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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 56, 2005

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

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Citer cet article (2005). Reviews / Comptes Rendus. Labour/Le Travailleur, 56, 293–366.

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Georges Campeau, From UI to EI: during the Great Depression that led first Waging War on the Welfare State, trans- to an abortive effort to introduce UI by the lated by Richard Howard (Vancouver: R.B. Bennett government in its dying UBC Press 2005) days, and the eventual introduction of a new UI bill by Mackenzie King’s admin- O RIGINALLY PUBLISHED by Les istration in 1940 after the Judicial Com- Éditions du Boréal in 2001, Georges mittee of the Privy Council in the UK had Campeau’s work ambitiously traces the decreed that the Bennett bill, which history of (un)employment insurance in lacked provincial consent, was ultra Canada from its inception to the present. vires. Campeau observes that the battle A legal scholar and activist lawyer who between left-wing forces, led by the fought many cases for the jobless who Communist Party of Canada, for were denied unemployment benefits, non-contributory unemployment insur- Campeau employs an approach that com- ance, and the right-wing supporters of UI bines political economy with discourse who demanded contributions from poten- analysis, and is generally successful in tial recipients, was just one part of a larger linking the two. It seems only appropriate war. The “unemployment insurance” for that the first full study of the UI system in which the left were struggling had little to Canada was done in French in Quebec, do with traditional capitalist notions of and then translated into English. UI is re- insurance in which rates were assessed on garded as a social right in Quebec to a the basis of risk, and benefits reflected the greater degree than elsewhere in Canada, contributions that individuals made. It and UI demonstrations demanding more was simply a name given to a wage re- consideration for Quebec workers have placement for the unemployed to be paid been frequent occurrences in Quebec. The from general revenues, that is a Bloc Québécois, which many Anglo- redistributive mechanism. Since, at the phones view as simply bent on keeping time, only the wealthy paid taxes, they the federal government out of all social would be forced collectively to repay programs in Quebec, has been the most workers for the greed of their individual militant defender in Parliament of a return members who had taken workers’ jobs to the Liberal-era UI program, though away. This would either place collective they want the program for Quebec to be capitalist pressures on individual busi- under Quebec jurisdiction. nesses not to dismiss workers, or would Beginning with the familiar ground of create a crisis in capitalism as the wealth unemployment insurance’s origins in of the rich was redistributed to the penni- Bismarckian Germany and its spread less via a state insurance program. Either throughout Europe, Campeau outlines the way, the capitalists would be deprived of debates within Canada both before and the reserve army of labour, so important to strike-breaking and maintaining low Table of Contents for Reviews, pp. 5-6. wages. 294 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

By contrast, the right wanted to pre- importance of women’s groups in secur- serve capitalist property relations and the ing the gains of the 1950s and early 1960s, existing distribution of wealth among so- seems unaware of the key role played by cial classes. So it defended the more tradi- the women’s movement. tional, “actuarial” notion of insurance. In The story after 1971 is the story of neo- both the Bennett and King UI bills, that liberalism. The 1971 changes, though in- meant depriving seasonal workers and do- troduced at a time when unemployment mestic workers of the right to participate was beginning an initially slow rise, were in UI at all since the risk of their losing accompanied by government optimism their jobs was so high. It also meant tying that the economy would remain stable and benefits to contributions. Only about 40 there would be no rush of UI-seekers. That per cent of the labour force was covered optimism quickly evaporated, and the by the 1940 bill. Interestingly, Campeau Tory federal campaign of 1972 featured misses completely the gendered character an attack on UI recipients that had racist of these bills, and does not include Ruth and anti-foreigner overtones, even Pierson’s important work on the issue in though the campaign was led by the sup- his bibliography. Campeau does, at other posed “Red Tory,” Robert Stanfield. times, deal with gender issues related to What began as minor cuts in the program UI but in a spotty manner. here, there, and everywhere, became a During the Cold War, the reduced in- mighty sword in the 1990s which ended fluence of the left, and especially the with fewer Canadian unemployed per- Communists, removed any notion of sons being eligible for insurance payouts non-contributory UI from public debate. than had been eligible when the program But the underlying struggle between “ac- was first introduced in 1940. tuarial” and “social” approaches to UI Campeau does make note of the social continued, with business groups demand- movements that fought the emasculation ing a tightening of the program along lines of the UI legislation at various turns, par- of risk assessment, and trade unions and ticularly in French Canada. But he does so women’s groups calling for the program in a rather cursory way, providing greater to embrace all workers subject to job loss, coverage of the continuing clashes in dis- and with adequate payouts to all of the un- course between the right-wing and employed, regardless of what benefits left-wing versions of EI. From the they had paid into the plan. The post-war Mulroney government onwards, the ‘ac- liberal consensus, in which workers were tuaries’ not only took over control once to receive sufficient benefits from the again of the UI agenda, but introduced state (or “social wages”) to make social- new wrinkles that robbed workers’ contri- ism and militancy uninteresting to them, butions and made the insurance program did result in gradual, if uneven, reforms of mainly a cash cow for governments that the UI program to include more workers. were decreasing corporate taxes during a Fishers and others whose self-employ- time of recession, thereby pushing up lev- ment was largely illusory gradually came els of government debt enough to create under UI. So did growing numbers of ‘deficit hysteria’. Contributions were women workers, thanks to concerted cam- raised while rules for eligibility were paigns by women’s groups as well as la- made tougher. This produced huge sur- bour against such practices as the denial plus revenues in the EI account, which of UI to pregnant women or women with governments transferred to general reve- small children. In 1971, the program was nue. Here was the opposite of the 1930’s extended to all but a small group in the la- non-contributory UI: instead of general bour force, benefits were raised, and ma- revenues paying for UI for workers, work- ternity benefits were introduced. Again, ers’ incomes would make up for shortages however, Campeau, who recognizes the in general revenues. REVIEWS 295

Campeau’s detailed account is con- ing pressure on families and communities cise, thorough, and easy to follow. Its to fill a gap created by diminishing pro- weakness lies in a failure to disaggregate vincial health budgets. Tensions are the unemployed. There is little sense here growing as governments redirect services of the racialized character of either unem- towards acute care patients, and away ployment or the treatment of individuals from supporting the elderly and the dis- by the Un/Employment Insurance Com- abled. In effect, an increasing number of mission. Gender is taken seriously at us are being conscripted into providing times, ignored at others. Fortunately, Ann care for relatives and friends, without be- Porter’s Gendered States: Women, Unem- ing given the opportunity to debate the ployment Insurance, and the Political pros and cons of this shift in policy. The Economy of the Welfare State in Canada, authors in this volume alert us to the fact 1945-1997 (Toronto 2003) complements that few Canadians have the necessary Campeau’s From UI to EI. Porter rarely supports in place to fulfill this role with- concedes the existence of social class, but out sacrificing their own health and her book, read together with Campeau’s long-term financial security. As well, it more class-based reading, provides the should come as no surprise that much of reader with an excellent survey of the the writing in this collection examines the events and influences that have shaped to- effects on women, who hold most of the day’s EI system. paid jobs in this sector and are over-repre- sented in the ranks of unpaid caregivers. Alvin Finkel Women also predominate as recipients of Athabasca University home care services. In the name of neo-liberal ideology and fiscal restraint, the entitlement to Karen R. Grant, Carol Amaratunga, Pat home care is currently being rationed in a Armstrong, Madeline Boscoe, Ann bid to curtail spiraling health care costs. Pederson, and Kay Willson, eds., Caring The availability of new drugs and tech- For/Caring About: Women, Home Care nology, and the shortage of beds, are used and Unpaid Caregiving (Aurora, ON: to justify the growing practice of rapidly Garamond Press 2004) discharging patients from hospitals. Con- trary to myths that persist about the qual- THIS IS a timely book, given the rapidly ity of life in rural communities, patients changing context for home care in Can- living in urban centres are more likely to ada, and the lack of debate or transpar- have relatives and friends living with or ency about government reforms near them who can be pressed into the occurring in this area of public policy that complex and skilled role of caregiver. touches us all. Over the years, with no na- Many others must manage their care on tional standards for home care, the prov- their own, and the assistance they need is inces have evolved a patchwork of no longer provided in public health facili- voluntary, public, and commercial ser- ties. This trend raises the concern that the vices to address the needs of Canadians caring work taking place in homes re- requiring this type of care, the majority of mains largely invisible, and the writers whom are the elderly and the disabled. give a detailed account of how this shift Yet, despite admonishments from politi- from public to private setting can bring cians to the contrary, the bulk of responsi- many risks and challenges for both the bility for providing home care still rests care recipient and the caregiver. It can with families, a situation that has not have detrimental effects on their relation- changed for over a century. Currently, a ship, on their long-term health and combination of economic restructuring well-being, and on the quality of care pro- and an aging population is putting mount- vided. 296 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

These essays give us ample evidence should be given more consideration by of the value of home and commu- federal and provincial policy-makers. nity-based care, as well as pointing out the The contributors to the volume are all risks created in the current policy context, members of the National Coordinating where home care is held up as a panacea Group on Health Care Reform and for our troubled public health care sys- Women, several of whom are involved di- tem, yet the necessary supports to care- rectly in First Nations health, social, and givers and care recipients are not forth- economic development. The essays bring coming. Community-based services are together an extensive body of knowledge one of the casualties of privatization and about the home care needs of Canadians, the incursion of the market system, and as well as the demands put on those who unpaid caregivers are becoming a substi- provide this care. The volume also con- tute for a system under stress. The trend tains recommendations for building a Ca- towards diminishing and “rationalizing” nadian home care system that is premised services is taking a high toll on various on universal entitlement, and goes far be- segments of the population, especially yond the present targeted, means-tested those for whom accessing services is dif- programs. A theme that underlies all of ficult, including residents of rural and re- the essays is the toll being taken on mote communities, Aboriginal Canadi- women by the current erosion of public ans, and Canadians with disabilities. home care services. The 2002 Romanow In the face of this swing towards Commission on the Future of Health Care neo-conservative reforms, the writers in acknowledged that home care is becom- this volume challenge us to think of home ing a burden on Canadians, especially on care as a public rather than a private re- women. Many of the essays in this collec- sponsibility. Rather than understanding it tion give evidence of the gendered nature as an individual relationship between a of home care and unpaid caregiving, an caregiver and a care recipient, they en- aspect that is too often overlooked in courage us to understand it as a collective much of the literature on the welfare state. responsibility. The authors challenge ad- In their bid to map out a blueprint for a vocates and policy makers to envisage a system that does not reproduce inequali- national system that recognizes the rights, ties, the authors deconstruct many of the needs, and aspirations of those who re- assumptions and stereotypes that distort ceive care as well as those who provide it. our assessment of policies and policy op- Both research and practice show that an tions. For example, we still hold an image integrated and comprehensive commu- of rural Canada as having extensive, nity-care model works best and is also a close-knit communities. This stereotype cost-saver, as well as coming closest to is used to justify the redirecting of home the goal of respecting the autonomy and care resources away from rural areas. In independence of both patient and care- fact, women in rural Canada often take on giver. This volume contains examples of the role of unpaid caregiver because of a best practices, such as the Manitoba Con- lack of alternatives, including inadequate tinuing Care Program, which is useful in- or non-existent services, poor public formation for policy activists and advo- transportation, and the persistence of tra- cates. The Manitoba model erases the tra- ditional expectations towards women. ditional boundaries between community, Another myth is that the majority of the hospital, and home, and involves practi- elderly are reliant on the state for care; in tioners from a variety of disciplines in as- fact, many elderly Canadians are provid- sessing and providing both short and ing care, thus relieving the state of this re- long-term home care service, free of sponsibility. The mantra we hear from charge, based on need. It is a model that government about the disappearance of ‘our caring society’ is also shown to be REVIEWS 297

false; one in five unpaid caregivers in come isolated from informal and formal Canada are not blood relatives — they are networks of support. neighbours or friends. Perhaps the most Part of this collection is devoted to persistent myth is the notion that women analysing policy recommendations. One have more time than men to devote to in- theme that emerges clearly is that in the formal care. The male-breadwinner current climate of fiscal restraint, it will model of the family with women retreat- be an uphill battle to ensure that caring ing from the workforce was short-lived work is visible and valued. A meeting of and only predominant for a brief period health care advocates in Charlottetown in following World War II. It was predicated 2001 proposed a declaration of rights, on notions of family wages and a calling for care to be made available to pa- redistributive welfare state, neither of tients in a culturally appropriate and which exists today. Actually, women are non-discriminatory form, and for the pro- more likely than men to leave the labour tection of the rights of both care recipients force to provide care because they are seg- and care providers, to ensure that this re- regated into the lowest paying occupa- lationship is a voluntary one. We need to tions and are over-represented in be increasingly wary of neo-liberal gov- part-time and temporary work. Even ernments who are expanding the defini- though women provide most of the infor- tion of the family in order to force unwill- mal care to relatives and friends, few jobs ing “volunteers” into a caregiver role. allow them to take paid leave for this pur- Perhaps due to the fact that this collection pose, and three times as many women as pulls together a number of essays from au- men lose time at work due to caring re- thors in the areas of health care reform sponsibilities. Women’s caregiving ac- and women, there is some repetition tivities are directly linked to the growing throughout. The introductory chapter, by phenomenon of non-standard, precarious Pat and Hugh Armstrong, provides a use- jobs, where women are vastly over-repre- ful framework for scholars who are em- sented. barking on research in this relatively new As well, much evidence suggests that field of inquiry. The index is a helpful policy and legislation constructs women guide to the many themes that are raised in as caregivers. Thus, it is no surprise that in the book, and for those who are research- these neo-liberal times, women are being ing a particular issue, will prove helpful conscripted in large numbers into in locating the material most relevant to caregiving. In this volume, the authors their search. challenge the assumptions that women have the skills, resources, time, and desire Laurel Whitney to provide care. They argue that Simon Fraser University caregiving is complex, skilled work, and our notion of who can provide care should be expanded to include those with no Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau, blood or marital ties. Regardless of who eds., Mapping the Margins: The Family takes up this work, we must provide them and Social Discipline in Canada, with the necessary public supports to 1700-1975 (Montreal and Kingston: carry out this role. Finally, the authors McGill-Queen’s University Press 2004) caution us to be critical of policies that re- move women from the workforce, even IN ADDITION to their important mono- when accompanied by care-allowances. graphic studies that began in the early Women who drop out of the labour force 1990s, this is the third collection edited run a high risk of finding themselves in by one or both of Nancy Christie and Mi- poverty later in life, and also tend to be- chael Gauvreau since 2002. With such a concentration of productivity, the anthol- 298 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ogy under review here should be ap- ulating institutional and state construc- proached as part of their ongoing effort to tions of marginality”; and, secondly, to promote fresh research on diverse topics. assess “those who fell outside the demo- Their editorial work has elucidated graphic measure of the conjugal house- emerging social and cultural themes. It is hold, to test the prevailing historio- also highly cognizant of the international graphical assumption that the nuclear literature. While a broad period frame is family was irrevocably normative in embraced, from the beginning of the 18th Western society.” (4) century to the mid-1970s, Christie and The book is nicely framed. Both the Gauvreau have a good grasp on period co-written introduction and Micheal shifts in politics, the economy, and cul- Gauvreau’s useful commentary at the end tures that impinge on generations of so- work very well, the latter bringing into fo- cial change. In another collection, for cus both social scientific and historical instance, they highlighted a single decade constructions of the nuclear family of intense realignments, the postwar re- through the 1945-1975 period. Each of construction period from 1945 to 1955. the contributors uses their subject areas to Thanks to their publishing program to map either case study or state jurisdiction date, new work on family, gender, com- histories of subjects living outside strictly munity formation, citizenship, religion, nuclear family roles in eastern Canada and social discipline is now available to since colonization. The intersecting vari- wide reading audiences, from researchers ables of class, gender, ethnicity, and age, and graduate students to undergraduate with a marked emphasis on histories in instructors choosing reading materials for Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes, are their students. So too with this book. addressed throughout. My only criticism Thematically, Mapping the Margins of the volume concerns what it does not offers twelve essays that consider the nor- attempt — selections did not include mative, conjugal family (of homemakers western Canada. But it does, nonetheless, and wives and breadwinners and hus- raise the issue of the marginalizing force bands, along with their dependant chil- of the conjugal family ideal, a concept dren), as a marginalizing force, a power- that applies to work other historians are ful model that often served to define those now pursuing on polygamy on the Prai- living outside of it. It served, in short, as a ries in the late 19th century, gay life in the centrifugal ideal — one that spinsters, same region in the 20th century, and the widows, unmarried mothers, orphans, the lives of Vancouver’s single, male hoboes insane, the elderly, and reconstituted fam- during the years of the Great Depression. ilies constructed their own lives, both Both the conclusion and fulsome intro- against and with. Throughout, this collec- duction to what the book does consider of- tion underscores the complexities of this fer family history specialists an important model/reality relationship under the conceptual statement concerning the con- broad Foucauldian label of “social disci- jugal model’s current status in studies of pline.” It considers the varied ways that social control and discipline. Christie historical subjects actively mapped out also introduces each of the book’s three their lives in counter-distinction to those sections through brief discussions that supposedly ‘enduring’ nuclear kinship push readers to consider, thematically, ties, the kinds of mother/father/children what follows. roles some historians have mistaken as In the process, the editors consider ‘traditional’. As the editors state, they set how a surprisingly enduring myopia out, first, “to examine the ways in which among historians has cropped up along- the family defined membership, depend- side the grand narratives of change in ency, and exclusion,” and to consider how family structure over time: how, for in- the family itself became an “agent in artic- stance, the displacement of the patriar- REVIEWS 299

chal family with the contractual family, or reaching maturity, strategies that the rise of the ‘modern’ family of separate changed with the life cycle to accommo- spheres in shifting contexts of settlement, date changing power relationships de- commerce, and industrialization have led fined by wealth and patriarchy. Christie us to forget something important. Those herself contributes perceptive interpreta- who did not fit the traditional family tions of women in need, most from Upper mould were in fact defined, or defined Canada, beseeching material support themselves, in relation to it — as widows through letters that spoke to what was and widowers, orphans, unmarried moth- owed through kinship ties, with, again, ers, the homeless, or the institutionalized “the obligations of patriarchal gover- — roles and identities were forged by the nance” (92) always present. absence of an ideal kinship arrangement. From a close look at the “itineraries” The foundational touchstones today for of wives who became widows in students just beginning to consider the ex- 19th-century Montreal, Bettina Bradbury tent to which families in Western cultures focuses on the impact of marital civil law, have become modern, new, traditional, according to the Custom of Paris, on three reconfigured, or reconstituted — Peter cases — that of a poor widow, a richer Laslett, Lawrence Stone, and Phillippe one, and one who negotiated her eco- Ariès — are critically assessed in this in- nomic rights at marriage, a legal loophole troduction in light of work that includes available within the marriage law. The Mary Beth Norton, Joanna Bourke, contrasting outcomes are, especially in Lenore Davidoff, and Catherine Hall. relation to each other, illuminating. With this new generation, family history Bradbury’s article is part of a larger work beyond the conjugal unit has broadened in progress, and clearly an important one. considerably. The defectives, the indi- Again, the power of a patriarchal family gent, the single men or women, or the model, and the legal structures that se- “ambiguous” families (from Peter cured them, are considered. Laslett) are increasingly being seen as Finally in this section, Peter Gossage part of rather than separate from the inter- asks the question: were Quebec’s step- secting force of family ties. By mapping children marginal by definition? Here, we the evolving margins, of “broken” fami- find a revealing sampling of popular liter- lies, of “bachelors and spinsters,” and of ature, oral histories, life writing, and legal “institutions and marginality” (the book’s records that extends a discussion that three themes), both the editors and each opens with two of Quebec’s most famous contributor remind us of the cultural orphans, Sir Wifrid Laurier and Abbé power of the evolving image of the stable Lionel Groulx, neither of whom became and economically secured family house- famous because of their upbringings — or hold unit through the longue durée of did they? Gossage considers the compet- nearly three centuries of family life in ing forces that, on the one hand, brought Canada. While the “nuclearity thesis,” (6) the place of stepchildren into a secured (an awkward but, in the context of this fold as members of reconstituted fami- book, understandable term) must be criti- lies, and, on the other, left them in varying cally re-examined, both editors and au- degrees unable to share fully the same thors are sensitive to its shifting signifi- identities, roles, and privileges of their cance across Canada’s changing social step-siblings. Again, the presence of pa- landscapes. triarchal power was important, but in a Under the “Broken Families” rubric, different way. Fathers, more than moth- Josette Brun begins with the impacts of ers, sought to secure the presence of death in New France, offering a quantita- stepchildren within the family circle. tively precise study of the kinship strate- Under the “Bachelors and Spinsters” gies of widows, widowers, and orphans theme, Ollivier Hubert’s study of bound- 300 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

aries separating respectable fatherhood does one reconstruct this year,” Davies from disreputable bachelorhood in rural asks at one point, “the life of an eigh- Quebec takes seriously the source catego- teenth century spinster in between the si- ries of reconstituted gossip and a critical lences, the illnesses, and the ellipses in reading of fictional representations: “in- her diary?” Taking the ‘life-writing’ task stances of deviance,” he argues in a cri- on, of course, can entail a sort of ‘method’ tique of the signs of rural mentalities, “are reading of people’s private confessions, indications of micro-societies that leave of trying to recreate (akin to ‘method’ act- no room for deviance.” (191) Hubert’s ing) a deep sense of experience by becom- readings of the discourse of a parish priest ing as immersed as possible in the feel- and the novel Jean Rivard, penned by the ings and experiences of a person, place, Quebec writer Antione Gérin-Lajoie a and era. This is what Davies offers. The few years before Confederation, are par- lives of four spinsters are revealed ticularly sophisticated, reflecting a dis- through interpretations that speak to these tinct style of historiographical discourse single women’s strident efforts to remain that does not shy away from subjective in- connected to their social worlds, worlds terpretation. Here again, Hubert, through in which family identity still played a his exegesis of this novel, recognizes the part. In the next article, Michele Stairs ex- importance of fatherhood as a marker of tends the attention we can lend to subjec- respectable manhood, of manhood de- tive realms of living as a spinster or a fined ultimately by patriarchal status. bachelor. Stairs considers the typecasting I have not read anyone more versed in connections one might draw between patterns of rural life in Quebec’s Eastern Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classical por- Townships than J.I. Little, who combines traits of the spinster Marilla Cuthbert, her that wisdom with his gifts as a storyteller. bachelor brother, Mathew, and the statis- Little examines the tale of a revivalist, tical and qualitative experiences of these Ralph Merry, son of the first settler at the familial categories on Prince Edward Is- Outlet of Lake Memphremagog, later the land. She concludes, with convincing evi- town of Magog. Merry’s life is retraced dence that might deflate more daring no- through his lengthy and detailed journal, tions, that popularized image and lived re- kept from 1809 to 1863. Several times alities were often not all that different. Merry tried, unsuccessfully, to publish For those removed from the family cir- his story as a man of God, as a throwback cle by the rise of the Victorian-era institu- to the circuit riders of the northeastern tions for the insane, the elderly, the or- States. But as a family man, Merry was phaned, and the single mother, we start in marginal. Uniquely so in fact: because he the third and final section with a joint ef- suffered from ill health, because he never fort by James Moran, David Wright, and secured a steady means of providing for a Mat Savelli. They follow a useful litera- family, and because he married late, at age ture review of the family’s reliance on in- 42. His life, through his telling record of stitutions for the insane in America, Eng- it, Little concludes, shows how the radical land, and Canada in the period with new revivalism that swept through this region data from the Hamilton Lynatic Asylum tended both to challenge the patriarchal to test the ‘social control’ theses so popu- power of fathers and fatherhood and fore- lar in work done in the late 1970s and the stalled the trend toward domesticity that 1980s. Eschewing a crude, Foucauldian modern changes would eventually bring, approach, linking the ‘modern’ institu- even to places like Lake Memphremagog. tion to madness, the authors consider, and Finally, for this section, I felt a re- quantify in useful ways, cases of mutual searcher’s connection to Gwendolyn dependency that developed between the Davies’ and Michele Stairs’ approaches Hamilton asylum’s patients and their to spinsterhood and bachelorhood. “How families. REVIEWS 301

