-1348), studies by examining labour unrest inter­ l'humaniste italien est pourtant à nationally since the late 1800s. Silver, a l'origine de l'affirmation selon laquelle, proponent of the world systems theory ap­ dans l'établissement d'une vie heureuse, proach associated with the Fernand les questions sur les animaux, les Braudel Centre and its Review, uses a végétaux et les minéraux sont beaucoup world-historical theoretical perspective moins significatives que celles qui and empirical data to move beyond the fo­ touchent aux origines, à la nature et à la cus on the late 20th century of most writ­ destinée de l'homme. ing about labour and globalization. Une chose est certaine : à l'image de Forces of Labor clearly lays out a the­ Pétrarque, l'auteur de La révolution tech­ oretical framework that distinguishes dif­ nique a préféré démontrer de la bonté par ferent sources of workers' power and ses vertus morales, et, par là même, son characterizes labour power as a fictitious imperfection, plutôt que de manifester de commodity. Drawing on Marx, Silver l'intérêt pour les sciences et les technolo­ highlights the contradictory character of gies. S'il est fort difficile de lui reprocher capitalist development as creating both son humanisme, puisque, face aux dérives human suffering and working-class de la technologie, se mettre en devoir power as it passes through phases in d'humanité demeure pertinent, il en va which periodic processes of restructuring tout autrement de la démarche qui 1 ' a con­ reorganize capital and labour. Through duit à penser la manière d'accomplir ce Polanyi, she observes "a pendulum-like devoir. motion" (17) between eras during which the commodification of labour is height­ Jean-François Auger ened and those in which people mobilize Université du Québec à Montréal to reduce it. On this basis, she argues that working classes are always being remade. She notes two kinds of labour unrest: Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: "Marx-type" — "the struggles of newly Workers ' Movements and Globalization emerging working classes that are succes­ since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ sively made and strengthened" (20) by versity Press 2003) capitalism — and "Polanyi-type" reac­ tions to the extension of market relations WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENTS in many (Marx's analysis of which she does not countries have experienced serious set­ discuss). Silver also observes that groups backs and defeats since the mid-1970s. of workers as well as employers and states 346 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

are involved in creating exclusionary cycles to include the role of worker resis­ boundaries within working classes. tance as well as capitalist profitability. Methodologically, Forces of Labor The auto industry is compared with the takes as a premise that workers in differ­ earlier global lead industry, textiles, and ent places are linked by the global divi­ reasons for the greater workplace and sion of labour and the international state market bargaining power of auto workers system. Consequently, it emphasizes the are proposed. The transportation sector is interrelatedness of "cases" around the also introduced for purposes of compari­ globe and through time, and the structural son. The chapter concludes by surveying pressures of the world system. Silver ar­ four contenders for the title of leading in­ gues that the main research strategies for dustry of the 21 st century to predict where dealing with this kind of complex analy­ future waves of labour unrest may erupt, sis, encompassing comparison (which noting the importance of the Chinese traces similarities and differences be­ working class. The book shifts into a dif­ tween cases to an overarching totality, ferent vein in the next chapter, whose such as Immanuel Wallerstein's modern scope is broader than the others: the rela­ world-system) and cross-national com­ tionship between international politics parison, are both inadequate. Instead, she and workers' movements from the late limits complexity by working on only two 1800s to recent years. The narrative fol­ levels of analysis, capitalist structures lows the swing of a Polanyian pendulum: and collective action, and by studying from increased commodification of la­ only episodes of intense labour unrest. bour through resistance, revolt, and revo­ lution after World War I and World War II The World Labour Group database is a to the global capitalist offensive in re­ key source for this book. As explained in sponse to challenges to US hegemony and the introductory chapter and a useful ap­ the end of the post-World War II boom. pendix, it has been compiled by combing The Times (London) and the New York The book closes with a brief chapter, Times from 1870 to 1996 for reports of la­ "Contemporary Dynamics in World-Historical bour unrest around the world. Its purpose Perspectives." Silver argues that the pre­ is limited and specific: to register chang­ ceding analysis shows that neither a "race ing levels of struggle and identify waves to the bottom" nor changing labour pro­ of unrest. The data for Argentina, China, cesses are the roots of crisis in global Egypt, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and workers' movements. It is wrong to see the US was checked against statistics and this crisis as permanent, as new workers' working-class history literature to test its movements will likely transcend it. The reliability, with favourable results. picture