In a comparable vein, Denyse tion that survived two world wars and the Baillargeon stands on its head the notion Great Depression often faced more cop- (fueled by revelations of the ‘Duplessis ing than comfort with the newly created orphans’ of the 1950s) of the Quebec or- 1951 universal “citizen’s wage” for se- phanage as something far from a haven in niors. At $40 per month, it was at first a heartless world. She addresses the de- glance a breakthrough — a universal Old gree to which the Catholic church strove Age Security payment to all over age 70. to nurture settings for “the best family that But what did it really mean? asks could exist,” (319) one close to God and Struthers. Like Suzanne Morton’s take on His children. The gaze of the clerical elite shoddy support for Nova Scotia’s single that Baillargeon considers, in fact, looked mothers, he suggests, it was far less than down upon families, poorer families in Health and Welfare minister Paul Mar- particular. They were seen as the least tin’s claim of unparalleled state “generos- able to provide the best settings for the ity.” (354) “[L]iving at the margins of the best family values — Catholic, Christian, family,” Struthers concludes, dark im- and morally communal, despite what Fa- ages of the “tea and toast” or “rooming ther R.P. Plomondon recognized in the house” elderly subsisting without the aid mid-1920s as the ‘artificial’, boarding of kin called into question the whole no- school setting provided for the children tion of a “citizen’s wage.” (372) Old Age who grew up in them. (317) Security became a kind of oxymoron. Morality politics takes a different turn Implicit in virtually every article in with Suzanne Morton’s overview of the this collection is the positive force of the history of unmarried mothers in Nova family’s ability to provide support, both Scotia. Though her title and main focus psychologically and materially, weighed delineates the 1945-1975 period, her con- against the negative forces faced by those tribution goes further back to include who cannot, will not, or simply do not fit thoughtful references to rather common into its many moulds across time. We Maritime portraits in the novels of Frank should note that crossing the thresholds Parker Day, Hugh MacLennan, and oth- betwixt and between public and private ers: depictions of unwed mothers. Mor- existence, into the vortex of family rela- ton’s central points are that Nova Scotia is tions as actually lived, can be a frustrating somewhat unique in having a history in exercise, fraught with contradictions. In the modern era of proportionally more un- both private lives and the researcher’s at- wed mothers; at the same time, the prov- tempt to reconstruct them, families can ince’s public policy serves as a strong appear in all places and eras as oppres- negative example of histories in North sive, violent, and variously dysfunctional American jurisdictions and elsewhere of units that provide love, support, and sus- women being “made vulnerable and tenance. They can become a kind of illu- marginalized” by the politics of exclu- sionary, deadly flame, consuming mem- sion. Even after Canada’s centennial year, bers, young and old, living either too the province offered assistance that was close to dangers within them, or too far “both inadequate and humiliating.” (343) from their embrace. In one era, religious In the immediate postwar to centennial fanaticism might flare; in another, year period, James Struthers considers the pseudo-scientific condemnations of devi- single elderly, typecast as Canada’s “griz- ancy abound. Historians, too, should be zled old men and lonely widows,” partly cautioned against being quickly sub- as a construct of public policy. The na- sumed in their study. “If the family,” tion’s single elderly, especially women, Gauvreau concludes, “was inhabited by were often the poorest of Canadians, shut these twin historical archetypes of the out of the rising expectations of the Fifties addictive personality and the polit- by virtue of their seniority. The genera- ico-religious fanatic, was it indeed any 302 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

surprise that the study of this entity said to unite the work. While the chapters would, until very recently, be regarded as range widely in their focus, “from the re- somewhat of a distasteful human quag- lationship of voluntary agencies with mire, that would swallow alive any histo- governments and funders, to internal de- rian so unfortunate as to venture there?” cision-making of voluntary organiza- (400) Fortunately, with this collection, no tions, to the changing regulatory environ- such appetites are satisfied, nor pitfalls ment of organizations, to the difficulties encountered of inadequate methods or of coordinated action among these orga- faulty approaches. Specialists will find its nizations,” (x) the common link is that conceptual underpinning stimulating. each chapter is concerned with how non- Readers new to family history will find it profit organizations have adjusted to an insightful companion to other work function in a period of deep restructuring. that focuses on nuclear family roles per The importance of this volume rests in se. Further attention by all should be large measure in the growing significance given to this important approach to life on of nonprofit organizations in our lives. the margins of the ever-changing Cana- Until recently the role of nonprofit insti- dian family. tutions in society had been virtually ab- sent from Canadian academic analysis Robert Rutherdale and policymakers were also largely un- Algoma University College aware of their contributions to the ‘public good’. The contribution and role of nonprofits were so hidden from history, in Kathy L. Brock and Keith G. Banting, fact, that they came to be referred to in eds., The Nonprofit Sector in Interesting Canada as the ‘invisible sector’. The Non- Times: Case Studies in a Changing Sector profit Sector in Interesting Times is part (Montreal and Kingston: School of Policy of a growing body of academic, as well as Studies, Queen’s University and community-based, research aimed at un- McGill-Queen’s University Press 2003) covering the important place of this sector in Canada. Consequently, we owe a debt IN THEIR EDITED collection, The Non- of intellectual gratitude to Brock and profit Sector in Interesting Times: Case Banting for spearheading the “Public Pol- Studies in a Changing Sector, Kathy icy and Third Sector Series,” a collection Brock and Keith Banting bring together a that has added to our empirical and ana- set of papers concerned with examining lytical knowledge of the sector. various aspects of Canadian nonprofit or- It is important to observe that there is a ganizations operating in an environment certain lack of precision and some mea- characterized by profound change. This is sure of confusion which surrounds the the third volume in the “Public Policy and conceptualization of nonprofit organiza- Third Sector Series” and the chapters tions. Throughout this volume, as well as here, as in the previous volumes, have in other such works, numerous terms are their origins in a program of competitive deployed to identify the sector, including research grants awarded through the nonprofit, charitable, voluntary, and third School of Policy Studies at Queen’s Uni- sectors. These terms are catch-all phrases versity. As such this collection represents which attempt to capture that area be- a somewhat loose grouping of papers, and tween the private and state sectors, rather is marked by an unevenness common to than concepts which embody a distinct edited volumes. approach to nonprofit organization. Brock and Banting state that “no one These terms can also convey different theme governed ... the works included” in meanings. For example, the notion of the this edition. (ix) However, an implicit charitable sector suggests that nonprofit theme captured in the book’s title may be organizations have a legal status as incor- REVIEWS 303

porated charities, a distinction that is not neoliberal state restructuring. These enjoyed by the majority of not-for-profit changes include the downloading of bodies. Also, numerous institutions, like many services to nonprofit organizations, universities and hospitals, enjoy charita- the emergence of more collaborative rela- ble status, but given their close relation- tionships between the public and non- ship with the state it is questionable as to profit sectors, and a renewed interest by whether they are a component of the non- governments of all political stripes in profit sector or better understood as part ideas of “citizenship,” “volunteerism,” of the ‘broader public sector’. This speaks and “self-sufficient communities.” (18) to the fact that the ‘not-for-profit sector’ According to Phillips, several changes remains largely a residual category that is necessitate the reform of voluntary sec- significantly under-theorized. There is, tor-state relations. The first is the shift however, a growing sense that a distinct from a paternalist, dependent model of grouping of institutions that are recogniz- service delivery based on traditional no- ably separate from both the state and the tions of charity towards a civil society market and worthy of independent analy- model characterized by a more empower- sis do exist. ing, participatory approach that empha- Brock and Banting provide an intro- sizes the creation of “enabling environ- ductory chapter that is most useful for ments.” (24) Such environments are ones framing many of the challenges and where the state helps communities to help changes facing the nonprofit sector in themselves, assists with capacity build- Canada today. One theme they identify ing, and promotes active citizenship, in- arises out of a debate between Robert cluding incentives to donate and volun- Putnam, as outlined in his classic work teer. But while the promise is for building Bowling Alone, and Robert Reich’s argu- deeper forms of citizenship within so- ments in Future of Success. Putnam con- cially cohesive communities with strong tends that our communities and civic life social capital assets, the reality is that the are in sharp decline because of the break- logic of neoliberal governance structures down of our voluntary associational net- promotes extreme individualism, a mar- works, i.e., fewer individuals joining non- ket-based form of consumer citizenship, profit organizations. Reich, by contrast, and social polarization. asserts that people are still joining to- Phillips argues that traditional gover- gether for things like childcare, health nance structures based on top-down bu- services, and recreation but they are join- reaucratic methods of oversight are un- ing as consumers rather than citizens. In tenable within the contemporary environ- short, the altruistic goals of addressing ment that is increasingly more ‘the needs of strangers’ are lost and the “horizontal, embedded and negotiated.” poor and the needy are increasingly left to (25) Also, while Phillips identifies moves fend for themselves in an ever more com- such as the federal governments’s Volun- petitive world where self-interest rules. tary Sector Initiative as a step in the direc- Both Putnam and Reich identify a com- tion of creating a more meaningful work- mon problem, the erosion of community ing partnership between the nonprofit and the role that nonprofit organizations sector and the state, overall she remains can play in restoring social solidarity, a skeptical of the outcome, given the over- theme that is addressed in subsequent whelming counter-tendency to embed chapters. neoliberal structural forms. Phillips’ Susan Phillips in her chapter, “Volun- chapter gives us some of the tools in tary Sector — Government Relationships which to better understand these develop- in Transition,” examines the changing re- ments and it is by far the most conceptu- lationship between the voluntary sector ally advanced and satisfying paper in the and the Canadian state in the context of collection. 304 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Laura Brown and Elizabeth Troutt also valuable contributions, like Phillips’ offer the reader a most interesting study chapter, bring more theoretically en- regarding cooperation and the stresses as- riched and critical analysis to their sub- sociated with the new relationships that jects. This is especially important if we are developing between the state and are to fully comprehend the reality versus nonprofits. Drawing upon the Manitoba the rhetoric of nonprofit sector restructur- experience, the authors provide a useful ing that is taking place under the inclusive set of analytical categories by which to title of ‘building partnerships’. Overall, understand this changing association. this volume is essential reading for those One point that comes out clearly is that interested in understanding the expand- new funding relationships between the ing place that the nonprofit sector is play- state and nonprofit service providers are ing in our rapidly changing society. creating significant amounts of stress within the not-for-profit sector. They con- John Shields clude that governments must act more as Ryerson University “system managers” of the sector, (214) rather than viewing themselves solely as funders seeking the biggest short-term Janis Sarra, ed., Corporate Governance bang for their dollars. The funding deci- in Global Capital Markets (Vancouver: sions of governments and the terms and UBC Press 2003) conditions they attach to these funds greatly shape the stability and security of CORPORATE GOVERNANCE has become the nonprofit sector. Brown and Troutt a business buzzword in the turbulent conclude that better education for years since financial scandals at Enron, policymakers concerning the needs and Tyco, Nortel Networks, and other leading realities facing the non-profit sector, sus- global corporations wiped hundreds of tainable and predictable funding, negoti- billions of dollars from the portfolios of ated reporting and accountability require- investors around the world. Legal ex- ments tailored to the capacities of the spe- perts, securities regulators, and business cific non-profit could all serve to increase schools have since rushed in to fill the le- the vitality of the sector and ensure effec- gal and moral void left by those scandals, tive provision of services into the future. with a range of proposals aimed at en- Unfortunately, evidence points to the cre- hancing the integrity, transparency, and ation of a new funding regime for non- accountability of corporate management. profit human service providers based on Corporate managers and directors are contract financing which works to maxi- now held to a higher governance standard mize state control while minimizing non- thanks to initiatives like the US profit autonomy; hardly the basis for Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for finan- building an independent and vibrant civil cial reporting. Whether these measures, society. and other changes being designed and de- Other chapters tackle issues associ- bated in many countries, make any notice- ated with nonprofit financial planning able difference to the efficiency of and restraints in an environment of fiscal capitalism remains to be seen. An equally uncertainty; online charitable fundraising important, but less-discussed, question is and the regulation of privacy; political ad- whether these refinements to the manage- vocacy and the challenge of maintaining rial processes of the modern corporation tax-exempt charitable status; and the will somehow make society a “better shifting role of nonprofits in public place,” more broadly defined — or, in policymaking. The papers collected in fact, a worse one. this book approach their subject matter Indeed, on a superficial level the no- from various perspectives. The more tion of “holding corporations account- REVIEWS 305

able” must seem rather appealing to a rel- siders the special governance problems atively broad cross-section of society, in- faced by distressed corporations — unfor- cluding many social and community tunately, an all-too-common circum- advocates who have jumped on the corpo- stance in Canada in recent years. Its three rate governance bandwagon. The lan- chapters will provide useful fodder for a guage of “social responsibility” is often public debate over Canada’s bankruptcy invoked in discussions of governance re- protection laws and procedures that will form. Those calling for tighter control only intensify in the wake of the recent over corporate managers are often called management debacle at troubled “activists.” But to whom are they asking steel-maker Stelco. that corporate managers be held account- Most Labour/Le Travail readers will able? And on what criteria? These are im- likely be especially interested in the chap- portant questions not always addressed by ters contained in Part 2 of the book, those, including those on the left, beating “Shareholder Activism and Control: Ac- the drum for new governance standards. countability for Corporate Harms.” These Within this context, this recent Cana- four chapters provide a representative dian collection — Corporate Governance sense of the growing, but to my mind un- in Global Capital Markets, edited by convincing, literature linking corporate Janis Sarra of the Faculty of Law of the governance with so-called “corporate so- University of British Columbia — makes cial responsibility.” The chapters by Gil for an informative and thorough, but so- Yaron (of the Shareholder Association bering, read. The thirteen essays con- for Research and Education, a leading tained in the volume were originally pre- Canadian shareholder “activist” network) sented at a specialists’ conference on cor- and Ronald Davis (now Associate Profes- porate governance held at UBC in 2002. sor in the UBC Faculty of Law) consider They address several different dimen- the social responsibility angle on corpo- sions of the corporate governance debate. rate governance most broadly. Both au- An introduction by the editor, and her ex- thors situate their arguments with respect cellent theoretical survey in Chapter 2, to the notion of the “universal investor,” provide a useful legal and economic posited by Robert Monks and other writ- context for the subsequent discussions, ers, who have celebrated the rise of pen- and a convenient introduction for sion funds and other institutional inves- non-specialists to the theoretical litera- tors as heralding a constructive new era in ture regarding corporate control and its capitalism. The idea is that since these in- central “principal agent” problem stitutional investors hold the shares of (namely, how do those who own corpora- many (or even most) corporations, and tions ensure that their hired managers re- they tend to invest for long-term returns, spect their preferences and priorities). An they will possess economic interests that accessible foreword by Purdy Crawford are compatible with (or even identical to) — the wise man of Canadian corporate those of the broader society. Hence these governance — summarizes his views on investors can use their collective power recent reform proposals (including split- (assuming a legal and cultural framework ting the functions of CEO and Chairper- which facilitates this shareholder “activ- son, and issues related to the composition ism”) to promote progressive social and and size of boards of directors). environmental goals through the corpora- Part 3 of the book contains three chap- tions which they own. ters considering the role of directors in Yaron considers the extent to which more detail — including a novel look by Canadian corporate law allows for the Barry Slutsky and Philip Bryden at the sorts of interventions (such as share- unique governance challenges facing di- holder resolutions) aimed at enforcing the rectors of Crown corporations. Part 4 con- will of these “universal” (and presumably 306 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

socially concerned) investors over corpo- fective corporate management teams, not rate actions. Despite recent legislation at promoting more “noble” social or envi- which expands the legal space for these ronmental goals. So we should not be sur- types of interventions in Canada, Yaron prised that this “activism” leads to im- finds that many barriers remain, ranging proved “performance” by those tradi- from shareholder apathy to ownership tional measures. Whether the targeted concentration to inadequate proxy voting corporations demonstrate any notable dif- rules. Davis considers whether the activ- ference whatsoever in their social and en- ism of universal investors could be capa- vironmental responsibility is an entirely ble of restraining the negative actions of different question, and Yaron’s confla- far-flung multinational enterprises. He tion of the two issues is confusing at best. concludes that it cannot sufficiently do Indeed, many “social investment” advo- this job (for various functional reasons, cates will deliberately portray Yaron’s such as imperfect information and the un- evidence as “proving” that socially con- certain framework of international law), cerned investment strategies can match or and must be supplemented by government even exceed the financial performance of regulations to ensure that corporations re- traditional investment strategies, thus in- spect “international standards.” dicating that “ethics” and “profits” are not While both authors express caution incompatible. In fact, however, Yaron’s about trusting shareholder activism with evidence shows simply that investors who too much responsibility for moderating actively press managers to increase prof- the excesses of global corporations, their its can in fact succeed in doing so. That’s a underlying faith that activist shareholders rather different conclusion, indeed. Can- would even have a motive for enforcing ada’s largest occupational pension fund, more humane and sustainable behaviour the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan on corporations, let alone the power to do Board, has taken a similarly “activist” ap- so, is open to serious question. Yaron is proach — buying an active 25 per cent more honest than most advocates of this stake in the non-union airline WestJet, strategy, in reporting that pension funds and partnering with Maple Leaf Foods to own only about 10 per cent of all publicly shut down underperforming (and union- traded equities (less informed writers on ized) meat processing plants. The “activ- this subject still often claim, falsely, that ist” OTPPB has an exemplary financial re- pension funds own “most” of the stock cord among its peer institutional inves- market). Yet he never asks how socially tors, yet can hardly be attributed with aware pension investors might aim to ex- having had a progressive impact on soci- ert influence over the other 90 per cent of ety through its investment strategy. capitalism. He summarizes research The central proposition of the “univer- which superficially addresses the ques- sal investor” model, that so long as inves- tion of whether shareholder activism can tors are vested in a sufficiently broad “make a difference” on the behaviour and range of companies then their interests performance of companies. The evidence will converge with those of society (since is quite robust that active pension fund in- the negative consequences of actions of terventions (such as those initiated over those corporations can no longer be the years by CalPERS, the giant Califor- “externalized” by those investors), is lu- nia public sector pension fund) will in- dicrous: it implies society is simply a con- deed lead to improved financial perfor- stellation of corporations, and denies the mance – measured by profitability, share possibility of any conflict of interest (or price return, and other conventional indi- potential for “externalization”) between cators. Yet the vast majority of those in- those who own corporations and those (at terventions have been strictly aimed at home or abroad) who do not. A related im- governance issues and shaking up inef- plicit claim is that shareholding is now REVIEWS 307

universal across social classes (as well as Alan Gordon, Making Public Pasts: The being “universal” in Monks’ sense of Contested Terrain of Montreal’s Public portfolio diversification), yet evidence on Memories, 1891-1930 (Montreal and the precarious (and growing) inequality Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University of financial wealth ownership readily dis- Press 2001) poses of this claim. In fact, most Canadi- ans have no economically significant ALAN GORDON’s book on the construc- stake in the stock market whatsoever (ei- tion and uses of public memory in the city ther directly or indirectly), and the vast of Montreal in the early decades of the majority of corporate equities are owned 20th century represents a notable addition (directly or indirectly) by a surprisingly to the growing body of English Canadian small elite of society. The mutual fund in- historical scholarship, by H.V. Nelles, dustry likes to pretend that investing is a Ronald Rudin, and Colin Coates, among socially “universal” pastime every Febru- others, on the relationship between com- ary when they unroll their annual on- memoration and political identity in slaught of RRSP advertising; but social French Canada. Making Public Pasts scientists should dig a little more deeply draws freely upon a wide range of canoni- before accepting the claim at face value. cal works on nationalism and collective In the end, the project of improving cor- memory, from the classic texts of porate governance is ultimately aimed at Durkheim and Halbwachs to more recent tightening the control of shareholders over influential studies by Eric Hobsbawm, Pi- the actions of corporations, in hopes of en- erre Nora, Anthony Smith, and John hancing shareholder wealth. As editor Sarra Bodnar. Although Gordon does not ex- states bluntly in her introduction, “The goal plicitly situate himself in relation to the that flows from these notions is shareholder eclectic mix of theoretical and method- wealth maximization, aimed at an optimal ological approaches represented by these return on investment of equity capital.” authorities, he clearly shares their as- (xvii) It is not at all clear that corporations sumption that memories, myths, and sym- that function still more directly and ruth- bols (or “mythomoteurs,” to use his lessly in the interests of maximizing profit preferred term) both reflect and actively (and hence shareholder wealth), whether shape aspects of social and political real- defined in the short-run or the long-run, will ity. He is particularly concerned to show be at all more respectful or accommodating how images of the past, embodied in mon- of working people at home or abroad, their uments, memorials, plaques, historic communities, or the environment. Indeed, sites, and commemorative rituals, helped the reverse is quite likely the case. In this to constitute the competing nationalisms context, progressives should indeed be very of English- and French-speaking careful what they ask for in the corporate Montrealers, and structure the power rela- governance debate, lest they get it — re- tions of a modernizing capitalist society. gardless of how often words like “account- Gordon begins by systematically de- ability,” “responsibility,” and “activism” scribing the social, political, and geo- get thrown around. A more hard-headed left graphical context of public commemora- analysis of corporate governance initia- tion in Montreal. He devotes particular at- tives, and how they relate to efforts aimed at tention to the urban landscape of the late holding corporations accountable to a more Victorian city and its surrounding sub- inclusive constituency (beyond just their urbs, with its squares, parks, and stately shareholders), would be a most useful and avenues, set against a background of ac- timely contribution to this ongoing debate. celerating modernization. The written text is enhanced by an extremely useful Jim Stanford apparatus of period photographs of indi- Canadian Auto Workers vidual monuments, as well as maps, dia- 308 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

grams, and tables, which both illustrate Women, meanwhile, were relegated to Gordon’s arguments, and enable the largely symbolic roles as personifications reader to assess his use of evidence. of timeless, abstract virtues, apart from With admirable thoroughness, Gordon the recognition accorded to a handful of documents and analyses the significance exemplary figures like Jeanne Mance and of the striking increase in commemora- Marguerite Bourgeoys. He discusses tive activity that began around 1890 and working-class efforts to forge an alterna- extended into the early decades of the new tive collective memory, for example century, which he attributes to the delib- through the annual commemorative ritu- erate intervention of a new “heritage als of Labour Day. He also acknowledges elite,” drawn mainly from the over- the increasing agency of women in heri- whelmingly male ranks of the profes- tage activities in the early 20th century, sional middle classes. Its members shared through such influential organizations as a common interest in awakening and mo- the IODE, while insisting on — and per- bilizing the historical memory of their re- haps overstating — their subordination to spective communities in support of two masculine agendas. But these examples very different nationalist projects. He of resistance to the bourgeois and patriar- provides a wealth of illuminating detail chal values of the heritage elite receive about representative members of this rather cursory treatment, especially given elite, such as the romantic Anglophone Gordon’s stated interest in the relation- litterateur and ardent imperialist W.H. ship between public memory and the Lighthall, as well as the most important structures of power in Quebec society. institutions through which their ideas They are subordinated to his main argu- about the past were disseminated to a ment about the ethnic and religious “fis- larger public: the Antiquarian and Numis- sures” that divided his socially homoge- matic Society of Montreal, the Société neous heritage elite into two distinct, Historique de Montréal, the federal His- “fratricidal” camps — French, Catholic, toric Sites and Monuments Board of Can- and nationalist on one side, English, ada, and the Commission des monuments Protestant, and imperialist on the other — historiques du Québec, among others, and how these divisions found expression which were responsible for erecting mon- in rival representations of Canada’s past. uments, placing plaques on designated He argues, for example, that Montreal heritage sites, staging lavish historical Anglophones viewed their city as a strate- pageants and processions, and so on. gic imperial outpost, and sought, through Gordon captures the cultural and political monuments of British heroes and mon- contradictions of their attitudes and val- archs, public holidays like Empire Day ues, which tended to combine an and other commemorative devices, to le- anti-modern nostalgia for a vanished, gitimize a conception of national belong- more “authentic” pre-industrial past with ing that combined an almost feudal per- faith in material progress and capitalist sonal allegiance to the British crown with prosperity; or, in the aftermath of the a solid bourgeois faith in material prog- Great War, attachment to a nascent, au- ress, capitalist enterprise, and political tonomous nationhood with allegiance to liberty. French Canadian heritage elites, the British monarchy and empire. under the ideological leadership of Abbé Gordon describes the gender and class Groulx, were at the same time evoking biases of his heritage elite, which had no mythologized memories of New France in place for the memories of Irish workers, the process of constructing the “historical whose histories of forced emigration, novelty” of a unified, militant, economic hardship, discrimination, and “Catholicized” nationalism, which, ac- labour struggle were almost wholly ig- cording to Gordon, finally succeeded in nored in the official public sphere. vanquishing and co-opting its old rouge REVIEWS 309

adversaries in the aftermath of the Great of Cartier — or of Confederation, the War. Gordon provides numerous, richly Great War, or the British Empire, for that detailed examples of the ways in which matter. But Montreal’s “heritage elites” these fundamentally opposed concep- seem to have tacitly agreed to disagree tions of Canadian history and identity about the significance of symbols like were reflected in disputes between French Cartier, whose monument represented and English members of heritage organi- him as both an Angophile imperialist and zations, and embodied in strategically sit- as the defender of the rights of the French uated sites of memory in the ethnically Canadian patrie. Spectators were free to segregated neighbourhoods of Montreal. pick and choose which Cartier they Gordon is less interested in exploring wished to remember and venerate. (Or the question of how the apparently irrec- they could accept both meanings at once oncilable tensions between Anglophone — or neither.) But the fact that Cartier and Francophone discourses of memory could be publicly claimed and memorial- and identity were negotiated and re- ized by both groups helped to foster at solved, or at least contained. Yet one of least the illusion of consensus and bonne the more surprising aspects of Gordon’s entente after the bitter conflicts of the war account is how little overt controversy years. In other words, public memory and conflict accompanied the attempts of both divided Anglophones and the two communities to represent and pro- Francophones — as Gordon convincingly mote their respective versions of Can- argues — and provided the means for ada’s past in a contested public sphere. overcoming or at least obscuring these di- Despite their frequent sophistication and visions and mitigating their potentially originality, Gordon’s readings of monu- corrosive effects. And if French ments and commemorative rituals do not Montrealers took issue with hegemonic always fully capture the “multivocal” na- British Canadian and imperialist con- ture of lieux de mémoire, in particular structions of the city’s history, nothing their ability to serve as vehicles of social prevented them from commemorating the and political reconciliation and harmony. past and honouring their heroes — For example, Gordon plausibly describes Dollard, the martyrs of 1837, among oth- the unveiling of the imposing monument ers — on their own, counter-hegemonic to George-Étienne Cartier in Jeanne terms. Mance Park as an occasion for symboli- A similar case can be made for the cally mending fences between English 1930 celebrations surrounding the unveil- and French Montreal after the traumatic ing of the monument to Jean Vauquelin, battles over conscription. Less convinc- the commander of the French fleet which, ingly, he attributes its role as a unifying against overwhelming odds, tried to re- symbol to the success of Anglophone her- lieve Quebec after its capture by Wolfe in itage elites in recasting Cartier as a sym- 1759. Gordon dismisses the efforts of its bol of loyalty to the British connection. organizers to use the event as an object Gordon characterizes the monument as “a lesson in ethnic harmony, mocking its strange mix of British imperialism and supposedly “confused’ and “comical” Canadian nationalism,” (89) without melange of French and British symbols, seeming to recognize that its effective- and “bizarre mix of contemporary politics ness as a vehicle of reconciliation de- with history.” (118) But public memory, pended precisely on this element of politi- as Gordon himself argues, is almost al- cal ambiguity. Neither the members of the ways shaped by the political concerns of committee that commissioned the Cartier the present. In any case, I would once monument, nor the racially mixed crowd again argue that the variety and “confu- that attended the unveiling ceremony sion” of the symbolism surrounding the shared a common, homogeneous memory monument and its unveiling, which 310 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Gordon derides, contributed to its popular and identity into the mould of a reaction- appeal as a site of memory. The cere- ary messianic Catholicism, arguably al- mony, which was staged by the local Saint lowed all the disparate elements that Jean Baptiste Society on the eve of the fête made up modern French Canadian society nationale and attracted over 20,000 spec- — rouge and bleu, clerical and secular, tators, clearly struck a chord among the rural and urban, industrial and agricul- people of Montreal. By simultaneously tural — to unite under the banner of an in- allowing Francophones to celebrate their creasingly pluralistic patrie. heroism and gloire in defeat, and Gordon’s stimulating study of how the Anglophones their magnanimity in vic- collective memory of the two “founding tory, it could serve as another example of races” was shaped and exploited by con- how the ambiguity of commemoration tending elites in the ethnically polarized was used to empower both group identi- urban landscape of Montreal yields fresh ties, while masking the intractable points perspectives on a number of important is- of difference between them behind a ritu- sues: the genealogy of the uneasily coex- alized display of reconciliation. isting nationalisms of English and French A greater appreciation of the ambigu- Canada, the relationship between histori- ous, multivocal nature of symbols and rit- cal consciousness and civic identity, the uals would also have strengthened origins of the heritage industry, and the Gordon’s suggestive account of the redef- Canadian experience of modernity, inition of French Canadian nationalism in among others. One could wish for a more the 1920s. As it stands, his argument nuanced reading of certain key lieux de about the “Catholicization” of mémoires; important points are at times Francophone memory and national iden- simply asserted rather than empirically tity under the influence of Abbé Groulx demonstrated; and the theoretical frame- and his followers can even, on the work does not always do justice to the strength of his own evidence, be turned on complex and elusive subject matter. But its head. The rehabilitation of the the same reservations can be applied to al- Patriotes in 1926, for example, might just most every other contribution to this na- as easily be cited to demonstrate the ac- scent field of historical research. They do commodation of Groulx’s elitist, clerical not detract from the overall value of form of French Canadian nationalism to Gordon’s book, which provides yet an- the forces of liberalism and modernity in other example of how cultural approaches Quebec society. The historical pageantry drawn from a variety of disciplines are of the reinvented fête nationale, to which breathing new life into the study of Cana- Gordon devotes an entire chapter, can be dian history. interpreted as a product of the moderately liberal nationalism of lay intellectuals Robert Cupido like Victor Morin and Joseph Massicotte Dalhousie University of the SSJBM. The extraordinarily elabo- rate, hugely popular défilés inaugurated by Morin and Massicotte in 1924 pre- Patricia E. Roy, The Oriental Question: sented painstakingly detailed images of Consolidating a White Man’s Province, French Canadian history, organized 1914-1941 (Vancouver and Toronto: around a series of grandiose themes, UBC Press 2003) which, upon closer inspection, lent them- selves to a surprisingly wide range of SEPARATING THE HISTORIAN’s own an- meanings and purposes (including the de- alytic voice from those of the historical velopment of a mass tourist industry). actors to whom he or she is trying to give These complex, multilayered spectacles, voice is one of the critical issues in writ- rather than forcing Francophone memory ing a history of racism. Failure to main- REVIEWS 311

tain this separation can result in anti-Asian feelings died down in one part unwittingly reproducing the very catego- of the province, only to pick up in another, ries and exclusions that need to be ex- and how such feelings were often specific plained in the first place. When one relies to particular issues. She supplements her exclusively on primary sources without newspaper accounts with other available critically engaging wider literatures and public records such as House of Com- theories of racism, this result is all the mons and Senate debates, as well as archi- more likely. val sources and the diaries of leading pro- Patricia E. Roy’s The Oriental Ques- tagonists. The result is a finely textured tion: Consolidating a White Man’s Prov- account that convincingly shows that ince, 1914-41 illustrates both the advan- while anti-Asian racism was never a tages and dangers of an approach relying monolith, it became consolidated in the almost exclusively on primary sources. image of British Columbia as “a White This is the second of three volumes in Man’s province” during this era. which Roy traces the history of anti-Asian One of the virtues of the resulting ac- racism in British Columbia. The first vol- count is the way Roy spins these very di- ume, published a number of years ago, A vergent sources about a series of isolated, White Man’s Province: British Columbia even obscure, episodes into a credible Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Im- narrative. In effect, she argues that after a migrants, 1858-1914, examined period of quiescence during World War I, anti-Asian discourse and public policy in immigrants from China and Japan and British Columbia until the beginning of their Canadian-born children were seen World War I. This volume picks up where as “unassimilable,” meaning incapable of the former left off, bringing the story up to ever being incorporated into the dominant the eve of the forced relocation of Japa- British Canadian community. Even as the nese Canadians on the west coast during Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 ended World War II. The third volume covers immigration from China, resulting in the period from 1941 to the introduction greater tolerance of the members of this of the points system and the supposed dis- community, fear mounted over Japanese mantling of racist immigration policies in imperialism, and ultimately over the pres- 1967. ence of Japanese Canadians. In many The Oriental Question has many of the ways this thesis is an elaboration of her same strengths and weaknesses of the ear- “Fear of Asians” argument first put for- lier work. Like A White Man’s Province, ward over 25 years ago, i.e., that as the it is deeply rooted in the primary Eng- century progressed anti-Asian sentiment lish-language sources and in newspapers shifted from a focus on the Chinese to the in particular. This rootedness in the pri- Japanese and that at heart these senti- mary sources has always been one of the ments were based on a fear of Asian supe- strengths of Roy’s research and has al- riority and competition. Certainly subse- lowed her to make finely shaded distinc- quent scholarship on this issue will need tions that escape less careful historians. to contend with Roy’s findings and inter- Indeed, I was a bit shocked to learn (13) pretations, e.g., that there was no signifi- that Roy admits to not having read all of cant gender component in the anti-Asian the newspapers published in British Co- racisms of British Columbia’s “white” lumbia during the period under consider- population. ation. She has certainly read more of them Like her earlier account, this one is than anyone else and this shows here in also largely immune to issues of theory. the way in which she treats the develop- As Roy explains, her argument “relies ment of anti-Asian discourse as specific more on empirical evidence than on theo- to time and place. For example, she is able ries.” (11) This is unfortunate since be- to document how at various moments tween the publication of her first volume 312 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and this one a significant literature on account of this incident, one more sensi- racisms and their histories has appeared in tive to the racist nature of the conflict. We Canada, a literature that has often bene- learn, for example, that Chung Chuck was fited from being theoretically informed. not merely a truck driver, but one of the Consider for example, the work of Con- main growers who had successfully chal- stance Backhouse on the history of legal lenged the marketing broad’s restrictions racism in Canada or Roy Mikki’s account in the courts. (80) Yee’s reproduction of of the Japanese Canadian redress move- the Province editorial itself shows that it ment. One advantage of theory is that, represented those behind the Chi- when used properly, it leads to asking nese-controlled farms as “smart young better questions. Roy largely takes racist Orientals, born in Vancouver and claim- categories at face value, treating them ing all the rights and privileges of Cana- much the same way her sources do, and dian citizenship.” (Yee, 83) While the ed- while her sympathies are not with the rac- itorial makes clear that these people were ists, she occasionally falls into the kinds in the process of taking over, to the detri- of binaries that underlay so much ment of racialized whites, it appears that anti-Asian racism, a tendency that does a this Canadian/Chinese juxtaposition co- disservice to her strong claim to the em- mes from Roy rather than the editorial it- pirical. For example, she provides an ac- self. This in turn suggests that she rather count of the picketing of “Chinese” potato misses the point that “the Chinese” were farmers by “white” growers on the Fraser also “Canadian” and that an important Street bridge in March 1937. The picket- historical question is how and why so ing resulted in an assault on a truck driver, many of their racialized “white” contem- Chung Chuck. Roy is careful to describe poraries did not see them as such or would Chung’s injuries and notes that he also in- not accept them even when they techni- flicted a minor knife wound on a Vegeta- cally shared the same citizenship. In ef- ble Board inspector. The police laid fect, she sees her sources as relatively charges against Chung who also charged straightforward descriptions of real dif- the inspector with assault. Both sets of ferences rather than as artifacts of a dis- charges were dismissed by the courts. course that continually created and recre- Roy then notes that the Chinese consul ated notions of racialized difference. condemned the picketers and that the CCF Roy’s closeness to the English-lan- condemned the marketing board that was guage newspaper accounts meant that I trying to fix prices and whose actions had often found myself hearing the racist led to the confrontation in the first place. voices, and relatively little in the way of She then points out, “The Vancouver antiracist voices. Indeed, I found myself Province denied that it was ‘a racial issue’ wondering whether the English-language but sympathized with the board’s efforts sources Roy relies upon do not also con- to keep the market for Canadians against tain more of the voices of the members of an ‘increasing tide of ruthless Chinese the excluded groups themselves. Cer- competition’.” (141) She seems unaware tainly by the 1920s and 1930s, British of the problematic juxtaposition between Columbia’s population of racialized “Canadian” and “Chinese” here. It is pos- Asians included many who were literate sible that her description reproduces the in English and who did not hesitate to terms of the Vancouver Province edito- speak out against racist practices in letters rial, but if so it is curious that these cate- to the editors and in various organized gorizations warrant no discussion. By protests. The dominance of racist voices contrast, Paul Yee’s Saltwater City: An Il- is compounded by Roy’s necessary reli- lustrated History of the Chinese in Van- ance on English-language sources and couver (Vancouver: Douglas and hence her failure to adequately consider McIntyre 1988) presents a rather different the experiences of racism as lived by REVIEWS 313

members of British Columbia’s Asian ence of racism from the points of view of communities. In the early chapters, she those who were the objects of this dis- makes an effort to include some refer- course means that it fails to provide a con- ences drawn from the Vancouver-based vincing account of anti-Asian racisms. Chinese Times, the Chinese-language Racisms are not merely sets of linguistic newspaper published by the Zhigongdang practices on the part of members of ra- or “Chinese Freemasons,” but these dis- cially privileged groups; they are dy- appear in the later chapters even though namic relations of categorization, of in- this paper continued to be published. I clusion and of exclusion, and of resis- suspect that this has less to do with a care- tance. An adequate account of racism ful review of this paper than with her read- needs to be more alive to these dynamics. ing of the notes on its local news section compiled as part of the background re- Timothy J. Stanley search for Edgar Wickberg, et al., From University of Ottawa China to Canada, and preserved in the Chinese Canadian Research Collection at UBC. These notes become rather more Jim Mochoruk, Formidable Heritage: spotty after the mid-1920s. Here some Manitoba’s North and the Cost of Devel- might also argue that had she conducted opment 1870 to 1930 (Winnipeg: Univer- interviews with some of the survivors of sity of Manitoba Press 2004) the racist practices of this era, she might have had quite a different result. In the THE “PROVINCIAL NORTHS,” or the end, her book is more about the attitudes parts of the provinces lying north of the of racialized whites towards racialized zone of agriculture, have not received a Asians than it is about the social construc- great deal of attention from professional tion of racism. historians. The reasons for this are obvi- Finally, I also wondered at her deci- ous: although they contain a great deal of sion to end this volume on the eve of the Canada’s landmass, and in Québec, for exclusion of racialized Japanese from the example, make up four-fifths of the prov- west coast during World War II. While ince, they do not have a large population, this may be the result of editorial deci- and therefore have proportionately little sions to preserve an extended discussion political power. Their economic impor- of this event for the third volume, some- tance to Canada has been as producers of thing that might have been too large to in- natural resource products, chiefly miner- clude here, I cannot help but feel that an als, forest products, and hy- adequate understanding of racism re- dro-electricity. They have a large First quires appreciation for the consequences Nations population, and their non-native of racist and racializing representations, population has, historically, been quite something that this volume cannot transient. They tend to be dominated by achieve if it does not also discuss the ef- outside forces, located in provincial or fects of a quarter-century of racist dis- national capitals, and although they have course in the destruction of Japanese Ca- much in common with each other, there is nadian communities. very little cooperation or coordinated ef- Thus, in the end, the significance of fort among them; northern Saskatchewan this work is that, like the earlier volume, it and northern Ontario, for instance, do not catalogues English-language anti-Asian form a common front against what some discourse in British Columbia. As such it would call the forces of internal colonial- is an invaluable reference for students of ism that oppress them. racism and of British Columbia’s history. Formidable Heritage is an attempt to Its failure to problematize racist catego- rectify this omission of interest in the case ries or to adequately consider the experi- of northern Manitoba, a region which can 314 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

be defined in several ways, but is most the region was simply neglected. When usefully thought of as the region north and smallpox broke out among the Icelandic east of the agricultural belt of the southern immigrants in the Interlake region, which part of the province. The central argument is on the periphery of the province’s of the book is revisionist, an attempt to north, the government first ignored them, counter the triumphalism of the tradi- then quarantined them, and a violent con- tional accounts of the province’s history. frontation with the authorities was only W.L. Morton’s statement, in The Cana- narrowly averted; treaties were offered to dian Identity, that the main task of Cana- the First Nations only when some devel- dians was to “make something” of the oper became interested in their traditional “formidable heritage” of the Canadian lands. Shield, is the metropolitan, out- One of the best parts of the book is side-directed and arguably exploitative Chapter Three, “The Entrepreneurs’ interpretation against which Mochoruk North: The Land of Opportunity to 1900,” directs this book. “The central argument in which the author takes aim at the of this study,” he says, “is simple. When Horatio Alger myth that lauds the process all of Manitoba was given in 1670, sight whereby active young men wrest a for- unseen, to a group of entrepreneurs whose tune out of the north. The chapter contains primary goal was to exploit the natural re- some of the book’s most lively prose: sources of the region, a precedent was set that would be replicated all too many Told and retold by fawning journalists, hagiog- raphers posing as historians, and uncritical lo- times in Manitoba’s history, for this grant cal history committees, the careers of many en- was both careless and callous in regard to trepreneurs with interests in the north took on the region’s resources and to the rights of an almost mythic quality ... tales of rags to its inhabitants.” (xiii) And, he says, the riches by deserving young men ... or David and history of the region over the following Goliath parables of small companies taking on 260 years consisted of variations on this the northwest’s economic giants .. Theo Bur- theme. In fairness to Morton, though, it rows, who left the Ottawa home of his widowed must be said that, given the chance for re- mother at eighteen years of age to take a job on buttal, he would likely claim that this a survey crew in the wilds of the Lake Dauphin region and rose from this humble beginning to book is ahistorical in its approach, and become the west’s leading lumberman and the that Mochoruk is approaching the 17th to lieutenant-governor of his adopted province. early 20th centuries with the sensibilities (63-4) of the 21st: given the spirit and customs of the times, how else were England and the Of course, as with the Alger stories, there Hudson’s Bay Company supposed to deal was always a trick involved, and charac- with northern Manitoba in 1660, or with ter and pluck turned out not to be the most the other periods the book covers? important requirements for success: The bulk of the book is an account of all these “great men” and companies had feet of the development of northern Manitoba in clay. More often than not, their business ca- the interests of outsiders — first the Hud- reers had been advanced by political favourit- son’s Bay Company, then the federal gov- ism, by successful attempts to limit competi- ernment, and then the provincial govern- tion, by the use of inside information, or any ment, the latter two working in concert other advantage that would allow them to sur- with private developers. Such develop- vive and prosper ... studying these “success ment, prior to quite recent times, was usu- stories” ... help[s] to document the general pat- ally carried out with complete disregard tern of capital accumulation, concentration, for the wishes of the region’s inhabitants and outflow from the north as well as trace[s] the evolving nature of the relationship between and for any environmental consider- capitalists and the state. (64) ations. On the other hand, when no devel- opmental prospects were on the horizon, REVIEWS 315

Chapter Six, “New Manitoba and the Jamie Brownlee, Ruling Canada: Corpo- Fight For Equality, 1912 to 1922,” is a rate Cohesion and Democracy (Halifax: hard look at among other things, the em- Fernwood Publishing 2005) ployment practices of companies in northern Manitoba in this era that should NEOLIBERALISM in Canada began 30 disabuse anyone of romantic notions of years ago with the Bank of Canada’s life in lumber and mining camps. Em- adoption of monetarism and Trudeau’s ployers at The Pas who fired workers who use of wage and price controls to defeat an lacked the money to leave the community, insurgent labour movement. While these and bush camps where workers were al- policies were defended at the time as most slaves were common features of life short-term necessities, they came to in the region. Mochoruk cites the case of represent components of a more general two workers in 1913 who borrowed $25 restructuring process. Indeed, neolib- worth of clothing and food from the eralism has been much more than a McMillan company to enable them to conjunctural economic fix or policy ad- walk the 100 kilometres back from camp justment; rather, it has consisted of a sys- to the The Pas: tematic transformation of political, economic, and social relationships both No sooner had they arrived at The Pas than they within Canada and around the world. were arrested. On the basis of information pro- vided by the employer, it was established that Most social science has interpreted they owed the McMillans $25 for the goods neoliberalism in one of two ways. For taken out of the company store, plus ... various neoclassical economists, neoliberalism other charges ... As the local newspaper put it, unshackles the market from Keynesian “satisfied of their delinquency, the magistrate regulations. According to this perspec- sentenced each to a prison term of six months, tive, neoliberalism realizes the inherent which should serve as a warning to others hav- potential of capitalist markets and thus ing similar inclinations. (206) promises benefits for everyone. For The rest of the chapters are equally in- Weberian or institutionalist researchers, formative about the realities of northern neoliberalism is the outcome of techno- development and exploitation, and in- logical developments that allowed for the deed, what makes this book particularly globalization of investment and the re- valuable is the enormous amount of re- structuring of production processes. search that evidently went into writing it. These technological and economic trans- The 396 pages of introduction and text are formations occurred outside of the na- supported by 90 pages of footnotes, some tion-state and thus contributed to the of them fairly substantive. Despite its global power imbalances that exist today size, weight, and rather relentlessly revi- among capital, governments, and citizens. sionist approach, however, the book is Jamie Brownlee’s new book, Ruling quite readable, and is likely to serve as the Canada: Corporate Cohesion and De- definitive work on the subject for a good mocracy, offers a different conceptual- many years. ization of neoliberalism and its effects on democracy, citizenship, and the state. For William R. Morrison Brownlee, neoliberalism emerged not University of Northern British Columbia from naturalistic market processes or technological developments, but from a deliberate and well-organized effort of the economic elite to radically alter the political economy of Canada. Class strug- gle in the economy and at the level of the state was central to the neoliberal revolu- tion. To defend this argument, Brownlee 316 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

focuses on the economic and political pro- economy. Brownlee makes five impor- cesses by which Canada’s economic elite tant points. First, Canadian capital is con- — its leading capitalists, corporate execu- stituted by an elite network of directors tives and directors, and their ideological who sit on the boards of the most concen- and political supporters — advanced trated industries. Second, these interlocks neoliberalism as a class program. Two have integrated the circuits of industrial questions guide the analysis: what eco- and money capital to such an extent that nomic basis allowed the Canadian elite to they now constitute “finance capital.” unite and mobilize around a neoliberal (59) Third, Canadian finance capital is a agenda? And what political mechanisms “well-integrated and dense network of were utilized for achieving this end? nationally based interlocking director- Answers to these questions are devel- ates” (66); that is, it is established by an oped in three sections which integrate em- East-West or pan-Canadian structure of pirical data and theoretical interpreta- corporate power. Fourth, “Foreign con- tions. In Section One, Brownlee covers trolled corporations have only marginal sociological debates on the unity and po- interlocking status and are much more litical capacities of the economic elite. He likely than domestic firms to be isolated first reviews and critiques the theories of from the network.” (66) In other words, pluralists and structural Marxists and then the top units of capital in Canada are Ca- develops his “instrumental Marxist” or nadian-owned and operate independently “unity theory” approach. He insists that from foreign interests. Finally, the devel- divisions amongst the elite are usually opment of finance capital provided the more tactical than strategic, and that impetus for the internationalization of “powerful unifying mechanisms” exist to Canadian capital. Brownlee summarizes facilitate political consensus and solidar- this argument with a quote by William ity. (19) Sections Two and Three demon- Carroll, who writes that “transnational fi- strate how the Canadian elite unified nance capital has radiated from Canada in around a neoliberal strategy and how they a way that has not disorganized the na- used their resources and connections to tional network, but has embedded it more implement this strategy. extensively in a circuity of global accu- For example, Chapter Two analyses mulation.” (68) According to Brownlee, the concentration and centralization of the development of Canadian finance capital in Canada and the ways in which capital through the concentration and this creates a “corporate structure that is centralization of capital and through in- conducive to elite cohesion.” (53) The terlocking directorships provided the Canadian elite used mergers and acquisi- structural potential for elite cohesion. In tions as well as diversification strategies Section Three, which deals with the “pol- to consolidate its control over the domes- icy formation network,” Brownlee re- tic market and to become more competi- veals how the Canadian elite developed a tive globally. As an example, Brownlee common political program in the form of reveals how Canadian conglomerates neoliberalism, and how it organized to now “employ one-third of the Canadian implement this program through the state. workforce and account for one-half of to- For example, in Chapter Four, tal business revenue.” (36) It is this grow- Brownlee examines intersectoral policy ing intercorporate ownership that pro- organizations such as the Canadian Coun- vided the elite with a structural basis for cil of Chief Executives, the Canadian developing a class-wide strategy around Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manu- neoliberalism. facturers and Exporters, and the Canadian Chapter Three continues the economic Federation of Independent Business. analysis of elite unity by focusing on in- These organizations create forums for terlocking directorships in the Canadian corporate leaders to discuss and articulate REVIEWS 317

long-term, class-wide strategies. tions, think-tanks, and free enterprise Brownlee reveals how these policy orga- foundations as well as through its connec- nizations advanced neoliberalism tions to the media, the Liberal and Con- through their close financial and political servative parties, and the civil service. relationships to the Liberal and Conserva- These economic and political resources tive parties and to the corporate media. He were used to advance neoliberalism as a also shows the decisive interventions conscious class strategy to restructure the made by these organizations around free Canadian state and economy. trade, the Multilateral Agreement on In- Brownlee concludes Ruling Canada vestment, debt reduction, military and with one chapter on the nature of the state foreign policies, and the Canadian Health under neoliberalism and another chapter and Social Transfer. on alternatives to neoliberalism. Chapter Chapter Five discusses advocacy Seven makes two important points: first, think-tanks such as the Fraser Institute, that the state is fully integrated with the the C.D. Howe Institute, and the Confer- logic of neoliberalism and thus functions ence Board. These think-tanks are impor- to reproduce and intensify this logic; and tant actors in the elite network. Through second, that regardless of such structural their conferences, publications, submis- processes, the economic elite maintains a sions to parliamentary committees, and strong grip on governance and adminis- access to the corporate media, they “help tration, making the state a “vital power business leaders to establish class cohe- base and set of organizing tools” for capi- sion and a common policy perspective, tal. (127) mainly by setting up regular meetings or While Brownlee paints a picture of a roundtables between different sectors of very powerful and well-organized eco- the business community.” (106) nomic elite, he concludes on an optimistic Brownlee argues that these think-tanks note. “Corporate domination” can be also provide a veneer of legitimacy to the challenged, he says, because it “is not the neoliberal agenda. culmination of a natural, evolutionary Chapter Six examines actors within process.” (142) A “great deal of potential the policy formation process that are often exists for citizens to alter current eco- overlooked, namely, free enterprise foun- nomic arrangements to realize the inter- dations. Brownlee reveals how corporate ests of the vast majority. Collective social and family foundations interlock with action could change the public policy policy groups and think-tanks and thus consensus.” (13) According to Brownlee, create another network through which the such a political mobilization must engage elite exercises power. He also implicates the state — as it is clearly a terrain of in- free enterprise foundations in the devel- tense class struggle. Social movements opment of neoliberalism in Canada, for must defend existing state programs and example, through their funding of partic- create new forms of democratic adminis- ular research, their recruitment and train- tration in the process of curtailing corpo- ing of future members of the elite, and rate power: “At present, the state is the their projection of an image of corporate only institution large enough to act as a philanthropy. counterweight to corporate power; there- Brownlee’s principal arguments, then, fore, short-term goals should involve de- are two-fold: first, financial and institu- fending, even strengthening, those ele- tional linkages among the Canadian ments of the state that are accountable to economic elite facilitated forms of unity public input (which are the ones con- necessary for the development of stantly under attack by private power). neoliberalism. And second, this elite’s Opening up the state to democratic partic- economic power was translated into polit- ipation and improving the effectiveness ical power through its policy organiza- and accountability of state regulation are 318 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the most realistic interim strategies for state, then, it must develop a clear dealing with the corporate threat and the anti-capitalist strategy, one that builds practical problems of tomorrow — prob- workers’ and oppressed people’s capaci- lems on which people’s lives often de- ties to overturn the “centralized state sys- pend. In the short-term, then, political ac- tem” and its underlying capitalist rela- tivism that directly targets corporate tions. While Brownlee mentions power should be complemented by efforts anti-capitalist formations such as Peo- to re-democratize the state and govern- ple’s Global Action, he could have ana- ment. In the long-term, the inherent injus- lyzed these formations in greater detail. tices of the centralized state system need Lastly, Ruling Canada could have said to be challenged and ultimately disman- more on globalization and imperialism. tled.” (152) Given the Canadian elite’s new push for Ruling Canada provides a clear analy- “deep integration” with the United States, sis of the Canadian economic elite and its it would have been interesting for ability to shape state policy. The text also Brownlee to discuss the relationship be- does a good job of examining neoliberal- tween the Canadian state and the interna- ism in the context of transformations oc- tionalization of Canadian capital. For ex- curring on a global scale. But the text ample, how does the state facilitate the could be strengthened in a number of cru- expansion of Canadian capital? And how cial areas. For example, it should have in- does this expansion reinforce domestic cluded more political economy. While the neoliberalism? Unfortunately, in the text provides an excellent sociological short section on “deep integration,” description of the Canadian elite, it does Brownlee ignores Canadian imperialism not adequately conceptualize neoliberal- and looks solely at the threat of “assimila- ism as a form of social power based upon tion” to Canadian “sovereignty” and the rule of finance capital (the coales- “quality of life.” (125-6) cence of industrial and money capital as a Despite these weaknesses, Ruling result of concentration, centralization, Canada is an important contribution to and internationalization). The text dis- the study of Canadian political economy. cusses Canadian “finance capital,” but it The book provides substantial empirical does not theorize it either in terms of capi- evidence to defend its principal claims tal’s laws of motion or as a new configura- and should be referenced and debated in tion of social rule. Making such a theori- current discussions on the nature of Cana- zation is crucially important for two rea- dian capital and the Canadian state. The sons. The first is for understanding book is highly readable and could also be neoliberalism not simply as a class con- used in upper-level undergraduate spiracy, but as an expression of the work- courses. Most importantly, the book ings of the capitalist mode of production. demystifies neoliberalism by naming the The second is for conceptualizing economic elite which benefit from it. As neoliberalism as a systematic form of such, it opens the door for political action social power, as a social logic organizing to challenge neoliberalism. Brownlee everything from macro- and micro-eco- should be commended for contributing to nomic processes to governance and this much-needed process. inter-state relations. The weakness of Brownlee’s analysis is evident in his Jerome Klassen chapter on challenging corporate rule. His York University argument about engaging the state fails to comprehend how the state is fully impli- cated in the patterns of accumulation and social reproduction that characterize neoliberalism. For the Left to engage the REVIEWS 319

R. Scott Sheffield, The Red Man’s on the consumption, of cultural material. Re- Warpath: The Image of the “Indian” and gardless of how small a number of people the Second World War (Vancouver: UBC made films and newsreels, the key issue is Press 2004) the extent of their distribution and the meanings audiences attached to them. THIS SUBTLE, interesting book by R. Sheffield states that newspapers “were Scott Sheffield examines the image of the not simply sources of opinions. They “Indian” as it was understood in the minds were also reflections of the cultural val- of English Canadians during the period ues and norms of the society in which they from the 1930s Depression through to the operated; they not only shaped and rein- end of World War II. The subject is em- forced opinion, but also drew from an ex- phatically the “imagined” Indian, not his isting cultural toolbox, employing lan- flesh-and-blood counterpart. Throughout guage and imagery that their readership the text the author refers to the former as would recognize.” (13) This is true, but it the “Indian” (in quotation marks), thereby does not go far enough. Sheffield seems to continually calling the reader’s attention assume that the readers of newspaper sto- to the distinction that lies at the heart of ries interpret them more or less similarly the book. This expository strategy largely and that their “common-sense” interpre- succeeds. It fails only when Sheffield for- tation coincides with his own. Both are gets himself and begins to make com- dubious propositions. Readers bring to ments about the alleged disparities texts their own viewpoints and cultural between real and imagined Indians. How predispositions. They habitually recast can this be done, the reader wonders, information so that it conforms to precon- when the author has limited his expertise ceived opinions. This is especially true of to one of the paired terms? texts that involve stories and symbols, as The book differentiates between the do many of the excerpts Sheffield cites. “Administrative Indian,” that is the “In- Such stories and symbols inherently carry dian” as perceived by the staff and offi- multiple meanings; they always mean cials of the Indian Affairs Branch [hereaf- more than they say. ter IAB], and the “Public Indian,” mean- Ignoring or disregarding this method- ing the “Indian” as viewed by the general ological complication, Sheffield forges public. Sheffield discovers the “Adminis- ahead with a clear, vigorous argument. He trative Indian” in the correspondence files asserts that in the 1930s, the “Public In- of the IAB, particularly those relating to dian” was a contradictory amalgam of the schooling, enlistment and compulsory “noble savage,” an heroic remnant tragi- military service, Indian policy reform, cally doomed to extinction, and the and the postwar review of the Indian Act. “drunken criminal,” the contemporary The “Public Indian” is revealed through “Indian” laden with numerous character an exhaustive survey of the print media in flaws. (The “drunken criminal” language English Canada, including daily and is distasteful, but Sheffield believes that it weekly newspapers, academic quarter- accurately reflects the views of the time.) lies, and such popular periodicals as Sat- The “Administrative Indian” conformed urday Night. The author pays no attention to the latter stereotype because, as Shef- to film and literature sources, which, he field explains, IAB personnel, immersed says, “reflected a relatively small intel- in the here-and-now of daily duties, were lectual elite and have already been the disinclined to brood over a romanticized subject of scholarly attention.” (12) The past. Further, they formed a negative phrase,“reflected a relatively small intel- opinion of Indians, when the latter re- lectual elite,” points to a weakness in the sisted the government’s assimilation pol- methodology, namely a tendency to em- icies. Those outside the IAB, many of phasize the production, rather than the whom never saw an Indian and had no oc- 320 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

casion to visit a reserve, freely indulged out the multiple meanings of “assimila- their speculations. tion,” a term that referred variously to the With the coming of the war, the dichot- social, economic, and cultural conver- omy between the “positive-historical and gence of First Nations with the rest of so- negative-contemporary” (70) versions of ciety; the removal of legal and constitu- the “Indian” broke down. In its place tional differences between status Indians emerged an image that was both positive and other Canadians; and the absorption and contemporary, the “Indian-at-war.” through intermarriage of the “Indian” Canadians took comfort from the fact that race into the larger population. The di- during the bleak early years of the con- verse interpretations mingled confus- flict, with France defeated and the United ingly in public discourse, merging States and the Soviet Union still not com- vaguely with the newly popular jargon of batants, First Nations people rallied to the “integration.” cause. By 1943, as prospects for Allied More than 150 submissions to the SJC victory brightened, the prominence of the came from Indian bands, tribal councils, “Indian-at-war” faded, although it did not chiefs, and Native-rights organizations, disappear altogether. When Canadians all of which received a boost from war turned to reconstruction and, in the par- conditions and the post-war revival of in- lance of the day, “winning the peace,” yet terest in Indian administration and legis- another image, that of the “Indian vic- lation. Although the First Nations briefs tim,” came to the fore. A country fighting differed on specific items, such as liquor to rid the world of a racist, oppressive re- rights and denominational schooling, gime could hardly countenance racism they were united in opposing the policy of and oppression in its own backyard. Arti- assimilation. The SJC seemed deaf to their cles began to appear dwelling on the squa- message; the texts of the briefs meant one lor of reserve life and the paternalistic, thing to the authors and quite another to overbearing system of Indian administra- the readers. As Sheffield observes, “terms tion. Editorials declared the irony of First like democracy, freedom, progress, citi- Nations soldiers fighting for a country zenship, and equality were broad enough that denied them full citizenship rights, to accommodate a multiplicity of mean- including the right to vote. A massive ings, and indigenous leaders and wave of sympathy, arising from a collec- spokespersons used such language almost tive sense of guilt, overwhelmed the pub- as liberally as their Canadian counter- lic and forced the Canadian government parts.” (141) The SJC could not reconcile to re-examine its policies. special rights with equality of citizenship; In January 1946 the minister responsi- First Nations representatives, by contrast, ble for the IAB announced that his depart- based their claim for distinct national ment would no longer actively oppose the treatment on the treaties, which they re- formation of Native political organiza- garded as the bedrock of their relationship tions. The following May the government with the rest of Canada. The final report created a special joint committee of the did nothing to resolve the uncertainty. Senate and House of Commons [hereafter The Committee firmly endorsed the strat- SJC] to collect evidence and consider re- egy of assimilation in keeping with the visions to the Indian Act. Out of the com- image of the Indian as “potential citizen.” mittee hearings, which lasted two years To this end, it recommended increased and generated extensive press coverage, powers of self-government for band there emerged the Indian as “potential cit- councils as a means of fostering responsi- izen,” a construct that captured both the ble citizenship. First Nations took the rec- optimism of the era and the durable belief ommendation as an acknowledgement of in assimilation as the best solution to the their separate cultural identity and dis- “Indian problem.” Sheffield deftly sorts tinct status. REVIEWS 321