is not exactly rosy, though: global Forces of Labor's three central chap­ capitalism will continue to reproduce ters examine labour movements and, re­ North-South inequalities, many ser­ spectively, capital mobility, product cy­ vice-sector workers have weak structural cles, and world politics. The chapter on bargaining power, and it is uncertain if the capital mobility is a study of the 20 cen­ Polanyian pendulum will swing back. tury's leading industry, automobile pro­ The great merit of Forces of Labour is duction. It demonstrates how capitalists its attempt to analyze workers' move­ have responded to worker m i I itancy by re­ ments and high points of struggle on a organizing production and shifting to new world scale across over a century, within regions in search of higher profits and la­ the totality of global capitalism. This sets bour control. The result has been the relo­ it above much of what has been written cation of unrest, not its elimination. The about labour and globalization. The ambi­ following chapter examines how capital tious project reveals a number of patterns, accumulation moves between industries. yields some insights, and touches on other Here Silver recasts the concept of product issues in suggestive ways (some, such as REVIEWS 347 the subordination of national states to the Ronaldo Munck, Globalisation and La­ Gold Standard in the 1920s, cry out for a bour: the new 'Great Transformation' more profound analysis that would (London and New York: Zed Books strengthen the treatment of contemporary 2002). capitalism, which is disappointingly thin). GLOBALIZATION sometimes conjures an Any such study must necessarily be image of footloose "vagabond" capital­ made at a high level of abstraction, and ism. Turning this image inside out, the most striking limits of the book arise Ronaldo Munck suggests that rapid from problems in the way its abstractions proletarianization is a fateful aspect of are constructed. A stark example is the globalization. The world's total claim that "more controlled and limited workforce has doubled in numbers in only warfare as well as a more labor-friendly three decades and Munck demonstrates [sic] international environment" (174) that this massive expansion of the work­ explains the decline of labour unrest and ing class is geographically uneven and radicalism in the second half of the 20th highly concentrated in the global South. century. What of the impact of fascism, Furthermore, this explosion is marked by Stalinism, World War II, the Cold War, profound changes in the nature of work and the Long Boom on working classes, and workers, particularly the the Stalinization of the Communist Inter­ "feminization" and "informalization" of national, and the strategic impasse of so­ work (highly correlated yet distinct cial democracy, Communism, and "Third trends). Meanwhile, labour unions, inter­ World" national liberation movements af­ national confederations, and worker ac­ ter the mid-1970s? Politics and its social tions are honing creative strategies to face roots get short shrift. The book also up to the new global realities of work. suffers from questionable theoretical Drawing inspiration from Karl Polanyi notions. These include "partial and Antonio Gramsci among others, decommodification" of labour power (in Munck explores this recent trajectory of fact, a specific form of its social regula­ labour internationalism and finds that ef­ tion), the exclusion of struggles against fective transnational and international capitalists in the sphere of consumption strategies are emerging. His central con­ from the definition of labour unrest, and a cern is to assess the positive potential of weak concept of boundary-drawing be­ workers, worker institutions, and orga­ tween workers (rather than forms of op­ nizing efforts. pression and privilege) that at one point leads to the implication that immigration Munck's volume contributes to de­ controls and protectionism are in the in­ bates on globalization as well as labor terests of workers in the North. ( 178) As a studies and strategic (and coun­ result, Forces of Labor is an interesting ter-hegemonic) thought more generally. I but limited contribution to labour studies. found it to be highly readable, well orga­ nized, and original. Any serious scholar of labour studies or globalization will David Camfield want to engage Munck's work. At the University of Manitoba same time, the volume could provide a supplementary text in such courses as la­ bour history, economic geography, glob­ alization and society, or social move­ ments. I believe undergraduates will en­ joy the crisp writing style and I intend to assign the book in my course on global­ ization and geography. The book is orga­ nized in eight short chapters with the most 348 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

provocative being two pairs of chapters: volution of many social programs (for ex­ "Workers North" (Chapter 4)/"Workers ample health and education programs South" (Chapter 5) and "The Old Interna- associated with the welfare state) that tionalism"(Chapter 6)/"The New Interna­ have been propelled by globalization. In tionalism" (Chapter 7). In these paired one sense, labour activists are trying to re­ discussions, Munck outlines the key dif­ store the linkages to community that ex­ ferences between a global "South" and isted — albeit unevenly — at the national global "North" perspective on labour. scale during the "Golden Age" of various These contradictory viewpoints have Fordist arrangements. The geography of come to a head recently over the idea of globalization has shifted production social regulation, specifically the incor­ logics to supranational geographical poration of a "social clause" in interna­ scales, while these parallel processes (of tional trade arrangements such as the devolution and dismantling) have shifted World Trade Organization. Another con­ social reproduction logics to subnational tentious issue is the way in which geographical scales and to the mi­ trade-union corporatism during the Cold cro-spaces of households, individuals, War metastasized into trade-union impe­ and neighborhoods. rialism and undermined principles of In the final chapter, Munck's findings worker democracy and solidarity, espe­ again touch on the potential importance cially within the AFL-CIO. of theorizing social reproduction in rela­ There are a number of intriguing ele­ tion to globalization. Here he discusses ments in Munck's argument that could be benchmarking as a potential strategy for highlighted. I found the discussion of gen­ worker internationalism and globalism. der and women workers to be particularly Benchmarking was developed by global insightful. Recognizing that women's management consultants to compare a rapid proletarianization may signal some particular enterprise with best practice new opportunities (and challenges) for la­ anywhere in the world. As Munck shows, bour activism, Munck does not simply the Canadian Automobile Workers "add women and stir." Instead he makes a adapted this business-oriented technique concerted effort to think through how the by doing intensive research among their feminization of global labour changes the members to monitor and measure the dynamics and prospects of the contempo­ quality of life. International labour stan­ rary situation. He develops the related is­ dards could expand this method by setting sue of social movement unionism to sig­ workers' benchmarks "on key issues of nal the importance of wider creative wages and conditions to health and safety worker strategies that seek to bridge com­ but also including an equality agenda and munity concerns, household and gender issues of social responsibility." (183) networks, and local and/or regional eco­ This would be a means of tracking pro­ nomic (and social) arrangements. These duction and social reproduction issues in sorts of careful linkages to community — a way that ensures overall improvement encouraging the "embeddedness" of in worker conditions while avoiding the trade-union institutions and social regula­ North/South controversies over protec­ tory mechanisms at various geographical tionism. If quality of life information is scales — will certainly be one effective shared widely, benchmarking might lead way forward for labour activism. The to techniques that could harmonize global "living wage" initiatives in a number of inequities over time instead of exacerbat­ US cities are one example of a response to ing them. this sort of prescription. This volume charts the rapidly shifting It seems to me that it will be crucial to terrain of labour internationalism in pur­ link Munck's insights on embeddedness suit of social justice goals. Munck chroni­ to an analysis of the dismantling and de­ cles and analyzes emerging international- REVIEWS 349 ist strategies and suggests that these could vices and pensions (France), as well as give way to global strategies that agitate blockades against meetings of the world's for global citizenship and global rights. elites (Melbourne, Porto Alegre, Quebec Massive proletarianization is the force City, Seattle). The title for this volume behind such a "great transformation." then was inspired by the banner at the Munck honours Karl Polanyi in the subti­ World Social Forum in Porto Alegre and tle to this volume and suggests that is written as a guide to a new generation of Polanyi's concern with the counter-hege­ activists. monic potential of workers to transform While the book is divided into seven society during the Industrial Revolution chapters, it can be more usefully de­ of the 18th century is highly relevant to scribed as falling into three sections. The contemporary society. Polanyi's idea of a first section (chapters one and two) is a "double movement" in which the expan­ handbook of the new social movements sion of free-market principles is met with listing places, dates of events, and a few a counter-movement of self-regulation to lines about the type of action (chapter protect society informs Munck's hopeful one) followed by an introduction to the view of the future and his realistic assess­ movements' aims (chapter two). The sec­ ment of the potential power of ordinary ond section (chapters three to five) tries to people. Let us prove him right. provide a background to capitalist op­ pression and responses to it. And the third Altha J. Cravey section (chapters six and seven) is University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill McNally's political analysis of the global justice movements. McNally's principal argument is that David McNally, Another World is Possi­ the global justice movements should de­ ble: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism velop a language of anti-capitalist orga­ (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing nizing and elaborate common goals and 2002) objectives which fit the specific historical situation. He outlines a list of "modest ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE is a comproposals­ " (266) for