Sheffield, at the end of his study, dis- bolic particularity of rural Texan white cerns an underlying continuity in English working-class life. The everyday weave Canada’s construction of the imagined of this life consists, he says, in “emplace- “Indian.” He argues that from the 1930s to ment, embodiment, the organization of the postwar period the essential nature of temporal experience and memory, and the relationship between Canadians and normative local understandings of emo- the First Nations remained the same. It tion, subjectivity, and proper sociality,” was based on “the deeply rooted assump- (21) an ensemble he bravely and convinc- tion that English Canada’s race, society, ingly labels “culture” (Fox is an anthro- and way of life were superior to those of pologist, writing from the discipline most the ‘Indian’.... Assimilation, although haunted by the concept’s demons). This still founded on a conviction of racial su- “culture” is far from the strictly bounded, periority, was legitimized and renewed static and naturalized social substance through liberal-democratic principles and that has justifiably given it a bad name. confidence in the promise of scientific so- Rather, Real Country is built on what cial engineering by an interventionist could only be called an intimate elabora- government.” (178) The ambiguity of this tion of regional white working-class cul- passage centres on the problematic con- ture, marked by empathy, but sensitive to junction of racial superiority with lib- unsaid and unthought resonances and eral-democratic principles. Did the Cana- contradictions. It is the product of almost dian government misapply principles that 15 years of ethnomusicological and are essentially valid, or are the principles ethnographic research, during which time themselves flawed by the erroneous pre- Fox talked with and listened to the partici- sumption of universality? It is a mark of pants in the local country music commu- the quality of this book that it stimulates nity, and gradually became musically and such broad questions, while satisfying our personally enmeshed in that very commu- curiosity about a particular phase of nity. Canadian history. The book is staged, for the most part, in a Lockhart “beer joint” called Ann’s James M. Pitsula Place during the 1990s. Populated with a University of Regina range of local characters, some of whom the reader comes to know well, Ann’s Place is known in the region as a venue Aaron A. Fox, Real Country: Music and and haven for “real” country music, what Language in Working-Class Culture Fox calls the “evaluative index” of a lo- (Durham: Duke University Press 2004) cally prized style of “feelingful,” “au- thentic” (non-Top 40) country music. LOCKHART, TEXAS, is just south of Aus- (103) (The reader can fortunately hear tin. It is, like many other peri-urban towns some of this music at Fox’s website, in North America, an affordable, work- www.aaronfox.com.) Yet the cast mem- ing-class, not-quite-suburban place bers are themselves as much setting as within driving distance of a rapidly ex- they are players, for the real focus of Real panding urban centre, and the rurality of Country is working-class “voice” in its its past may prove out of rhythm with its dominant expressive modes: talk and future. But the increasing spatial en- song. Voice, Fox argues, “is a privileged croachment of city upon country is not medium for the construction of meaning matched in the realms of social life in cen- and identity, and thus for the production tral Texas. Indeed, Aaron Fox’s wonder- of a distinctive ‘class culture’,” one ful book about music, talk, and class in through which working-class Texans Lockhart paints a vivid, detailed, and construct and preserve “a self-con- moving portrait of the material and sym- sciously rustic, “redneck,” “ordinary,” 322 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and “country” ethos in their everyday Any readers familiar with the work of life.” (20) This is not to say that Fox strips Antonio Gramsci (or, more historio- away the particularity of the community graphically, E.P. Thompson) will recog- organized around Ann’s Place — and the nize their legacies in Fox’s description of music that is played and danced to and lis- class as a “culturally mediated phenome- tened to there — to reveal some kernel of non.” (108) Indeed, although Fox only pure working-class expressivity. He is cites Gramsci once — and then in the con- keen to underscore the individuality of text of a discussion of the organic intel- each of the book’s main figures, and he lectual (35) — the Gramscian vein that has an almost novelistic approach to char- runs the length of Real Country can acter development. An ethnomusicologist hardly be accidental. For Gramsci and and professional guitarist, he spent his Fox, culture is the precipitate of history; it time at Ann’s Place playing and listening encrusts all facets of everyday life, deter- to music, recording conversations, and mining in its apparent “naturalness” the getting to know the idiosyncracies of sense we make of our places and times, many of the performers, staff, listeners, and of the trajectories of change. As and other “regulars.” Gramsci wrote in Prison Notebooks, To say, then, that “voice” — not voices “common sense creates the folklore of the — is the subject of this book is to say that future as a relatively rigid phase of popu- Real Country is intended to bring ethnog- lar knowledge at a given place and time” raphy, musicology, and linguistic anthro- (New York 1971, 326). Culture as it pology into conversation with social the- emerges for Fox – summed up for him in ory in a manner that is theoretically and an appropriately messy form in the adjec- politically relevant far beyond Lockhart tive “country”(31) — is “a grammar of or Texas. And to the extent that this inten- human response to experience.” (34) tion is realized, Real Country is a book Voice materializes a discursive common about class, and about a critical aesthetics sense that is embodied and enacted in the of working-class culture that cannot help “polemical delineation of a class commu- but problematize the naturalized separa- nity.” (103) tion of the aesthetic and the political eco- Gramsci was interested in the con- nomic in labour and working-class stud- struction of a theory of culture that would ies more generally. It is also intellectually illuminate the politics of the very terrain ambitious and sometimes technically of sense-making, one that would consis- complex: the nine chapters consider the tently denaturalize common sense, allow- voice as a site of the production and repro- ing the working class to construct new duction of time, subjectivity, emotion, cultural spaces beyond the reach of bour- gender, and performativity within the ru- geois hegemony. In the contemporary US, ral white working class, and Fox not infre- however, this political strategy is turned quently calls upon the descriptive vocab- on its head. In Lockhart, the cultural ulary of linguistics for precision. While spaces in question are not new, but are in- this is of course justifiable — the book is stead those that are traditional and “au- about voice, after all — and rarely over- thentic,” those that are, according to the whelms, it does demand an unusual com- “evaluative index,” “real”: real feelings, mitment from the non-disciplinary reader real people, real country. As such, the (and access to a very good dictionary). working-class culture of rural white Tex- Like all good books, then, there is much to ans is not instantiated, according to Fox, discuss here. But with the interests of La- in a critique of capital, but in a critique of bour/Le Travail readers in mind, I want to neoliberalism and post-Fordism in the focus the rest of the review on the ques- “key of nostalgia.” (91, 319) Inextricably tion of class, and on what Fox calls “work- bound to this critique, the “poetic obses- ing class verbal art.” (229) sion with loss and the looming presence REVIEWS 323

of the past” shapes the regional work- that they possessed power as consumers. ing-class aesthetic, and its dominant In that sense, as Sears Roebuck executive forms and modes of expression. In Lock- Arthur Price noted, radio advertising car- hart, Fox suggests, the voice as “privi- ried within it the “seed of its own destruc- leged medium” blurs the bounds between tion.” (158) Clearly, that seed never fully class art, class culture, and class politics. germinated, for radio advertising was, of I do not think this is an argument schol- course, the very engine of radio’s golden ars of labour and working-class studies age in the United States, and it is still with can hear too often. Indeed, if I have one us. Playing watchdog to it was a losing substantial critique of Real Country,itis battle. Sponsors policed their own ad that while this inseparability is illumi- scripts lest they offend target audiences, nated, the political-economic dimensions but they relied upon the structure of the of working-class critique and agency — radio game to remain essentially un- of what Fox is forthright in calling “class changed — a commercial space with few struggle” (253) — are given relatively regulations to protect consumers. very short shrift. If the “nostalgic, some- Newman begins by setting out her times obsessive working-class gaze is work’s contributions, which she charac- precisely archeological,” (91) then the terizes as “revisions of the consumer/pro- power-laden, often exploitative produc- ducer dichotomy.” (11) Complicating tive material conditions in which it and its this task, she notes, is the ‘production’ of constitutive critical rural voice emerged the audience on the part of the radio indus- merit as close attention as does that which try — particularly its advertisers and is called “aesthetic” and that which is sponsors — an industry seeking to culti- called “cultural.” vate a close identification between a hit That said, this is a creative, sophisti- program and the sponsoring product. An cated, and beautifully written contribu- unproblematic relationship between tion to contemporary scholarship — best these elements meant a profitable adver- suited to graduate courses, if it is taught tising vehicle, but too heavy a hand, too — and I enthusiastically suggest reading repetitious a jingle, too biased a commen- it and talking about it, if not singing about tator would bring the threat of lower rat- it (that may be warranted; I liked it that ings or, in some more extreme cases, boy- much, but not many want to hear me sing). cotts. The reaction to advertising also cre- ated its own intellectual and literary Geoff Mann circles, peopled with advice-givers like University of California, Santa Barbara Ruth Brindze and playwright and whis- tle-blower Peter Morell. Consumption (and by implication stra- Kathy M. Newman, Radio Active: Adver- tegic withdrawals of consumption like the tising and Consumer Activism, boycott) is for Newman best understood 1935-1947 (Berkeley: University of Cali- as “a form of work.” This holds together fornia Press 2004) well, especially when Newman is discuss- ing the consumption of the ordinary IT IS DIFFICULT to write about causes or goods most frequently linked with some movements that experience infrequent or of the most popular programs (coffee, ra- limited success, but American author zor blades, cereal), as buying these goods Kathy Newman has done so thoughtfully, was clearly part of the (unpaid) domestic producing a book that prompts us to qual- labour that fell most often to women. In ify our understandings of both radio ad- this sense, even consuming leisure (or vertising and consumer activism. Radio products associated with leisure) falls un- Active argues that radio advertising unin- der the category of work, a departure from tentionally moved listeners to recognize a clearer work/leisure division drawn by 324 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

historians such as Roy Rosenzweig and over themselves trying not to present a John Kasson. This is a strong departure, soap opera character who too closely re- and the author might have spent more time sembled John L. Lewis. More important early in the book qualifying this important than labour organizations to the phenom- theme. enon of ‘radio activity’ were organiza- Before Newman gets to stories of boy- tions that had the potential to mobilize cotts, soap operas, and the founding of the their members as though they were taking organization that now puts out Consumer strike action — consumer groups refusing Reports, we meet some of the intellectuals to live up to the bargain implicit in the ra- who laid the groundwork for our current dio ad: patronize the sponsors of the understanding of advertising’s impact. shows you enjoy. Newman’s shorthand Paul Lazarsfeld and his short-term col- for this bargain is listener goodwill. Ad- league at Princeton’s Office of Radio Re- vertisers seemed to be forever interested search, Theodor Adorno, need to appear in maintaining it, and this reviewer cer- early here, and they do. Adorno’s articu- tainly found it the sort of compelling lation of a “process of listener awareness theme that could have appeared more that could lead to the destabilization of prominently throughout. capitalism as a whole” is what worried Perhaps Newman’s weakest section program sponsors and made ‘radio activ- comes near the end of the book, and it is a ity’ an important force when radio passiv- short lapse. Within the space of two fac- ity would have been more convenient for ing pages (164-165), she has bureau- sponsors and ad agencies. As we learn, crat-turned-radio activist Donald Mont- Madison Avenue drove away some of its gomery’s National Association of Con- most talented people (like the disillu- sumers [NAC] both folding “for good in sioned adman James Rorty), and the mar- 1957” and “collapsing in the 1960s.” A ket-oriented work undertaken at the few pages later, we are told that the maga- Princeton Radio Project was clearly zine-style of on-air advertising (multiple anathema to Adorno. It is vitally impor- sponsors buying time on one program) tant to see how radio is intellectualized, as made its debut after the mid-1950s (177), this sets up some of the conceptual frame- and then (181) that this moment happened work we need to appreciate the examples in 1960. The tantalizing suggestion (165) of anti-New Deal, anti-union commenta- that the NAC gave an impetus to 1960s tor Boake Carter against the CIO, and the feminism would have been more satisfy- ‘washboard weepies’ (soap operas) that ing to read about had it been followed up were churned out by writers like Jane by a mention of some of those who were Crusinberry. How listeners/consumers active in both causes or a brief explana- used these shows, at times rejecting plot tion of some of the ideological or strategic twists and devices, demonstrated the fra- congruities between the movements. gility of the broadcaster-audience rela- Even though these examples treat a period tionship. outside 1935-47, more attentive editing Newman shows us that organized la- would have caught these inconsistencies, bour played a role, but perhaps a less ac- restoring some impact to the final chapter tive role than it might have taken. The CIO and conclusion. Its lack is unfortunate, threatened or successfully conducted because the conclusion includes a tight some boycotts, most notably a boycott of and well-argued account of the impact of Philco radios initiated by CIO-affiliated Frederic Wakeman’s The Hucksters,a Philco employees, a campaign which novel which played on public familiarity brought about the beginning of the end of with radio advertising to drive its plot. Boake Carter’s career. The spectre of la- The tone throughout is familiar, bour seemed to have just as potent an ef- friendly, and uncluttered. Comparisons fect when networks and advertisers fell of the Major Bowes Amateur Hour and the REVIEWS 325

current American Idol program, for in- many of the issues surrounding FAS. It is stance, are welcome signposts for readers a weakness however because, despite not familiar with some of the older shows. Golden’s concession early on that FAS There are few hitches in Newman’s prose, does describe a real phenomenon rather and most do little to damage the underly- than just a social construct, she is never ing meaning of the surrounding material. able to get beyond the relativizing and so- For example, how could Boake Carter be cially demobilizing language that charac- second to both Walter Winchell and Doro- terizes so much of the linguistic turn. For thy Thompson in syndicated readership? the rest of this review, I will refer to FASD (90) Wouldn’t he rank third, still not a — Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder — mean feat given Thompson’s and rather than FAS because the former term Winchell’s well-known impact? Can is more all-encompassing, FAS referring “crescendo” (166) be used as a verb? Why to people with alcohol-related birth de- not “crest”? fects for which there are characteristic This book is an important and accessi- physical signs and FASD including those ble contribution to both the history of ra- who have such defects but look “normal.” dio and the history of the consumer move- I am the father of a marvelous young man ment. Underlying it is a fascinating per- with FASD, and so there’s nothing very spective on the potential of the left in objective about this review. America, a subject that could easily be- Janet Golden, it should be said from come a magnet for one’s interpretive en- the outset, makes a valuable contribution ergy. Fortunately, Newman resists a simply by producing the first monograph lengthy wallow in the woes of the left to on the emergence of FASD as a recognized show us more effectively that although medical problem. For those unacquainted the nascent consumer movement did not with fetal alcoholism, it refers to the brain fundamentally alter the way radio adver- injuries and physical problems that some tising operated, self-identification as a babies are born with as a result of the consumer (especially a consumer with an transfer of alcohol from a pregnant awareness of the adman’s agenda) could mother’s bloodstream into a fetus. As far be a dramatic political and cultural state- as science has been able to determine, ment. women risk their babies being born with FASD only if they drink during the preg- Len Kuffert nancy; it is not a case of an ovum or a University of Manitoba sperm being damaged as a result of alco- holism on the part of its originator but of alcohol ingested during pregnancy caus- Janet Golden, Message in a Bottle: The ing damage to the brain of a fetus. People Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (Lon- born with FASD have a continuum of don: Harvard University Press 2005) problems, but common to most of them is brain injury that results in impaired judg- THE SUB-TITLE of this book reveals at ment and limited self-control. Their once its greatest strength and its memories are porous and they usually unforgiveable weakness: it treats Fetal have some motor difficulties. None of the Alcohol Syndrome [FAS] almost exclu- rules of behavioural psychology, them- sively as a social construct. This is a selves contentious in any case, apply to strength because it helps explain why FAS people living with FASD because the parts as a concept did not exist before 1973, and of their brain that control behaviour have allows us to understand that the causes, been damaged to one degree or other. symptoms, and prognosis for FAS are sub- While some have normal IQs, mental re- ject to at least some debate even if a de- tardation is common. Even those with gree of consensus is emerging around normal or above-average intelligence of- 326 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ten fail to thrive because their impulsive- So what’s wrong with seeing FASD as ness, short fuses, and inability (though a social construct, and no more? Golden’s not generally unwillingness) to follow too evidence, though not her commentary, many orders makes it difficult for them to demonstrates the problem with trying to fit in. keep a healthy distance from the lives of Now, there is a strong liberal pseudo- people with FASD and their mothers while anarchist thrust in the Foucauldian litera- focusing on the impact of FASD on social ture that would be immediately suspi- debates that go beyond FASD.Inone cious of any “label” such as FASD that chapter, she deals with the American normalizes particular notions of what campaign for and against warning labels constitute rational judgement, reasoned on liquor bottles regarding the dangers of response to frustration, and acceptable re- drinking while pregnant. She presents the sponses to socially constructed authority. arguments of feminists on both sides of The term, “moral panic,” is quickly the divide. Opponents of warnings about erected as a barrier to discussion about liquor use that singled out pregnant whether particular regimes of punishment mothers, she notes sympathetically, be- and deterrent have any validity. They are lieved that it was all a plot of abortion all invalid, in all respects, by definition, it anti-choicers “to establish a vocabulary sometimes seems. Janet Golden certainly of fetal rights in excess of the rights of the uses the term, “moral panic,” to apply to women in whose bodies these fetuses FASD, though she is careful to also rest.” (88) The effort to make people liv- indicate that it is applied to a social issue ing with FASD collateral damage in the that she thinks has validity. She is not so battle against anti-abortionists conflates much a Foucauldian as a typical historian fetuses that are to be aborted with fetuses of our age who has been shaped by the that are to become human beings. Their now omnipresent notion that discourse opinions, mainly reflecting those of femi- equals reality. This is not meant to be dis- nists in the US who are, on most issues, missive to the discourse missionaries who well within the confines of American have, in fact, rescued scholarship in the bourgeois individualism, are only bal- social sciences and humanities from anced by the views of feminists in the overly-schematic materialist dyads and public health movement. But what about from economic determinism. It is to say the mothers who give birth to fetal alcohol that a new pseudo-religion has been un- babies and the mothers, including veiled, which it is important to unmask at birthmothers, adoptive mothers, foster every (linguistic) turn. mothers, and operators of institutions If one wished to place Janet Golden on who raise these babies? Some historical a continuum among practitioners of the searching on Golden’s part would reveal new religion, she would be on the United what “choices” many of these women Church end of it rather than a born-again. had, both about drinking during preg- She wants to cling to the core beliefs of nancy and then raising the children after- the dogma, but not to reject consideration wards. Many of the birthmothers are of those who might be outside its parame- themselves sufferers of FASD and have ters. So, for example, she believes that it little ability to resist drinking during is acceptable to ignore actual people with pregnancy, even when they have the de- FASD — “It is not my intention to exam- sire; others are simply alcoholics living in ine the lives of individuals, families, and poverty and despair. Once the baby is communities affected by alcohol expo- born, most of these mothers, if they try to sure in utero” (15) — while still using “the raise the child, fail, even if they have shed diagnosis of FAS as a window through their alcoholism: raising these children which to view and interpret American cul- requires many times the effort and many ture and institutions.” (15) times the funds than average children. In REVIEWS 327

short, drinking during pregnancy usually to bear babies with FASD. For African leads to a mother losing the right to American women, the figure is six times choose whether or not to raise her own that of the general population. While any child. So much for liberal shibboleths woman who drinks during pregnancy, with no context of social class or social particularly if she goes on periodic binges circumstances. or always drinks to excess, might bear a After Golden leaves the debate about child with some alcohol-related damages, pregnant mothers’ responsibility for their the women whose drinking patterns are children — which, unfortunately is lim- most likely to produce a child with brain ited to the rather unedifying debate about damage are marginalized women. An end warning labels — she wades into the diffi- to internal racial colonialism within cult waters of how courts have treated North America, to super-exploitation of FASD-affected individuals. Here there is certain groups of women, and to patriar- little question of her sympathies. She chy (and perhaps to capitalism which has doesn’t have the time of day for the created a liquor industry that has man- hang-’em-high crowd who want to hold aged to turn a dangerous product into all individuals responsible for their ac- something glamorous and supposedly tions and to write off brain injury as a ra- healthy, even fooling most labour histori- tionalization rather than an explanation ans) would all contribute immensely to for why some people cannot be held ac- ending FASD. But since none of this will countable in the same way as others. I occur in one fell swoop, a reformist cam- don’t either, but there is a terrible contra- paign that focused on pregnant women diction among the liberally minded if, at who choose to continue their pregnancies one and the same time, we recognize that seems quite defensible. The alternative, some people are born ticking time bombs frankly, for Native people in both Canada to commit crimes and otherwise to lead and the US seems to be genocide, since the unhappy lives, and yet reject all efforts to liberal defence of a woman’s right to prevent their being born that way. choose whether she drinks during preg- Of course, what efforts can be made to nancy has, by now, become incompatible prevent their being born that way is the is- with Aboriginal peoples’ demands for sue that stymies everyone. As Golden control of their communities and restora- notes, efforts to institutionalize pregnant tions of their former traditions (in com- women at risk of bearing FASD babies are munities where everyone has FASD, and fraught not only with complicated civil Aboriginal peoples active in work dealing rights implications but with the simple with the problems of people living with pragmatic fact that they cause alco- FASD insist that there are already such hol-addicted women to hide their preg- communities, colonialism will have suc- nancies from doctors and others and per- ceeded in its goal of infantilizing the sub- haps make matters go even worse for the ject population). fetus. But it is likely that a Cadillac ser- Radical social intervention is needed vice that turned pregnancy into a not only to reduce and eventually wipe queen-for-nine-months experience would out FASD but also to deal with the dam- voluntarily attract many otherwise desti- aged lives of the people who currently tute women to agencies that rewarded suffer from FASD, and their families, both temporary sobriety with treatment as a by birth and adoption. Most people do not real citizen. have the fancy salary and book royalties The dirty secret behind FASD, as with of the author of this review, and have nei- so much else, is class and race discrimina- ther the time, money, nor social influence tion, usually the two combined. In the US, to deal with the maze of difficulties that as Golden indicates, Native women are 33 children and adults with FASD face in the times as likely as the general population schools, courts, workplaces, and commu- 328 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

nities. FASD adults living in poverty are a Daniel E. Bender, Sweated Work, Weak living demonstration of the fallacy of the Bodies: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns and Poor Law legacy of “less eligibility” and Languages of Labor (New Brunswick: its comforting notions that those left at the Rutgers University Press 2004) bottom of the pile without help from the state will pull themselves up by their own FOR MORE THAN a century, successive bootstraps. generations of authors have penned, Janice Golden offers an historical ac- typed, and word-processed innumerable count of why it took until the 1970s for re- works, in Yiddish and English, about the searchers to recognize the impact of alco- immigrant Jewish labour movement in hol on a fetus, and the ways in which that the American garment industry. Daniel knowledge was used, abused, or ignored Bender’s new book is the latest contribu- in a variety of settings. But her book tion to this voluminous historiography. would be so much better if she had recog- Bender analyses “the United States’s first nized that the lives of those with FASD anti-sweatshop campaign,” (3) focusing and their families, as opposed to myriad on Jewish ladies’ garment workers in social constructions, are the centre of the New York City and the union they cre- story of FASD. She ends with a beautifully ated, the International Ladies’ Garment written set of scenarios (170-71) that cap- Workers Union [ILGWU]. ture the complexities of FASD. But few of Different generations of historians them appeared within the main body of have addressed the American Jewish la- the book. On a single day during the week bour movement from a myriad of theoreti- when I am writing this review, a young cal and political perspectives. Bender em- man in Winnipeg with FASD, whose par- ploys the theoretical methodology of the ents had complained that he lacked the linguistic turn, in its feminist variant. The 24-hour services required, was murdered, anti-sweatshop campaigns of the 1990s while another, in Lethbridge, was on trial shape his political perspective. Bender for a brutal murder. It is likely that a large maintains that Jewish women forced their proportion of the people who are doing se- way into an inherently male-chauvinist rious time in our prisons, perhaps a major- anti-sweatshop campaign, which conse- ity, suffer from FASD. One can quently collapsed under “the burden of over-determine the roots of FASD in colo- language.” (182) Bender’s employment nialism and capitalism, as I tend to do, or of the lens of gender enables valuable in- try to locate the phenomenon mainly in sights into the complex dynamics of gar- discourse theory, as Janice Golden does. ment unionism. But these insights, ironi- But there is little doubt that the costs to in- cally, are warped by the burden of dividuals and to society as a whole of the Bender’s linguistic methodology. alienated lives and alcoholic bodies that Bender’s most important contribution produce FASD, and then of FASD itself, is to break — or at least to re-excavate — are incalculable. historical ground. He is virtually the first historian in generations to dare to tread Alvin Finkel the polemical minefield of the Commu- Athabasca University nist-backed garment insurgency of the 1920s. This insurgency was a key episode in American labour, Jewish, and radical history. It was the missing link between the pre-1917 socialist Jewish labour movement and Jewish Great Depression radicalism, heavily influenced by the American Communist Party. Jewish “red diaper babies” were a dominant compo- REVIEWS 329

nent of the New Left of the sixties. Many plained the misery of the sweatshop in post-sixties historians, like Bender, them- class terms. They saw their oppression as selves stem from a Jewish radical family inscribed on their weakened Jewish bod- background. Perhaps precisely because of ies. This seemingly irreconcilable oppo- this, they have tended to avoid this sub- sition was resolved through male Eastern ject. The Socialist-Communist “Civil European Jewish immigrants and An- War” in the New York garment industry glo-Saxon reformers discovering a com- embodied everything America’s New mon enemy — Jewish women in the Left found distasteful about the Old Left. workplace. A “calm, rational vocabulary As veterans of the sixties settled into of scientific reform,” (78) centred on academia, the 1909 “Uprising of the workshop sanitation and the elimination 20,000” New York shirtwaist makers, the of gender disorder, replaced potentially first mass strike of women workers in explosive languages of class and race American history, became a favourite conflict. topic in the field of women’s history. But The role of mediator was played by feminist labour historians also shied away middle-class German Jews. They helped from addressing the aftermath, again per- create a Progressive cross-class coalition. haps precisely because of its gendered as- They also persuaded their Eastern Euro- pect. A feminist interpretation of the pean co-religionists that they too could “Civil War” might compel them to hail enjoy American prosperity by driving the Communists and denounce the Social- women out of the workplace and becom- ists. ing male breadwinners. They further per- Recent anti-sweatshop campaigns suaded their Aryan class brothers that have facilitated a “return of the re- Eastern European Jews could be profit- pressed.” The sweatshop discourse of ably uplifted in the American racial hier- Progressive era America returned to the archy. Through Americanization, and in general social vocabulary during the particular the imposition of American Clinton administration. Immigrant gar- gender norms, the Jewish immigrant gar- ment unionism is no longer merely a lost ment worker could be trained to accept nostalgic moment of American Jewish the “manual work which falls his lot.” history. It is once again a contemporary (39) As Bender neglects to point out, Ger- concern. This inspired Bender to man Jews played a major role in the gar- re-examine and re-analyse the often-told ment industry in this period. They owned story of immigrant Jewish garment union- the large, modern garment factories suf- ism. fering from competition from dirty, According to Bender, the cramped East-European-owned sweat- anti-sweatshop coalition that Jewish gar- shops. ment unionism embodied was created in a Jewish women garment workers did linguistic process. Its sweatshop dis- not passively accept exclusion from the course arose through a negotiated com- workplace. Led by the middle- and up- promise between the race discourse of per-class white women of the Women’s Anglo-Saxon policymakers and factory Trade Union League [WTUL], they inspectors, and the class discourse of the crashed their way into this anti-sweatshop immigrants themselves. The central trope cross-class coalition through mass strike of white middle-class sweatshop dis- action. They accepted a temporary status course in the 1890s was Jewish racial in- in the workplace, ending with marriage, feriority. Middle-class men feared that as the price of admission. But the strikes Jewish “comfort in filth” (37) would en- were “aimed as much at male workers and danger the health of middle-class women unionists as at employers.” (101) The un- buying clothing made by Jewish immi- derlying issue of the strike was the sexual grants. The immigrants themselves ex- harassment of women to drive them out of 330 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the workplace, or at least to establish a an ideal test case for this theory, because male monopoly over high-paid “skilled” before the Jewish immigrant wave, it had labour. been a female industry. But technological The success of the strikes created revolutions made craft skill much less im- something new in the American labour portant, and physical strength much movement — mass organizations of more. This made it possible for men to women workers. Neither the top union of- seize control of well-paid jobs from ficers nor the upper-class female social women, as Wendy Gambler notes in The reformers of the WTUL quite knew how to Female Economy: The Millinery and control them. But when women workers Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930 (Urbana sought leadership roles in the union, they and Chicago 1997). Bender fails to recog- were blocked by their own acceptance of nize the key role played by physical the sweatshop “language of labour,” strength because his analysis suffers un- founded on gender distinction. They were der the “burden of language.” According compelled to adopt “contemporary lan- to the terms of sweatshop discourse, guages of class, not gender, in particular, “sweated work” created “weak bodies.” Communism.” (103) But this new vocab- Therefore, “male garment workers could ulary undermined the cross-class founda- not rely on notions of muscular masculin- tions of the anti-sweatshop coalition, and ity to claim dominance…. Instead, male merely ended up bringing male Commu- Jewish workers grounded masculinity in nists briefly to power. sexual relations on the shop floor.” (109) Bender’s gendered re-casting of the Bender convincingly describes how history of Jewish garment unionism has sexual harassment was used to create a logical elegance, and sheds fresh light on gender monopoly over “skilled jobs” in dark corners of American labour history. the cloak trade, just as in other industries But he has to play a bit fast and loose with physical violence was used to create eth- the facts to make his schema work. nic job monopolies. But he overlooks the Firstly, his version has a major chronolog- obvious fact that the “Uprising” took ical defect. According to Bender, the place in the shirtwaist trade, not the cloak foundation of the ILGWU in 1900 was the trade. In shirtwaist only the new long cut- “culmination” of the male Jewish immi- ter’s knife, which Bender concedes re- grant struggle for unionization. (11) The quired “little training but tremendous “Uprising of the 20,000” enabled Jewish strength,” (207 n. 47) was a male monop- women workers to force their way into the oly. Well-paid, skilled women workers male-dominated anti-sweatshop coalition led the organizing process, as evident in that the ILGWU embodied. Unfortunately Susan Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl: for this schema, until 1909 the ILGWU Life and Labour in the Immigrant Gener- was a feeble shell of an organization, per- ation (Ithaca and London 1990). petually on the brink of collapse. The Bender’s evidence that rebellion “Uprising” preceded and inspired the against sexual harassment was an impor- 1910 “Great Revolt” of the male tant component of the Uprising is an im- cloakmakers that transformed New portant part of the story. But his own nar- York’s garment industry and created the rative demonstrates that this rebellion “anti-sweatshop coalition” Bender de- was primarily directed at supervisors, not scribes. fellow male workers. (113-14) Women Secondly, Bender’s focus on the role leaders either downplayed the issue of of sexual harassment in delimiting gender sexual harassment or cast it as something boundaries in the garment industry is committed by foremen, not by powerful but misapplied. Bender views class-conscious male union comrades. the idea of skill as a social construction. Bender ascribes this to the “burden of lan- America’s women’s clothing industry is guage.” He fails to see it as a conscious REVIEWS 331

tactical choice. For working women to de- fact, the ILGWU was ravaged for years by feat their primary enemy, the alliance be- internal conflict centered in the tween male bosses and male employees male-dominated cloak trade. This con- against women had to be broken down, flict was temporarily resolved on the eve not reinforced. Was direct confrontation of World War I through the demise of the with male workers really the best way to Protocol and the replacement of the previ- do this? Indeed, was not casting the issue ous apolitical ILGWU leadership by a new as one of class consciousness and union team explicitly identified with New York solidarity the ideal way to do this? Jewish Socialism. The Communist rebel- Thirdly, according to Bender, the Up- lion against the Socialists arose from an rising was directed by “elite and alliance between the revolutionary maternalist WTUL activists.” (119) The idealism of women workers with the core strike activists, including Clara cloakmakers’ rebellion against Lemlich the leader, were indeed WTUL cross-class coalitionism. The high point members. But they were also veterans of of the rebellion was the 1926 Commu- the Russian Jewish socialist underground, nist-led male cloakmakers’ strike, an members of the New York Socialist Party, event that fits rather poorly into Bender’s and officials of ILGWU Local 25. Their schema. backgrounds are traced in Annelise Moreover, it should be remembered Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: that if the real goal of the rebellion was to Women and Working-Class Politics in the place female faces in high places, as United States, 1900-1965 (Chapel Hill & Bender maintains, then this goal was London 1995). Bender is once again achieved. The male leaders of the insur- blinded by “the burden of language.” gency defected, were purged, or drifted Since the WTUL controlled the strike’s into deep obscurity. Bender barely men- “discourse” — i.e., its PR — Bender be- tions its central female leader, Rose lieves it ran the strike. Sometimes the me- Wortis. After World War II, she was re- dium is merely the massage, not the mes- warded for her party loyalty by being sage. placed at the head of the garment work- Lastly and most importantly, Bender ers’ union of her native Poland. Juliet Stu- casts the Communist-led rank-and-file re- art Poyntz, the theoretician of ILGWU bellion against the ILGWU’s Socialist of- health care initiatives for women, ficialdom purely and simply as a continu- (145-149) became the theoretician of the ation of earlier revolts against male domi- garment insurgents’ efforts to seize con- nance. Misdirected into a Communist trol of union office. After criticism by language of class empowerment, this Party leaders for “trade union opportun- feminist rebellion destroyed the ism” she rehabilitated herself, allegedly, cross-class anti-sweatshop coalition that by becoming a key player in Soviet intel- was the prize being fought over. Bender ligence operations in America, and disap- deserves credit for directing attention to peared under mysterious circumstances. the role of gender, which was indeed a key Clara Lemlich, the original leader, con- axis of conflict. But his monocausal inter- sciously accepted the temporary status in pretation of the “Civil War” in garment the garment workplace that Bender treats runs aground on the rocks of as a compromise with male dominion. long-established historical fact. She married, dropped out of politics, Bender depicts the “Protocol of raised children, and then joined the Amer- Peace” emerging from the 1910 “Great ican Communist Party and became its or- Revolt” as the embodiment of a ganizer of working-class housewives. cross-class coalition generally accepted She became the poster girl for the classic by male Jewish garment workers as the Stalinist slogan of “building the family as solution to the sweatshop problem. In a fighting unit for socialism” — and also 332 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

for CPUSA leader Earl Browder’s slogan maintains that the “Bolshevism” of fe- of “Communism as twentieth-century male dissidence represented a “new lan- Americanism.” guage of class power that contrasted with In fairness to Bender, it needs to be re- earlier languages of class ... that cast membered that factual errors and misrep- workers, not as the vanguard of revolu- resentations are traditional for historians tion, but as victims of vampire bosses.” of this supremely politically charged (157) Bender fails to realize that the “cap- chapter of American history. Bender is far italist bloodsucker” was the fundamental from the worst offender. All previous ac- trope of Russian labour radicalism, from counts have been written by factional par- the Jewish Pale to the Donbass coal tisans with axes to grind. Why should mines. feminist historians act any differently? The single gravest problem with Bender has provided a real service simply Bender’s version of ILGWU history is his by reopening this can of worms. The disregard of its roots in the revolutionary “New Deal” alliance between the Roose- Jewish underground of Tsarist Russia. velt administration and the CIO, which Classic accounts of the history of the Jew- shaped American trade unionism as it cur- ish labour movement usually ascribed the rently exists, was molded on the template explosion of mass garment strikes during of the “special relationship” between the Progressive era to the flood of Jewish New York Governors Al Smith and FDR emigrés, radicalized by the Revolution and “Jewish socialist” needle trades bu- and trained in trade unionism by the “Jew- reaucrats. If the “Protocol of Peace” was ish Bund,” which revitalized the move- the “dress rehearsal for the New Deal,” ment in the aftermath of 1905. The Bund then the “Civil War” was the dress re- does not even appear in Bender’s index. hearsal for the post-World War II red In the epilogue, Bender attempts to purge. And the ILGWU’s contemporary draw lessons for contemporary descendant, the linchpin of the anti-sweatshop campaigns from the “anti-sweatshop campaign” of the 1990s, ILGWU experience. But Bender accepts cannot be understood outside of this con- the cross-class-coalition framework of text. both the original version and the modern Bender’s “discourse analysis” of Jew- edition of anti-sweatshop coalitions. He ish garment unionism is seriously flawed does note the danger that contemporary by much too much attention to the Ameri- sweatshop discourse could drown out the canizing discourse of ILGWU official- voices of the actual workers. dom. He unfortunately has a tin ear for the Yiddish-cultural discourse of the immi- John Holmes grants themselves. It is strange that a University of California, Berkeley study of sweatshop language virtually ig- nores the “sweatshop poets” of the 1890s, who set the parameters of Jewish immi- Vincent J. Roscigno and William F. grant culture from their workbenches. Danaher, The Voice of Southern Labor: Bender reduces this rich, complex cul- Radio, Music, and Textile Strikes, tural experience to the sentimental sweat- 1929-1934, Vol. 19 of Social Movements, shop victimization discourse of Morris Protest and Contention (Minneapolis and Rosenfeld. London: University of Minnesota Press Bender adorns the cover with a strik- 2004) ing artistic depiction of what he sees as the central trope of Jewish immigrant IN THE VOICE OF SOUTHERN LABOR, class consciousness. It depicts a weak, Vincent J. Roscigno and William F. victimized Jewish worker drained of his Danaher seek to make a contribution both lifeblood by a sweatshop vampire. Bender to social movement theory and labour his- REVIEWS 333

toriography. With respect to the former, According to the authors, central to they regard theoretical approaches to col- explaining the great textile strike are lective activism that stress only “issues of three overlapping themes that differenti- grievance, union influence, or strike suc- ate it from earlier job actions. The coinci- cess and failure” (xx) as of limited use in dent expansion of radio broadcasting (and explaining the timing and character of so- listening) throughout the upland South, cial protest mobilization. Noting the the vigorous emergence of indigenous highly dispersed character of the textile protest music, and the new presence in industry, they explore “the question of Washington of a president seen as a genu- how processes relevant to social move- ine friend of working people gave shape ment formation are manifested across and cohesion to mill-worker activism. To space.” They conclude that it was the con- demonstrate this point, the authors care- fluence of indigenous culture, rapid tech- fully plot out the geography of rapid radio nological development, and changes in expansion in the late 1920s and early national politics that help significantly to 1930s, showing a close correlation be- explain the militancy and solidarity that tween the existence of outlets and the textile workers exhibited in the great 1934 nodes of worker activism. Station owners strike. It was only in the brief period of the and managers relied heavily on local tal- early 1930s that popular access to radio in ent, just as a gifted corps of mill-worker the South meshed with decentralized performers became available to fill air ownership of broadcasting to provide op- time. Since many of the most popular portunities for local musicians, many of singers and musicians were mill workers whom had roots in the textile industry and or closely connected to family and friends whose songs often called attention to the who toiled in the mills, their music reso- plight of workers. At the same time, nated immediately and powerfully in the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s radio-borne fire- textile towns and villages. Moreover, a side chats conveyed a strong sense of enti- high proportion of the most popular tlement to workers everywhere, nowhere songs, such as David McCarn’s “Cotton more so than in the impoverished Mill Colic” and the Dixon Brothers’ Piedmont villages. “Weave Room Blues,” spoke of workers’ The authors’ examination of the rela- grievances, singled out employers for tionship between radio and mill culture as criticism, and endorsed collective re- primarily reflected in music constitutes sponse. The sense that a new regime in their main contribution to labour histori- Washington, as personified by the charis- ography. Why was there such an explo- matic FDR, provided government support sion of broad-based worker-generated ac- for mill worker empowerment comple- tivism in 1934 and not before? Since mill mented this techno-cultural thrust to cre- workers’ grievances long predated the ate a powerful, cohesive mass movement great strike of that year, the explanation that triggered the mass strike. cannot lie in the simple facts of workplace In a spirited conclusion, the authors ar- mistreatment. To be sure, southern mill gue persuasively for the importance of workers had earlier waged significant cultural resources in the shaping of work- strikes, most notably in 1919-20 and at ers’ responses to working and living con- Gastonia and Marion, North Carolina, in ditions. Fellow sociologists will be able 1929. But before the massive, to judge whether this somewhat fortu- Piedmont-wide 1934 uprising, strikes had itous joining of cultural, political, and been local affairs. Now, however, a quar- technological forces constitutes a signifi- ter million or more southern mill workers cant contribution to the development of walked out, exhibiting fierce militancy mass movement theory. Social movement and region-wide solidarity in the face of theory, they sensibly argue, must include harsh repression. consideration of workers’ cultural re- 334 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

sources. And they are persuasive in hold- when in fact they mean the opposite. (64, ing that the combination of indigenous 103) Firm copy editing should have music and new technology helped to cre- caught these errors, thus permitting read- ate a climate of cohesion and militancy in ers to contemplate the authors’ contribu- the early 1930s. This point, however, tions free from distracting gaucheries. raises implicit questions as to how other configurations of popular culture and Robert H. Zieger technological development might con- University of Florida tribute, as seems to be the case today, to conservative patterns of political and so- cial activism. Paul Buhle, From the Lower East Side to For historians, the authors’ discussion Hollywood: Jews in American Popular of radio dispersion and its linkage with Culture (London: Verso 2004) grassroots musical expression constitutes their main contribution. The basic story of I WAS LOOKING forward to reading this textile labour relations and especially of book, and indeed it is encyclopedic in the 1934 strike is familiar, as are the limi- scope — a virtual who’s who of Jews, tations of Franklin Roosevelt, the New left-wing and otherwise, on stage, on the Deal, and the National Industrial Recov- screen, and in comics including, for good ery Act insofar as protecting workers’ measure, a few whom Buhle feels might rights is concerned. Also well established as well be Jewish, like Chaplin, and the in the historical literature is the cartoonist R. Crumb. I share Buhle’s pas- rank-and-file character of the textile sions for Yiddish, and secular Jewish cul- strikes, the ineptitude of the leadership of ture. The particular position of left Jews the United Textile Workers, and the living in a hostile anti-Semitic world and harshness and efficacy of employer and in revolt against the limitations of what state-conducted repression. Moreover, they saw as the ossified theocracy of a the authors do not inspire confidence shtetl life controlled by the rabbis and the when they confuse Section 7 (a) of the wealthy has contributed to a particular NIRA with the provisions of the NRA’s creative sensibility from the margins. Textile Industry Code. (102, 133) But Buhle begins his book with two big their careful examination of radio’s role questions: What explains the impact of in unifying otherwise parochial textile Jews on popular culture, and what is worker militancy adds an important ele- “Jewish” anyway? He spends a lot of time ment to the story of the great strike. on who is Jewish, and less on why it mat- The University of Minnesota Press has ters. I once had a husband who loved to not served these authors well. This book make his heroes Jewish, so he called the suffers from careless writing and copy ed- ballplayer Mickey Mantle “Mickey iting. The authors’ addiction to the pas- Mandell.” It seems that the non-Jewish, sive voice sometimes threatens to rob mill Yiddish-speaking Buhle has the same in- workers of the agency that they otherwise clination to not only inform us of the dis- herald. Lengthy block quotes drawn proportionate number of Jews prominent largely from mill workers’ oral histories in popular United States culture, but at the Southern Workers Project at the wherever possible, who had a left secular University of North Carolina do provide Jewish history. Like Isaac Deutscher in first-hand testimony but are not well inte- his essay, “The Non Jewish Jew,” even grated into the narrative. Misplaced mod- Jews who do not personally identify ei- ifiers and vague pronoun references ther with Jewishness or left-wing politics abound. On two occasions, the authors re- are, for Buhle, part of the picture. But mark that the importance of certain devel- Deutscher explained why rather more opments “cannot be underestimated,” convincingly. REVIEWS 335

This book seems to always be in a rush. in the 1950s. Perhaps the most Buhle is eager to tell us how much he thought-provoking contribution was by knows about everything, who he talked to the Israeli author Appelfeld, who made a or knows personally, and to draw political distinction between what he called Jewish connections with the left wherever he can. authors and authors of Jewish descent. He begins with three cartoonists — Appelfeld includes among Jewish writers Harvey Pekar, Ben Katchor, and Trina those like Kafka or Proust or Babel who Robbins. Two had parents who were con- wrote in European languages and did not nected with the communist newspaper, necessarily deal with Jewish themes but the Morgn Freiheit, and the third had a whose feeling and thought and creativity mother who read the paper. That’s nice, were influenced by Judaism. While there but I personally also know of at least one are many authors of Jewish descent, in his son of a Freiheit reader who became a view we no longer have Jewish authors. Wall Street stock broker and as far as I Buhle has so much information to im- know, Abby Hoffman’s father attended part that, unfortunately, he doesn’t take synagogue and did not read the Freiheit. the time to explain the connections which In passing, the description of Katchor, for him are self-evident, or to do more and the cartoonist’s work and life in the than mention in passing what kind of a introductory chapter, provide some Jew or Jewish theme we are dealing with interesting observations, such as the — what is Jewish, and what creators sim- author’s comment about Katchor’s ply happen to claim Jewish descent, or “semi-conscious questioning of what does it mean to have left-wing par- self-identity or self-location outside the ents. It gets confusing. Thus, in the chap- bounds of either religion or nationalism.” ter, “From Jewish Stage to Screen,” (12) we’ve got Irving Berlin, Rogers and Hart, I must confess I got a little lost along Gershwin, ARTEF — the radical and very the way as to exactly what his argument serious Yiddish theatre troupe, a page or was in his broader exploration of Jews in two on the cartoon character Betty Boop, various arenas of popular culture. Given the dame with the low-cut dress produced the personal connections he had with so by the Fleisher brothers, a discussion of many people in the book, it seems a lost movie moguls such as Jack Warner, Louis opportunity to not have asked his inter- B. Mayer, and David Selznik and a de- viewees directly — what do they see as tailed description of the wonderful Yid- Jewish influences in their work, or what is dish films produced in Hollywood in the their left-wing Yiddish speaking parents’ late 1930s, with reference sprinkled legacy in their own creativity? throughout to the devastating effects of The publication of The National Yid- the blacklist. I forgot to mention radio dish Book Center, the Pakn Treger (Book Jews like Eddie Cantor and Jack Benny Carrier) devoted a good part of its summer are in there as well and I haven’t even be- 1997 issue to various viewpoints on what gun to list the many other themes and peo- is a Jewish book, and what the contribu- ple that appear in this chapter. tors considered their favourite Jewish As Irving Howe had pointed out, Jews books and why. The choices included were in the right place at the right time, Delmore Schwartz’s In Dreams Begin Re- but for Buhle this is but a corner of the rea- sponsibilities, Franz Kafka’s The Meta- son for their strong presence in popular morphosis, as well as the popular pot- culture. As what seems to be further expli- boiler Amboy Dukes: a Novel of Wayward cation of his point, he goes on to describe Youth in Brooklyn. This was trash, ea- his meeting with the volunteer nurse in gerly and surreptitiously passed from the Bronx of the famous writer, Sholem hand to hand with the “good” “dirty” pas- Aleichem, whose death in the Bronx is ap- sages marked when I was in grade school parently significant to Buhle. The first 336 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

script for the film Malcolm X, Buhle men- Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Moun- tions, was written by Arnold Perl, the tain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal and For- black-listed author of “The World of getting in Guatemala (Durham: Duke Sholem Aleichem” performed in Jewish University Press 2004) Cultural Centers. This, for Buhle is not coincidental. “The connection has the IN LATE JANUARY 2005, six Mayan quality that shines like a beckoning North campesinos were killed on a Guatemalan Star.” (46) For me it doesn’t. His method, plantation; the campesinos said planta- he explains, “works mainly through tion guards had kidnapped a campesino analogy.” I enjoyed the many mini-bio- for stealing fruit from shade trees. A few graphies throughout the book, but I want days later his tortured corpse was found. the author to explain why the narratives The class hatreds embedded in this event, matter and what he sees as the linkages be- captured on the evening news with police tween them. kicking corpses, are as old as the history There is an affection and passion that of capitalist agriculture in Guatemala. Buhle has for the subjects in this book that They can be found in abundance in the is most appealing. He traces the enormous documents from the 1870s forward, in the creative contributions from the brief flowering of farmworker organizing Yiddishists of the Lower East Side in the in the 1920s, in the epic dictatorship of the first decades of the century to the Jews/ish 30s. Eating the fruit of the rich was legal- presence on stage, in film, in the ized during the nation’s only progressive Blacklist, in the development of comics as era of the 20th century, the October Revo- an art form, and the contemporary lution, before the rule of the planters reas- self-identified Jew. The book ends with a serted itself with a vengeance in the visit to the forgotten artist and poet, US-engineered coup of 1954 that opened Maurice Kish, in Brighton Beach and a the door to decades of death squad terror. note of notalgia for a Yiddishkayt that is After 1954 planters and guerrillas alike fast disappearing as the native speakers took these class relations as their guiding die off; but then we switch to Abe logic. Daniel Wilkinson’s acclaimed Si- Polonsky, a survivor of the blacklist and a lence on the Mountain unlayers this his- description of the films he made. Finally, tory, succeeding beautifully on some Buhle indicates that the connection is counts, while on others it remains a better about capturing “something of our com- reflection of Wilkinson’s journey than the mon dreams.” Buhle has more than journey of those with whom he spoke. twenty authored and co-edited books to Wilkinson, the Harvard graduate with his credit. I hope in the future he allows a scholarship to travel, is warmly em- himself the luxury of honouring his braced by a family of German forbears heroes by dreaming in slightly slower mo- who own a plantation in the heart of the tion. coffee belt. The author skilfully captures the Guatemalan elite, secure in their con- Ester Reiter viction that they have pulled themselves York University up by their bootstraps to become the guardians of the nation’s prosperity — “omitted from the story were the many ways the government intervened in the economy to help industries, companies, and even wealthy individuals.” (78) The woman who has inherited the plantation is troubled by the contrast between her fa- ther’s mares who give birth in well-lit lux- ury and the field master’s wife who goes REVIEWS 337

into labour in misery, darkness, and filth. showing up at their homes in her truck.” Yet her sense of solidarity only goes so (57) Wilkinson’s book will have made an far. “Tell them about cars,” she says refer- important contribution if young readers ring to her father’s workers, or “the sim- with the same inclinations think twice plest story, maybe just a story about buy- about how they enter warscapes. “Are you ing a dress in the city, they would be in related to the family?” the plantation awe.” (93) When those workers tried to workers wished to know. (61) claim some of her father’s land under the The author offers a wonderful portrait agrarian reform of the October Revolu- of the distance that separates the Germans tion, and in a later generation when some from their illegitimate progeny with Ma- joined the guerrillas, she believed that the yan women. Though one would have leftists had unleashed a reign of terror. wanted more from the perspective of the And she found it hardly credible that the children and their mothers, he garners military would commit atrocities. In her from his elite sources that the unrecog- dual life as the wife of a North American nized offspring cast their lot with the poor professor she defines herself as a liberal, during the Arbenz era. In retaliation the and in fact most liberals in the US respond planters generated vicious and baseless in similar fashion when invited to trust in accusations against them. They sexual- the respectability of the US war machine. ized these accusations — castrating a Says a more crass member of the planter bull, raping women — in effect assigning elite, “What are we to do with all these their own aggressions to those who chal- inditos blowing up bridges?” (214) The lenged their patronage. In miniature it question is only rhetorical; as he spoke, mirrors the manufacture of racist stereo- the military was wrapping up the closing types by the elite to vilify their mestizo stages of its genocide in which 83 per cent relatives, a practice in which they have of the estimated 200,000 civilians killed been engaging since the 1500s. were Mayan. The book is a sort of coming-of-age The author of Silence on the Mountain story, and early in his pilgrim’s progress explains in his courtesy call to the local Wilkinson visits the US embassy for a se- military camp, “I’m working with the per- curity briefing because his scholarship re- mission of the plantation owners.” It is an quires it. He leaves appalled by their lack entrée that amazes the son of a plantation of concern for his safety. Though the nar- book-keeper, who says of the owner, “she rative doesn’t mention it, the embassy in would never talk to me.” This those years was being pilloried by a group book-keeper’s son plants what becomes of US citizens for backing Guatemala’s the book’s central question — what ex- military command in torturing them- actly happened on this plantation during selves and their loved ones. As Wilkinson the October Revolution with the partition- documents, it is an army that massacres ing of the land in 1952, two years into the civilians in revenge for its inability to win presidency of Jacobo Arbenz? To pursue battles against the guerrillas, (250) an the answer the author shows up unan- army that, to cite just one example, had nounced to gather revolutionary history one of the people he interviewed “beaten and finds, “Here there was no excitement, and interrogated, then left overnight in a no nervous laughter, no glimmer of hope. tank of water. He had been able to breathe There was just fear.” (136) Those who en- only by standing on his tiptoes until morn- ter the Guatemalan countryside differ- ing, struggling against fatigue and fend- ently of course find a very different coun- ing off the bloated corpses in the water tryside, but Wilkinson discovers, “What- around him.” (127) Wilkinson went to ever they were hiding about the Guatemala precisely because he knew of plantation, it couldn’t help that they saw such things, yet in one of the opening vi- me staying in the house of the owner or gnettes the author and another foreigner 338 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