things that need to be pact volume by activist and academic Da­ done at this stage: building common vid McNally who states from the outset fronts; bringing together all anti-capitalist his solidarity with the new global justice activists around a "common emanci­ movements which have arisen since the patory project;" creating conferences, fo­ mid-1990s. While most widely known rums etc. for debate and decision-making; here for their opposition to the World holding large political, educational, and Economic Forums, these movements in­ cultural events; producing literature, vid­ clude uprisings of indigenous peoples eos, and CDs; and promoting revolution­ over land expropriation and redevelop­ ary pluralism. His method then is named ment (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecua­ "socialism from below" by which he dor), popular protests against utility means that the emancipation of the work­ privatizations (Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Co­ ing class will be the action of the class it­ lombia), and rallies against the debt col­ self, citing Rosa Luxemburg. In drawing lection of the World Bank (Thailand, together socialist and anarchist activities, India, New Guinea) in the Southern na­ he says that for him "socialism from be­ tions. These popular mobilizations have low" might also be called "libertarian so­ been joined by urban movements of un­ cialism" and uses the words interchange­ employed workers (Argentina, Domini­ ably with "revolutionary." (251) His aim can Republic, Venezuela) and mass is to address the new anti-capitalist activ­ strikes of workers, unemployed, and stu­ ists avoiding characterizations and while dents protesting attacks on public ser­ there is some strength to this approach, he 350 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

also avoids some political questions tends to describe the actions more than which I will discuss later. the organizational linkages between ac­ McNally draws on many examples of tivists, he says, in several places, that the anti-capitalist organizing from both the point is to spread the struggle from the past and the present. One movement that local to the international. What distin­ he calls on to exemplify this approach is guishes these movements from elitist the Unemployed Workers' Movement in politics are the methods they employ, Argentina. (244) He characterizes it as a those which build the self-confidence of "grassroots movement that is independent workers through self-organization from of the unions and political parties," (239) below. Quoting Rosa Luxemburg, and describes a movement which imagi­ McNally says "the struggle for reforms is natively embraces a wide range of organi­ the means; the social revolution its zation and notions of democracy. Draw­ goal." (250) ing on McNally's source, James Petras, McNally advocates the mass strike as one learns that in August 2001, highly or­ a means to bring together the workplace, ganized unemployed workers numbering community, and street protests. (253) He over 100,000 (30-80 per cent of Argentin­ does not refer to the sort of strike orga­ eans are unemployed) shut down over 300 nized from the top by the bureaucratic highways, paralyzing the economy, and caste of business unionism, but one in went on to lead a successful general strike which workplace committees take control in Buenos Aires in conjunction with sec­ in a system of workers' councils. Here he tors of the trades unions against cites the mass struggles in Chile privatizations, job losses, pension cuts, ( 1970-73) and Portugal ( 1974-5) but indi­ and cuts to social services due to IMF re­ cates the weak link in the chain of radical quirements. These workers were armed opposition to capitalism are the work­ only with a transitional program of de­ ing-class organizations in the north. He mands and won modest concessions from suggests that workers in the north have the government. Petras points out that not been sufficiently radicalized through large numbers of unemployed industrial direct struggles on the streets as they have workers had union experience and were in the south so that rank-and-file opposi­ familiar with collective struggle. Thus tion movements in union locals have yet these actions were not spontaneous, but to be built. the product of decades of experience. In footnote 38 to chapter 7 McNally explains My principal criticism of Another that self-activity from below "does not World is Possible is the vacuum that ex­ mean that such movements cannot elect ists around the role of the political party in organizers and delegates for special pur­ the workers' movement. In this volume poses. It is to insist, however, that there McNally avoids discussion of any kind of should be complete democratic control party building, whether it be the vanguard over any elected officers who ought to be party, a party formed from the trade un­ accountable to mass assemblies or con­ ions, or a left-wing electoral party with a ventions..." (270) mass base. The independence of the working class could be interpreted as in­ The second major preoccupation of dependence from the party. Nonetheless this volume concerns the political direc­ it seems a shame not to consider the role tion of the workers' and unemployed of a genuinely left party in the building of movement. The tactics of revolt (rallies, a workers' movement. Surely there are pickets, demonstrations, strikes, and oc­ countless lessons to be learned globally cupations), according to McNally, from the