strike up a friendship with a soldier. They form had affected lives in their planta- join the soldier for a visit to his hometown tions. And by now I had grown tired of at the beach, which turns out to be an is- trying to make them ... when I saw Mario land where the villagers thought they had tugging at that kid’s hair, it had occurred come to steal children. The soldier pulls to me that my tugging at people’s memo- his gun and saves the gringos from being ries was not so different.” (149) From this lynched. The author’s choice of company point the book hits its pace. Wonderful in- strikes an odd note, as does his eagerness sights follow, though the author still ap- to see rebels erupt from the landscape, but proaches interviewing as a one-size- perhaps these doubts say more about my fits-all activity. suspicions of government soldiers and Another Harvard graduate, also a law- Rambo scenarios than Wilkinson’s judge- yer, who follows many of the same ques- ment. “From some wealthy Guatemalan tions but does so more perceptively, is businessmen” he gets the idea of inter- Jennifer Harbury, one of the US em- viewing a fellow Harvard graduate, Gen- bassy’s unwelcome guests. She married a eral Hector Gramajo, which leads to an- guerrilla (a campesino from the coffee re- other well-drawn sketch, this time of the gion) and unmasked CIA support for the small-town elites who have bilked the Guatemalan military in her efforts to lo- poor, and in the case of some like cate her husband’s tortured corpse. Gramajo, scaled the ladder of class via the Harbury sees the human weave of collec- military. tive struggle. For example where Self-discovery takes a new turn when Wilkinson argues “Here in Guatemala’s his motorcycle enters the picture, echoes coffee fields, employers met practically of Che but with a difference. Wilkinson’s no resistance,” (144) Harbury under- retreat is the plantation house — the stands that workers in the coffee groves owner never seems to be there since like have never been sheep and their resis- most, she has another home — and there tance would fill books; Jennifer he is free to sip beer on the patio while Harbury’s are available in English. Per- someone prepares his meals. His motor- haps what distinguishes the two is cycle becomes a protagonist — “no nature Harbury’s essential empathy with the walk could give me the same rush I got poor, whereas by contrast Wilkinson charging through on my bike, reducing seems appalled in the face of poverty: “we the continent’s roughest terrain [this is lit- would forever be foreigners in one an- erary embellishment] to a joy ride.” He other’s world.” (347) He erects this bar- goes on, “Just the man and his machine rier one suspects for purposes of protec- against the mountain. It was the thrill of ... tion, and remains very much within the well ... conquest.” (ellipses in the origi- traditions of his mentors. “What did re- nal, 153) He had just interviewed a slimy main strong among young Americans character named Mario who talks revolu- from expensive schools, however, was a tion and is rumoured to be a military intel- faith in knowledge — that it was attain- ligence officer. Offering to show the au- able and that attaining it was good — that thor poverty, Mario had barged into a a person could go anywhere, get to know campesino home with Wilkinson in tow, the people there, document their situa- interrupting the parents, half-clad, to in- tion, and so help improve it.” (197) Such a spect their malnourished child; Mario stance — essentially it is charity — is of pulls out tufts of the child’s hair as it wails course offensive to many. For example in and the mother stands by paralyzed. the immigrant and refugee rights organiz- (138-139) Wilkinson beats his retreat to ing of the 1980s, Latino and African the plantation porch to reflect on the American organizers would often com- events of the first half of the book. “They ment on white university youth who had refused to tell me how the agrarian re- risked their lives documenting human REVIEWS 339

rights violations in Central America’s the image diffuses the horror, confuses it wars, but whose efforts frequently failed with the popular protest, when the night- to lead to any genuine reckoning with is- mare lies in the paramilitary response to sues of race and class in their own lives. In that protest. By this point the author has labour and the non-profit sector, the phe- already proposed that the foreign human nomenon led to a host of do-gooders; in rights community is the seminal force ca- academia the graduate schools produced pable of achieving justice in places like hundreds of young scholars who recast Guatemala, on the basis of his experience their forbears’ more evident allegiance to documenting the army massacre in empire, shifting the focus from US re- Sacuchúm, San Marcos. He believed he sponsibility and the ravages of inequality was the first to record those testimonies, to the realm of personal morality. While and while his presence was deeply appre- Wilkinson is wary of cross-border slum- ciated, local organizers had in fact col- ming, often he seems a prisoner of his lected voluminous detail. In the book’s training, firmly lodged as it is in European closing pages he revisits the idea: he says traditions that have guided generations of about a community that waged a success- colonizers and settlers. He says, “a talis- ful land struggle, “The key to Cajolá’s man of sorts for me in the years when I victory” lay in the fact “they had been was first discovering the appetite for ex- able to access people like me.” He is dead ploration” was a family heirloom, a coin serious. He has told us how he came to un- from the “World’s Colombian Exposi- derstand “the leaders of Cajolá had been tion” with “a detailed engraving of the ex- guerrillas,” (357) and one would hope this plorer’s ship, the Santa Maria.” (196) Ap- realization would invite a more nuanced parently his education didn’t broach the reading of the role of guerrillas in social acts of sadism that characterized the com- movements, as well as the relation be- mand of that particular explorer. More tween leadership and rank-and-file, but surprisingly, the oversight was not cor- this is not Wilkinson’s strength. rected by years of visiting Guatemala, a In the riddle he is trying to unravel — majority Mayan nation which served as the years of the agrarian reform on his the continental headquarters to protest the hosts’ plantation — Wilkinson leaves out power relations unleashed by the conquis- some of the more damning evidence from tadors; that campaign was in full swing the archives that he read. I had published during the 90s when Wilkinson was dis- it several years earlier in a book on covering racism in the coffee zone. campesino organizing in that region dur- Alongside his Santa Maria talisman he ing the October Revolution only because possesses others of similar provenance it was so dramatic, but almost excised it such as “Marlow on his famous quest into when I realized the family in question was the heart of darkness. Marlow hated lies. joined by marriage to the most senior US He hated lies, he said, not because he was academic writing on Guatemala, a gentle- holier than the next guy, but because they man known for his irascibility who in- possessed a taint of death. Telling history spired a Guatemalan intellectual to coin a is always a political act.” (305) Indeed. term based on his surname — However we are in the presence here of a Adamscismo — in reference to “the an- story line that requires a white hero thropology of imperialism” which a num- against a backdrop of natives. Exotic and ber of Guatemalan scholars as well as Ma- dangerous lands. The formula trumps re- yan leaders charge Richard Adams with ality. The German-Guatemalan planter cultivating. These are Wilkinson’s hosts. saw savages when Mayan workers While the author mentions the dirty work danced. Wilkinson sees “a circus in a hor- of the Central Intelligence Agency in ror movie” when students burn tires at bringing down the regime of the agrarian night to protest bus fare increases (119) — reform, (181) he does not mention that the 340 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

host professor’s arrival in Guatemala in- ers in the region, it should be considered volved providing his services to the US an act of terrorism.” (351) If writing his- government as their mercenary army was tory is a political act, here he joins the mopping up after the 1954 coup; the US Guatemalan right in one of its favourite anthropologist interviewed jailed orga- arguments. The issue is reduced to indi- nizers. His future wife’s family were vidual morality: burning planters’ homes staunch opponents of the ousted Arbenz causes them anguish. Guatemala’s land- and the agenda for democratic reform. owners are a tough crowd and I would ar- Such affiliations are the soil in which po- gue neither the rebels nor the planters litical loyalties take root. Inexplicably, thought burning the big house would sow Wilkinson gives the couple pseudonyms, terror; rather, as a guerrilla strategy it although they are instantly recognizable communicated revenge and among the and have never shunned the limelight. In elite it caused outrage. Aside from this the end I can’t help but wonder whether question of interpretation, Wilkinson’s Wilkinson’s gratefulness for their hospi- empathy for his host family pushes him to tality didn’t silence him on that same a more startling claim — the decision to mountain. Often when I was waiting for turn to revolutionary violence is terrorist. the bus in coastal towns I would see Context is everything: the guerrillas wil- Wilkinson and his motorcycle; once when fully destroyed property in a state that tor- he was walking he mentioned that a reli- tured hundreds of thousands of able source had told him torture was con- campesinos in order to preserve the plant- ducted by the military on his hosts’ plan- ers’ interests, a state that burned thou- tation and his quandary was how to inform sands of campesino homes with people in the owner. The fact was not unusual; them. Wilkinson invites us to equate state probably all of the plantations in that re- terror and rebel violence in Guatemala. gion functioning as military posts prac- Along the road that Wilkinson trav- ticed torture. But he chose not to include eled there lives a catechist nearing 90 this finding in his book. For an years old who never took up arms, though anglophone audience he has consciously most of his family did. He pushes us to or unconsciously whitewashed his host question the book’s understanding of fire. family and their property in order to paint “They kidnapped eight catechists. The them as planters caught in the crossfire — military commissioners would get an or- another common trope that extracts the der from the army and they would pull good fortune of the wealthy from the them out of their homes at night. For a nexus of class relations he had earlier de- year we slept in the underbrush, leaving at scribed so well. dusk with the whole family, the children In Latin America, even a significant were still little. One day we had just left portion of the centre believes there is dig- and hidden, just that far away, when they nity in people taking up arms to end tyr- arrived, they thought we were inside and anny. Yet many on the left in the United they doused the house with gasoline then States argue there is never any justifica- set it on fire, yelling — They’re all going tion for violence. Perhaps pacifism offers to die, they’re dead! — You know some- comfort in the belly of the beast, a dis- thing, we were nothing more than animals avowal of complicity. Wilkinson finally for them, that’s right, animals” (my taped finds out who among the guerrillas burned interview). his hosts’ original plantation home in the The author does not really touch the is- years before he arrived. “Silverio may sue of killing in the name of revolution, have been fighting for the welfare of Gua- clearly a distinct order of violence from temala’s poor when he set the house on torching property; the one example he fire. Yet, to the extent that this act of vio- lays out at length is told as a tragic love lence was intended to terrify the landown- story. Three per cent of the civilian dead REVIEWS 341

were military commissioners or people right now are working with your children involved in the death squads who were ex- in the harvest, on that day you have the ecuted by the guerrillas. Some 93 per cent right to say to us, — Bishops, you have died at the hands of the right. The man he turned traitor to the faithful. —” Where calls Silverio who burned his hosts’ plan- David Stoll gives voice to Guatemalan tation turned to clandestine organizing campesinos recruited by the military pro- years before the war started because the ject, Daniel Wilkinson tries but fails to army had unleashed a wave of assassina- see the collective struggle named by the tions, and in particular, tortured the direc- bishop. Wilkinson tells us, “It took four tor of the local school for “calling a meet- decades of violence to stamp out what the ing to raise the level of education” (my Agrarian Reform had created — the com- taped interview). During this period — mitment to the future that those men had which the planters remember as a time of shared, the belief that they could trans- peace — hundreds of labour organizers form their nation.” (344) As a symbol of were systematically kidnapped, then left this hopelessness he paints a bleak future with their eyes gouged out or other un- for a cooperative of former guerrillas who speakable injuries. Many of their children had just bought an abandoned plantation. embraced armed resistance. Those who (349) That community has since built subscribe to the mainstream of human houses and infrastructure collectively, rights discourse would say that by doing and won fair trade contracts for organic so, the guerrillas became the evil they de- coffee in the thick of one of the worst plored. downswings in world market prices in At the risk of raising hackles, I would modern memory (my interviews). suggest this is a more elegant and evasive Through their fair trade ties, they are rendering of David Stoll’s famous thesis building a marketing network for other that criticizes armed actors on the left (he campesino producers and in the meantime singles out Che, Nelson Mandela, and they have provided schooling for youth Rigoberta Menchú). Stoll argues that the from neighbouring plantations as well as turn to arms by campesinos was and al- their own children, in a nation where pub- ways will be flawed, and that it is, un- lic schooling is more an aspiration than a avoidably, the work of elite ideologues. reality. Perhaps Wilkinson’s point of de- Both of these propositions crumble on parture prevents him from trusting the in- closer inspection — of the archives, of the sane determination that has always in- memories of campesinos who dared orga- formed the collective actions of the poor. nize, and of the record of actions taken To offer another example, the faceless from 1944 forward, the year in which the wife of one of his main sources (a former poor began to dismantle the injustices that guerrilla commander running a restau- find their symbol in the burning of planta- rant) is now organizing Mayan and tion houses. Their organizing in San campesina women across the region to Marcos long preceded the agrarian re- end violence and build a livable economy form. Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini under- (my interviews). In the book her husband lined the point recently when he said to mentions she was the first female combat- thousands of campesinos gathered to pro- ant to join the rebels, but the author does test open-air mining in San Marcos, in ref- not pursue the clear invitation to hear her erence to those on the right who are accus- story — it would have taken him to the ing him of inciting the Indigenous to vio- murder of her father for campesino orga- lence, “The politicians haven’t realized nizing in the 1960s, the murder of union that you are the ones making the demands. organizers in the factories where she Hear me well, the day that we are not worked in the capital in the 1970s, the walking alongside the poorest among founding principles of anti-racism in the you, the humblest, the canecutters who nascent guerrilla struggle led by her un- 342 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

cle, and her understanding as a mother of that such ideas have vanished and more- three daughters that “We were trying to over, he charges the guerrillas with con- change things not just for our own chil- tributing to their demise. As so often dren, but for all children.” In conversation happens in the analyses of US intellectu- she is an utter cynic — about gains in als, they obscure as much as they reveal. women’s rights for example — but her ac- tions have led to such changes as the crim- Cindy Forster inal prosecution of guerrillas who beat Scripps College, California their wives, joint male and female title to property, and an equal wage for women coffee pickers in the community of Douglas Hay and Paul Craven, eds., Mas- ex-rebels (her name which she is happy to ters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain have known is Aurora Gives Tambríz). and the Empire, 1562-1955 (Chapel Hill The elderly campesino who escaped and London: University of North death by fire (he requests anonymity) de- Carolina Press 2004) scribes what he understands to be the abiding dilemma in a way that would IN OCTOBER 1910, fifteen men were surely annoy Wilkinson’s hosts. “Our co- charged with a breach of the Master and operative was born out of the work of the Servant Act in Alberta. They had been church to end poverty in the early 1970s. I hired by the firm of Foley, Welch, and saw the homes of the rich there in Guate- Stewart in Wolf Creek to work as team- mala City, you can still see them. sters and labourers on a section of the Twenty-story buildings for the politi- Grand Truck Pacific Railway then under cians, the government employees, while construction. The accused were part of a for us [gesture for nothing]. One starts to contingent of 140 men who had come see why we live like we do. So God said west from Winnipeg, but on arrival in Al- one day, in Beatitudes, — That’s enough, berta they refused to work on the terms no more! They’ve eaten the fattest sheep specified by the contract they had signed. of my people, they’ve taken the best milk. In court, each man was charged with “ne- No more! My poor little sheep are com- glect[ing] to perform his duties when re- ing, and the rich, just wait [gesture that quested to do so by the command of his they will be attacked with rifles]. — Ahh, master,” and upon being found guilty was it’s written, it’s the word of God. And offered the option of a ten-dollar fine or what are those in power going to do? They fourteen days in jail. rule, they rule. As for us, for talking a lit- I gave this small episode little consid- tle, they want to take our lives. Allah, they eration when I came across it a few years want to [gesture for slit our throats].” The ago while researching vagrancy in Al- catechist is describing the present as well berta. In this respect I was in good com- as the past. Across Guatemala, organizers pany, for any mention of the Master and are insisting that the homicides of today Servant Act is notably absent in most Ca- bear everything in common with those of nadian reference books, survey texts, or the 1970s — that they are not the work of even more specialized works on labour or common criminals. Since 1999, over 50 legal history in Canada. Judy Fudge and human rights defenders have been killed. Eric Tucker’s recent Labour Before the In this regard Wilkinson fails us. Silence Law, for example, contains a solitary ref- on the Mountain, a book of frequent erence to the legislation. Indeed, as Bryan beauty, renders invisible ongoing histo- Palmer notes in Working Class Experi- ries of organizing on Guatemala’s planta- ence: Rethinking the History of Canadian tions — campesinos who continue to act Labour, 1800-1991 (1992), by the time in “the belief that they could transform that trade unions were formally legalized their nation,” even while the author insists in 1872, the Master and Servant Act was REVIEWS 343

already “an anachronistic Act, and the of the evolution of the Master and Servant class relations it tried to keep alive were a Act in Britain between 1562 (the date of thing of the past.” (109) the Elizabethean Statute of Artificers) That might be so, but as the sixteen es- and 1875 (the Employers and Workmen says in Masters, Servants, and Magis- Act, which effectively decriminalized trates in Britain and the Empire, employment offences). Christopher 1562-1955 clearly demonstrate, for al- Tomlins, Jerry Bannister, and Paul Cra- most half a millennium the Master and ven discuss the enactment and enforce- Servant Act — in its numerous and vari- ment of Master and Servant legislation in ous incarnations — was at the heart of the its North American context, from the late origins, rise, and eventual decline of the 16th to early 20th centuries, while Mi- British Empire. First enacted in the wake chael Quinlan offers a useful contrasting of the Black Death in the mid-14th cen- and comparative study of similar legisla- tury as a reaction to the resulting labour tion in the penal colony of Australia. shortage and upward trend in wages, the Mandy Banton’s essay on how the Colo- Master and Servant Act went on to be- nial Office attempted to manage “native” come one of the cornerstones of the great- labour in the “tropical colonies” appears, est movement, colonization, and regula- aptly and symbolically, at the heart of the tion of labour that the world has ever seen. book, before the remainder of the contri- “From that point until the twentieth cen- butions focus on those same colonies. Be- tury,” note editors Douglas Hay and Paul ginning with Mary Turner’s analysis of Craven in their introductory essay, “the the transition from slave to “free” labour enforcement of employment contracts status in the Caribbean between 1823 and was almost entirely in the hands of the 1838 (possibly the pick of the book’s es- [gentry class] and their urban counter- says), we are introduced to the signifi- parts.” (5) cance of labour legislation in British Gui- Three enduring features of the Act, ana, South Africa, Hong Kong, Assam they explain, were enshrined in thousands and the West Indies, West Africa, and of separate statutes passed both in metro- Kenya. politan London and more than a hundred “Master and servant statutes were ev- imperial jurisdictions between the 16th erywhere the same, and everywhere dif- and 20th centuries. First, employment re- ferent,” Hay and Craven contend. “This lations were a private agreement or con- somewhat paradoxical statement is true at tract for work and wages; second, the leg- every level — applied, conceptual, even islation provided for summary enforce- linguistic.” (14) The essays bear out this ment of those agreements by local belief, too, spanning as they do not only a magistrates and JPs; and third, a worker’s vast geographic territory over several breach of his or her agreement became a centuries, but also the application of such criminal rather than civil offence, with legislation to different forms of employ- punishments including (depending on ment, from chattel slavery to indentured time and place) whipping, imprisonment, service and apprenticeships to “free” la- forced labour, fines, and the forfeit of bour. Added to this is the fact that not all wages earned. “Although their exact con- the authors approach the subject with a tours changed over time,” conclude Hay similar goal or emphasis in mind. That and Craven, “these were the elements that said, however, there is a core consistency colonial governments adopted, modified, to the essays in that they, more or less, or rejected in creating labor regimes share three main concerns. throughout the empire.” (6) First is the development of Master and The essays that follow more than bear Servant legislation itself in each particu- out this contention. Hay provides a lar jurisdiction, and the degree to which it sweeping but tightly structured overview was directed more by the perceptions and 344 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

interests of legislators in London or by new relief? “Distinctions of class, race, those of local legislatures. By focusing on age, and gender were coded into the legis- this point of tension, the essays throw new lation,” Hay and Craven acknowledge, light on the ties that bound the empire to- “and reified in differential rates of prose- gether. cution, conviction, and punishment.” (36) Second, the contributors distinguish Do the differences in experience, expec- between the enactment of such legislation tation, and response among the Empire’s and its actual enforcement. After all, stat- labour force — and these essays clearly ute books may tell us much about the con- confirm that there was a marked differ- cerns of officials, but little of how effec- ence between, say, the life of an employee tively those concerns were met. In the of the Hudson’s Bay Company and a plan- case of Canada, for example, Craven tation worker in the West Indies — out- notes that there was an apparent paradox weigh the basic commonalty of life as a between the state’s eagerness to “pass a “servant” in the emergent empire of capi- great deal of legislation,” on the one hand, tal? If the essays here do not quite provide and the fact that “enforcement was spo- any clear answers, they nevertheless dem- radic, conviction relatively few, and pun- onstrate why such questions are impor- ishments rarely harsh,” on the other. This tant and deserve our attention. They also contradiction is resolved, Craven sug- serve to remind that the broad transition gests, by the fact that “occasional exem- from slave to free labour, against the plary” prosecutions served as a “useful re- workings of the Master and Servant Act, minder of superordination and subordina- was not an unmixed gain. “Free status,” tion in a British society bordering the notes Turner, “introduced slaves to a dif- American republic.” (175) ferently calibrated but not less rigorous Finally, the essays share the belief that system.” (322) Or as Hay and Craven con- the law is “contested terrain,” and that clude, “Freedom to choose one’s em- while Master and Servant legislation ployer did not imply the freedom to re- might have been used to prosecute and main unemployed; if the master and ser- punish workers (as well as the unem- vant acts did not themselves compel ployed, too), it also provided them with engagement and the whip of hunger did the means by which to challenge their em- not suffice, then the head tax, land laws, ployers’ authority on occasion. Petitions or the law about vagrancy took up the bur- against employers for their own breach of den.” (33) contract (primarily related to wages) ap- pear throughout the book. However, these David Bright instances only serve to underline the fact Brock University that the law was weighted against labour in that employers, even when found guilty, did not face incarceration or physi- James Epstein, In Practice: Studies in the cal punishment, but only an order to com- Language and Culture of Popular Poli- pensate their workers with the wages that tics in Modern Britain (Stanford: Stan- were theirs by right, anyway. Yet it was ford University Press 2003) this very imbalance of the Master and Ser- vant Act, perhaps, that led to its eventual NINETEENTH-CENTURY popular poli- demise. Quinlan’s essay on Australia, for tics has long been the most dynamic and example, underlines how the legislation contentious subject within the historiog- served to aid political and organized resis- raphy of modern Britain. For much of the tance by workers in the 19th century. 1960s through to the 1980s there was, Is all this enough? Does focused atten- however, something approximating a tion to the Master and Servant Act throw consensus as most students of the period the rise and fall of the British Empire into accepted the New Left-inspired cultural REVIEWS 345

materialist approach, best exemplified by this was conceived as too simply emerg- Edward Thompson’s The Making of the ing from people’s direct confrontation English Working Class (1963). During with the material world and neglected the 1980s some of those schooled in this how it could be constructed discursively. method — notably Gareth Stedman Jones Thompson is also taken to task for believ- and Patrick Joyce — began to question its ing ‘experience’ led to the creation of a intellectual basis. They were particularly homogeneous and fixed working-class exercised by cultural materialists’ belief consciousness. There is nonetheless some that social being or ‘experience’ was the special pleading. Thompson’s material- primary influence on consciousness and ism is, for example, described as “ambiv- almost ineluctably led to class feeling. In- alent,” although it is striking, in retro- stead, and in a variety of ways, detractors spect, how much he shared with those claimed ideas, texts, or ‘discourse’ struc- crude materialists attacked by himself tured consciousness. Those who took this and others in the New Left after 1956. ‘linguistic turn’ consequently questioned Most obviously, while Epstein is correct the importance of class identity to manual to note that Thompson was interested in workers and stressed the importance of using a wide variety of texts to make his political projects other than socialism – case, he nonetheless read them informed the most important of which was, they be- by the same prior intent: to seek out ex- lieved, radical liberalism. pressions of class sentiment. This collection brings together six of Epstein discusses the work of Stedman James Epstein’s key articles and chapters Jones and Joyce in two discrete chapters. published since 1986, that is since the lin- The former’s 1983 essay on Chartism was guistic turn had been taken, two of which the first clear sign that there was trouble (along with the introduction) take an in store for cultural materialists, as there overtly theoretical tack while four put his Stedman Jones stressed the importance of ideas into practice. Readers will be famil- political language — rather than social iar with Epstein’s work on popular radi- and economic developments — to the calism and if the collection simply movement’s rise and fall. This led him to brought together some of his previously characterize Chartism as more of a late published work it should still be warmly expression of 18th-century radicalism welcomed. The book, however, does rather than a proto-socialist, class-based much more than that. It represents a movement, as many cultural materialists pointed contribution to what Epstein re- were wont to do. Epstein takes issue with fers to as the “new political and cultural that conclusion by reasonably question- history of modern Britain” and aims to ing Stedman Jones’s emphasis on formal “renegotiate the ground” between cul- expressions of Chartist ideology and cor- tural materialists and those favouring dis- rectly claiming that, as political language course. As a result, there is much of inter- is inherently and deliberately vague, it est for those interested in modern British could be open to numerous readings. history as well as the nature of the histori- Thus, Epstein suggests Stedman Jones’ cal discipline as a whole. failure to study how Chartism’s many It is in the introduction and the first humble followers read the movement’s two chapters that Epstein maps out his po- public discourse meant he overlooked sition. How far this can be described as a how they gave it a class meaning. “middle ground,” as is claimed, is open to Epstein looks on aspects of Joyce’s doubt, for while Thompson’s shortcom- work more indulgently. This is partly be- ings are noted, Epstein often gives his for- cause even since Joyce laboured under the mer mentor the benefit of the doubt. He is auspices of the discursive approach he however not uncritical of Thompson’s consulted a wider array of texts than central notion of ‘experience,’ conceding Stedman Jones ever did, allowing him to 346 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

acknowledge the heterogeneous nature of happy to praise both Stedman Jones and working-class attitudes. Epstein nonethe- Joyce when he thinks they are right and less criticizes Joyce’s employment of a expresses any criticism in a guarded man- new master category, that of “populism,” ner, this collection will probably not lead to replace class — pointing to the paradox to reconciliation. In the introduction Ep- of a postmodernist doing such a thing. He stein cites Raymond Williams with ap- also disparages Joyce’s failure — despite proval (as had Thompson) on the matter his supposed firm grounding in social his- of language. Williams said language tory — to take due account of how the should be seen as but one element among populist language he describes was re- many in the structuring of human agency ceived, assuming (like Stedman Jones) but was not by itself constitutive: only that universal concepts were read in the idealists believed that. All the world is, same way by differing groups. In particu- then, Epstein suggests, not a text; there is lar, Epstein questions what he rather such a thing as context, something that is kindly refers to as Joyce’s “innocent” in- material, precedes the text, and condi- terpretation of Gladstonian liberalism, tions its creation and interpretation. Thus, accusing him of too readily believing it workers in the 19th century — for whom assumed the character its leading expo- ‘class’ remained a lived, real thing — nents claimed it possessed. could interpret the meaning of words to The author is, then, keen to highlight best reflect their material interests rather how far both men’s work has privileged than allowing themselves to be con- the singular, formal content of the text structed by words. However moderately over the many and various ways it might he may make this point, rather than build- be informally read. This means, Epstein ing a middle ground, Epstein’s work believes, they have both made a serious merely highlights a decisive difference of mistake in disregarding the continued im- opinion that looks set to match cultural portance of class sentiment within popu- materialist against linguistic turner for lar politics. He elaborates on the reasons some years to come. why historians need to place text into con- text, and how they may accomplish this Steven Fielding task in four chapters each of which tackles University of Salford differing aspects of the subject, all seek- ing to underline the vitality of class feel- ing and liberalism’s limited purchase. Regina Wecker, Brigitte Studer, and Perhaps the most important of these chap- Gaby Sutter, eds., Die “Schutzbedürftigte ters contrasts the significance of the role Frau”: Zur Konstruktion von Geschlecht of the ‘gentleman leader’ in early durch Mutterschaftsversicherung, 19th-century radicalism and Gladstonian Nachtarbeitsverbot und Sonderschutz- liberalism. gesetzgebung. (Zürich: Chronos Verlag Epstein suggests that what has often 2001) been an unpleasantly antagonistic debate has resulted partly because most linguis- THIS BOOK is the first to fully document tic turners wanted to exaggerate how dif- the debates and practices surrounding is- ferent their approach was to that of the sues of gender and work in Switzerland ‘founding fathers’ of cultural material- from the final third of the 19th century ism. They laboured under that obligation into the near present. It admirably fulfills only because Thompson had so obviously the aim of exploring the mutually interde- influenced their own earlier work. Ep- pendent development of gendered labour stein’s implication is that there is actually legislation within the structures and more common ground than the debate has contexts of larger societal discourses. hitherto allowed for. Yet, while Epstein is The research was financed through a gov- REVIEWS 347