successes and failures of such should bring people together around a party building. While McNally is not op­ program of common demands and politi­ posed to building socialist organizations cal vision. While McNally's volume (he is the editor of New Socialist), he REVIEWS 351 does not see H as his central question in different parts of the world. Another this work. He de-emphasizes the ques­ disappointment is that many of the tion here in favour of other issues about endnotes refer me to secondary sources. the new radicalization. In conclusion, Another World is Pos­ I would have wished also for more sible starts an important debate on the analysis of the role of organized labour political direction of the social justice in building the movements. According movements around the world. Its format to Lennist theory, workers need mass or­ makes it an easy reference for a brief ganizations, and while the trades unions survey of recent events and while it may can never replace the party, it is para­ not have been exhaustive enough for mount that workers participate in the un­ this reader, it provokes questions on im­ ions. Ultimately the goal is to build radi­ portant developments. cal strike committees, workplace committees, and, finally, workers' coun- Ellen Ramsay cils elected by all the workers. York University McNally's analysis of the militant Ko­ rean Confederation of Trade Unions em­ phasizes the role a million-strong gen­ Barbara Hobson, Jane Lewis, and Birte eral strike (1996) can play in radicalizing Siim, eds., Contested Concepts in Gender workers. But he is silent on the problem and Social Politics (Cheltenham, UK: Ed­ of why these mass movements in our pe­ ward Elgar 2002) riod so often fail to advance socialist pro­ grams. Also, more work is called for on CONTESTED CONCEPTS in Gender and what McNally sees as the weak link with Social Politics is an international dia­ the unions in the northern countries. logue among twelve influential scholars While McNally praises the Bus Riders' of gender, social policy, and the welfare Union and OCAP in Canada as examples state. It is a comparative and interdisci­ of independent working-class action plinary examination of current theoretical which involve a relationship with the un­ and political debates about social policy ions, he does not discuss other possibili­ and the impact of shifts in policies of Eu­ ties. He supports the call for a decisive ropean welfare states on women. The au­ break from social democratic and Stalin­ thors are members of the European ist parties, but he avoids major theories Network on Theory and Research on of Leninist party- building. A study of Women, founded in 1991. In the past de­ the strengths and ultimate betrayals of cade, the network has been engaged in the Solidarity Movement in B.C. (1983) scholarship about gender, citizenship, and the Days of Action in Ontario and the European welfare states. This col­ ( 1995-6) would have clarified his call for lection is one of the network's many pub­ a break from the bureaucracy of the un­ lications. Their goal in this book is to ions and their social- democratic politics. explore seven key concepts of social pol­ My smaller criticism of the book is icy in the context of the emerging Euro­ that it tries to achieve too much in a com­ pean Union. They are: citizenship, care, pact volume. The middle section of the social exclusion, contractualization, volume on the nature of capitalist op­ commodification and pression is probably the strongest, most de-commodification, representation, and interesting, and the most central to un­ social capital. Each chapter provides an derstanding the situation today. The overview of the feminist debates about first and last sections of the book then one of the seven concepts and its applica­ are guides to activism and left this tion to the current social policies of the reader wishing for fewer examples and European Union and its member states. more detailed accounts of struggles in The essays are written collaboratively by 352 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

scholars from different national and disci­ existing frameworks based on Marshall's plinary backgrounds. The authors exam­ concept of social citizenship no longer ine social welfare policy from different capture the complexities of the rights and methodological and cultural frameworks, obligations of citizenship because their but share the position that "gender mat­ authors did not anticipate the develop­ ters, context matters, and politics mat- ment of supranational policy-making in­ ters."(17) The importance of feminist stitutions. In the opening essay about citi­ scholarship in gendering analysis of in­ zenship, Barbara Hobson and Ruth Lister equality and of women's activism in im­ submit that the next step for citizenship proving women's civil, political, and theorizing is to envision how rights and social rights are unifying themes of the claims will be made in global and supra­ volume. national arenas. The feminist project of Raymond Williams' Keywords is the gendering citizenship by exposing the inspiration for the organization of the androcentric bias of social policy remains book. The authors share Williams' argu­ important, but feminists must consider ment that societies produce unique inter­ how global restructuring and the prospect pretations of concepts that are based on of Eurocitizenship will affect women's different histories and social politics. Fol­ citizenship claims. Advancing women's lowing Williams, the editors believed that rights in the European Union has pro­ it was important to take stock of the vari­ duced contradictory results. Women in ous meanings of key concepts in gender member states have invoked the Euro­ and social politics. Departing from Wil­ pean Union's intolerance of gender dis­ liams, the contributors focus on the evolu­ crimination to lobby successfully for leg­ tion of social concepts instead of islative reform to advance women's polit­ keywords in order to analyze how social ical rights. Regardless, social policy has and political processes have influenced not addressed the structural features of the genealogies of these concepts rather the labour market, such as the sexual divi­ than how these processes occur within sion of labour and women's lower wages language. The central questions of the that hinder women's ability to participate book are the extent to which gender has in economic and political life. destabilized conceptual vocabularies and Analyzing how women are excluded the impact of these debates on women's from social and symbolic domains has lives. The renegotiation of relationships been central to feminist theory and politi­ among the family, market, and the social cal strategies for change. Feminist analy­ welfare state in the context of the Euro­ sis arguing that women's exclusion was pean Union informs the analysis of the es­ embedded in power relationships was says. Each chapter provides a critical never integrated into mainstream policy overview of the development of the litera­ discourses about exclusion. Instead pol­ ture about one concept and recommends icy discourses about groups who are directions for future research that the au­ marginalized in society concentrate on in­ thors believe will provide a theoretical dividual rather than systemic change. So­ grounding for the advancement of cial exclusion is the current "buzzword" women's rights. Examinations of the de­ in social policy that aims to integrate bates on the restructuring of welfare marginalized groups into social and eco­ states in their own countries and in the de­ nomic processes. It entered public dis­ velopment of social policy in the Euro­ course in 1974 through French social pol­ pean Union support the theoretical dis­ icy and gained precedence through Euro­ cussion. pean Union policy discussions about Social citizenship has been a corner­ poverty. While the concept is most stone of discussions about the develop­ closely associated with policies about ment of social welfare states. However, poverty, it also includes all social in- REVIEWS 353 equalities and deprivations. Mary Daly equality through social policies that ac­ and Chiara Sanceno argue that social ex­ commodate care work. Discussions of the clusion has become a politically strategic ethics of care that do not consider the discourse that serves political needs rights of care-givers and those who are better than social needs because it has not dependent on care do not address the been developed adequately as an analyti­ power relations in caring relationships, cal concept. The most serious implication and how those relationships differ in fa­ for advancing women's rightsi s that so­ milial and public contexts. They caution cial exclusion as it is currently articulated that the emphasis on the ethics of care that in policy discussions does not consider does not adequately address the labour di­ women's inequality as a central form of mensions of care work may make exclusion. women's unpaid care work invisible. Re­ Care work is a recurring issue in these leasing women from these obligations essays because social policy will not rec­ with public services has been one femi­ tify the structural barriers to women's nist strategy to facilitate women's contin­ economic and political participation un­ uous participation in paid work. In the less it strikes a balance between care and chapter about commodification and paid work. Current trends in social policy de-commodification, Trudie Knijn and are moving in the opposite direction. The Ilona Ostner raise important questions reconceptualization of the family rela­ about the impact of policies that stress tionship that posits two equal and inde­ women's paid work over unpaid caring pendent breadwinners counters feminist responsibilities and argue that improving solutions integrating care and paid work. women's opportunities in the workforce Rights are increasingly tied to paid work has not adequately addressed men's re­ in discussions about the restructuring of sponsibility for care work. Subsidizing the social welfare states, a trend that has paid care work has helped women pursue serious implications for women who still careers and has created jobs for women, assume most of the responsibility for un­ but it has also produced inequalities paid care work. Ute Gerhard, Trudie among women. The recruitment of do­ Knijn, and Jane Lewis argue that develop­ mestic workers from poorer nations, who ing policies that recognize the importance are excluded from welfare benefits, best of unpaid work requires a conceptual shift illustrates how the emphasis on the adult in theories on contractualization from in­ worker model in social policy depends on dependent, competitive individuals to an global inequalities. Knijn and Oster rec­ analysis of the interdependent relation­ ognize that policies that promote men's ships among individuals. Social policy caring responsibilities are problematic that assumes that women and men are because they rely on "nice fathers," but equally able to enter into the new contrac­ conclude that they provide a more equita­ tual relationships between the state and ble solution than basing caring strategies citizen do not work for women because on exploited women. the care work is unequally shared and women still earn less than men. The last two essays examine how women contribute to political life in gov­ The theorization of an ethics of care ernment and in civil society. Berengere based on interpersonal relationships Marques-Pereira and Birte Siim examine rather than rights is a significant develop­ how feminist scholarship has emphasized ment in feminist analysis of care. Despite "the connection between representation the proliferation of care discourses in the and empowerment with women's agency past 30 years, Arnlaug Leira and Chiara as the link."(170) They explore different Saraceno argue, there are important ambi­ strategies to improve women's political guities in the literature that may thwart representation in European states to dem­ feminist efforts to promote women's onstrate the link between national politi- 354 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

cal traditions and how feminists frame in these essays will no doubt inspire fu­ their strategies to improve women's par­ ture thinking about the gendered implica­ ticipation. Greater representation for tions of the current restructuring of social women in governments has empowered welfare policy. women politicians, but has not signifi­ cantly changed women's collective Nancy Janovicek power within states. Hence, much of the University of New Brunswick feminist scholarship about representa­ tion, agency, and empowerment has con­ centrated on civil society. The book Andy Merrifield, Dialectical Urbanism: closes with a discussion by Dietland Social Struggles in the Capitalist City Stolle and Jane Lewis of the potential of (New York: Monthly Review Press 2002) the increasingly important concept of so­ cial capital to assess women's roles in DIALECTICAL URBANISM contains a num­ civil society. They believe that social cap­ ber of previously published (and rewrit­ ital is an important concept because it ten) articles, together with some new helps us assess how citizens take care of materials, which Andy Merrifield has each other. However, the literature's fo­ melded together to tell a particular story cus on voluntary organizations fails to as­ about the contemporary urban experience sess how women accumulate social capi­ within the advanced capitalist city. The tal because women no longer have the central theme of the book is that this con­ time to participate in organized politics temporary urban experience is one riven and volunteer work. They recommend by a number of contradictions. Spe­ more research about women's informal cifically, as suggested by its title, support networks to understand how Merrifield seeks to explore what he calls women build cooperative and trusting re­ the dialectic of urbanism and urbaniza­ lationships in their communities. This re­ tion, by which he means the dialectic be­ search program entails moving the theo­ tween the experiences of living in the retical discussions of social capital be­ contemporary, post-industrial metropolis yond civil society to analysis of the and the ways in which the urban built en­ relationship between the state, the family, vironment is physically constructed as and civil society. part of the accumulation process under capitalism. Three tenets run through the The essays in Contested Concepts con­ book, as outlined by Merrifield in its in­ firm that gender, context, and politics troduction: first, "truth claims about cit­ matter. The influence of feminist scholar­ ies must be conceived from the bottom ship on the development of social policy upward, must be located and grounded in has been contradictory and uneven, but it the street, in urban public space, in every­ has had an impact on how women articu­ day life"; second, the built environment is late their politics at local, national, and in­ an inherently political social product and ternational levels. The discussion of different sorts of organizing and localized trends in social policy in the various mem­ action are necessary to construct more so­ ber states of the European Union demon­ cially just cities; and third, there is an am­ strates that although policy-making is in­ biguous metaphysical condition to the creasingly bound to international agree­ urban experience in which both optimis­ ments, the nation-state still matters. tic and dysfunctional aspects of modern Comparative research enriches the explo­ life are expressed — cities can be simulta­ ration of how social, historical, and politi­ neously liberatory and oppressive, Uto­ cal processes shape the vocabularies used pian and dystopian, full of pessimism or in theory and social policy, and to what full of hopeful potential. degree gender analysis has influenced these vocabularies. The questions raised REVIEWS 355

After laying out the conceptual struc­ land. In particular, whereas the majority ture for the book, there are then five chap­ of residents within the poorest of Liver­ ters which examine a number of contem­ pool's inner-city neighborhoods are porary conflicts within several US and white, struggles for social justice have British cities. In Chapter 2 Merri field ex­ usually been portrayed as an issue partic­ plores conflicts over the creation of the ularly for mobilizing black Britons and bourgeois playground of Baltimore's In­ non-white immigrants, and questions of ner Harbor, particularly as it has impacted class have tended to disappear from local the area around the old American Can political organizing agendas which have Company plant. The chapter recounts been articulated by many non-white com­ how federal government urban policy has munity activists. One of the questions for been hijacked during the past twenty Merrifield, then, is how to celebrate eth­ years or so by large financial interests and nic difference amongst urban subjects how speculative investments in the spaces whilst simultaneously trying to maintain of the built environment have encouraged some sense of commonality and cohesion the gentrification of old industrial facili­ amongst workers who share similar class ties. Merrifield examines how a local positions. As a way of exploring this community group sought to intervene in question further, perhaps, in Chapter 4 the built environment to save the Ameri­ Merrifield recounts the living- wage ac­ can Can plant from being demolished so tivism in Los Angeles in which janitors that it would retain both its corporeal and and other low-wage workers — who are psychic position within the local commu­ mostly non-Anglo—have managed to or­ nity's lifeworld. For Merrifield, part of ganize around issues both of class and the paradox of this conflict between de­ ethnicity. For Merrifield, continuing the velopers and local community activists is theme of urban dialectics, the liv­ that whilst the community activists took ing-wage campaigns which have arisen in on the power of speculative capital (and over one hundred US cities represent so might be seen by some on the left as he­ American workers' antithesis to capital's roic proletarians) they were also, in many assault on their standards of living. They ways, quite racist, bigoted, and national­ are the working-class response as many istic in their politics — many supported jobs and services have been the first Gulf War and were quite explicit sub-contracted out by a downsizing cor­ that they did not want "Jewish parasite de­ porate America and by local governments velopers" destroying their neighborhood. during the past twenty years. Merrifield calls this situation (racist and nationalistic proletarians fighting the Having spent some time in the book in­ forces of capital) a "political dilemma" vestigating conflicts within the contem­ for the left, for it complicates some repre­ porary city, Merrifield then ponders in sentations which see working-class com­ Chapter S the issue of order and disorder munity activists who challenge the power in the city, contrasting the writings of of capital as flawless heroic figures — 19th-century writers such as Marx and though ultimately the dilemma may stem Dostoevsky with 20th-century writers more from the left's idealized notion of such as Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford. how proletarians should act and its failure In particular, Merrifield argues that both a to understand the power of patriotism for certain amount of order and disorder are many working-class people than from the essential for a vibrant urban culture, an ar­ actual practices of community activists gument that he delves into through an and workers themselves. analysis of the transformation of 42nd Street/ Times Square in New York City. In Chapter 3 Merrifield looks at the Continuing the focus on NYC, Chapter 6 conflicts that have divided neighbours scrutinizes what has been happening to within the poorer parts of Liverpool, Eng­ Single-Room-Occupancy (SRO) tenants 356 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

as many neighbourhoods in the city be­ though most books have some typograph­ come gentrified as the city reinvents itself ical errors (in this one the reader might be as a post-industrial, financial services, left wondering whether the "ballet boxes" and tourist-destination metropolitan cen­ of page 72 relate to voting or to dancing ), tre. Finally, Chapter 7 serves as a conclu­ there is a significant problem with the sion to probe what Merrifield calls the footnoting in Chapter 2 — 48 footnotes "negative dialectic of the city" and the appear in the prose but there are only 47 conflicts under capitalism between footnotes for the chapter at the end of the use-values and exchange-values in the book (it appears that the inconsistency be­ built environment. gins around footnote 36). If a second edi­ In summing up, although Merrifield is tion of the book is planned, this inconsis­ not the first to make the argument that tency should be corrected. there are deep contradictions within cit­ ies, he writes about the topics covered in Andrew Herod the book with great passion and aplomb. University of Georgia The book is easy to read — Merrifield is an evocative writer — and the prose flows in such a manner that you want to turn the page to find out what happens next. The book would be appropriate for students of In issue 52, Pamela Sugiman's review of all levels, from first-year undergraduates Ann Eyerman's study of current trends in to graduate students, who are dealing with office work cited the title of this book in urban issues across a wide range of social different ways. The correct title of the science or humanities disciplines, partic­ book, published by Sumach Press, is ularly for those interested in reading Women in the Office: Transitions in a about case studies of contemporary urban Global Economy. struggles. One criticism of the book, how­ ever, relates to the copy-editing. Al­