ernment grant designed to shed light on is- of protective legislation, however, was sues of male and female equality and the monetary compensation for women while social significance of gender in Switzer- they were off work for this reason. The land, and explains the sensitivity of the contradiction between increased “protec- authors to the Swiss debates of the early tion” of women without concomitant fis- 1990s around issues of work, protective cal recompense either in the area of ma- legislation, and compensation for mater- ternity benefits or in other ways (such as nity. Drawing on both the historical and setting up school cafeterias) forms a ma- contemporaneous debates, the authors jor theme for the book. This general pat- demonstrate the continuity of the unwill- tern excluded women from certain types ingness of Swiss lawmakers to deal com- of (usually better paid) work in order to prehensively with the securing of protect their reproductive capacities, but compensation and the improvement of no serious attempts were made to com- conditions for working mothers as late as pensate them for lost earnings. 2000, when the book went to press, an un- In some aspects of labour legislation willingness that was based on often con- and attitudes towards working women, tradictory gender “norms” which the Swiss case fits neatly with situations developed historically. experienced in other European countries. The book is arranged largely chrono- Modernizing and rationalizing in rapidly logically, with the editors each taking re- developing white-collar work such as sponsibility for one or more chapters. telegraph and office work meant that in Wecker provides a sophisticated theoreti- areas where men (and sometimes men and cal framework in the beginning of the women) had once worked for reasonable book, inspired in no small part by the remuneration, the influx of women work of Judith Butler and the idea of “do- changed the perception and pay scale of ing gender” to explain the processes of in- the work involved. Legislation limiting teraction that have “naturalized” gender women’s work tended to extend over time difference and its manifold social conse- from proscriptions such as handling toxic quences. chemicals during pregnancy to proscrip- One of the most interesting findings in tions to any women working with such the book was the initial peculiarity of chemicals. As Wecker remarks, (244) ar- 19th-century Swiss labour legislation guments about protecting unborn chil- when compared to similar western Euro- dren or reproductive capacities were only pean legislation. Swiss labour legislation used for women. Men working with dan- tended to deal with the regulation of male gerous chemicals were protected through and female workers at the same time. legislation as workers, whereas women Rarely did such legislation involve spe- were excluded from certain work not as cial amendments intended to protect workers but for reasons of gender. In the women specifically. In the 20th century, final analysis, the discourse around pro- this peculiarity of Swiss labour legisla- tective legislation for women was part of tion began to fade, as both in practice and a process that created and consolidated in newer legislation women workers were gender roles, gender differences, and gen- specifically targeted with restrictions on der hierarchies. their freedom to choose certain types of The authors were all careful to use a labour, such as night work or work with variety of sources to support the narrative toxic chemicals. Earlier legislation had structure of the book, including numerous already stipulated a period of absence archival materials, legal documents, gov- from work during pregnancy and child- ernment publications, legislation, news- birth. This specifically female role be- papers, and magazines. The trilingual came the basis for later forms of protec- bibliography of secondary literature is tive legislation. Missing from these forms impressively thorough and international 348 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

in scope, thus demonstrating an in-depth countries, but are virtually unknown in appreciation of German and American de- Canada and the United States. For exam- bates on gender theory and past and pres- ple, Roxana Cheschebec writes about ent debates on “women’s work” by the Princess Alexandrina Cantacuzino of participants in this book. Roumania. The intellectual and practical It is unfortunate that there is at present work of Hertha Krauss, whose career no English translation of this book, as its spanned the US and Germany, is explored findings are likely to resonate with issues by Beate Bussiek. Jelena Stassowa of of gendered work appearing in the Cana- Russia, and Mentona Moser of Germany dian context. The book will be an impor- (whose achievements are noted here by tant resource for anyone interested in Eu- Elena Resch and Sabine Hering) were ropean women’s and labour history. both instrumental in the International Red Aid, a communist welfare organization Rosemarie Schade whose internationalism and anti-capital- Concordia University ism provides yet another example of orga- nized welfare, albeit one that resisted the bourgeois states of Europe who were also Sabine Hering and Berteke Waaldijk, building their welfare organizations. Kurt eds., History of Social Work in Europe Schilde takes the story of the Interna- 1900-1960: Female Pioneers and their tional Red Aid further than the biogra- Influence on the Development of Interna- phies of Moser and Stassowa by provid- tional Social Organizations (Opladen: ing national and institutional insights into Leske und Budrich 2003) this largely Moscow-dominated aid net- work which provided legal counselling, THIS TIMELY comparative study of social children’s homes, support for political work in a European perspective presents prisoners, and help for political refugees. papers from the conference “Designing It was at times a huge organization, with, the Social Sphere, a Challenge for Eu- for example, the German section number- rope” held in Mainz in 2001. It crosses the ing some 504,000 in 1930, of whom divides between western, southern, and 141,000 were women. (142) Dissolved in Eastern Europe (which are often treated 1941, little has been written previously separately) by also including contribu- about this organization for reasons that tions inter alia about Hungary, have to do with the politics of the “two Roumania, and Lithuania. The broad Germanies.” This gap has recently been chronological (late 19th and 20th centu- filled by S. Hering and K. Schilde, eds., ries) and wide geographic spread makes Die Rote Hilfe (Opladen 2002). In the for a useful overview of developments in west, its image was tainted by its pur- social work under vastly different politi- ported connection to the Red Army Fac- cal regimes and diverse social and cul- tion of the 1970s and 80s, and in the East it tural conditions. The work is an excellent was neglected because many of its mem- introduction for English speakers to the bers fell victim to Stalinist purges. The in- relatively inaccessible world of studies in clusion of this highly important and Eastern and Southern Europe, and thus gravely neglected topic serves to remind fills an important gap in our knowledge of the reader of the extraordinarily wide international social work. range of charitable activities women were There are several approaches to the engaged in during the 20th century. area of social work represented here. A Two final areas of the book deal with large part of the book is devoted to intro- the challenges and sources of archival re- ducing the biographies of women who search; there are also portraits of some of were crucial in the development of wel- the most important archives and their fare and social work in their respective holdings in this area of study. The book REVIEWS 349

ends with portraits of the authors and in- ment have all left their mark on a belea- formation about the “Network for Histori- guered and shrinking labour movement. cal Studies of Gender and Social Work” At the same time that national unions are which grew out of the Mainz conference. losing traditional forms of bargaining The book is geographically and meth- power and political influence, they face a odologically diverse, so I will limit my- new set of challenges as they seek to build self to presenting just a few issues which institutions that will support collective were of particular interest to me. It was a representation in an increasingly inte- pleasure to see the internationalization of grated Europe. It is not quite so easy to Canadian social theory in the article by find comparative analyses of how unions Mirja Satka, “Gender and the History of are responding to these challenges. Social Work: Biographies of Male and Fe- Deborah Foster and Peter Scott’s edited male Social Work Pioneers in Finland,” collection Trade Unions in Europe: Meet- which draws heavily on the insights of ing the Challenge has an optimistic title Dorothy Smith. The internationalization without presenting much new evidence of ideas and frameworks is also described that would warrant such optimism. None- in many of the contributions, as for exam- theless, its chapters provide a good road ple by A. Boet and B. Waaldijk in their ar- map of the various arenas in which unions ticle on the Dutch social work reformer are seeking to expand their role and en- Marie Kamphuis, in Kerstin Eilers’ look gage in social dialogue, suggesting that at the First International Conference of while European labour may not yet be Social Work in 1928, and in Elke Kruse’s successfully overcoming the challenges revisiting of Alice Salomon’s study of of integration, they are at least beginning 1927, which was the first attempt to create to face up to them. an international comparison of social The first two essays ask how unions work training. are restructuring their organizations to The book will be of interest to histori- more effectively influence pol- ans, social workers, and anyone with an icy-making at the European level. interest in gender and women’s studies in Waddington and Hoffman begin by ana- the 20th century. The contributions vary lyzing union efforts to engage in struc- somewhat in quality, but are solidly re- tural and policy reform. To this end, they searched and interesting in content and summarize recent shifts in union strategy, perspective. It is an important contribu- including efforts to recruit and retain tion in its field. members, union mergers, and new forms of international engagement. They are Rosemarie Schade particularly concerned with the current Concordia University lack of “articulation between the different levels of trade union activity,” or strate- gies that link European, national, and Deborah Foster and Peter Scott, eds., workplace activities. (60) Jane Pilliger Trade Unions in Europe: Meeting the offers a somewhat more optimistic as- Challenge (Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang sessment in her discussion of coordinated 2003) union efforts to address gender inequal- ity. She analyses the success of recent THE CHALLENGES European trade un- campaigns by the European Federation of ions face are, by now, well documented. Public Service Unions [EPSU] to improve Bargaining decentralization, market lib- the representation of women in deci- eralization, the growing dominance of sion-making positions in the EPSU and its multinational firms, the shift of employ- affiliate national unions, and documents ment from manufacturing to services, and successes in both raising awareness of the expansion of non-standard employ- gender issues and increasing equal oppor- 350 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

tunity provisions in collective bargaining. more enduring forms of solidarity. Foster While women are still underrepresented and Scott conclude with an analysis of in decision-making positions, she argues how the EMU’s policies have created new that these efforts at the EU level are mov- challenges for public sector unions. The ing national unions toward greater accep- EMU has become a central actor in the pol- tance of gender mainstreaming. itics of recent cutbacks in national wel- The remaining chapters provide de- fare state provision and public sector em- tailed accounts of specific EU initiatives, ployment as it pressures national govern- analysing the influence of the EU “as an ments to reduce expenditures. The actor” on national unions. Pochet focuses authors document different union strate- on recent developments in European so- gies to intervene, including social pacts cial dialogue, asking how debates over that seek to meet the convergence criteria subsidiarity and the open method of coor- and union resistance to austerity mea- dination [OMC] have “created a specific sures — each of which has had varying space and roles for the social actors.” (89) success. They argue that this example He shows that each has a different logic, raises broader concerns with how eco- and thus as the debate shifts from nomic governance will be managed in an subsidiarity (which conceives of a federal increasingly integrated Europe, given Europe with centralized actors) to the multiple and often conflicting interests in OMC (which is based on multi-level gov- reform. ernance with coordinated actors), unions The chapters in Trade Unions in Eu- are forced to change their strategies. In- rope together provide a thorough and stead of relying on European-level frame- well-researched contribution to the litera- work agreements, unions, employers, and ture on union responses to European inte- policy-makers must increasingly interact gration. The book is strongest in docu- on different levels to “Europeanize” na- menting the various obstacles this process tional and regional policies. Keller asks has thrown in the path of trade unions still more speculatively whether social part- oriented to the nation-state, providing the ners will be able to establish a more en- reader with a comprehensive historical compassing system of social policy and technical background on a wide range within this new framework. He finds that of related topics. The authors convinc- new structures are developing unevenly ingly demonstrate their expertise in the due to weak institutional supports, di- often complex relationships between na- verging interests, and the progressive tional and European-level policies and in- shift from substantial to procedural regu- stitutions. The scope of topics covered is lation, making it unlikely that social dia- impressive, bringing together much de- logue will develop into a more coordi- scriptive material in a relatively slim vol- nated form of European neo-corporatism. ume. The final contributions focus on two One theme that runs through the book European institutions that have received a is the growing need for trade unions to de- great deal of press in recent years: Euro- velop more integrated strategies that con- pean works councils [EWCs] and the Eu- nect their activities at the workplace, na- ropean Monetary Union [EMU]. Knudsen tional, and European levels. As a cata- analyses the relationship between EWCs logue of what unions are trying to do in and trade unions, arguing that disagree- this regard, it is an excellent reference. ments among national unions have lim- However, given the scope of material pre- ited the EWCs’ success. He finds that the sented, there is a notable lack of compara- new EWCs play a somewhat contradictory tive analysis or theoretical synthesis. The role, as they are dominated by unions and authors often combine general and some- yet primarily used to extend regional or times vague prognoses of what unions national bargaining rather than to build should be doing (i.e., improving coordi- REVIEWS 351

nation between different levels of union the impact of labour market regulation activity) with very detailed descriptions and institutional frameworks on the func- of strategies and challenges at these dif- tioning of contingent work in various na- ferent levels, without effectively connect- tional settings; and to consider policy ing the two. The distinct struggles of na- solutions to some of the problems raised tional unions over social policy outcomes by the extensive use of contingent work. fall into the background amidst the sheer (xi) As a global assessment, the book suc- volume of material covered, making it cessfully achieves these broad aims. difficult to draw clear conclusions about It is clear that national surveys of la- which strategies have been more or less bour forces consistently and systemati- effective. cally under-report and misclassify indi- These minor criticisms aside, Foster viduals working in contingent forms of and Scott have brought together a unique employment. Moreover, some countries group of essays addressing a range of is- are far less accurate in their identification sues that are clearly of growing concern to of contingent employment patterns than European trade unions. Raising more others. Under these circumstances, mak- questions than can be easily answered ing accurate readings of the size and seems to be part of the justification for growth of the contingent workforce be- this volume, and in this regard it provides comes a precarious task. In addition, mak- an effective jumping off point for future ing comparisons across countries is com- analysis. Trade Unions and Europe plicated by these sampling problems. should be valuable reading for both aca- These limitations are acknowledged and demics and practitioners concerned with addressed in this study in a manner that the challenges unions face in an increas- enables useful cross-national analysis, a ingly integrated Europe. significant achievement. A related challenge is determining a Virginia Doellgast common definition of the kinds of Cornell University employment captured by the term ‘con- tingent employment’. Ola Bergström operationalizes contingent employment Ola Bergström and Donald Storrie, eds., as any form of “employment contracts or Contingent Employment in Europe and work arrangements that, from the point of the United States (Cheltenham, UK: Ed- view of the user, could be terminated with ward Elgar Publishing Limited 2003) minimal costs within a predetermined pe- riod of time. This includes employees THIS VOLUME offers a wealth of infor- working on limited duration contracts mation and analysis on contingent em- (LDCs) or working through temporary ployment and provides an invaluable work agencies (TWAs).” (1) This is, at one resource to scholars, students, and pol- and the same time, a rather open yet limit- icy-makers interested in this expanding ing definition. Various authors in the vol- segment of the labour market. The book ume use shifting boundaries respecting consists of nine chapters including whom they include as part of the contin- in-depth examinations of six countries — gent workforce. For example, in some of the UK, Sweden, Spain, Germany, the the chapters self-employed workers hired Netherlands, and the USA — as well as by a firm for a defined task or time period chapters devoted to exploring contingent are included while other contributions ex- employment from a more comparative clude such self-employed individuals. To and conceptual vantage point. The goals some degree these differences are a mani- of the study are to analyse the increased festation of differently structured labour use of contingent work in a number of ad- markets and how national statistics are vanced western democracies; to explore collected as much as the individual 352 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

choices of the researchers. In the case of widespread use helps to lower unemploy- the chapter on the Netherlands, for in- ment rates. But conversely and simulta- stance, some self-employment work ar- neously it increases employment rangements are included in their contin- insecurity, and lowers wages and bene- gent work analysis, while in the chapter fits, thus contributing to the overall di- on Sweden they are not. More impor- minishing of the quality of the job stock. tantly, however, other forms of This volume tackles these questions di- flexibilized nonstandard employment are rectly. Its conclusions are that contingent largely excluded from the volume’s anal- forms of employment expand rapidly dur- ysis, thus limiting its reach. ing periods of high unemployment. This In one of the most satisfying chapters, may in fact serve to create more employ- “Contingent employment in the UK,” ment opportunities, of a particular type, Surhan Cam, John Purcell, and Stephanie in tight labour markets. Interestingly Tailly examine this more narrowly cast enough, however, there is evidence from grouping of “contingent workers” but the country case studies that once eco- they do so within the broader context of nomic recovery occurs and unemploy- the growth of ‘other’ forms of flexibilized ment levels fall, the size of the contingent work like part-time and own account workforce does not significantly decrease self-employment. They adopt an explicit in size. This is consistent with a more gen- political economy orientation that links eral pattern where restructuring opens up the rise of Thatcherite driven political and space for the displacement of standard public policy shifts with neoliberal eco- employment — permanent full-time jobs nomic and civil society developments and — by other forms of flexible employ- radical labour market restructuring. This ment. Each successive period of restruc- holistic approach serves to ground our un- turing since the 1970s has resulted in a derstandings of the strategic place that higher plateau in the proportion of the la- contingent work has come to occupy in bour force occupied by nonstandard economies featured by high unemploy- work. This has occurred to such an extent ment and market-oriented deregulation. that today there are many countries where It must be said that at times it is easy to flexibilized types of work have so eroded get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of full-time jobs that they have become the statistical and public policy development de facto new work norm. information presented. While the wealth With respect to employment quality, of empirical evidence on contingent em- the studies are in agreement that pay and ployment and its governance is valuable benefit levels are lower and job security, in its own right, it is easy to lose the cen- by its very nature, far less for contingent tral lines of argument in a forest of facts workers than standard workers. In this re- and figures. Consequently, the volume gard the flexibility brought by contingent would have benefitted from a stronger in- work is primarily a flexibility that is of terpretive thrust with rather less dedica- greater benefit to employers than work- tion to excessive detail. The British case ers. The volume also observes that state study chapter, once again, offers a wel- regulation around contingent work can come antidote to this tendency for while it make an important difference in improv- is rich in empirical detail the political ing the wages, benefits, and job security economy focus of its analysis ties to- provisions for these workers. In this re- gether what could otherwise be simply a gard TWAs can play a key role. TWAs can dense rendering of ‘the facts.’ offer a point of longer term employment There are a number of advantages and attachment for the workers, and workers disadvantages that contingent work is in such settings can be more easily union- said to bring with it. The most important ized and regulated by the state to the bene- positive attribute is the claim that its fit of the employees. TWAs are not with- REVIEWS 353

out their problems in terms of the contin- Sweden (because of high trade union den- gent employment relationship, however. sity and the regulation collective bargain- For while they can improve many aspects ing brings) are the most regulated with the of employment quality they also intro- Netherlands and Germany falling in be- duce the complication that workers have tween. It is clear that in the cases of more relationships with two employers at the regulated labour markets stronger mea- same time — the agency and the employer sures of protection are extended to contin- the worker is contracted out to. With re- gent workers. Storrie contends that spect to issues like health and safety the greater use and regulation of contingent existence of dual employers has made it work through TWAs would be the best difficult to determine employer responsi- way of achieving a better balance be- bility in cases of work-related accidents tween the interests of employers and em- and ill health. ployees. Nonetheless, there is recognition Another central issue that the volume that contingent work by its nature is a perceptively raises is the problem of highly desirable form of employment for ‘training deficits’. Firms with no capital because of the employer-friendly long-term commitment to workers have flexibility it introduces, especially with little incentive to invest in their human respect to employment security. The capital development. In fact there is a flexibilities offered by contingent em- strong disincentive as such investments ployment create power asymmetries that are likely to benefit competitor firms ea- are decidedly to capital’s benefit and ger to poach ‘trained’ flexible workers. A while regulation may help to mitigate labour market that is more and more char- their most negative effects on workers, it acterized by the use of contingent workers is not capable of eliminating the disad- is also one that under-utilizes the full vantages to workers altogether. range of skills of its existing workforce. Moreover, it creates polarization in the la- John Shields bour market between an ever shrinking Ryerson University number of core workers permanently at- tached to firms that receive employer sponsored training and an expanding Russell Muirhead, Just Work (Cam- army of flexible workers who do not. This bridge, MA: Harvard University Press dynamic runs against the stated logic of 2004) neoliberal policy that purports that human capital investments are essential to the THIS BOOK has a catchy title — one success of modern economies. which promises the reader an interesting In the final chapter of the volume Don- approach to analysing and understanding ald Storrie poses the key policy question, contemporary work issues. Regrettably, namely: can employer demands for in- the author does not deliver on this prom- creased levels of flexibility promised by ise. contingent work arrangements be recon- The author approaches the issue of ciled with worker desires for expanded work primarily from an individualist per- regulation of contingent work to improve spective. Work is a person’s life’s activ- job security and overall job quality? This ity, the vehicle through which he or she chapter provides a very good overview of seeks personal fulfillment and self-worth. the continuities and discontinuities re- From this perspective, the key challenge garding contingent employment trends is to find the right ‘fit’ between an indi- and regulatory developments among the vidual’s aptitudes and interests, on the countries under study. The USA and Brit- one hand, and the requirements of the job, ain are home to the most deregulated con- on the other. Fulfillment is individual. tingent work regimes while Spain and The relationship between worker and em- 354 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ployment is mediated through the opera- and internationally, to secure decent tion of the impartial market based on the wages, working conditions, job security, individual’s contract of employment. and dignity on the job receive almost no True, the author acknowledges, the mar- attention. ket does not always provide optimum op- In a 204-page book, unions are dis- portunities for such fulfillment. Sweat- cussed on one page and there is no men- shop labour and drudgery still exist. But tion of strikes or other labour struggles. Muirhead believes these kinds of restrict- The decline in US union density is dis- ing jobs are declining in numbers, while missed as the result of inevitable changes careers that offer opportunities for self- in the US labour market in which workers development and creativity have ex- have come to prefer the ‘benefits’ of mo- panded dramatically in the US in recent bility and job choice rather than the older years. In developing his argument, the au- — and outdated — approach of lifetime thor draws selectively on a number of dif- employment with a single employer. The ferent philosophical perspectives on following quotation gives a sense of how work, citing the contributions of political the author approaches this issue. philosophers including Aristotle, Adam “Working life today is less likely than in Smith, Karl Marx, and John Rawls. An en- the past to be mediated by binding affilia- tire chapter is allocated to Betty Friedan’s tions with institutions like unions and views of the impact of work on women. large institutions. Individuals have a Muirhead examines work from various more immediate relationship to their job, points of view, both descriptive and nor- to the market and to the risks that markets mative. Work is conceived of in terms of impose. The decline in unions since 1950, necessity — the necessity of earning a liv- for instance, has been profound. Al- ing. It is also conceived of as the counter- though most people approve of unions, balance to leisure. And it is examined in now only 14 percent of those in the labour terms of its role in providing a fulfilling force belong to one.” (39) and creative way of living where the ‘fit’ After making this observation, the au- is a good one. thor simply moves on to other issues. Muirhead’s book does not challenge Why unions are in decline despite contin- the status quo in any significant way. Cap- uing “approval” of most people is of little italist organization of work (described by interest. The question of what the decline Muirhead as simply the impartial opera- in union density means for most working tion of the market) is assumed to be the people is not explored, nor is the link be- only viable approach to organizing a mod- tween this decline and the stagnation of ern economic system. Individual fulfill- wages in the US over the last 25 years, de- ment occurs within this framework — but spite a dramatic increase in output and in the framework itself is not questioned. Al- the income of the top one per cent of the though the book contains an extensive, if population. In short, there is no connec- selective, discussion of the approach of tion between work and class. There is also various philosophers to work issues, it is nothing about the relationship between strangely devoid of the history of work- working-class movements and the politi- ers’ collective struggles. In this respect it cal sphere, either from a reformist or a is fundamentally ahistorical. revolutionary perspective. It is rather as if Surprisingly, the author largely ig- nobody thought that politics had anything nores the long history of working-class to do with employment relationships. struggle to counter the abuses of capital- The role of the state, outside of what ism and to establish greater collective, the author views as failed Marxist states, democratic control over the organization is seen as largely irrelevant to the issue of of work. The enormous efforts histori- finding the right ‘fit’ between individuals cally of working people, both in the US and their work. There is no discussion of REVIEWS 355

such issues as employment standards, just work can say nothing about strikes health and safety regulations, or even and devote only two brief references on rights such as freedom from discrimina- one page to unions. It is a discussion of tion or harassment at the workplace. One work from which workers are absent. is left to infer that whatever these stan- dards are and how — despite their obvious John Calvert weaknesses — they came to be imple- Simon Fraser University mented in the first place is of little impor- tance to workers. Rather, in a modern lib- eral democratic society, all these issues Andrew Ross, No Collar: The Humane are resolvable through individuals exer- Workplace and Its Hidden Costs (Phila- cising choice in their selection of employ- delphia: Temple University Press 2004) ment opportunities. While a book analysing contemporary MUCH PUBLIC and academic discussion work issues does not necessarily need to about the workplace has in recent years provide solutions to the problems it iden- focused upon the information technology tifies, it would have been helpful if the au- industry. Workers in this sector are often thor had indicated what should be done thought to work in environments that are about some of them. Instead, the book is vastly different from workplaces outside largely descriptive. The evolution of the of IT, and otherwise to enjoy unique per- market economy will, according to the au- quisites and benefits. Andrew Ross seeks thor, continue to shape and reshape work. to reveal more about the functioning of We can observe what it does to work, but the no-collar workplace, as he terms the we are only observers: it is not our role — information technology work environ- or rather the role of workers — to attempt ment, in No Collar: The Humane Work- to reshape the market or take control of place and its Hidden Costs. Ross is a the work process. To the extent that there professor in the American Studies pro- are problems, these can be addressed by gram at New York University who pro- individuals focusing more attention on vides many insights into the IT ensuring that they get the right ‘fit’ be- workplace. He reveals that the no-collar tween their personal aspirations and the work environment is not markedly differ- employment they choose. ent from any other work environment as it While the author implies that the book is ultimately governed by the quest for addresses broad philosophical issues profit and manipulates employees in or- which are universal in their application, der to achieve this objective. the perspective of the book seems to re- Ross concentrates his analysis on the flect a rather more narrow, US experience ubiquitous dot-com firms of the late in which market values are dominant, in- 1990s, specifically on two in New York dividual rather than collective values pre- City. The staffs at Razorfish and vail, unions are marginal, and the organi- 360HipHop felt the main impact of the zation of work is not an issue that is a le- new economy in the sense that their per- gitimate subject of political debate — or ceptions of working conditions were fun- government action. The concept of work damentally altered by it. Employees be- as a social activity in which workers as a lieved that some kind of improved if not group or class have a collective interest — idyllic society could be founded within a and an active role to play — is almost en- corporate structure. This belief was but- tirely absent from the analysis. tressed by pervasive corporate discourse While this reviewer unquestionably which suggested that the new economy has a different take on the role of work in enhanced the transfer of knowledge. Ross society, he finds it difficult to compre- includes references to Elton Mayo’s hend how a book dealing with the issue of Hawthorne studies to substantiate his 356 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

view that the new economy workplace ap- tion among some sectors of the economy, pealed to workers’ need for recognition although few of them were unionized. and fulfillment. Their managers were much more tradi- Ross conducted comprehensive field tional as they were anti-union, and pre- research for this study and witnessed first ferred to consider their workers hand how workers became entranced with self-employed. As the dot-com bubble the no-collar ethos, then ultimately were burst, Ross found that workers at places betrayed by it. There was little organiza- like 360HipHop even began to revolt tional hierarchy at Razorfish or against the proliferation of technology in 360HipHop, and there were conscious ef- their workplace as it was robbing them of forts by managers to blur distinctions be- personal contact. tween themselves and their staffs. There While IT employment is reputed to be was also little distinction between work personally enriching, we also see in this and play as the latter activity was consid- book that information technology is ac- ered to enhance the former. Office parties celerating the casualization of work. The were often raucous events that drew faith- seemingly amorphous definition of em- ful staff attendance while affording yet ployee utilized by IT managers has en- another outlet for creative expression. abled them to refer to anyone, regardless Razorfish and 360HipHop grew in size of work status or tenure, as an employee. during the expansion of the dot-com bub- This does not bode well for the prospects ble of the late 1990s and their informal, of unionization, as Ross notes, or for the seemingly nurturing work environments natural feeling of security that workers were sustainable as long as the firms were often need. solvent, if not profitable. The main weakness of this book is its The weakness with the no-collar sys- lack of both a clear methodological ap- tem, as Ross ably shows, was its vulnera- proach and a comparative framework. bility under duress. Initial rounds of lay- There are elements of both discourse and offs dampened employee enthusiasm for materialist analyses found throughout, motivational initiatives and morale but anyone reading this book may wish it quickly dissipated. Ross’s analysis is possessed methodological clarity. The in- strongest when he delves into the hidden formation technology workers whom costs of the no-collar workplace. He Ross so ably describes are not adequately shows that the fundamental hazard of this analyzed in relation to their peers in workplace is that it enlists workers’ blue-collar or white-collar occupations. thoughts and desires in the service of sala- We would perhaps learn how different ried time. The long hours worked by the their work is from blue-collar or white- staff, their total allegiance given to the collar work had some comparisons be- firm, and their subsequent rejection by it tween them been offered. There is consid- led staff members to feel a profound sense erable literature on the impact of technol- of rejection. ogy on the workplace, such as the work by Ross’s analysis broadens when he Harry Braverman and Graham Lowe, yet contextualizes the information technol- Ross did not reference it despite fre- ogy workplace within the urban environ- quently describing a process of work deg- ment. He refers to IT employees as “so- radation within the firms that he studied. phisticated consumers of space” and The penchant of no-collar managers notes that they prefer certain urban envi- for incorporating a cornucopia of loud ronments and experiences. (135) The music, long idyllic lunches, and quiet workers described in this book often came places for contemplation into the work- from disparate backgrounds but they ex- place is a continuation of a long tradition hibited agency through style and attitude. of the human relations systems founded in They expressed sympathy for unioniza- the early 20th century, but Ross draws no REVIEWS 357

comparisons between contemporary em- Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda, ployer paternalism and its historical ante- Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: cedents. The staff at Razorfish would Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Econ- have perhaps scoffed at the free sausages omy (Princeton: Princeton University handed out to employees of the Swift’s Press 2004) company in Chicago in the 1920s, but their meditation spaces and costume par- THIS BOOK fills an important gap by pro- ties represented the evolution of paternal- viding one of the first major research istic practices used by early 20th-century ethnographies of the high-tech sector, a employers like the mid-west meat packer. major component of the knowledge econ- Issues of gender and race are also omy. To date, serious social science re- found throughout this book, but do not search on the subject has concentrated on form a comprehensive part of Ross’s anal- documenting or questioning the existence ysis. Razorfish had offices around the of such an economy. This has primarily world, and also included significant num- involved charting the growth of the data bers of women throughout the staff and and information components of the econ- managerial ranks. Ross does not, how- omy and documenting occupational shifts ever, look into issues of sexual inequality from primary (agriculture and extraction) in the workplace. Instead, his proximity to and secondary (manufacturing) sectors to his object of study, and frequent reference services (tertiary) and information (qua- to workers at Razorfish as “fish,” sug- ternary) sectors. Beginning with the work gests that he may have subconsciously of Daniel Bell, analysis turned to the so- adopted the no-collar view of people as cial, political, and cultural significance of primarily being high-tech workers, rather these changes and with the critical work than individuals with many potential of scholars like Harry Braverman and identities. The staff at 360HipHop was Herbert Schiller, the debate was on. predominantly African American and the Amid all the discussion of skills and firm was founded by prominent media power, there was very little work that ex- personality Russell Simmons. The main amined the knowledge economy, and spe- crisis experienced by the firm was its cifically the high-tech sector, from the takeover by Black Entertainment Televi- perspective of the participants them- sion [BET], yet Ross does not delve into a selves. Specifically, the authors set out to discussion of how African American provide what they call “an empathetic and workers may have faced unique chal- rich description of the perspectives and lenges in the high technology economy. practices of the people about whose lives This book has much to offer despite social scientists made claims.” (23) They the shortcomings mentioned above. Writ- find dominant institutional and free agent ing about the information technology perspectives wanting because they ne- workplace seems to have in many ways glect the voices of the people involved. become the preserve of popular journal- The former, drawing on institutional his- ists and business academics. It is there- tory and social structural analysis, raised fore important that Ross has written a fears about the rise of a contingent well-researched, cautionary analysis of workforce in this sector, cut adrift from the IT work environment that is not deter- the hard fought social contract that ministic or unjustifiably celebratory. shaped labour and social relations in the Anyone reading this book will find that period when manufacturing was domi- the IT industry is not particularly unique; nant. The free agent perspective draws on nor are the workplaces operating in it. neoclassical economics and provided the intellectual grounding for the rosy glow Jason Russell surrounding the dot-com boom. York University 358 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Questioning these leading perspec- and redefining information. It is interest- tives or metatheories, the authors try to ing to observe that at the heart of the make sense of what the range of actors in knowledge economy, so little is certain the industry have to say. They therefore and so much is left to the interpersonal dy- aim to eschew general conclusions until namics of power plays and social con- the end of the book when they try to make struction. In essence, as they describe it, sense of the fieldwork. Specifically, they making deals amounted to a three-way carried out field work from 1997 to 1999 market dynamic in which whoever was in staffing agencies which place technical best able to control flows of information contractors in high-tech jobs, interviewed and definitions of key terms — contrac- 71 contractors across a range of high-tech tors, staffing agencies, or clients — fields, and finally carried out fieldwork at would emerge with the best deal. the firms that hire these contractors from After addressing the relationships the staffing agencies. Although Barley among these three key participants, the and Kunda generally stick to their bot- authors hone in on the contractors and tom-up approach, the book is not without their lives on the job. As they see it, itiner- a framework, however lightly applied. ant high-tech workers move between see- Opening with Shakespeare’s “All the ing themselves and being seen as com- world’s a stage”, they make use of a modities and as experts, and between the dramaturgical perspective that focuses on emotions of respect and resentment. In actors, roles, performances, and identi- this regard, they are no different from ties. This approach leads them to focus on other workers but with much less explicit the diversity of motives and dramas that attachment to a particular employer or take place in various settings. Rather than task. seeing a firm as a singular force with a The final part of this four-part book unitary purpose, as they claim most social shifts from a thick description of relation- scientists do, the authors concentrate on ships and reporting on interviews with in- the tensions that, for example, distinguish formants to mapping the meaning of this a company’s senior executives who take form of work. Specifically, they describe the long view and its hiring managers who three forms of capital that define the op- face “the everyday tribulations of manag- portunities and struggles of the contractor ing technical projects”. Similarly, the au- world. Contract work is about the devel- thors deconstruct the world of the staffing opment of temporal capital or the ability agency, distinguishing between the pres- to manage, control, enjoy, and trade time. sures to serve clients’ needs, provide Some of this takes place in social space — good placement service to contractors, what do you do with time, including down and meet their own performance goals. time? But it also takes place in rhetorical The book is particularly strong in ex- space. How do you explain the exigencies amining the deal-making process that of time, the multi-faceted “flexibility,” brings clients, contractors, and staffing for example, to yourself and to others? agencies together. This is primarily be- Contract work is also about human capi- cause it recognizes that the needs and in- tal, including how to deal with the need to terests of all three are constantly chang- avoid obsolescence through the disci- ing, particularly since they operate in a pline of continuous training and the luck volatile environment. As a result, stan- of picking the right systems and technolo- dard definitions of roles and functions, gies to emphasize. However attentive to and assessments of what constitute stan- developing new skills, contractors con- dard qualifications, compensation, work centrating on learning systems and skills routines, and overall expectations are al- that fail to succeed in the marketplace will ways up for grabs. As a result, all three are have wasted their human capital. Finally, constantly renegotiating relationships contractors live in a world of social capi- REVIEWS 359

tal in which they must make choices about of 11 September 2001 was one of what social networks to join and which to excitement and hope for most supporters leave and how to cultivate skills in both of progressive social change. The global activities. The book concludes by exam- justice movement was mobilizing in ad- ining the role of the contractor in the vanced capitalist countries around meet- knowledge economy and ventures social ings of the International Monetary Fund, policy suggestions in such areas as certi- World Bank, and similar symbols of fying skills and providing health benefits. neoliberalism, proclaiming that “Another Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies World is Possible” and beginning promis- is a useful addition to the literature on ing interactions with unions and commu- working in a knowledge economy. It suc- nity organizations. Michael Hardt and ceeds in providing the thick description Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000) was the that this field has needed for some time. most celebrated theoretical work associ- However, it is not without its limitations. ated with the movement, although this Written during the peak of the dot-com dense text was neither a product of the boom, the book is very much the creature movement nor read by many of its activ- of its time. With plentiful jobs, contrac- ists, at least in North America. tors could choose from many employers, The years since 2001 have had a very enabling them to strike rich deals. The different political character than the two world of complex three-way market dy- that preceded them. This is especially true namics has changed significantly in the in the US and Canada, where massive but ensuing years of rapid decline in the in- short-lived anti-war protests failed to stop dustry. Barley and Kunda spend some the political retreat that followed 9/11. time discussing the networks and organi- Multitude, the sequel to Empire, arrives at zations of this workforce but have nothing a time when serious interrogation of to say about the trade unions, like the contemporary capitalism and prospects Communications Workers of America, for change is much needed. What Hardt which have spun off organizations like and Negri offer here is another tome that, WashTech and Alliance@IBM that have as Alex Callinicos observed of Empire,is played an important role in organizing “as much a work of applied post- and providing information, benefit pack- structuralist philosophy as it is a piece of ages, and lobbying clout for all kinds of concrete historical analysis.” Like Em- high-tech workers, including the contrac- pire, many of whose ideas it reprises, tors described in the book. This book goes Multitude is a work of great ambition and a long way to understanding the nature of scope that cites a wide range of scholar- contracting work among skilled profes- ship in the social sciences and humani- sionals in times of plenty. But the world of ties. This short review is limited to the scarce jobs, outsourcing, and fights over book’s central theme. immigrant visas is a very different one in- Multitude opens with a discussion of a deed. pressing issue that received little atten- tion in Empire: war, which the authors Vincent Mosco identify as the main obstacle to democ- Queen’s University racy in the world today. The place of war has changed. War was once pushed to the margins of society as a state of exception, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multi- but in the emergent mode of global rule tude: War and Democracy in the Age of the authors dub Empire, “the state of ex- Empire (New York: Penguin 2004) ception has become permanent and gen- eral ... pervading both foreign relations THE PERIOD from the “Battle of Seattle” and the homeland.” (7) War is a form of in November 1999 to the terrorist attacks biopower, producing and controlling so- 360 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

cial life. The enormous power of the US wage-workers, the unwaged, the poor, state, which received little attention in migrants, and others that they believe is Empire, is acknowledged as a crucial fea- the collective subject capable of realizing ture of the age of permanent war. Dis- a truly democratic and liberatory transfor- cussing military doctrine, Hardt and mation of society. Modern revolutions Negri argue that US power must assume have been making “a halting and uneven the form of a network to deal with the kind but nonetheless real progression toward of asymmetrical insurgencies it faces in the realization of the absolute concept of the age of Empire. Networks abound in democracy.” (241) The multitude is at last Multitude, as the authors analyse the capable of achieving this democracy, as shifting forms of subaltern resistance the many demands for reforms raised from the Cuban and Chinese revolutions around the world today suggest. through to the early 21st century as a pro- Multitude engages with issues that are gressive evolution driven by the desire for key to understanding the world today. It more democracy, autonomy, and effi- does so from a perspective that is reso- cacy, culminating in the network form of lutely opposed to all forms of exploitation the global justice movement. and oppression, and rejects the stance, The network form is spreading be- common even among critics of cause this is the characteristic form of im- neoliberalism, that a progressive alterna- material labour, which is dominant in the tive to capitalism is impossible or not age of post-Fordism. Immaterial labour is worth discussing. But the extent to which absolutely central to Multitude. Immate- these virtues raise a reader’s hopes and rial labour is labour that creates immate- expectations is also the extent to which rial products, including knowledge, emo- Multitude disappoints. tional effects, and social relationships. There are deep-rooted problems in the Hardt and Negri are clear that most work- way Multitude theorizes contemporary ers in the world today do not perform im- society. The concept of immaterial la- material labour, but they argue that imma- bour, the lynchpin for the book’s central terial labour is hegemonic in a qualitative argument, is unsound and cannot bear the sense and is increasingly putting its stamp explanatory and political burden placed on other forms of labour and, more gener- on it. It proposes that labour is increas- ally, on society. Immaterial labour, they ingly outside of and against capital (an acknowledge, is not necessarily pleasant idea whose origins lie in the kind of au- work. However, it is brimming with posi- tonomist Marxism that Negri helped to tive qualities and radical potential. Imma- create in the 1970s). This allows Hardt terial labour produces cooperation, which and Negri to wax eloquent about its posi- is now external to capital rather than cre- tive qualities and make it the basis of the ated by it. It is biopolitical, producing so- multitude. They also argue that the line cial life itself. It is dissolving the division between work and life is being dissolved, between work and life. It is also increas- one consequence of which is that Marx’s ingly shackled by private property and law of value no longer holds. Unfortu- capitalist exploitation, understood as the nately, far from escaping from capital, la- parasitical “expropriation of the com- bour in the world today is increasingly mon.” (150) commodified and subsumed by capital. By creating a growing qualitative The very examples given by the au- commonality among different concrete thors — Microsoft workers and low-wage kinds of labour, immaterial labour is the workers forced to hold down multiple basis for the singularities acting in com- jobs (145) — suggest a very different and mon that are the multitude. The multitude more plausible interpretation of trends in is the name Hardt and Negri give to the capitalism than Multitude’s: work for emerging formation of peasants, capitalist employers is devouring a larger REVIEWS 361

proportion of many people’s lives. It is because their formulations about the real not Marx’s theory of value (which the au- democracy of which the multitude is the thors apparently misunderstand, since bearer are so abstract and the book con- they wrongly suggest that Smith, Ricardo, tains little in the way of clear strategic and Marx held to the same law of value thinking. Hardt and Negri endorse Max [145]) that is unsustainable but Hardt and Weber’s critique of socialism, claiming Negri’s notion of an immaterial labour that “contemporary forms of right-wing whose cooperative and communicative populism and fascism are deformed off- dimensions exist outside of capital and springs of socialism.” (255) Surprisingly, whose products are “in many respects, im- they see potential in alliances in the South mediately social and common.” (114) between “aristocracies” (local ruling This in an era of ever more extensive com- classes) and the multitude — in other modification? The idea that immaterial words, Popular Front-style cross-class al- labour makes possible the emergence, liances of the kind that have done so much without the involvement of any organized harm to movements in Brazil, South Af- political forces, of the multitude as a col- rica, and many other countries. lective subject able to transform society is As a result of these problems, the also extremely unconvincing. book’s hopeful vision lacks anything ap- Multitude has little or nothing to say proaching a plausible grounding in an about a number of crucial developments analysis of capitalism and social strug- in the contemporary world. For example, gles in our time. Despite the authors’ de- what are we to make of the rise in a num- nial of a “preordained linear march to- ber of countries of Islamism as a reaction- ward absolute democracy,” (93) Multi- ary political force with mass appeal? Its tude suggests that the multitude is indeed analysis of “socialist” (Stalinist) societies on the march towards true democracy. Al- is remarkably shallow. More broadly, though it touches on issues that badly Multitude does not theorize on the basis of need serious study, such as changes in the concrete analyses of working-class and organization of paid work within global other social movements. There is no seri- capitalism, Multitude’s dubious social ous examination of how movements have theory and evasion of so many tough been affected by capitalist restructuring, questions about class recomposition and of the crises of social democracy, Stalin- politics make it a very limited contribu- ism, and “Third World” nationalist poli- tion indeed. tics, or of how movements have re- sponded to these challenges. Reading David Camfield Multitude brings to mind what E.P. University of Manitoba Thompson had to say about kangaroo-like theorizing that “proceeds in gigantic bounds through the conceptual elements, Peter Seixas, ed., Theorizing Historical with the most gracious curvatures of Consciousness (Toronto: University of thought,” touching the earth only briefly Toronto Press 2004) between leaps. Boldly theorizing on the basis of limited observations is a long- THE TITLE may be intimidating enough standing habit for Negri, who was criti- to stop the casual reader, so you might try cized for this by some of his comrades in entering by way of the small cover illus- the late 1970s, as Steve Wright recounts tration of a locomotive. There is a clue in his study of Italian autonomist Marx- somewhere late in the book that this may ism, Storming Heaven (2002). be the locomotive of history. Indeed one It is also unclear what the of the problematics addressed in the book “postsocialist” anti-capitalist politics ad- at least implicitly is whether that train is vocated by the authors really amount to stalled on the track or still moving. The 362 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

volume itself is a collection of papers “Historical consciousness should be con- from a conference held in August 2001 ceptualized as an operation of human under the title “Canadian Historical Con- intellection rendering present actuality sciousness in International Context: The- intelligible while fashioning its future oretical Perspectives.” The contributors perspectives.” (67) include American, Australian, British, These approaches are complemented Canadian, and European scholars, and the by the chapters that address the problem book is introduced by Peter Seixas, direc- at the level of practical challenges facing tor of the Centre for the Study of Histori- classroom educators. One useful study is cal Consciousness at the University of a revised and translated version of a paper British Columbia. From our vantage point by Jocelyn Létourneau and Sabrina out here on the embankment, peering up Moisan on the historical knowledge of into the coach windows of this impressive young Quebec francophones; they point train, the reader is apt to see answers out that educators do not control the his- looming in and out of focus, much as often torical consciousness of students but happens at historical conferences. work within a social and cultural context About half the chapters address ex- where knowledge is acquired from varied plicit theoretical concerns. One of the un- sources. Similarly, Peter Lee examines derlying anxieties about the production the challenges of equipping students (in and consumption of history is stated by England in this case) to consider compet- Chris Lorenz in terms of the growing in- ing historical narratives about their own fluence of “non-professional forms of his- country, with a view to acquiring the in- torical representation,” and he suggests tellectual skills to live their own history in professional historians give more atten- the present. Tony Taylor reports on the tion to the more extreme domains of the politics of school history in Australia, al- human experience that popularizers often though a more direct comparison between address. At a more general level, he also Canadian and Australian experiences in offers a classificatory schema for histori- this debate would still be helpful. Chris- cal consciousness based on spatial and tian Laville contributes an astute essay on temporal markers. The appetite for classi- the origins of “historical consciousness” fication is amplified by James Wertsch in studies themselves as a response to the al- an argument for the appreciation of his- leged destabilization of knowledge in re- torical narrative as a response to “sche- cent decades. In considering the growing matic narrative templates” in which preoccupation with heritage and memory, known events are regularly “emplotted” he warns against the rise of a prescriptive in historical determined interpretive con- historical agenda that undermines the tra- texts. Mark Salber Phillips makes a case ditional strengths of historical thinking. for the virtues of microhistory and argues John Torpey concludes on a more skepti- that the vaunted objectivity of the histo- cal note, suggesting that the forward rian actually involves distinctions be- march of history has been stalled by the tween what he calls formal, affective, absence of alternative social visions at the ideological, and cognitive distances. The end of the century. In their absence we particular value of oral history is well the- have “an avalanche of history” that, to orized by Roger Simon, who points out mix a famous metaphor, “weighs like a the several functions, both ethical and nightmare on the brain of the living.” pedagogical, of remembrance as a form of Of course, Canadian historians ex- historical reckoning. Meanwhile, Jörn plored this territory in a preliminary way Rüsen argues (while proposing another several years ago with the debate over typology of his own) that there remains a Jack Granatstein’s Who Killed Canadian connection between historical conscious- History? (unfortunately referred to in this ness and the moral function of history: volume as The Killing of Canadian His- REVIEWS 363

tory). There have been numerous cri- porary mass media as well as a good feel tiques of that polemic, although no pub- for the main schools of thought that have lisher has come forward with a compan- emerged in the study of culture and ion volume of responses, which is itself a communication. Accessible, interesting, comment on the relatively poor elabora- well-written and generally well-orga- tion of the debate in the public realm. The nized, Steven does an admirable job of present volume is something else, for it balancing criticism of the corporate struc- drives the discussion into the high-end tures that dominate the production and suburbs of intellectual discourse where distribution of commodified culture with even the vocabularies are still under con- a laudable sensitivity to the contradictory struction. A reviewer in this journal can- qualities of global media that open up not fail to note that the frames of reference spaces for cultural diversity and political here are for the most part those of empire, struggle. Yet the book’s strengths as a state, nation, and war and that categories survey text also account for its principal such as class and gender are rarely men- shortcoming, namely a failure to develop tioned on this journey. It is unclear if this a consistent, coherent or unified set of ar- is an accidental feature or a more general guments about the contemporary signifi- failure in contemporary historical dis- cance of the media. Ultimately, Steven’s course. As for the big questions, by the constant oscillation between condemning time we have inspected the illuminated the centralized power of dominant media windows of this train, the relationship be- on the one hand, and celebrating the vir- tween historical information and histori- tues of active audiences and hybrid cul- cal understanding, sometimes parsed for tural forms on the other, leaves us us as the tension between heritage and his- somewhat unsure about what he (and we) tory, remains nicely illustrated but unre- are to make of the global media and their solved. Conference collections serve a ambivalent effects upon individuals and purpose, but they probably need to be read society. In addition, the highly condensed selectively and strategically. The editor and often fragmentary style of the book has helped with a series of short introduc- makes it difficult to engage with its con- tions to the sections. In my own case, one tent at any level other than as a set of inter- thoughtful colleague suggested, I might esting and well-researched but also have found it easier to read the book from compartmentalized (and often contradic- back to front. We might add as well that tory) facts and observations. one’s perception of a train depends on The book opens, for example, with a where you are sitting. brief chapter composed entirely of state- ments from people around the world de- David Frank scribing their own unique experience University of New Brunswick with local and global media. “I have re- cently read The Life of My Choosing,by Wilfred Thesiger, The Fall of the House Peter Steven, The No-Nonsense Guide to of Saud, by Said Aburish and Alice in Ex- Global Media (Toronto: Between the ile by Piers Paul Read,” writes one corre- Lines 2004) spondent. “The book-publishing mergers are a problem and getting more so. Also TO WRITE a comprehensive introduction the swallowing of independent book- to the global media is a highly ambitious stores by chains ...” (12) Such a stark task; to do it in a slender volume of less juxtapositioning of multinational cultural than 150 pages is virtually impossible. diversity with cautionary words about Yet Peter Steven’s No Nonsense Guide to capitalist restructuring sets the stage for Global Media succeeds in providing read- the contradictory tone that characterizes ers with a useful snapshot of the contem- much of the book. For Steven, such con- 364 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

tradictions are reflective of a global me- form ever invented, the flow of content re- dia environment that is dominated by a mains as anarchic and potentially disrup- homogenized, commercial monoculture tive as in its early days.” (52) Thus tight yet simultaneously also provides the corporate control of the infrastructure space for more creative, cosmopolitan en- seemingly has no effect at all upon the counters with alternative and even content? Such utopian optimism clearly oppositional cultural forms. Yet insofar flies in the face of the rapid commercial- as the pleasures of the latter are constantly ization of the Internet in the late 1990s. invoked, the dangerous tendencies of the Once ‘anarchic’ patterns of use have been former are, in effect, minimalized. In- displaced, marginalized, or, more pre- deed, if the range of cultural practices de- cisely, mapped over dense clusters of scribed by Steven’s acquaintances in the shopping and entertainment sites that are, first chapter are at all representative of the as often as not, affiliated with corporate offerings that globalization brings in its media. wake, then we seemingly have little to Subsequent chapters on technology, worry about. mass culture as aesthetic practice and the Yet, as he often suggests in separate effect of media upon society are equally chapters on global media, political econ- schematic, ranging widely over the prin- omy, technology and media and society, cipal themes in each area, yet generally we actually have a great deal to worry failing to deliver much of a synthetic nar- about. In a boxed vignette from the sec- rative to bind these themes into a coherent tion on global media, for example, Steven unity. The treatment of technology — offers a brief description of the global probably the best chapter in the book — reach of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corpo- offers a whirlwind tour through the many ration, one of five or six media behemoths different perspectives on media technolo- that control much of what we now see, gies, from McLuhan’s technological de- hear, and read. He cites Roy Greenslade, a terminism to the diversity that ‘blogging’ columnist for The Guardian, who ob- allegedly brings to contemporary journal- serves that every single one of Murdoch’s ism. However, the limits of space con- 175 newspapers worldwide offered edito- demn Steven to providing little more than rial support for the Bush administration’s a cursory summary of each point without 2003 invasion of Iraq. Steven’s chapter on any sustained attempt to assess their com- political economy nicely locates this ex- peting merits or develop a broader, more emplary anecdote within the restructuring inclusive narrative about the relationship of the global media that has occurred over between media and technology. The so- the last two decades. In rapid succession, cial dynamics that drive technological he offers succinct descriptions of key ele- change, for example, are condensed into ments of the “howling, brawling global ten separate themes — technology as so- marketplace,” including the concentra- lutions to problems, for realism, for spec- tion of ownership, formation of integrated tacle, for privacy, for crowds, for con- media conglomerates, and the gutting of sumption, for surveillance, for war, for media policy and regulatory regimes at globalization, for democracy — which both the national and international levels. are each dealt with in a single, short para- However, in an accompanying discussion graph. Within the limits of such con- of the emancipatory potential of new digi- straints, Steven does an admirable job and tal technologies, he makes the puzzling he certainly has a knack for condensing claim that “although the infrastructure of complex ideas into a few accessible and mega-computers, data switchers and sat- lively sentences. But it is ultimately a Pyr- ellite relays comprising the internet is as rhic victory, probably leaving the reader tightly controlled by largely US, political, better informed about the range of debate military and corporate elites as any media on technology but ill-equipped to inte- REVIEWS 365

grate those positions into a more coherent films remind us of the diversity of local analytic framework. A later discussion of culture that often survives and occasion- media violence — the principal case study ally even prospers within corporate me- in the media and society chapter — re- dia. Conversely, Steven relentlessly ham- peats the same pattern: we learn, for ex- mers home how coverage of the global ample, that some maximize the negative South remains a glaring blindspot in the effects of violence and others minimize mass media: “in the US and Britain the them, but are left with little guidance as to Survivor series, set in Africa, took up which perspective is more convincing. most of the air-time for African coverage On a more positive note, the great in 2001!” (125) strength of the book is its truly global fo- In sum, The No-Nonsense Guide to cus. Taking his cue from the cosmopoli- Global Media covers a lot of ground in a tan cultural habits of his correspondents very short space, producing a text that is in the first chapter, Steven draws upon a valuable as a cursory introduction to both wealth of examples from around the the mass media and the multitude of con- world, a refreshing change from most me- tradictory perspectives that dominate its dia studies texts that are rooted almost ex- study and analysis. Yet this ambitious clusively in the North American and Eu- agenda ultimately compromises the ropean experience. This comes out most book’s narrative coherence, limiting its clearly and convincingly in a chapter on utility for readers looking to develop a art and audiences that considers different sustained, critical understanding of ways of thinking about media content. global media. Brief commentaries on Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Brazilian telenovelas, Shane Gunster Chinese rock stars, and Nigerian video Simon Fraser University 366 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL