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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 51, 2003

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Publisher(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History

ISSN 0700-3862 (print) 1911-4842 (digital)

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Cite this article (2003). Reviews / Comptes Rendus. Labour/Le Travailleur, 51, 271–342.

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Andrew Neufeld and Andrew Pamaby, Nigel Morgan, along with "depres­ The IWA in Canada: The Life and Times of sion-weary" woodworkers who remained an Industrial Union, (Vancouver: IWA committed to industrial unionism, Canada/New Star Books, 2000) founded the International Woodworkers of America in Tacoma, Washington, as IN THE IWA IN CANADA, Andrew Neufeld part of the CIO boom. Neufeld and and Andrew Parnaby record the "life and Parnaby make the important point that the times" of an industrial union that has IWA's immediate success in the United played a major role in the development of States was not matched north of the bor­ British Columbia (and to a lesser extent der in BC where a hostile legal and politi­ Canada) since the 1930s. The union has cal climate prevented the great organiza­ ensured some redistribution of wealth tional breakthrough until the changes from the exploitation of Canada's forests; brought by World War II. By 1946, how­ in BC it also has played a role in promot­ ever, the IWA had won a master agree­ ing social justice and combating racism. ment on "the Coast" of BC and further or­ As former BC premier Dave Barrett puts it ganizational and contractual gains in the (with feeling) in a video I show my BC his­ 1950s and 1960s allowed the rank-and- tory students, "(the IWA] set a standard file to participate in the post-war boom that everybody got the same wage and you and compromise "shaped by big govern­ didn't get cheated because you were an ment, big unions, big wages, and big prof­ immigrant." its." (183) As is well known, during this The IWA in Canada is a well written "golden age," anti-communists allied and illustrated chronicle that deserves a with the CCF and helped by government broad audience. Throughout the book, pursed the "reds" from the union. Neufeld Neufeld and Parnaby place the struggle to and Parnaby portray the "reds" sympa­ establish a union of all woodworkers in thetically as effective unionists who were the industry, "from the stump to the fin­ respected by the membership. As IWA ished product," at the centre of the story. historian Clay Perry put it for many of the They locate the union's origins in the rank-and-file, "[There was] a sense that early efforts of groups like the Industrial since companies, in their heart of hearts, Workers of the World and the One Big did not believe that there should be un­ Union to organize the West's ions, it was not a bad thing that they be blanketstiffs and bunkhousemen in a sin­ matched with union reps that did not be­ gle organization. Following the collapse lieve there should be companies." (120) of the 1919 labour revolt, organization in From the 1970s to the 1990s, govern­ the forest industry almost disappeared for ment and company attacks on the IWA and over a decade. Then, in 1937, "reds" like a series of deep recessions marked the end Harold Pritchett, Ernie Dalskog, and of the postwar boom and compromise. Neufeld and Parnaby describe how the union and its members fought back Review Table of Contents — pp.5-6. I through strikes, support for technological 272 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

change to make the industry more effi­ opment of the union. There are histories cient and competitive, and the continued of the locals but not much sense of what it promotion of sustainable harvesting prac­ was like to be a member of the union or tices. During the 1990s, some NDP poli­ what the union has meant to its members cies in BC supported woodworkers and and communities. There is also little re­ their communities. In other cases, govern­ flection in the latter part of the book on the ment (and not just in BC) sided with envi­ nature of the leadership and the organiza­ ronmental groups that wanted large areas tion during the era of the postwar compro­ of forest lands left in their natural state. mise and beyond. For example, the au­ As the Lumber Worker put it about the thors cite Bryan Palmer's critical analysis "Lands for Life" policy in Ontario: "The in their evenhanded description of the result was parks for the preservationists, long ago purge of the "reds" but rely compensation for companies, and nothing heavily on Jack Munro for their discus­ for workers, communities, or First Na­ sion of the IWA's more recent role in tions who depend on the forests for their "stopping" Operation Solidarity in 1983. living." (277) Today, the union and its Interestingly, the current IWA president, members face a major assault by the Dave Haggard, recognizes past mistakes neoliberal policies of provincial govern­ and the need for change in his "Reflec­ ments in provinces such as BC, Ontario, tions" at the end of the book: "We need, and Alberta and the imposition of heavy for instance, to recover some of the social duties by the US Department of Com­ activism and union pride that motivated merce as part of the softwood lumber dis­ our founders and predecessors. We need pute. It appears that the IWA and its mem­ to rekindle the sense that the union is bers will make a great deal of history in "us," that the union is only as strong as its the next decade. members. Remember: although history is partly about "leaders," it is even more The IWA in Canada is popular history about the hundreds of thousands of work­ which emphasizes the heroic struggle of ing people who ... dream[ed] of a better woodworkers to build "one union in future ...." (305-6) The context for this wood." A large portion of the narrative fo­ significant and powerful statement cuses on BC, reflecting the longstanding needed more development in the book. commitment of the province's forest in­ dustry towns to the union. However, All in all, The IWA in Canada is a Neufeld and Parnaby also trace the un­ good and important popular history of the ion's efforts to expand across Canada. union that its members should be proud The authors' account of the dramatic and of. More books like this one need to be costly struggle to establish the union in written about the "great" unions of Can­ Newfoundland in the late 1950s reveals ada's past and present. the length to which the membership was prepared to go to expand the IWA and to Duff Sutherland improve the lives of loggers. The long and Selkirk College bitter 1986 strike against contracting out in BC also reveals "that when the exis­ tence of the union is threatened and obvi­ ous to the membership there is no limit to Andrée Lévesque, Scènes de la vie en the length the membership will go to save rouge. L'époque de Jeanne Corbin 1906 - it." (231) This is stirring stuff that union­ 1944 (Montréal: Les Éditions du ists and other Canadians should know remue-ménage, 1999) about. The only failing of the book is that it is EN DEHORS DE LA BIOGRAPHIE, on ne written largely from the point-of-view of trouve guère de genre historique où, face the leadership and the institutional devel­ à une apparente insuffisance de sources, il n'est pas de mise de renoncer. Cela tient REVIEWS 273

probablement au statut encore flottant du tion communiste. La jeune femme, en genre: ayant connu sa part de turpitudes effet, s'est coulée rapidement, et semble- au 20e siècle, la biographie est toujours t-il spontanément, dans les milieux en quête d'une méthode formelle, et par communistes. Institutrice de carrière, là d'une forme de respectabilité permanente du parti, son engagement lui épistémologique. aura notamment fait voir du pays: on la Il est toutefois heureux que certains voit s'installer successivement à Edmon­ historiens n'aient pas perdu le goût du ris­ ton, Toronto, Montréal et Timmins. Ses que. Dans un ouvrage qu'elle hésite responsabilités de militante furent à la elle-même à qualifier de biographie tant fois lourdes et nombreuses: organisatrice sa démarche et sa méthode semblent syndicale, agente commerciale des résister au jeu des étiquettes, Andrée journaux The Worker, L'Ouvrier cana­ Lévesque nous offre une histoire du dien et La Vie ouvrière, secrétaire de dis­ mouvement communiste canadien trict de la Ligue de défense ouvrière. Son procédant du point de vue des militants, et enthousiasme et son dévouement, qui ne plus particulièrement de celui d'une jeune se sont jamais démentis au cours des femme d'origine française, Jeanne années, lui valurent plus tard la réputation Corbin (1906-1944). Dépourvue en d'«héroïne du parti.» Atteinte de la tuber­ matière de sources documentaires, culose, Jeanne Corbin meurt prématuré­ Corbin ayant très peu écrit, Lévesque ne ment en 1944, à l'âge de 37 ans. pouvait certes aspirer à une biographie au Sous une premièreimpression, sens littéral du terme (écriture d'une vie). l'impossibilité pour l'auteure d'appro­ Ayant fait le pari d'instrumentaliser la vie fondir l'étude de son personnage nous de son personnage, elle nous convie plutôt fera croire à une perte: celle de la richesse à une étude du communisme de la et de l'irréductibilité de l'expérience première moitié du 20e siècle, une époque humaine; celle également de l'individu marquée notamment par la première qui résiste aux structures. En l'absence génération révolutionnaire, la dépression d'une pensée explicite et un peu significa­ économique, le Front populaire, le tive, il nous faut effectivement postuler stalinisme, la guerre d'Espagne, la me­ que Corbin n'a jamais dévié de la ligne du nace hitlérienne, l'antisémitisme. Sous parti — rien, du reste, ne nous permet cet aspect — l'instrumentalisation du d'affirmer le contraire. Cette perte en ce sujet —, je crois qu'il n'est pas abusif de qui concerne la liberté du sujet est situer son travail dans la veine toutefois compensée par l'introduction historiographique inaugurée il y a dans le récit d'une figure singulière: le quelques années par l'historien français militant. Celui-ci dont c'est justement le Alain Corbin (Le monde retrouvé de propre de croire sans questionner, Louis-François Pinagot. Sur les traces d'assujettir ses intérêts personnels à la d'un inconnu 1798-1976, Paris, cause. Soumis sur le plan doctrinaire, Flammarion, 1998). parfois même jusqu'à l'aveuglement, le La vie de Jeanne Corbin, qui fut militant n'en conserve pas moins une courte mais non moins riche, fournit le certaine autonomie sur le plan de l'action. principe organisateur de l'ouvrage. De sorte que lorsqu'on daigne bien Chassée en bas âge avec sa famille d'une considérer son point de vue, l'histoire du région de France devenue inhospitalière, communisme canadien apparaît comme Jeanne aboutit au Canada, en Alberta, sur une vaste lutte contre l'injustice sociale, une terre située près du village de Tofield. évidemment, mais aussi contre le Même si les certitudes sont difficiles à centralisme excessif du parti, les maigres atteindre en ce domaine, on peut présumer ressources matérielles et financières d'un que la rudesse de ce nouvel environne­ mouvement qui n'a cessé d'évoluer dans ment n'est pas étrangère à sa future voca­ la marginalité, les difficultés sur le terrain 274 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

à mobiliser les travailleurs, la répression dédales du sanatorium Queen Alexandra anticommuniste, l'apathie de certains de London (Ontario), les nouvelles des membres. À cet égard, il faut entendre camarades qui se font de plus en plus rares Jeanne Corbin s'indigner du manque et, surtout, l'optimisme qui habita Jeanne d'ardeur de certains de ses «chefs jusqu' à la fin, en dépit d'une maladie qui supposément politisés.» (87) Dans la lui volaitprogressivement ses forces. sphère d'intervention qui est la sienne, et Hardi dans la forme et témoignant bien qu'il lui faille toujours rendre des d'une connaissance assurée du mouve­ comptes, le militant livre donc des com­ ment et de l'idéologie communistes, bats «au quotidien» qui suffisent l'ouvrage d'Andrée Lévesque comblera amplement à le faire accéder au rang le désir de ceux qui, nombreux je le pense, d'acteur historique. souhaitent parvenirà une compréhension L'engagement personnel de Jeanne du phénomène communiste sans pour Corbin envers la cause communiste autant sacrifier l'expérience de ceux qui y devient ainsi le prétexte à une échappée ont laissé leurs peines et leurs espoirs. vers la «grande histoire.» De chapitre en chapitre, et à partir d'une grande variété Julien Goyette de sources, l'auteure parvient à nous Université du Québec à Montréal entretenir des grandes orientations du Parti communiste, de la réalité qui s'offrait aux immigrants dans le nord de PAlberta, du chômage pendant la crise, Errol Black and Tom Mitchell, A Square des conditions de travail dans les indus­ Deal For All A ndNo Railroading: Histor­ tries minières et forestières, la vie dans les ical Essays on Labour in Brandon (St. sanatoriums durant la Seconde Guerre John's: Canadian Committee on Labour mondiale, etc. Dans cette perspective, le History, 2000) chapitre six intitulé «Des femmes dans un parti d'hommes» est l'un des plus réussis. THIS BOOK TAKES its title from an essay Il illustre bien d'ailleurs cette by Tom Mitchell that first appeared in «instrumentalisation» du personnage à Prairie Forum in 1990, and which in turn laquelle Andrée Lévesque fut contrainte: took the phrase from a declaration made même si Corbin eut sans doute été by the Brandon Trades and Labour Coun­ réticente à se définir d'abord en tant que cil in 1917. Such layering of reference is femme, elle qui était sans doute plus apt, perhaps, for while the essays here are encline à faire reposer son identité sur son frequently challenging and critical of or­ appartenance de classe, Lévesque s'est thodoxy, there is also a sense that much of inspirée de son engagement politique what this volume contains is comfortably pour nous livrer une admirable analyse du —and comfortingly — familiar to anyone rôle et de la place des femmes au sein du who has studied western Canadian labour mouvement communiste. over the past two or three decades. Le dernier chapitre est toutefois en "The essays in this collection," write rupture de ton. Après une plongée dans les historian Tom Mitchell and economist structures, il nous faut refaire le contact Errol Black in their introduction, "are un­ avec le destin singulier, et tragique, de abashedly about reconstructing and dis­ Jeanne Corbin. Cela dit, l'effort exigé est closing aspects of the history of class and minime et je ne cacherai pas l'émotion class relations in Brandon." (12) Brandon qu'a suscité en moi la description des might, at first glance, appear an odd dernières années de sa vie. Une descrip­ choice for such a study, numbering just tion qui, il faut le préciser, se trouve cette 14,000 or so in the tumultuous year of fois-ci alimentée par sa correspondance 1919 — less than half of all those who personnelle. J'en retiens surtout les were on strike in Winnipeg — and pos­ sessing a modest industrial base. But as REVIEWS 275

the nine essays here make clear, class and The first two essays provide over­ class conflict are not the exclusive pre­ views of labour politics in Brandon. "La­ serve of larger urban centres, either in the bour in Brandon Civic Politics: A Long West or elsewhere. "The experience of View" is particularly useful, for it covers small cities has been neglected," Errol not only the familiar decades 1900-40, and Tom Black note in their essay on civic but also the far less explored war years politics in Brandon, and it would it be and post-war decades up to the 1970s. As wrong to assume it simply mirrors devel­ such we get a sense of continuity as well opments in larger cities such as Winnipeg as change in the course of labour's elec­ or Calgary. Instead, as their piece makes toral evolution. Mitchell's more focused clear, "there are unique aspects in the essay on Brandon labour politics between Brandon experience ... which originated 1900 and 1920, and his conclusion that "a in the peculiarities of local class relations class conscious labourite ideology had and local politics." (27) spread to a large proportion of Brandon's Quoting liberally from Marx, working class" (84) should be read and Gramsci, Thompson, and Williams, the considered against this broader back­ book's co-authors set out their position on ground. class. They reject a "simple minded [sic] Switching from politics to industrial understanding of the relationship be­ relations, Mitchell's two essays on the tween the material world and the con­ 1919 sympathy strike and the 1922 teach­ sciousness and actions of workers" in fa­ ers' conflict underline the depth, breadth, vour of the belief that "individuals make and resonance of class conflict in the sense of, and respond to, the world they small Prairie city. One might quibble with inhabit through a process mediated by his assertion that Brandon workers staged material circumstances, culture (includ­ the "longest and most cohesive sympa­ ing competing social, political, and eco­ thetic strike" (145) in 1919 (the essay by nomic discourses) and human agency." Greg Kealey that he cites to support this ( 16) This is setting the bar high, of course, shows that Calgary, Edmonton, in that the essays that follow have to mea­ Saskatoon, and Vancouver all have far sure up to this ideal. greater claim to this title), but his essay re­ All but one of the book's nine essays mains a valuable addition to the literature have appeared previously in various jour­ on 1919. Even better, perhaps, is Errol nals. (The single exception is "The Black's account of industrial relations at Making of the East End Community the A.E. McKenzie Company between Club" by Errol and Tom Black, which 1944 and 19S2, both in emphasizing that closes proceedings) Mitchell is author or class tensions did not just "go away" after co-author of five of the pieces here; Black the defeat of 1919 and in underlining the is solely or jointly responsible for the re­ active role of female workers in maining four. The opening four essays ap­ Brandon's post-war labour force. pear under the collective heading, "La­ The book's final two essays — one on bour and Politics," the second three under the Brandon labour movement's educa­ "Collective Bargaining and Industrial Re­ tional policies and practices, the other on lations," and the final pair under "Shaping the East End Community Club — explore a Working-Class Culture." In short, then, the world of working-class culture in the they cover well-trodden territory and at "Wheat City" in the years surrounding first glance might appear less innovative World War I. The former is especially or bold than the book's introduction thoughtful in bringing together such dis­ promises. On closer inspection, however, parate elements as the local Trades and Mitchell and Black do indeed throw some Labour Council, various labour and so­ new light on the nature of class in the cialist parties, the People's Church and West. the People's Forum into a single analysis. 276 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Whether the uneasy amalgam of accom­ Paul De la Riva, Mine de rien. Les modative labourism and more revolution­ Canadiens français et le travail minier à ary socialism divided Brandon workers Sudbury, 1886-1930 (Sudbury: Prise de more than it brought them together, how­ parole et l'Institut franco-ontarien, 1998) ever, remains open to question. Indeed, there is a sense sometimes PAUL DE LA RIVA a réalisé une étude fort that the empirical evidence in this collec­ intéressante sur la contribution des tion of essays is unable to live up to the Canadiens français en tant que promises of the introduction. While use­ travailleurs dans le secteur minier dans le ful and informative in themselves, the Nord de l'Ontario et plus spécifiquement pieces on labour politics and industrial re­ dans la région de Sudbury de 1886 à 1930. lations do not really support the authors' L'historiographie franco-ontarienne et claim that "experience of class emerged canadienne-anglaise a longtemps as the dominant theme over gender, eth­ maintenu que «les Canadiens français ont nicity, race, or other social identities in été des participants tardifs aux travaux the history of Brandon's workers." (17) miniers et peu intéressés à ce type de tra­ There is also a sense at times that Brandon vail.» (7) En effet, plusieurs études workers's experience of and response to prétendent que les Canadiens français se industrial capitalism did indeed mirror sont tenus à l'écart des mines jusqu'aux those of workers in other western cities, années 1940, préférant se consacrer aux and that while this book adds to our secteurs agricole et forestier. De la Riva knowledge of western labour it does not rejette cette interprétation. Il veut necessarily adjust it. The fact that six of démontrer que la contribution des the nine essays deal with that well-mined Canadiens français dans ce secteur period — 1900-30 — rather compounds remonte à 1886,c'est-à-dire au même mo­ this perception. ment que s'amorcent les premiers travaux That said, A Square Deal For All And miniers dans la région, et que cette No Railroading is a welcome addition to contributionn'est guère négligeable pen­ western Canadian labour historiography. dant toute la période étudiée soit de 1886 Taken together, its essays provide a de­ à 1930. tailed and often nicely nuanced account of Les recensements nominatifs de 1891 class relations in Brandon, a city often et 1901 pour la région de Sudbury, les overlooked in broader accounts of the livres de caisse de l'International Nickel West. And two essays in particular — Company (Inco) et les fiches du person­ Mitchell's revisionist account of Method­ nel, conservées à partir de 1912, lui ist minister A.E. Smith and Black's study permettent d'évaluer la place qu'oc­ of the revolutionary communist Forkin cupent les Canadiens français dans ce family — should become essential read­ secteur de l'économie en plus de suivre ing for anyone who thinks they know the l'évolution de cette main-d'oeuvre et des history of Western labour. travailleurs des autres ethnies. Après avoir déterminé le nombre de travailleurs David Bright canadiens français, il s'intéresse à leur University of Guelph expérience de travail, la division du tra­ vail par service et la ségrégation occupâtionnel le afin de mieux définir leur rôle au sein de l'Inco. L'étude de Paul de la Riva jette aussi un regard sur la mobilité et les antécédents professionnels des travailleurs. Il tente de démontrer que les Canadiens français ne forment pas un groupe de travailleurs très homogène. REVIEWS 277

Tiré d'un mémoire de maîtrise réalisé 1891 et 1901, les Canadiens français sont en 199S, son ouvrage comprend six actifs dans l'industrie minière puisqu'ils chapitres. Dans quelques chapitres, forment près du quart de la force ouvrière. l'auteur a eu la bonne idée d'introduire Les livres comptables révèlent également des cas d'ouvriers qui proviennent des la présence continue d'ouvriers fiches d'embauché. De plus, son ouvrage canadiens français surtout entre 1887 et regorge d'informationsstatistiques 1904.Malgré un certain déclin au début présentées sous forme de tableaux. Dans du 20e siècle, lesCanadiens français sont son premier chapitre, De la Riva fait bien présents dans l'industrie minière de d'abord un survol del'historiographie 1886 à 1912. «Par le fait même,» souligne franco-ontarienne et canadienne-anglaise De la Riva, «les Canadiens français pour ensuite présenter la méthodologie doivent être perçus comme de véritables utilisée afin d'analyser la présence des pionniers de cette industrie et non pas Canadiens français au sein de l'Inco. Près comme des retardataires qui ont attendu de 48 000 fiches d'embauché existent les années 1930 pour y participer.» (71) pour la période de 1912 à 1939. Un Dans son chapitre suivant, De la Riva échantillonage s'est donc imposé. De la dresse un profil général du mineur cana­ Riva admet avoir procédé de façon un peu dien français à Sudbury de 1912 à 1930. Il arbitraire. Reconnaissant que les lettres B trace d'abord l'évolution de l'embauche et L sont fort communes comme première des Canadiens français afin de dégager les lettre des patronymes français, il a temps forts de leurintégration dans d'abord retenu les fiches dont la première l'industrie minière. À partir de son lettre du nom de familledébute avec ces échantillon, il a pu identifier 134S lettres. L'auteur a donc dépouillé 6 674 Canadiens français et les quatreannées fiches qui lui ont fournit, maintient-il, «un d'embauché les plus importantes sont bon échantillon de ladiversité ethnique de 1916, 1917, 1920 et 1929. Par la suite, il la force ouvrière.» (26) L'examen des étudie trois caractéristiques des mineurs fiches lui a permis d'analyser l'évolution canadiens français soit l'âge à de la force ouvrièrecanadienne française l'embauche, l'état matrimonial et dans les installations minières de l'Inco. l'éducation. Des constantes se dégagent. Les fiches ont révélé des informations sur Ainsi, lesmineurs Canadiens français les dates d'embauché, la mobilité interne, sont jeunes car plus de 50% ont moins de le rôle de chaque travailleur dans les 25 ans. La majorité, plus de 70%, sont activités minières et l'évolution salariale. célibataires et peu sont instruits puisque Lesfiches permettent aussi à l'auteur de plus de 80% ont une formation de niveau comparer la main-d'oeuvrecanadienne primaire. Après avoir établi le profil française à la force ouvrière dans son en­ général de sa force ouvrière canadienne semble. française, l'auteur veut voir si les traits Le chapitre deux se penche sur les dégagés ont un effet sur la place qu'ils Canadiens français et le travail dans la occupent au sein del'industrie. Son région de Sudbury de 1886 à 1912. quatrième chapitre se penche donc sur Puisque cette période précède la mise en lastructure du travail et de la ségrégation placed'un système de fiches d'embauché ethnique. Les fichesd'embauche révèlent à l'Inco, De la Riva consulte les que les Canadiens français sont en grande recensements de 1891 et de 1901 ainsi que partie des manoeuvres et des ouvriers les livresde caisse de la Canadian Copper semi-qualifiés. Ils sont bien présents dans Co., le précurseur de l'Inco, pour faire son les différents services de l'Inco, analyse. Il démontre clairement que les légèrement sous-représentés dans les ser­ Canadiens français ne sont pas tous des vices miniers et ils ont une plus forte cultivateurs ou des bûcherons durant cette présence dans les services de la fonderie période. Ainsi, selon les recensements de et de la préfonte, et des champs de 278 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

frittage. Ils sont peu présents dans des Canadiens français tout comme chez les travaux de surface, où Ton retrouve plutôt Canadiens anglais, sont pour la plupart des Italiens et des Polonais, ainsi que dans des départs volontaires. L'auteur attribue les services de bureau etprofessionnels, cette situation à la pénibilité du travail «la chasse gardée des Canadiens anglais, minier et aux risques d'accidents. De desBritanniques et des Américains.» plus, étant donné qu'ils sont installés plus (102) Donc, les postes bien rémunérés et près des leurs et dans une région qu'ils de commande, les postes qui exigent la connaissent, les ouvriers canadiens maîtrise de la langue anglaise, sont français et canadiens anglais sont plus occupés par les immigrants britanniques aptes que tout autre groupe à quitter sur et les Canadiens anglais. Les immigrants une base volontaire. «étrangers» occupent, pour leur part, les Dans son dernier chapitre, De la Riva postes plus épuisants et les moins se demande si la main-d'oeuvre ouvrière enviables. Selon De la Riva, «la grille canadienne française de l'Inco forme un salariale semble témoigner de l'absence groupe homogène. Il démontre que les d'une politique discriminatoire sur la contingents canadiens français ont vécu, baseethnique.» Par contre, poursuit-il, «le au sein de cette compagnie, une processus de division du travail montre expérience industrielle différente en que certaines ethnies sont plus présentes fonction de quelques variables comme dans certainssecteurs mieux rémunérés et l'âge à l'embauche, l'état civil, le lieu et de prestige.» (111) le type d'engagements antérieurs ainsi Dans son cinquième chapitre, De la que le lieu de résidence des parents ou des Riva étudie les antécédents professionnels personnes à charge. Donc, selon l'auteur, et la mobilité des travailleurs canadiens on aurait tort de présenter les ouvriers français. Il essaie de voir si l'origine canadiens français comme un groupe très ethnique a un lien direct avec les hausses homogène. Leur expérience au sein des salariales ou si celles-ci relèvent plutôt de activités minières de l'Inco n'est pas la durée du séjour de l'ouvrier. La uniforme. majorité des ouvriers canadiens français L'ouvrage de Paul de la Riva nous fait ne sont pas à leur première expérience de davantage connaître la contribution des travail lorsqu'ils sont embauchés par Canadiens français dans le secteur minier l'Inco. Plusieurs déclarent avoir occupé dans le Nord de l'Ontario. Dans sa con­ des emplois dans le secteur industriel clusion, il invite les historiens à pour­ (40%), dans la construction (21,8%), dans suivre la recherche étant donné la grande les services (7,7%), en agriculture accessibilité des archives de l'Inco. Selon (11,9%) ou dans le domaine forestier lui, il serait possible de mieux définir (12,1%). Les fiches indiquent que peu de l'évolution de la main-d'oeuvre travailleurs font carrière dans le secteur canadienne française dans l'industrie minier. Pour plusieurs ouvriers, travailler minière, de mieux comprendre la mobilité à l'Inco est perçu comme un emploi canadienne française dans l'ensemble du saisonnier. Il faut dire que jusqu'en 1944, Nord de l'Ontario, de situer l'expérience les ouvriers miniers de Sudbury ne sont canadienne française par rapport à celle pas syndiqués et ont des conditions de tra­ de différents groupes tels les Polonais, les vail assez difficiles. Les fiches révèlent Italiens, les Finlandais, etc. afin de donc que la force ouvrière canadienne brosser un portrait plus juste et détaillé de française est instable puisque seulement l'histoire ouvrière de cette région. un ouvrier sur quatre travaillera plus de Plusieurs études ont été publiées sur six mois pour l'Inco. D'ailleurs, les le travail des Acadiens et des Canadiens Canadiens français constituent le groupe français dans les domaines de qui séjourne le moins longtemps à l'Inco. l'agriculture, de la forêt, des pâtes et Il semble que les départs chez les papiers, et des pêches. De la Riva nous REVIEWS 279 démontre clairement que le secteur minier his father was a good friend and school­ mérite qu'on s'y attarde. Son livre fera mate of Barilko. (98) Minutia and family désormais référence pour les chercheurs lore in so slim a volume (about 100 pages et chercheuses qui s'intéressent à of text) are often presented with flair; l'histoire franco-ontarienne et à l'histoire still, one might hope for some more broad du travail. analysis. Yet there is merit in Angus's personal NicoleLang perspective, his exploration of memories. Université de Moncton He is clearly fascinated with where he grew up and later returned to live as writer and musician. These personal perspec­ tives give the book a passion often miss­ Charlie Angus and Louie Palu, Mirrors of ing in "grounded academic history." An­ Stone: Fragments from the Porcupine gus has worked hard, as is evident in the Frontier (Toronto: Between the Lines text, if less so in rather limited and casual Press, 2001). citations. His findings are presented in colourful prose that will entice the casual NEAR THE END ofMirrors of Stone, a his­ reader. His considerable reliance on the tory of the Porcupine mining area, Charlie memories of both men and women (the Angus writes, "Memories... are not faith­ latter are far more than an afterthought ful recordings. Rather they are construc­ here) should interest more serious stu­ tions." (117) This comment is revealing: dents of history. So too the use of notes in Mirrors is a "construct," at once fascinat­ the book's generous margins (often quo­ ing yet predictable, revealing yet obvious, tations from the Porcupine Advance) that enlightening yet exasperating, suited to the serve as an interesting if uneven source of general audience yet relevant to the aca­ information. Oral and newspaper history demic. is complemented by the testimony of the Angus set out to record a history of the dead: evocative photographs of grave­ Porcupine wherein "the darker clouds of stones by Louie Palu, with a quality of an immigrant and class-oriented frontier dark charcoal sketches, provide powerful [had not] ... been air-brushed from mem­ miniature biographies that pull the reader ory." (3) The physical setting is less than along as Angus tells his tales. precise — the focus varies from Timmins These images are grim reminders that to other mining towns and even entire townships. The historical coverage is death was a constant companion in the equally hit-and-miss. Inspired by family rough-and-tumble life and workscapes of experience in the region, and memories the Porcupine. But one is struck by the re­ triggered by remembered and continuing ality that headstone after headstone re­ visits to local cemeteries, Angus takes us veals a short lifespan, while Angus relied through a meandering survey of some 90 on those who had lived long if not always years of Porcupine history. Some major prosperous lives. The writing also takes a events such as the 1912 fire, mine disas­ relentlessly one-sided perspective. There ters, and the quite recent Kidd Creek is no doubt that the various mining firms boom are examined fairly well. But do of the Porcupine drove their workers not look here for a steady chronology of hard, pushed for profits hard, and made events; topics seem idiosyncratically piles of money. But the image here is so chosen with highly variable coverage. relentlessly negative, so convinced of the The minor also meshes with the major, evils of capitalism that Mirrors loses and the (relatively well known) death of some of its impact. The evils of the em­ hockey star Bill Barilko gets more cover­ ployer, the exploitation of men, women, age than do some decades. Perhaps that and families, and the consequences are a reflects family history. Angus writes that major part of Porcupine's history. But 280 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Angus is so angered, so filled with righ­ covered every aspect in detail; nor could teous indignation, that his retelling of the one expect him to be expert on all aspects brutal workplaces, hard-driving bosses, of the multifaceted Porcupine popula­ and hideous silica dust becomes predict­ tions. But one suspects he prefers the able rather than provocative, annoying straightforward and thus vivid stereo­ rather than eyebrow-raising. One grows types to historic complexities that pro­ suspicious, too, of the accuracy of some vide a more accurate but often blander generalizations. Angus writes of miners tale. struggling to get by on 60 dollars a week Bland this book is not — from graphic in the early 1950s. (86) Does he realize discussion of men plunging to their that this rate of pay was well above the na­ deaths in a mine cage to the "short un­ tional average? And when workers con­ happy [and murderous] life of Natasia fronted workers, for instance in the strug­ Baldiuck," (22) to the ultimate price paid gles between Mine Mill and the United by some men who "high-graded"gold, Steelworkers, coverage is brief and, for there is rarely an everyday moment here. once, rather cautious. (111-113) Perhaps Indeed, the ordinary folk of Timmins and criticizing workers was not something area are hard to find; instead the colour­ Angus wished to do? One need not be ful, the boisterous, the dangerous, the en­ coldly analytical; but a balanced assess­ trepreneur, the hapless get centre stage. ment is a requirement of good history. Surely, even in mining areas life is often Even when dealing with "good times," more mundane, more ordinary. Angus sometimes struggles. Tales of But Angus knows what he wants to Henry Kelnick performing at the accomplish. His goal is not a long- winded, Pav[iIlion] and as the yet unknown and academic compilation of massive just barely Stomping Tom Connors at the amounts of data, carefully cited through Maple Leaf Hotel add life to the book. But hundreds of endnotes. He wants to cap­ in describing the bar or the hockey game, ture the vitality, the live-for- the-moment, stereotypes arise: "miners need a period the at-once-present optimism, and of depressurization following their la­ depressing reality of life in a single-re­ bours." (97) All of them? None are happy source, company-dominated region. with their work? None just go home and Louie Palu's photographs nicely parallel get on with other things? Similarly, in this effort as headstones tell of immi­ grimmer tales of confrontation within grants and Canadians from far afield the local society (over control of drawn to the Porcupine by its promise but co-operatives, in assaults against Ital­ crushed by its realities. ian-Canadians during World War II, or a In the end, then, Angus and Palu passing reference to "DPs") Angus fa­ show the value of remembering. These vours colour and generalization over de­ stories, told in word and photograph, in­ tail and accuracy. Citations are fre­ complete and sometimes almost imag­ quently sparse even as descriptions are ined, are worth the telling. Reading Mir­ vivid; ethnic groups are depicted in rors in Stone, and staring at the dark im­ rather stereotypical ways. Finnish immi­ ages, leaves little doubt that there are grants come across in rather simplistic more stories to tell; a more accurate ver­ ways. The radical, leftist Finn can be sion awaits. Angus closes by addressing found here, but little of the complexity his fear that history has lost its way, lost now known to scholars of the Finnish im­ its "power to haunt, challenge, or in­ migrant experience. The Jewish experi­ spire." ( 132) This book, thin and flawed, ence, too, seems naively simplified, with is testimony that history can still haunt suggestions of success but hardly a word and inspire. A book worth reading and of the anti-Semitism that surely was looking at for anyone interested in the present. Angus could not, of course, have REVIEWS 281

North, in mining, in the capitalist-worker On the other hand, one is over­ relationship and more. whelmed by too much detail and sight is lost of the bigger picture. Sylvester never Peter V. Krats succeeds in weaving these often appar­ University of Western Ontario ently idiosyncratic local events into either the bigger events in Canadian politics that shaped the Canadian political economy, or the generally well-known fate of the Kenneth Michael Sylvester, The Limits of agrarian petite bourgeoisie in a moderniz­ Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and ing capitalist political economy. From Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, time to time these insights are tangen­ 1870-1940 (Toronto: University of To­ tial ly mentioned, but only as an aside that ronto Press, 2001) the alert reader must grasp. Further, the general fate of the Qué­ FRANKLY, I am uncertain what to make bec francophone diaspora in the Prairie of this book, since it leaves one with a West is dealt with only tângentially and mixed and sometimes confused assess­ often by implication. Yet the story of ment. On the one hand, somewhat in the Montcalm must surely be more centrally tradition of Paul Voisey's Vulcan, and clearly tied to the unconstitutional Sylvester has done a fine community withdrawal of French language and edu­ study of Montcalm, the only rural munici­ cation rights in the Prairie West, and the pality in Manitoba settled almost entirely related events that made it clear to by francophones from Québec. Tracing francophones in Québec (later, the three or four generations, Sylvester docu­ Québécois nation) that they were not wel­ ments the survival strategies of a unique come to participate as meaningful part­ experiment in Prairie settlement. Pro­ ners in the development of Canada's viding some contrasts to anglophone set­ West. Again, one can sense this impact in tlers, Sylvester explains what was Sylvester's chronicle, but it is never made initially different among the settlers of as explicit or as central as it should be. As Montcalm: the ties of extended families events unfolded, it evidently became provided conduits for successive waves clear to the francophone Montcalmois, in of settlement; the larger families fur­ common with other enclaves of nished considerable amounts of unpaid francophone settlers across the Prairies, family labour, affording insulation from that they were to be isolated and always a too early or too extensive reliance on minority. Hence we needed some devel­ wage labour; there was a better sex ratio opment of their story around the theme of achieved largely as a result of the fam­ La Survivance, not from the perspective ily-based settlement strategies; family of francophones in Québec, but from the strategies for inheritance and land access perspective of those abandoned in the di­ allowed for a greater retention of a grow­ aspora. Again, Sylvester's chronicle ing population and slowing down of touches on these big events but only in outmigration; and strong linguistic and passing. cultural barriers provided a solid sense of Do not get me wrong. Sylvester's vol­ community. Much of the book subse­ ume is an outstanding piece of meticulous quently tel Is the story ofhow these unique scholarship, but he fails to solve the features were gradually gnawed away by macro/micro dilemma of the social sci­ an emerging rural capitalism as "their ences. How can we do research, writing, working lives and ambitions became and, indeed, theorizing, in such a way that commoditized and costed by the calculus we can move easily and gracefully back of the market." (4) This is the great and forth between micro and macro levels strength of the book. in order to achieve a dynamic and full un- 282 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

derstanding of a community's develop­ better future in Montcalm, Manitoba. ment? And, certainly, the agrarian petite bour­ Part of Sylvester's problem arises geoisie of Montcalm, as francophones from his apparent lack of a clearly defined from Québec, were able to adapt and re­ theoretical perspective. When he says, for sist in some unique ways, thanks to large example, "the biggest mystery of prairie families, a strong extended family net­ farming is that... the western countryside work, francophone linguistic and cultural was never truly industrialized" (4), he ap­ barriers, and family-based patterns of set­ pears to forget that Prairie agriculture, es­ tlement. Sylvester has done a first-rate pecially with the Wheat Boom of 1896, job in detailing those patterns, but, at the was, and remained, industrial and exten­ end of the day, as Sylvester himself argu­ sive at its most advanced and sophisti­ ably shows, the fate of the agrarian petite cated. The author seems to confuse "in­ bourgeoisie of Montcalm was a common dustrial" with "capitalist," and seems to one shared with their comrades across believe that since there were family barri­ Canada as the capitalist modernization of ers or limits to the fullest development of agriculture continued its relentless and capitalism in Prairie agriculture, there­ ultimately irresistible course. fore Prairie agriculture was somehow something other than capitalist agricul­ J. F. Conway ture. The well-documented fact is that University of Regina what developed in the Prairie West, from the start, was a sophisticated industrial and capitalist agriculture. And what Sylvester has shown in his work is how Nancy Knickerbocker, No Plaster Saint: farm families in Montcalm struggled to The Life of Mildred Osterhout Fahrni negotiate the terms of their incorporation (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2001) into that political economy, and to defend their agrarian petite bourgeois class inter­ THE LIFE OF Mildred Osterhout Fahrni, ests. Again, Sylvester teases one with this the subject of this biography written by understanding implicit in his text, when, Nancy Knickerbocker, touched upon for example, though never explicitly some of the great social movements and adopting a class analysis, he describes outstanding personalities of the 20th cen­ how the agrarian petite bourgeoisie im­ tury. It is a case study of the interesting posed and maintained its hegemony on lo­ things that can happen to the person who cal government. (123-29) takes the less travelled path. Mildred was born 2 January 1900 in a Methodist par­ Family strategies for survival and sonage in rural Manitoba, the daughter of well-being, which Sylvester seems to sug­ Reverend Abram and Hattie Osterhout. gest uniquely placed limits on capitalist When she was fourteen, the family moved development in Montcalm, were a com­ to British Columbia, where she attended mon response among all classes to the de­ school and university. In 1921 her mother velopment of capitalism, not just those died and, as the only daughter, she took on lucky enough to own property. As capital­ the role of housekeeper and caregiver for ist modernization worked out its some­ her father. She arranged one of her fre­ times painful and often ugly logic on hu­ quent escapes from domesticity by win­ manity, destroying whole classes, cul­ ning a scholarship in 1930 for one year of tures, and continents, uprooting study at Bryn Mawr. There she met communities, flinging the propertyless Muriel Lester, a British pacifist and social onto the labour market, all families strove worker, who had embraced voluntary to salvage survival and dignity, those dis­ poverty and set up a community center, possessed from the highlands of Scotland Kingsley Hall, in the slum district of Bow no less than those from Quebec seeking a in East London. On Lester's invitation, REVIEWS 283

Mildred volunteered for a six-month stint Back in Vancouver, Mildred chafed it the center. As luck would have it, her under the tedium of looking after her in­ stay coincided with the visit of Mohandas creasingly "dependent, possessive, patri­ K. Gandhi, who was in London to attend archal, nervous, over-cautious, pessimis­ the Round Table Conference on Indian in­ tic, and devoted" father. (125) He died in dependence. Although the British govern­ July 1940, leaving Mildred free of re­ ment had offered him luxurious lodgings, sponsibilities, but also in a precarious fi­ he preferred to stay among the poor at nancial position, since she had depended Kingsley Hall. Mildred cooked for him upon him for money. In 1941 she married and joined him in his pre-dawn walks. Ac­ Walter Fahrni, a ship engineer eleven cording to Knickerbocker, "meeting Gan­ years her senior. The wedding, as de­ dhi was the "accident" that set her scribed by the Vancouver Daily Province [Mildred's] life on a heroic course and society page reporter, had unusual fea­ freed her from the confines of a conven­ tures. The toast to the bride was followed tional western woman's story." (60) by toasts to the Rural Education Plan of Following a tour of Europe, including India, die Industrial Cooperative Move­ the Soviet Union, Mildred returned to ment of China, the Seaman's Institute, Vancouver and resumed the role of house­ and the International Student Service keeper and dutiful daughter. She obtained Refugee Fund. The marriage was equally a job as a social worker and took up CCF unconventional, marked by long sépara* politics, attending the 1933 founding con­ tions and unusual living arrangements vention in Regina. In November she ran as (such as a cooperative with ten other a CCF candidate in the BC election, losing adults, two teenagers, and four children in to Liberal candidate Gerry McGeer, who the same household). secured 9,572 votes to her 6,491. She ran Mildred kept up her activism in pro­ in a federal by-election in the spring of gressive causes. During World War II, she 193 8, losing again. Later that year she was taught school in New Denver, one of the off to India, where she stayed at Gandhi's interior BC towns to which Japanese Ca­ ashram. Near the end of the visit, she men­ nadians were relocated. She attended the tioned to him that she did not want to leave founding conference of the United Na­ India. "Then why go? You are welcome tions in 1945, and in 1948 accepted the here. There is free room and board as long post of National Secretary of the Fellow­ as you want to stay," he replied. She said ship of Reconciliation, an international she would feel justified in staying if she pacifist organization. The job required had something useful to do. "Well, you her to move to Toronto, where she lived are a good little washer!" he answered. until 1953, when she came back to Van­ (113) Knickerbocker interprets this as a couver to work as the Western Secretary put-down that crushed Mildred's feel­ for the Fellowship. In keeping with her ings: "One wonders how Mildred's life knack for being at the right place at the would have been different if he had taken right time, she traveled to Montgomery, her hand, looked her in the eye and ap­ Alabama during the famous bus boycott. pealed for her help. What if he had asked She interviewed Martin Luther King, her to start a literacy program in his vil­ whom she admired as a young Mohatma lage, asked her to run a school or an or­ Gandhi. When her husband died in 1958, phanage, or to work with women, or se­ she rented out rooms to boarders and stu­ niors? What if? Her future hung on his re­ dents, living out her radical peace vision ply?" (113) Here one starts to lose with open-door hospitality to anyone who confidence in the biographer. Why is it up needed a meal or a place to stay. During a to Gandhi or anybody else to define Mil­ few months of every winter from 1963 to dred's future? 1979, she worked at Casa de losAmigos, a Quaker community center in downtown 284 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Mexico City. Her long, interesting, and the sufferings of humanity" is never elu­ courageous life came to an end on 12 cidated. (191) The biographer does not April 1992. play armchair psychologist or offer an ex­ The biographer leaves the reader with planation. As a result, the reader must as many questions as answers. Mildred's connect the dots as best he or she can. relationship with her father was clearly of utmost importance, but no coherent ac­ James M. Pitsula count is given of its dynamics or the im­ University of Regina pact, positive and negative, on her. We are told that as a young girl she was "eager — perhaps overeager — to please him." (16) We learn that when she was pondering Joan Sangster, Regulating Girls and whether or not to accept the invitation to Women: Sexuality, Family, and the Law Kingsley Hall, she was "hampered in her in Ontario, 1920 - 1960 (Toronto: Oxford decision-making by her devotion to her University Press, 2001) father, and her feelings of guilt at having left him alone for a year." (45) When she IN 2001, 99 per cent of spousal abuse vic­ decided to return home after her European tims were women and 80 per cent of sexu­ travels, the author tells us "not surpris­ ally abused children were young girls ingly, her father played a large role in her (Statistics Canada). As Joan Sangster re­ dreams, reflecting a daughterly love un­ veals in Regulating Girls and Women: derscored by guilt and a strong desire to Sexuality, Family, and the Law in On­ rebel." (69) After Rev. Osterhout died, we tario, 1920-1960, things were hardly dif­ are informed that Mildred suffered from ferent in mid-20th century Ontario. In this an "eating disorder rooted in self-denial thematic study of incest, wife assault, and repression." (131) What are we to prostitution, and delinquency, Sangster conclude from all this? Did Mildred's explores the legal regulation of women, oft-mentioned indecisiveness stem from sexuality, and the family. Her purpose is unresolved conflicts with her father? If twofold: first, to examine how the legal she had been able to make a declaration of system, swathed by comforting words independence, would her life have been like protection, assessed criminality us­ more fulfilling and less scattered? ing dominant race, sexuality, class, and gender norms; and, to explore "... the ev­ All through the book, statements are eryday, particular, lived experiences of made that cry out for some kind of expla­ the law in women's lives." (195) nation or follow up. "She was probably eighteen when she experienced her first Sangster uses penal records, Family kiss, which left her feeling quite dis­ Court files, reports from reformatories gusted." (24) Why was she disgusted? and training schools, social work jour­ "Rev. Osterhout had a rather difficult re­ nals, and government documents. Much lationship with his son." ( 132) In what re­ as in the scholarship of Steven Maynard, spect was it difficult? "The Fahrnis were Carolyn Strange, and Marianna Valverde, known to sleep separately ('supposedly she applies more than one methodology to because of his snoring') and this fact led answer the questions she poses about some of the co-op residents to wonder women and the law. "Due to feminist pro­ whether there was any 'passion in the clivities," (3) Sangster remains commit­ marriage.'" (p. 166) Why is this signifi­ ted to understanding the gender-specific cant? By the end of the book, the reader is supervision of girls and women, yet she caught up in the life of Mildred Osterhout, also draws upon Foucault's triumvirate, but is somewhat baffled by it. The link be­ power/ knowledge/ body, to explore the tween her inner needs and drives and what construction and deployment of the law the author calls her "super-sensitivity to between 1920 and 1960 in Ontario. REVIEWS 285

As a materialist feminist, Sangster working-class women into chaste, honest must grapple with the issues raised most daughters and mothers. famously in the Joan Scott-Linda Gordon For victims of incest and wife assault, debate (Signs, 1990): how can scholars the family was a site of contradiction: it reconcile a deconstruction of discourse symbolized both violence and redemp­ and power with the lived reality of abuse? tion. As wives, women used the legal sys­ Siding with Gordon, who asserts that tem to stop the abuse of their husbands; as scholars, irrespective of theoretical lean­ mothers, they were blamed for failing to ings, can not ignore the emotional and provide safe home environments for their physical scars of violence, Sangster rec­ children; and as defendants, they learned ognizes the actuality of abuse. Rejecting that heralding the heterosexual family en­ the idea that domination in law, family, couraged leniency and that returning to and society was ever complete, she em­ one's rightful place as wife or daughter phasizes women's agency. What emerges aided recovery. is a study that provides an empirical re­ Ultimately, the law, though designed construction of women's experiences and to protect women, rarely achieved its highlights the "plurality of meanings" goal. Rather it regulated incest and as­ that result from the dynamic relationship sault by normalizing the behaviour of between society and the law. (194) some women and pathologizing the be­ Regulating Girls and Women builds haviour of others. A gendered analysis re­ on other feminist studies (most notably, veals that absorbing appropriate feminine the scholarship of Constance Backhouse, attributes, like chastity, legitimized vio­ Judith Fingard, and Margaret Hillyard lent responses from women who were de­ Little) that examine women's resistance fending their honour, while the authori­ to and regulation through governmental tarian language of masculinity justified and legal systems. However, as Sangster male violence. These were contradictory points out, existing scholarship focuses messages that conveyed an unwillingness on either the Progressive Era, or late 20th to recognize the crucial issues of power century sociological and criminological and control at the heart of incest and wife issues. This leaves an historiographical beating. gap in the mid-20th century when changes In prostitution and delinquency cases occurred in the relationship between soci­ women were characterized as perpetra­ ety and the law, that had distinct ramifica­ tors of crime. The reaction of Ontario's tions for women. court system, the Children's Aid Society, In particular, these decades witnessed and the Mercer Reformatory for Women the rise of state and professionally run reveals a great deal about the discursive regulatory bodies, including the Toronto construction of good and bad girls. Juvenile and Family Court, the Mercer Women and girls found themselves in Reformatory for Women, and the conflict with the law for a variety of rea­ Children's Aid Society, which employed sons, but most often because they had not social workers, doctors, and psycholo­ absorbed the proper characteristics of gists to define and treat behaviour deemed femininity. Using bawdy-house laws, va­ unacceptable. The family is an important grancy provisions, and the Ontario Fe­ prism through which to understand male Refugees Act, officials claimed women's experiences of the law. For even prostitutes were abnormal, fee­ as eugenics gave way to Freudian expla­ ble-minded women who threatened the nations for victimization and deviance, family by undermining dominant reli­ the overall goal of experts persisted: to gious and cultural values. Morally maintain the strength of the heterosexual charged discourse regulated prostitution family and uplift, mould, and fashion informally; a woman guarded her "good" reputation through honest labour and by 286 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

embracing middle-class, heterosexual, nials and frank quips in the courtroom, female attributes. Delinquents also had their use of family need to explain prosti­ their family lives scrutinized. For in­ tution, and their defiance of Christian stance, families that were materially de­ western ideals and cultural continuity, prived, lacked a male breadwinner, or an provides an important dimension to our appropriate religious affiliation, were understanding of women's experience of likely to find themselves targeted as en­ the law. couraging delinquency. Indeed, this aspect of Sangster's In her most important chapter, study is particularly important. Thus, it is Sangster focuses on the experiences of surprising that she does not use oral histo­ Native women. Here important differ­ ries. Certainly, Sangster examines highly ences among women emerge that reveal sensitive issues. But, as Marlene Epp has the centrality of race to women's experi­ recently shown, memories can reveal im­ ences of the law. Prostitution and delin­ portant direct and indirect clues about quency case files suggest that White women's experiences of violence. More­ women of British descent were incarcer­ over, interviews with those who wielded ated less often and for shorter periods than the law, including judges, lawyers, po­ Native women. Sangster provides an im­ lice, and YWCA leaders, might have pro­ portant socio-cultural explanation for the vided important answers to questions sexual regulation of Native women. She about how historical actors perceived underscores systemic racism, and the col­ prostitution, incest, and wife abuse. Such onization of Native peoples by the Cana­ queries might also have provided further dian state. Moreover, Native women con­ insight into why poor, working class, and tended with an additional layer of surveil­ Native women continue to experience lance provided by the insidious power of greater legal regulation than other women the Indian agent. in Canadian society. The greatest strength of this study Nevertheless, these criticisms are rests in Sangster's commitment to unite small in comparison with the broader im­ questions from social theory about the portance of this study. On the anniversary construction of law and the discursive of the 1929 Person's Case, Governor power of norms rooted in categories of General Adrienne Clarkson observed: "It race, class, gender, and sexuality with ma­ is appalling that Canadian women are still terialist feminist queries about women's the most vulnerable in society and face experiences. She demonstrates that these discrimination and violence." (Toronto methodologies, though often juxtaposed, Star, 19 October 2002) There can be no can provide important tools for the assess­ greater indicator of the continued need for ment of regulation and resistance. sensitive studies like Regulating Girls Incest, wife assault, prostitution, and and Women. delinquency raise difficult issues about surveillance and protection. Certainly, Katrina Srigley the courtroom statements of incest vic­ University of Toronto tims suggest that regulation, however fee­ ble it may be, is important. But, the ques­ tion of how to protect women is harder to answer. In wife assault cases, women tended to use the law to regulate rather than escape male violence; prostitution continued, as did female delinquency. Sangster suggests that women's resis­ tance, conveyed in their use of the legal system to punish transgressions, their de­ REVIEWS 287

Paul Anisef, Paul Axelrod, Etta spondents reported having more than 150 Balchman-Anisef, Carl James, Anton employees. Turrittin, Opportunity and Uncertainty: In between these extremes the study Life Course Experiences of the Class of includes people from a very broad range '73 (Toronto: University of Toronto of employment statuses and affords the Press, 2000). researchers the opportunity to compare career and life-course patterns using a SOCIAL RESEARCH usually involves tak­ number of background and achievement ing a snapshot at one time and in one variables. While this single cohort study place. The researchers who have written does not directly allow cross-genera­ Opportunity and Uncertainty have taken tional comparisons, it does provide a base several portraits of the same group, cap­ from which the experience of other turing this "Class of '73" at various stages groups may be contrasted. As the authors of their life course, anticipating gradua­ note, the generation that matured in the tion, securing a first full-time job, and em­ 1990s faced a much more negatively barking on the personal project of structured job market relative to 1973, child-rearing. suggesting a direction for future research. Reading about the C lass of ' 73 is rem­ The majority of the findings reported iniscent of attending a class reunion. Not consist of quantitative data from the vari­ everyone comes to a reunion and it is of­ ous survey phases, though primarily from ten the more successful who show up. the last phase. Inevitably, individual re­ Similarly, a great deal of attrition oc­ spondents disappear in the reports of per­ curred in the successive stages of the lon­ centages and overall trends, which re­ gitudinal study described in this book, de­ quire the aggregation of large numbers of spite the admirable efforts of the research respondents to be meaningful. To com­ team to trace and contact members of their pensate, the researchers adopted a group. The study was conducted through multi-technique approach that included six phases beginning with 2,555 grade 12 almost 200 individual interviews or focus students in 97 secondary schools in On­ group participants. What people mean tario. Five successive follow-ups were when they answer questions on a survey is done, culminating in 1995, when 30.8 per best discovered by asking them directly. cent, or 788 from the initial group, re­ The authors utilize a life-course per­ turned surveys. While less than a third re­ spective. Members of a given cohort are mained, the final snapshot is still broadly likely to approximate an overall, norma­ representative of the original graduating tive set of transitions as they age together, class, with some over representation of from graduation to retirement. Theo­ the more successful and highly educated, retically, the authors attempt to straddle, and those from rural and small-town On­ if not overcome, the seemingly perma­ tario. nent dichotomy in social science between Not everyone made it for the original the structural and choice determinants of class picture in 1973. Among the missing life outcomes. In their theoretical model, were the approximately 20 per cent who structure and agency are distinguished, had dropped out prior to grade 12. They though they mutually condition each would have been least likely to be conven­ other. In turn, these primary determinants tionally successful and most likely to dis­ affect the objective situation of the re­ appear from successive stages of any spondents as well as their subjective un­ study. Typical of studies of school atten­ derstandings. This complex of factors is dees, the rich and powerful at the opposite further mediated by the "structured indi­ end of the social spectrum were also con­ vidualization" of the stages in the life spicuously absent, though five of the re­ course determined by age. 288 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

This model suggests a way to talk of the Class of '73 since they benefited about the factors involved in the individ­ from an exceptional expansion of formal ual's construction of her or his life course. education, opening opportunities and re­ A given outcome for any individual is sources that the Class of '73 consistently some function of these complex, interact­ utilized. Gender shaped the particular ing elements, that include individual outcomes within broader occupational or choices within the range of alternatives educational categories (the choice of they perceive to be available at many cru­ programme, the type of work within an cial transition points in their life. The occupational category), and also played a model makes intuitive sense in terms of key subsequent role structuring family the ways the respondents apparently per­ life. ceived their lives. It is a pragmatic use of One of the main strengths of the anal­ the agency/structure dichotomy that ysis in Opportunity and Uncertainty is the raises a larger, theoretical question about incorporation of an historical framework the effect of this individuated action on that depicts the changing groves that the social structure as a whole. This is not groups will predictably follow in the ag­ addressed by the authors. The theoretical gregate, or individuals will navigate in model in Opportunity and Uncertainty the construction of their individuated life does not imply any macro claims or appli­ courses. Structured factors are effective cation to the social formation as a whole. variously in time and space. The class of Structure persists over time, irrespec­ '73, as late baby boomers, imbibed the ex­ tive of the specific individuals who come pectations of post-war prosperity with to occupy the spaces. From the perspec­ their infant formula, weathered the Cold tive of pure capitalism, who does what is War, and endured school in a period of un­ immaterial. Reproducing capitalism has precedented flexibility in curricula. They been compatible with a variety of social experienced more Opportunity than Un­ forms, including a formal mechanism for certainty, though there were whispered meritocracy. Once labour was free, the in­ hints of more limited futures, more under­ dividualized labour market meant pre­ employment than unemployment. The fu­ cisely that ail those born with spoons of ture was casting a long shadow back­ base metals were on their own to compete, wards, especially for social science and to achieve or fail, to choose within the teacher-training graduates. structured options determined by the Mobility patterns were, predictably, stage of the division of labour. Capitalism complex, though mobility is a difficult created this degree of hyper-agency, or concept to operationalize. On the crudest under-determinism. From the perspective scale, while overall the majority re­ of actually existing capitalism, this mained in their class of origin, the Class agency is hindered or accelerated by so­ of'73 experienced slightly more negative cial structural factors such as gender, than positive intergenerational social mo­ class position, and ethnicity. bility, particularly among middle status As Opportunity and Uncertainty occupational groups. (Table 5.1) When a demonstrates, the educational, employ­ nine- category system was utilized, the ment, and mobility experiences of the norm for the class was considerable up­ Class of'73 were significantly influenced ward mobility, though largely into adja­ by the structural side of the cent or nearly adjacent categories. (Table agency-structure duality. Class and loca­ 5.3) tion shaped the unequal use of institu­ Children of immigrant families tional opportunities (primarily education) tended to do better than the Canadian-born, even while education, as an agency outlet, particularly among men. This illustrates has a strong independent effect on indi­ the importance of agency within the struc­ vidual location. This was especially true ture, as new Canadians entered the coun- REVIEWS 289

try for the presumed advantages of mobil­ The Class of '73 may be quite familiar ity and then negotiated their new environ­ to working academics, many of whom are ment to realize their aspirations. The baby boomers approaching retirement. Class of '73 claimed to find their greatest They are unlikely to know any of the peo­ source of satisfaction in their family life ple behind the pseudonyms, but they — in children and marriage — more than know people like them. More to the point, in their work, though most were also sub­ there are many they do not know. If aggre­ jectively "satisfied" with their employ­ gate data gives you a more objective view ment. of the surrounding reality, interview data These are merely samplers. There allows an appreciation of the life experi­ were not many surprising or unexpected ences of people you would otherwise findings in the data analysis (although never know. They are the class members family was subjectively less important for who do not show up for the reunions. class members in rural and small town ar­ eas compared with metro Toronto). The Anthony Thomson importance of the study is in the details, in Acadia University the potential for comparison with other cohorts at different times and places. The authors have access to a very rich and de­ tailed data source presented in numerous Ann Hansen, Direct Action: Memoirs of tables with full discussions of the find­ an Urban Guerrilla (Toronto: Between ings, broken down by numerous back­ the Lines, 2001) ground variables. It is not a casual read. Baby boomers will be interested in the ALTHOUGH 20TH-CENTURY Canada book because, characteristically, it is was hardly Lower's "peaceable king­ about them. It is, in addition, a landmark dom," political violence by non-state ac­ study that will be a reference point for re­ tors has been sufficiently rare that this searchers profiling future generations. To account of a group of self-styled urban their credit from the point of view of the guerillas is bound to be of interest to stu­ average reader, the authors restricted dents of social movements and the left. their statistical analysis to percentage ta­ The author and four others comprised a bles. group calling itself "Direct Action" that engaged in a series of politically moti­ The use of illustrative case interviews vated bombings in 1982. Arrested in Jan­ is another important strength of the narra­ uary 1983, they received sentences of tion. The interview data, by their nature, between ten years and life (Hansen her­ offer a more complex image of the way in­ self); all were out on parole by 1990. dividuals negotiate the constraint/agency Based on her own recollections, police paradigm. Interviews breathe life into the documents made available to defence figures, illustrating the structural tenden­ lawyers, and newspaper articles, the book cies, and highlighting variations. The tells the story of the three years during point of the illustrative material is not that which Hansen changed from a graf­ examples "confirm" aggregate tenden­ fiti-painting revolutionary into a cies, (193) but to show the "unique ways gun-toting urban guerilla. in which people manage social and politi­ cal capital," demonstrated in five detailed This does not pretend to be a scholarly biographies presented in the penultimate book, and the publisher has provided chapter. Every life is, in a sense, unique. terms for its review as "Politics, True As social science practitioners, the au­ Crime, Autobiography." (back cover) thors necessarily abstract from this over­ The 160 pages of Part II, "Going Under­ whelming mass of data. ground," are the most autobiographical, as we learn there about her involvement in prison rights and international solidarity 290 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

movements, growing interest in urban cal community from which you emerged. guerillas, support work in Paris for Ger­ This will have both political and personal many's Red Army Faction, and move consequences. The political consequence from Toronto to Vancouver, where she is that, cut off from movements and their joined a small network of anarchists. We constituencies (and disdainful of those follow the emerging urban guerillas as who do not share your militancy), your they acquire the skills and resources of group will become increasingly their trade — the skills (of car theft, weap­ self-referential, imprisoned by your own ons handling, bomb-making) mainly from ideologies and revolutionary delusions. books, pamphlets, and magazines such as The personal consequence will be that the Soldier of Fortune and Guns and Ammo; interpersonal emotional and sexual dy­ the resources (guns, dynamite, money, namics within the group will become very vehicles, false identities) mainly through intense. It will become very difficult to theft, including their first armed robbery. quit once you have begun, because so Hansen's motives emerge as a mixture of much of your identity will be tied up with idealism, a quest to realize a romanticized your activities and group, and you will self-identity as a revolutionary, and an find doing "actions" addictively exciting, emotional need to feel that she is doing despite the accompanying anxieties, fear, something important and dangerous. This doubts, and despair. The political conse­ section of the book can be tedious, the quences of isolation are shown in the gen­ level of detail sometimes overwhelming erally simplistic quality of political anal­ (e.g., two pages on disguising her hair­ ysis by Direct Action: their strategic goal style). was to stimulate others to more militant activity, but they displayed little sense of As "true crime" the book shines in the context and likely effects of their ac­ Part III, "Doing Cheekeye-Dunsmuir and tions. Politically, their most successful Litton," and Part IV, "Under Surveil­ action appears to have been the fire- lance." First, Ann and Doug bomb a sub­ bombing of several Red Hot Video outlets station on the environmentally conten­ selling violent pornography; the one ac­ tious BC Hydro line under construction tion undertaken with people outside their between the Sunshine Coast and Vancou­ group (under the name "Wimmin's Fire ver Island. Later she, Brent, Julie, and 550 Brigade"). pounds of dynamite travel to Toronto, where they bomb a building at the Litton Don't underestimate the police, is the Industries factory manufacturing compo­ second lesson. They have more resources nents for American Cruise missiles. Par­ than you do and they are a lot smarter than allel to their own story, Hansen also tells you think. Furthermore, the police will the story of the police investigation, pro­ consider you as frightening and inhuman viding a surprisingly sympathetic account as you do them (both of you are armed and of the feelings and actions of the "com­ dangerous, after all). The former is exem­ posite" fictionalized police investigator plified in an amusing passage where in Vancouver. Whatever one's opinion of Doug, who unknowingly has been under the morality and wisdom of the group's police surveillance for weeks, and whose actions, these parts of the book are grip­ room is bugged, states: "The cops really ping. do seem more incompetent than you The "politics" of Direct Action occur think." (448) The latter appears most viv­ throughout the book. They can be idly in the opening pages of the book, summed up in what might be called "Ann where Hansen and her friends are arrested Hansen's Lessons for Aspiring Urban on the highway between Vancouver and Guerillas." First, becoming an urban gue­ Squamish: the police fear a gun battle, rilla will isolate you from previous social and Hansen believes she will be killed on contacts, including contacts with the radi­ the spot. REVIEWS 291

The third lesson is that actions have than criminal; it is mistaken." {Reflec­ unintended and unwanted consequences. tions on The Causes of Human Misery and Even when you intend only to damage upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate property, you are putting others' lives at Them. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972, risk, and accidents will happen, such as 176-7) the premature explosion at the Litton fac­ tory, injuring ten people. Your actions Jim Conley will also have unintended political ef­ Trent University fects, including splitting moderate and militant factions of the movements you are hoping to energize. You may blame the moderates for this, (471) but it will Marc Edge, Pacific Press: The Unautho­ happen regardless, and the activists using rized Story of Vancouver's Newspaper techniques such as civil disobedience will Monopoly (Vancouver: New Star Books, bear the brunt of "hard" protest policing 2001) after your actions. In Germany and Italy, the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades IN A 1998 ARTICLE in Acadiensis, Wil­ emerged after a wave of protest and high liam J. Buxton and Catherine McKercher levels of state repression (including vio­ lament the lack of critical journalism lent neo-fascist counter-movements in It­ scholarship in Canada that links the aly). In contrast, Direct Action emerged growth of newspapers to broader techno­ in Canada in a period of heightened mobi­ logical, economic, and social changes. lization of the peace movement in the face Unlike the United States, they argue that of the war-mongering Reagan presidency. Canada has been slow to publish credible Perhaps because of the underlying politi­ surveys of the development of newspa­ cal analysis in which all states and corpo­ pers, magazines, and journalism. Pacific rations are equally oppressive, the book Press: The Unauthorized Story of Van­ does a remarkably poor job of conveying couver 's Newspaper Monopoly succeeds the threatening political atmosphere of in addressing their concerns and in doing that time. As a result, Hansen overesti­ so makes a definitive addition to the his­ mates Direct Action's impact (e.g., on tory of the media in Canada. This book is growth of the peace movement, (288)), particularly helpful for the painstaking and fails to provide the context that would detail that it uses to examine the creation render her own actions more understand­ of Pacific Press in 1957 and its entrench­ able. ment as a monopoly that had detrimental effects on two major media companies. The lessons emerging from Hansen's Author Marc Edge convincingly outlines book (and from academic studies of un­ the interplay of economic, institutional, derground groups) are unlikely to win her and labour forces, as well as personalities endorsement. She is unrepentant, echoing in the newsrooms of Vancouver's two the "diversity of tactics" line of major daily newspapers and their impact anti-globalization protesters and eschew­ on content, circulation, and the larger me­ ing responsibility for police repression af­ dia culture. ter her group's actions. Barrington Moore Jr.'s observation from a similar period co­ The literature on the Canadian media mes to mind: "The nineteenth-century an­ is full of memoirs from journalists, edi­ archist whom the desperate young imitate tors, and publishers that tell fascinating was actually the policeman's best friend. stories. But this book, which is written by The anarchist managed to do just enough Edge, a former reporter for the Vancouver to frighten respectability without being Province from the 1970s who took a able to cripple any vital social institution. buyout in 1993, and completed this study To paraphrase Tally rand, that is worse for his dissertation, succeeds where many former journalists have failed in melding 292 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the interesting stories of Pacific Press history such as Stu Keate and Allan with its economic and historic context. Fotheringham, he also includes anecdotes The study is a critical one written from rank-and-file journalists. For in­ from a viewpoint that challenges the stance, he outlines in detail how the union changes that have taken place at the Van­ launched the strike paper, The Express, in couver Sun and Province since what Edge 1970 under the editorial direction of Mike defines as the genesis of the problem — Tytherleigh, the night city editor at the the mechanical amalgamation between Vancouver Sun. The paper was a resound­ the Vancouver Sun and Province into Pa­ ing success for the three months that it cific Press Ltd. in 1957. Edge argues that was in operation, in the ended making the joint operating agreement between the money for the unions and situating two competing dailies similar to partner­ Tytherleigh for the position of general ships that had proliferated in the United manager at the end of the shutdown. Edge States since the 1930s signaled the begin­ also spends an entire chapter on the ning of a government-sanctioned monop­ "Cheesecake revolution," a 1989 rebel­ oly and the end of competition and quality lion of a group of Vancouver Sun journal­ journalism in the Lower Mainland. He ists over cost-cutting and quality con­ calls his work a "case study of the adverse cerns at the paper. effects of removing competition from the His use of sources — both interview marketplace for ideas." (xxiv) and document material is meticulous as is What makes his book particularly fas­ his eye for detail and story — is an obvi­ cinating and worth reading for any media ous remnant of his journalistic experi­ or labour historian is its examination of ence. Asa result Pacific Press: The Unau­ the bitter labour relations at Pacific Press thorized Story of Vancouver's Newspaper and how a number of strikes and shut­ Monopoly is not the dull, unimaginative downs since 1957 and successive mis­ history that some claim is all too often management by absentee corporate own­ found in the field ofjournalis m and media ers had a negative impact on circulation studies. While the book would be less in­ and readership, leaving the papers basi­ teresting without the stories behind the cally rudderless. For instance, Edge out­ scenes, it could also have done with a bit lines in detail five shutdowns that oc­ of editing. For instance, Edge tends at curred at Pacific Press in an eleven-year times to be easily seduced by anecdotes period, ending with what would prove to and sensational details without links to be the "catastrophic strike" in 1978 that his larger argument. This is particularly then Sun publisher Stuart Keate had long evident in the chapter on Province colum­ feared. At the same time, he places the nist Ormand Turner, who in 1965 began shutdowns in the context of North Ameri­ making charges of union vote-fixing in can labour and the impact of technologi­ aid of candidates in the 1963 federal elec­ cal change on the press rooms of daily tion under the banner of the New Demo­ newspapers. cratic Party. His claims resulted in a royal commission in 1965 and ended with In his attention to labour history, Turner retiring from the Province shortly Edge addresses Hanno Hardt and Bonnie after his allegations of election Brennan's lament in Newsworkers: A His­ price-fixing were nixed. One gets the tory of the Rank and File, that the history sense that the section was included for the of journalists as workers has been largely last line. Turner later "became editor of untold. Buxton and McKercher also point the monthly magazine "Phenomena," out that monographs on journalistic insti­ published by the Vancouver Flying Sau­ tutions follow general surveys in focusing cer Club, of which he was elected presi­ on élite figures important in their history. dent in 1968." (105) In this case, while Edge details the lives of the major players in Vancouver media REVIEWS 293

In the end however Edge's history of gee Kids," yet the parameters of the legis­ Pacific Press from 19S7 to 1991 is a must lation are wide, and allow for great read and his argument that the numerous interpretive powers at all levels of law en­ strikes and shutdowns coupled with the forcement, from police on the street to lack of competition in the market have left courtrooms. Indeed, this legislation is Vancouver readers unattached and under akin to the vagrancy laws of the late-19th served is convincing. and early-20th centuries, notorious for their arbitrary interpretation and enforce­ Mary Lynn Young ment. Hermer and Mosher note that "the University of British Columbia Safe Street Act is both extraordinarily de­ tailed and at the same time vague and sweeping." ( 12) The Act prohibits solicit­ ing in an "aggressive manner" and solicit­ Joe Hermer and Janet Mosher, eds. Disor­ ing a "captive audience," (12) and the edi­ derly People: Law and the Politics of Ex­ tors comment that "the very notion of a clusion in Ontario (Halifax: Fernwood 'captive audience' works to construct the Publishing, 2002) public as vulnerable victims, constantly held hostage in their travels through pub­ JOE HERMER and Janet Mosher have lic by the disorder that anyone begging compiled seven of the presentations from many embody." (13) a one-day conference held in April 2000 Prior to the enactment of the Safe at the University of Toronto, devoted to Streets Act by the Ontario Conservative discussing the social and legal conse­ government, laws against begging re­ quences of Ontario's Safe Streets Act, mained under the jurisdiction of particu­ into a small but exceptionally provocative lar municipalities. By portraying begging collection. Hermer and Mosher contend or soliciting donations for services per­ that although the Safe Streets Act remains formed as potentially hostile and aggres­ one of the more visible manifestations of sive acts, and therefore potentially threat­ the Ontario government's neo-conserva- ening to the users of streets and highways, tive agenda that assists in excluding the province has justified its involvement groups from the political and geograph­ in an area previously understood to be the ical landscape, this particular piece of leg­ responsibility of local government. The islation is only the latest in a long list of perceived threat to provincial interest — exclusionary practices that have arisen safety of the Ontario taxpayer on road­ from the current neo-conservative politi­ ways — has allowed for the passage of cal climate. This collection aims to illus­ province-wide laws against begging and trate that legislation such as the Safe various forms of soliciting. Streets Act, and other actions by the pro­ vincial government of Ontario, have con­ It is this focus on the perceived threat tributed to the construction of a vast array that Hermer and Mosher emphasize in of what the editors term "disorderly peo­ their collection as a discussion of the con­ ple," while at the same time serving to ex­ struction of "disorderly people" surfaces clude individuals and groups defined and through the various contributions. This framed as such from public space, public collection stresses that the political discourse, and public view. agenda of the Ontario government, in­ cluding but not limited to the passage of The Safe Streets Act, which came into legislation such as the Safe Streets Act, effect at the end of January 2000, seeks to manifests itself in part through a perva­ strictly limit, through criminalization, sive discourse that emphasizes the "d isor- various acts of public begging, soliciting, der" and threat created by those who are or exchanging services for money. The not self-sufficient — those "disorderly legislation is linked in the minds of many people" perceived and constructed as to the crackdown on the so-called "Squee­ 294 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

bleeding the Ontario taxpayer dry. Resi­ provides much needed income for in­ dents of Ontario are increasingly catego­ creasingly marginalized street youth rized dichotomously as either the giver or whose options have been severely cur­ the taker: the "Ontario taxpayer" or the tailed by the neo-conservative political "Ontario citizen," versus the "welfare climate. Mosher, in her contribution to cheat," the "squeegee kid/aggressive beg­ the volume, illustrates changes in our un­ gar," the "coddled prisoner," or the "vio­ derstanding of public and private realms. lent youth." There are those who She argues that, increasingly, access to contribute, and those who do not. Those public space and privacy has been portrayed as not contributing are increas­ usurped from the poor, effectively ex­ ingly perceived as requiring legislation to cluding them from society. Another con­ curtail their demands on contributing tributions call on Kafka's image of the members of society. They are constructed process of metamorphosis, and the con­ as requiring a "get-tough approach" to in­ cept of social death, to illustrate how the creasingly aggressive manifestations of poor are increasingly constructed as un­ their feelings of entitlement. "The under­ necessary and ineffective (non)members lying logic that has been installed in this of society. Another contributor illustrates politics of exclusion is the forging of an how the act of asking strangers for money unquestioned linkage between the exis­ is a political act, and constitutes a form of tence and control of disorderly people and political speech — an act the right to the securing of safety and security." (16) which must be protected. Further, a con­ The collection astutely stresses that tribution questions the right of the prov­ this constructed and perceived disorder ince to have passed such legislation effec­ has been used to justify the neo-conserva- tively criminalizing behavior, arguing tive policies and legislation of the Ontario that such j urisdiction resides in the federal government that seek to regulate the "dis­ realm. Another contributor argues that pov­ orderly." Increasingly those most in need erty and homelessness is criminalized as of a welfare state are excluded from social part of a wider neo-conservative political space as they are seen as promoting and agenda. If poverty is criminalized, then contributing to this disorder. They are the legislation proclaiming the need to therefore seen as less deserving, and the control those acting criminally is more Ontario taxpayer somehow less responsi­ easily perceived as beneficial to the On­ ble for their need: "making up a disorderly tario taxpayer-citizen. The final contribu­ set of people has come with an erosion of tion discusses the climate of change sur­ some of the central principles that have rounding Ontario's prisons and treatment underpinned the democratic and equitable of criminals, as the Ontario government character of our institutions." (17) argues a "get-tough" approach to its so- called "coddled prisoners." The seven contributions themselves serve to illustrate the pervasiveness of the Lest the desire to further marginalize Ontario government's politics of exclu­ those who have been constructed as "dis­ sion, for the subjects of focus are diverse. orderly," and push them further "out of The focus of this collection is sight," threaten to push them therefore far-reaching, yet this diversity is reined "out of mind" of the current citizen-tax­ tightly and presented with unity of pur­ payer of Ontario, this collection should pose. All the contributions are crafted to­ help to keep the debate surrounding at gether in a remarkably succinct presenta­ least one aspect of the neo-conservative tion. agenda of the Ontario government alive. The first contribution presents inter­ In keeping with the intentions of Hermer views with the so-called "Squeegee Kids" and Mosher in compiling this collection, whom many associate with the Safe which include "makfing] visible the over­ Streets Act, and argues that squeegeeing all geography of the neo-conservative REVIEWS 295

character of the Ontario government" thesis on the "historic import of Scottish while providing] footholds for critique Enlightenment common-sense philoso­ and resistance both within the courtroom phies into Canadian universities and their and out on the street," ( 17) proceeds from effects on Canadian law and culture," and the sale of Disorderly People are being her doctoral thesis that formed the foun­ donated to the Toronto Disaster Relief dation of the book. She detects a series of Fund. influences on Wilson's juridical under­ standing: academic studies of philoso­ Joselyn C. Morley phy, an "unconscious process of accultur­ Carleton University ation in the doctrines of the Scottish En­ lightenment," the influence of the "Church of Scotland ethos," and a "dis­ tinctively principled and moral" Ellen Anderson, Judging Bertha Wilson: postmodernism. The synthesis of this Law As Large As Life (Toronto: Univer­ rather complex mixture is well-exempli­ sity of Toronto Press, 2001) fied in the following sentence: ELLEN ANDERSON has produced the first Wilson's provisional process for weighing biography of Canada's first woman Su­ rights as it related to her highly particularized preme Court judge, Bertha (Wernham) definition of rights is traceable back to Aristo­ Wilson. This is a book that is long over­ telian phronesis, the subtle and shifting inte­ due, given that Madam Justice Wilson's gration of practical and philosophic wisdoms which we saw re-emerging in David Hume's historic stature as a jurist is arguably un­ phenomenological explorations of the frag­ paralleled in Canada. The book is de­ mented self, linked in term to Hume's cheerful scribed on the dust-jacket as an acceptance of the indeterminate epistemology "authorized, intellectual biography" which is all that such necessarily fragmented drawing upon interviews with Wilson, her selves can achieve; it is akin to the writings of husband, friends, relatives, and col­ the best of the contemporary postmodern theo­ leagues. It chronicles many fascinating rists who sustain the liberal heritage of mean­ aspects of Bertha Wilson's life: her child­ ing-seeking without demanding that meanings hood and adolescence in Scotland; her be unitary or finally fixed. (267) study of philosophy at the University of Aberdeen; her courtship with and mar­ Anderson weaves this intricate theo­ riage to John Wilson; her role as the wife retical framework through more than two of a Church of Scotland minister; migra­ hundred pages of legal analysis of the tion to Canada; employment as a dental criminal, commercial, family, tort, con­ receptionist; her law student days at tract, trust, tax, administrative, interna­ Dalhousie; articling with Halifax crimi­ tional, evidence, employment, property, nal lawyer F.W. Bissett; a legal career human rights, immigration. Aboriginal, with the corporate-commercial Osier law and constitutional cases that Wilson firm in Toronto; her elevation as the first judged over her career. Graduate students woman on the Ontario Court of Appeal in and legally-trained individuals well 1976; her appointment to the Supreme versed in Supreme Court jurisprudence Court in 1982; her work with the Cana­ will find this challenging and interesting. dian Bar Association Task Force on Gen­ Many of the potential readers of a der Equality; and her contribution to the Bertha Wilson biography will be femi­ Royal Commission on Aboriginal Issues. nists, gays and lesbians, Aboriginals, and In the main, however, this is a book others who support the various move­ that dissects Wilson's judicial decisions ments to achieve greater equality for dis­ and published writings about law. It advantaged groups. For us, her work at emerged out of Anderson's LL.B. re­ the Supreme Court of Canada represented search on Wilson's judgments, her LL.M. an enormous contribution. Madam Jus- 296 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

tice Wilson came to symbolize the finest deluged Wilson with hostile letters during in humanistic, principled, and creative her constitutional rulings on abortion, judging. Her advancement of legal think­ with comments so hateful that her staff at ing about equality and discrimination the court were too frightened to open the constituted a life contribution that out­ mail. Anti-feminist responses to the Ca­ stripped most of the jurists who had gone nadian Bar Association (CBA) Task Force before. For litigants and litigators seeking were virulent and directed at Wilson per­ access to a hitherto unreceptive, closed le­ sonally, causing her great anxiety and gal system, she opened vistas of opportu­ concern. (38-49, 57-64, 87, 94, 128, 150- nity, imagination, and hope. 64, and 346-50) Some of the readers who turn to this Anderson mentions these difficulties, biography to learn more about what but repeatedly discounts them. She shaped such an extraordinary judge and stresses that Wilson "did not nurture any her awe-inspiring career, may come away feminist resentments," that she had "no saddened that there is not more focus on desire to assert herself as equal in the this. Nor is there much analysis of the sense of being identical with the more multiple gender barriers that stood in Wil­ prominent male lawyers," and that she son's way. To be certain, Anderson lists was "prepared to accommodate ... and many. Wilson experienced social exclu­ learn from" the male judges who spurned sion as one of Dalhousie's early women her. In fact, she accepts that Wilson's ca­ law students, none of whom were wel­ reer "did not illustrate persistent or sys­ come in the university common room or temic discrimination," and that it was not the local fishermen's tavern where the until the backlash against the CBA Task other students lingered. Dalhousie Law Force on Gender Equality that Wilson felt Dean Horace Read told Wilson she should "her first unequivocal and deeply per­ "just go home and take up crocheting," sonal experience of gender discrimina­ and actively discouraged her from accept­ tion." (57,64,94, and 349) This may have ing a scholarship to do graduate legal been Wilson's own assessment, and it is a studies at Harvard because there would perspective that was common for women "never be women academics teaching in lawyers and judges of her generation to law schools." It was difficult for women assume. What is odd is that Anderson her­ to find articles, and when she became the self does not go into a deeper analysis of first female hired at Osier's, she was whether this was an accurate reflection of warned that she could not stay perma­ what Wilson experienced, what impact nently. She did stay, but Osier's made her gender discrimination actually had on her wait for nine years before bestowing part­ life and career, and what we can learn nership, in a milieu in which males were from Wilson's strategies of responding to often given partnership in five. At first, male exclusion and hostility. she was not allowed to travel with male Feminists will probably be even more lawyers because of the potential for gos­ saddened at Anderson's consistently neg­ sip. A woman who would have made a ative attitude towards feminism. The fem­ first-rate courtroom lawyer, she was not inism that I and many others aspire to allowed to do litigation. Despite sixteen bears little resemblance to Anderson's years at the firm, she was never made se­ depiction of it. Anderson finds feminism nior partner or appointed to the senior and feminists to be "confrontational" and management committee. Her appoint­ "fervent." She describes feminism as ment to the courts sparked serious resis­ given to "simple-minded dichotomies," tance from several judges and she found "self-righteous certainty," and "feminist herself isolated from informal judicial rant." (xvi, 197,223,230, and 231 ) Femi­ discussions in ways that marginalized her nists are undoubtedly capable of all these influence. Fanatic anti-choice proponents things, but the philosophy and the move- REVIEWS 297

ment that bears its name are profoundly failed) to establish a new tort of discrimi­ richer than this. It seems, at least to me, a nation, is someone whom I would have great shame that the woman who chose to hoped would claim the label of feminism write Bertha Wilson's biography believes with heart and soul. that feminism is properly characterized in this manner. Constance Backhouse And it seems possible that Ander­ University of Ottawa son's negative perspective on feminism has coloured her Wilson biography. She repeatedly recounts that Wilson does not claim to be a feminist. She makes the Colin D. Howell, Blood, Sweat, and point on the second page of the preface, Cheers: Sport and the Making of Modern and no less than three additional times in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto the text, noting that Wilson "declines to Press, 2001) identify herself as a feminist," does "not consider herself a feminist," was "avow­ THIS IS A LITTLE BOOK with a big title. edly not a feminist," and finally that she There are three words to describe "most emphatically does not consider Howell's book: vital, topical, and intelli­ herself a feminist." (xiv, 135-6, and 197) gent. It introduces a popular audience, Interestingly, none of these statements is rather than an academic one, to the devel­ in direct quotations, although Madam Jus­ opments of and critiques in Canadian tice Wilson writes in the foreward to the sport and culture. This is an interesting book that she is indebted to the author for read of 150 pages organized into 6 chap­ becoming a "philosophical alter ego" who ters: the Field, Blood, Respectability, has presented a true picture of her life; so Money, Cheers, Bodies, and Nation. The presumably she took no issue with this book is packed with little known histori­ characterization. There have been others, cal facts and a strong thesis showing the however, who have recorded Madam Jus­ interconnectedness of sport and national tice Wilson's politics slightly differently. development. Overall, the book qualifies Sandra Gwyn, a reporter for Saturday as an innovative and highly accessible Night, has written that Madam Justice survey text of Canadian sport history. Wilson considered herself "a moderate There is much to like about this book. feminist" while on the court. ("Sense and It is smartly written, rich in description, Sensibility," July 1985, 13 and 19) And and provides the reader with a new sport my assessment of her work with the CBA map. Howell gradually unfolds this map Task Force on Gender Equality suggests and with a gentle prodding of the readers' that there were certainly times when Wil­ imaginations, he leads us through some of son spoke as a feminist and for the femi­ the high and low points of the last two nist movement. centuries of Canadian sport. If Anderson is indeed correct, and In the introduction, Howell identifies Wilson is "avowedly not a feminist," that some of the themes of sport in the land is perhaps the saddest of all. How miscon­ that was to become Canada. By treating ceived the movement that has contributed sport as one of several commodities so much to the advancement of equality within a developing culture, Howell ex­ must be if women such as Bertha Wilson plores sport's purposes as it influences seek to separate themselves from it. The and is influenced by culture. To do this, he female judge who wrote so distinctly as a addresses not only the relationship of woman when she proclaimed the constitu­ sport to economics and an ever-widening tional right to abortion, who brought to internationalism, but also introduces the Canadian law a distinctly gendered sensi­ complex ties between sport and gender, tivity to woman-battering, who tried (and sport and the relationship among genera­ tions of Canadians, sport and urbaniza- 298 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

tion, and sport and class. While many of came involved in promoting sport, the themes have been covered in other Howell writes that Canadians con­ texts, Howell's treatment of the themes by sciously used sport for both charac­ using specific sport examples is a real ter-building and as a way of introducing plus. The style of writing brings each newcomers to what it meant to be Cana­ theme alive and leaves the reader with a dian. In addition, as sport became an in­ gift of lasting images of Canada in its ear­ creasingly urban experience, the influ­ lier times. ence of industrial capitalism and, in par­ In the following chapters, the author ticular, consumerism, Howell posits, was follows a roughly chronological pattern. responsible for the organization and dis­ The chapter, "Blood," brings the reader cipline in sport. Unfortunately, Howell is from the time of Confederation, a time of unclear about what period or periods of unorganized sport/recreation, to the more time he is writing about, and it was frus­ organized sport characteristic of the trating to see how little attention he pays post-World War II period. While neces­ to women while dealing with themes of sarily superficial, Howell takes time to respectability and money. look at some of the more obscure sporting "Cheers" was perhaps the most un­ activities that accompanied the develop­ satisfying chapter in this otherwise excel­ ment of a market economy in Canada. For lent book. The organizing question is who example, blood sports such as animal is supporting sport. The focus is on baiting and prize fighting come "under women more as spectators than perform­ the gaze of turn-of-the-century sport re­ ers. For example, in describing the 1928 formers," while "defenders of traditional Olympic experience of the great sprinter recreation presented their own definitions Percy Williams, Howell does not even of 'sportsman.'"( 13) By unpacking some mention how five gold medals won by the of the values in sport that influence, and in Canadian women track stars at the same turn, are influenced by culture, Howell games captured the nation's attention. He presents us with a new way of looking at also describes Billie Jean King as "the Canada, the nation. This chapter is weak­ world's greatest advocate of militant fem­ ened a little because some sports he cov­ inism,"(98) a description which may ers do not naturally fall into the blood cat­ quite surprise militant feminists and other egory, sports such as canoeing, boating, women advocates in sport of the day. aquatics, sailing, snow-shoeing, sled dog In the chapter, "Bodies," Howell calls racing, and all Aboriginal Games. Still, sport a "contested terrain," ( 106) and then the overall theme of ascendant organized irreverently says that this is a hackneyed sport remains strong. phrase. This quick dismissal suggests that The chapters, "Respectability" and his real understanding of race, sex, class, "Money" highlight the explicit move of and sexuality in sport is a somewhat over­ sport to respectability and financial simplified and superficial one. He recov­ strength. "In Canada, respectable sports ers by building a good case for the links were more likely to involve men rather between the sporting body, masculinity than women; the English rather than the and femininity, and the overall influence French, whites rather than Blacks and Na­ on nation-building. This is the only chap­ tive people, Protestants rather than Catho­ ter where women are the primary concern. lics and middle- rather than working- It is a curious phenomenon in much of the class athletes."( 28) The importance of sport literature that historical sporting basketball, baseball, barnstormers, la­ achievements of women appear in a sepa­ crosse, and Canadian football are exam­ rate chapter, while those of men are dis­ ined in some detail and the debates over cussed in all the other chapters as if they amateurism and professionalism are in­ represent the complete sport picture. It is, troduced. As churches and educators be­ what Margrit Eichler calls the "add REVIEWS 299

women and stir" approach. One would tinuing dispossession of Aboriginal peo­ have hoped that Howell would have pre­ ple, re-location to the inner city is sented a more integrated analysis. perceived as the result of a lack of choice Overall, he makes his case that sport of location and not about mobility. was and is an experience of both rural and The two non-Aboriginal men as­ urban Canadians; that sport involved saulted and beat Pamela George, who complex struggles in the building of a died from those injuries. Pamela George, complex new nation. Despite the critiques a Saulteaux woman from the Sakimay I have identified, I found his analysis re­ First Nation, was taken from the inner city freshing. He has come at the development (which afforded her some safety), to a of sport from a new angle and has in­ place frequented by people who did not cluded many little known facts about want their activities observed. It would sport in the process. He has a good grasp have been interesting to examine these of the literature, though in his efforts to places of illegal activity as spaces that write an accessible book, he has utilized were the primary sites of "border cross­ an unusual referencing style. In sum, he ings" — where those with wealth and has accomplished his goal of writing sport privilege cross over and those without are history for a popular audience. presumed to be unable to cross over. This race-and-space model is one that the au­ thor has obviously given great thought, Sandra Kirby and to her credit it provides a new way to University of Winnipeg interpret the vile language of hatred. At the outset, it must be said that "race" is an artificial descriptor that compartmental­ Sherene H. Razack, éd., Race, Space and izes experience and requires those cate­ the Law: Unmappinga White Settler Soci­ gorizing or categorized to select one site ety (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002) of oppression as primary in their relations with others. Similarly, there is danger in IT IS HARD TO THINK of space as a con­ removing the painful terminology of race crete entity. Meta theories related to space and hatred and substituting a frame of ref­ and peoples' occupation and use of space erence that fails to name either oppressors have often left me with the feeling that we or victims. An esoteric discussion about were not talking about issues related to lo­ space subsumes the privilege to name and cation as if people mattered. In Race, could result in the further cloaking of the Space and the Law, race, space, and law actualities of racehate and violence are intertwined, sometimes with chilling against all of the intersecting groups of results. people. The best example comes from Razack In this context, the examination of the herself who contributes a chapter that ex- judgment in this case is not advanced very amines racialized violence and far by the race/space/law discussion. I spatialized justice. Razack makes a con­ think this is because the privilege and vincing argument that there is a privilege prejudice of the two defendants in this in­ in place. Take for example, the luxury stance is mirrored in the judgement. The of Steven Kummerfield and Alex author, however, takes great pains to the­ Ternowetsky. University students in Re- orize about the assumptions built into the gina, they celebrated the end of a school racehate and space occupation of the de­ year by "slumming" — visiting dark hol­ fendants and does not hold the justice sys­ lows, the underside of bridges, and an area tem up for the same thoroughness of ex­ of town frequented and inhabited by Ab- amination. original people. Kummerfield and Ternowetsky are afforded the luxury of Still, the entire paper is thought-pro­ locational choice and mobility. In the con­ voking, informed and persuasive. It 300 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

should advance dialogue quite signifi­ — space is shared or taken. Groups move cantly. in or out. In one submission to this work, Space seems an inadequate category the author speaks of the privilege that al­ for comparing and analyzing disposses­ lows students in a cross-cultural class to sion, privilege, and exclusion based upon label, name and critique — with an abso­ race, culture, or religion. In fact, to draw a lute belief in the righteousness and truth line between race and space (and not cul­ of their right to do so. ture and space, or religion and space) arti­ Note, for example, the Crée MLA ficially limits the signifiers that are used from The Pas, Manitoba, who was asked to mark certain locations as belonging to to leave Manitoba's provincial legislature "in" groups versus "out" groups. The (and ironically, called a racist by then Pre­ space critique is valuable in that it marks a mier Gary Filmon) for labeling provincial subtle shift from victim to dispossessed. governmental policy racist. Never is the In this work at least, however, it does depiction of settler space more clearly es­ not allow for the creation of spaces that tablished than within Sheila Dawn Gill's are occupied and used in meaningful ways description of the silencing of Oscar by Aboriginal people. Inner-city space is Lathi in by the Speaker of the House and perceived as space that is chosen by Ab­ the ensuing racially charged response of original people solely as a result of pre­ the premier. In a physical space, the con­ sumptive previous dispossession by nection between space and the silencing non-Aboriginal settlers. This does not ad­ of race is easy to see and the metaphor of dress Aboriginal urbanization as an in­ the occupation of settler space and the ef­ formed choice, Aboriginal reclamation of fect of a "border crossing" by a Crée man sacred and traditional spaces, or the per­ into a presumed settler space is powerful. ceived ownership of unclaimed spaces This is also true of Jennifer J. Nel­ (under bridges, in parking lots, or son's discussion of the space of Africville out-of-town rendez-vous locations). Im­ in Halifax and in Engin F. Eisin and Myer portantly, there is an implicit understand­ Siemiatycki's discussion of space for ing that non-Aboriginal settlers own and mosques in Toronto. Both pieces identify have the right to inhabit universities, cab­ the righteous occupation and presumed ins, and lodges, as well as "nice neighbor­ settler group ownership of public spaces. hoods," and that they understand that to Both also examine the responses of the be their right. There is no room in this dis­ communities impacted by the spatial cussion for "border crossings" — Aborig­ claiming by city planners (as representa­ inal people who occupy traditional terri­ tives of "rightful" settlers) and the legal tories, non-Aboriginal people who live in tools used to advance the claiming of Aboriginal nations, neighborhoods, or space from settlers who were perceived homes, the privilege of urban Aboriginal not to be rightful ones (presumably, on people who "pass" in inner cities. the basis of their race). In these two pieces A few authors in this work identify there is a direct link between space their privilege (skin colour, academic po­ (claimed by a new settler group), race (the sition, wealth) and identify themselves as dispossessed not Caucasian) and law (city occupants of the space from which Other ordinances will be broken if plans are not people were dispossessed. This is laud­ followed). They are concrete examples of able. Nonetheless, the danger is that in the the theory at work as a tool to reveal the space metaphor, when we determine that potential harm when space is presump­ there are the rightful dispossessed and the tively owned, private, and protected. wrongful owners, it is implicit that this is Like all polemics, the space analysis the understanding that is shared by "right is useful only to the degree that it can re­ thinking" citizens. There is very little veal all of the underlying factors govern­ room for the individual in this paradigm ing social relations. Contrasting spaces REVIEWS 301

(Dirty, Dark, Desolate, and Dispossessed Anne Hayward, The Alberta Pottery In­ versus Clean, White, Privileged, and Em­ dustry, 1912-1990; A Social and Eco­ powered) sublimates components that nomic History (Hull: Canadian Museum constitute space: wealth, power, and own­ of Civilization, 2001) ership. The discussion of race, space, and law loses its moorings when the intersec­ FOR A SURPRISING number of Canadi­ tion of wealth, power, and ownership, is ans, particularly those on the Prairies, the divorced from the discussion of location word "Medalta" evokes nostalgic memo­ of groups, whether based on race or some ries of "brown betty" teapots and hefty other stratifying factor. crocks that did service in their grand­ It must be stated that the text uses mother's kitchen. These pottery pieces rather non-problematicaUy the macro are the hallmark of Alberta's once suc­ descriptor "race." The term does not ad­ cessful pottery industry. Anne Hayward's dress the multiplicity of experiences and study provides much insight into the fac­ the layering of traditions, understandings, tors that advanced the industry in the and perceptions related to culture, spiritu­ small city of Medicine Hat, then steadily ality, language, and other group charac­ brought it to its knees in the post-World teristics (particularly in the area of War II era. As the first scholarly study of Indigeneity). The homogenous amalgam­ the Alberta pottery industry, Hayward's ation of all race related issues leaves little book establishes a useful foundation on room for specific personal stories, and which others can build to explore Cana­ creates a tendency to homogenize the dian, and particularly Alberta's, indus­ findings of the research. trial development. Nevertheless, greater The book, however, is a very valuable historical context and more attention to tool for those studying race, race relations, differences of class, gender, and ethnicity sociology, gender studies, and the geogra­ would have enhanced its value as a labour phies of personhood and history. Several study. chapters would be useful for law school Drawing on a range of statistical evi­ courses on race and law. Its strengths lie dence converted into easy-to-read charts, in the new approach to quantifying and re­ Hayward demonstrates that Alberta's searching issues and situations that were pottery industry dominated Canadian pot­ previously disregarded as not susceptible tery production from the early 1920s until to academic analysis and its advancement the 1950s. Pottery manufactured in the of scholarship in the area of race relations area was sold across the country and as far in Canada. Its weaknesses lie in a varying away as New Zealand and Australia. By commitment to the notion of "space" by 1929 Medalta Potteries was manufactur­ the authors and the potential for the di- ing 75 per cent of all pottery produced in minishment of the import of the factors Canada. During World War II Medalta that construct race, space, and law (i.e. and Medicine Hat Potteries, the other ma­ relative wealth and power). jor pottery manufacturer in the city, domi­ nated Canada's war production, operat­ ing around the clock to fill government Tracey Lindberg contracts. But those were the industry's Athabasca University salad days and after a protracted decline the last pottery closed its doors in 1989. Since then the buildings and artifacts that remain have been designated heritage sites, and two industrial buildings have been partially restored to house an inter­ pretive centre that attracts thousands of visitors each year. Through careful re- 302 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

search Hay ward has pieced together a de­ structed the history of these develop­ tailed history of Medalta Potteries and ments, particularly at Medalta Potteries. Medicine Hat Potteries, which were the Drawing on material artifacts as well as two largest of thirteen pottery operations photographs, company records, contem­ in Medicine Hat. Medalta's trials and trib­ porary publications, and oral histories, ulations tend to dominate the narrative be­ the author identifies important manage­ cause more extensive records for that ment decisions that brought both success company have survived. The study is en­ and failure. livened by photographs as well as charts, Hayward highlights the development and includes a helpful glossary of terms to of artwares at Medalta as an innovation offer a level of production and marketing that helped the company survive both the detail that is invaluable to collectors as introduction of glass bottles in the late well as historians. Approaching her sub­ 20s, which hurt the company's stoneware ject in the tradition of material studies, sales, and the constantly shifting tastes of Hay ward emphasizes the "rivalry and es­ consumers. An exclusively female art de­ pionage" among pottery entrepreneurs, partment developed during the Depres­ and the struggles of scientists and crafts­ sion to perform the labour-intensive work men "to perfect the pottery materials and of decorating pottery pieces made from manufacturing processes." (x-xi) The the same moulds to vary them economi­ book provides good insight into the par­ cally at a time when labour was cheap. As ticular challenges posed by an extreme a labour shortage developed during the climate, lack of experienced workers in war, pottery owners increasingly turned the region, and manufacturing at a dis­ to technology to achieve cost efficiencies. tance from markets. Assembly-line systems were installed us­ Hayward attributes the initial success ing large conveyor belts to eliminate the of Alberta's pottery industry in large part employment of "runners," and automatic to an abundance of cheap natural gas in jiggering machines were purchased to re­ the Medicine Hat area, as well as high duce each company's need for jiggermen, quality clays, railway access, and the the most highly paid workers in the fac­ availability of American capital. Medi­ tory. cine Hat's location atop a major gas field Hayward argues that Alberta's pot­ was critical to development of the pottery tery industry was undermined in the post­ industry, which required large amounts of war period by lengthy labour disputes, a natural gas to fire the kilns at high temper­ hike in the cost of clay from Saskatche­ atures. Gas was so cheap in the early part wan and cheaper imports, as well as poor of the century that the municipality found product-line decisions by management. it less costly to keep city street lights lit The series of strikes and walkouts by day and night than to hire someone to turn workers at several clay products factories them off at night. in 1947, which culminated in a long and Cheap raw materials and easy access bitter strike at Medalta Potteries, is to transportation and capital, however, viewed as a crucial turning point in the did not alone ensure the industry's suc­ fortunes of the industry. Yet the labour cess. Hayward argues convincingly that actions were part of a nation-wide wave product development and constant refine­ of labour unrest that did not devastate all ment of manufacturing processes helped other industries. An influx of cheap pot­ Medalta and Medicine Hat Potteries adapt tery imports that undercut Medicine Hat to a shifting market and capitalize on tech­ wares was a more compelling reason than nological changes that reduced costs, par­ labour unrest for the industry's demise. ticularly the cost of labour. One of the Significantly, the rest of the clay products book's strengths lies in the painstaking industry in Alberta, which produced brick care with which the author has recon­ and tile, actually expanded in the postwar REVIEWS 303

period despite rising costs for labour and 1930s Depression, played a crucial role in supplies. the industry's success. Intense drought Although ostensibly a "social" his­ combined with gendered property inheri­ tory as well as an "economic" history, tance patterns to generate a large pool of Hay ward's sources and analytic focus cheap labour upon which the potteries provide only limited insight into the iden­ could draw. The young, unmarried daugh­ tities and perspectives of ordinary men ters of struggling farm families com­ and women who worked in the potteries, prised a disproportionate number of those and the role of labour in the industry's seeking paid work in the city, which success. Only two of the twelve individu­ helped keep wages low. Linking harsh als interviewed were non-management working conditions and management's personnel, and Hay ward does not mention cavalier attitude toward its workers to the that the Medicine Hat News, on which she larger economic and social context makes relies heavily, was owned by Harry Yuill, more explicit the human cost of the indus­ a local industrialist who also owned and try's inter-war success. operated Medicine Hat Potteries. Reading Such comments should not detract, such sources against the grain and con­ however, from this well-researched and sulting union records and more engaging industrial history that estab­ rank-and-file workers, as well as histories lishes the broad outline of a once-impor­ of Cold War labour politics would tant Alberta industry. Material history strengthen the labour analysis and expand scholars, pottery collectors, and anyone our understanding of how thousands of interested in Alberta's economic devel­ men and women experienced their work opment will find Hayward's study re­ in the potteries. One also wonders how warding. "Whiteness" and ethnicity influenced power dynamics in a workplace where the owners and managers were usually of Cynthia Loch-Drake Scottish or English origin and the workers York University were primarily of German origin. Hayward provides valuable detail about the gender segregation of labour Rowland Lorimer and Mike Gasher, Mass and working conditions that could also be Communication in Canada, 4th ed. (To­ incorporated more effectively into her ronto: Oxford University Press, 2001) analysis. Gender was a key organizing principle that determined most tasks and THE FOURTH EDITION of one of the best all wage rates within the pottery industry textbooks ever written on media and Ca­ and played a significant role in its suc­ nadian society, Mass Communication in cess. Hayward might have noted that the Canada, is out. In it, Lorimer and Gasher restriction of labour-intensive decorative have clarified and simplified the third edi­ work in the art department to female em­ tion and made the following list of ployees, who earned roughly 64 per cent changes: updated information in the text; of the male wage, helped keep costs low. increased the emphasis on public commu­ This practice was common in the Ameri­ nication (by cutting back the paper treat­ can and British pottery industries where ment of communications history and Marc Stern has demonstrated that em­ adding relevant historical URLs to the ploying a greater percentage of women website); divided the policy chapter in workers gave the English an advantage two — one on broadcasting and telecom­ over American potteries. munications and another on cultural in­ dustries; re-written the chapter on Similarly, the inter-war drought that journalism; placed all the discussion on devastated the agriculture-dependent technology into one very large chapter; Medicine Hat region long before the 304 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and altered the discussion on geo-politics sibilities for the analysis of media content to a discussion on globalization. and audience effects. As an introduction The various editions of this textbook to such approaches as literary criticism, read like a history of the last fifteen years structuralism, semiotics, post- in Canadian communications. First pub­ structuralism, pragmatics, discourse and lished in 1987, the text has been repeat­ conversational analysis, content analysis, edly updated for content and approach in political-economic analysis, and media order to reflect the whirlwind of change form analysis, Chapter 4 does an excel­ that has encompassed media and society lent job of presenting students with a wide as a field of study. range of research tools for examining In fact, the authors tell us that part of communication content. The chapter the reason for this fourth edition was their complements this tool kit with actual need to address the pace of change in re­ analyses of media campaigns and a short cent times. Whereas they once had a lag discussion of the connection between me­ time of four or five years in the production dia content and social issues. of a book, they now have barely a year, es­ Chapter 5 begins with a banal outline pecially for a book about communication of five academic approaches to audience and society. Lorimer and Gasher feel they research: effects research, uses and grati­ have solved this problem to some extent fications, cultural studies, feminist re­ by using the book's website http: search, and reception analysis. But then for up­ the chapter turns its gaze to industrial ap­ dates to the text. proaches to audience research, with spe­ Mass Communication in Canada pro- cial emphasis on such crucial areas as vides an excellent first look for reach, share, and viewing time. This prac­ post-secondary students at the complex tical application is followed by an outline societal factors affecting communica­ of the importance of formative research tions in Canada. It presents a multidimen­ (e.g. focus groups) and summative re­ sional look at the field, introducing only search (e.g. program effectiveness). The enough theory to enable the application of chapter concludes with an extended illus­ theoretical constructs in the real world. tration of the research organized by Can­ This textbook would make an ideal ada's Print Measurement Bureau, which teaching tool in a college or first-year uni­ serves the nation's publishing industry versity class. Each chapter is short (about and houses the world's richest print audi­ 30 pages), contains slate blue, rest- ence database. ful-to-the-eye, boxed and illustrated ma­ Other chapters are dedicated to com­ terial, and offers a list of four or five munication law and policy, the structure websites containing further information, and role of media ownership in Canada, a half-dozen references, and as many and the role of journalists as content pro­ study questions. The book also includes a ducers. The first nine chapters, then, well-written glossary, full list of refer­ place primary emphasis on the experience ences, and an index for the curious, or en­ of media in Canada. gaged reader. Not surprisingly to anyone who has The text begins by defining mass read earlier incarnations of this textbook, communication as a set of practices; then Lorimer and Gasher use chapters ten it makes a quick historical connection be­ through twelve to move outward from the tween democracy, politics, culture, and Canadian environment to the global. It is the media, before concentrating on the in these final chapters that the authors ways in which these forces currently oper­ demonstrate most clearly what concerns ate in Canada. them about the context of mass communi­ The fourth and fifth chapters provide cations in Canada. And it is these con­ students with a banquet of theoretical pos­ cerns that have actually driven the fourth REVIEWS 305

edition. Taking an approach informed switchman, amongst a handful of women largely by the concerns of political econ­ just entering that male-dominated field. omy, Lorimer and Gasher use these three Spending sixteen years in the industry, chapters to deal at length with issues of Green observed how introduction of new technology and society (the longest chap­ technologies kept redefining the nature of ter, at 60 pages), corporate globalization, telephone work. She also noted how posts and speculations about the future of com­ remained segregated by sex and race, munication in the digital age. with Black women clustered in low-level A major impetus to the fourth revision departments. In this well-written and im­ came from the changing nature of com­ portant book, Green explores the con­ munication since the advent of the nected history of such patterns in the Bell Internet. The authors write that public System between 1876 and 1984, "the con­ communication is quickly replacing mass vergence of gender, class, race, and tech­ communication because the electronic nology in the workplace." (1) She technologies allow the reader to produce particularly details evolution of tele­ content as well as consume it. The "trans­ phone operators' roles "in the context of mission of messages made by many is far debates over the degradation of skills, job surpassing the production and distribu­ loss, worker's control, job segregation tion of a limited set of products made by a and segmentation, and race and la­ few ..." (xi). This sea change in the Cana­ bor/management relations." (2) Green dian communications polysystem has de­ contends that management deliberately cided implications for the roles played by manipulated the operator workforce for media organizations, journalists, pol­ decades, through technological icy-makers, regulators, teachers, and the deskilling, overbearing supervision, pa­ public. ternalism, and gender and racial stereo­ typing. The final reason for producing this fourth edition of Mass Communication in Green divides telephone labour his­ Canada devolves from the corporate tory into three technologically-defined agenda of globalization. Lorimer and stages : mechanization ( 1878-1920), auto­ Gasher note in particular how the incre­ mation (1920-1960), and computeriza­ mental growth of market forces and inter­ tion (1960-1980). During the initial national trade agreements seriously chal­ phase, the Bell System recruited female lenge the ability of nations to produce ef­ employees after boy clerks proved un­ fective social policy. Their book is, in ruly. 1 9th-century operators entered a rel­ part, an attempt to critically assess efforts atively flexible workplace that valued of the Canadian government and its regu­ their initiative and gave them a certain au­ latory bodies to ensure that media meet thority and control over tasks. To win cus­ the cultural, social, economic, and politi­ tomers over to a still-unfamiliar technol­ cal needs of the Canadian people. ogy, head off competition, and meet growing demand, the Bell System empha­ Evelyn Ellerman sized the value of personalized service. Athabasca University Green describes how pioneer operators offered callers individual attention while handling the complex physical chores of making different types of connections. In­ Venus Green, Race on the Line: Gender, creasing mechanization promised to help Labor, and Technology in the Bell System, operators juggle growing call volume; 1880-1980 (Durham: Duke University Green offers excellent explanations of Press, 2001) how switchboard equipment evolved, in­ cluding photographs to illustrate various IN 1973 VENUS GREEN started work at the designs. New York Telephone Company as a 306 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

As the 20th century began, the ex­ strikes and slowdowns. Middle-class re­ panding scale of telephone communica­ formers and male union leaders behind tion highlighted problems of efficiency, such subversive actions, however, spoke leading managers to focus on controlling patronizingly of protecting female opera­ operators and raising productivity. New tors from abuses. Focusing on short-term equipment facilitated monitoring by su­ wage and hour demands, organizers pervisors, who watched warning lights "failed to understand the importance of that signaled waiting calls and "listened addressing the technological pacing of in" to double-check that operators fol­ work" and operators/ loss of autonomy. lowed standardized procedures. Surveil­ ( 108) By failing to correct such misplaced lance transformed the workplace into sci­ assumptions, Green convincingly sug­ entifically-managed regimentation; man­ gests, female operators lost any chance to agers divided jobs into simplified, rigid challenge management's introduction of routines, removing operators' discretion mechanization or to reorient working to exercise independent judgment. conditions in less-stressful directions. [Introduction of new machines and Ironically, fear of worker militancy changes in work organization degraded and rising wages fed the industry's the job and skills that had been so essen­ post-World War I determination to adopt tial to the early development of the tele­ dial-system conversion. Automation ex­ phone industry," a process that involved panded management ability to monitor, "the complete feminization of the occupa­ reorganize, and forcibly accelerate opera­ tion, the entrenchment of a clearly de­ tors' workloads. "With their personal fined male-dominated hierarchy ... the skills diminished in value,... operators re­ dissolution of operators' control over lied more on their white exclusivity to their work pace ... [N]ew technology at maintain what they perceived to be an first enskilled and offered opportunity to elite position." ( 134) The "ladies" created women in the nineteenth century but racially-stereotyped publications and deskilled and limited that opportunity in blackface skits (documented in Green's the twentieth." (55) illustrations). Meanwhile, the Bell Sys­ Stress on operators increased with tem set up company unions and paternal­ speedups, repetitive routine, and long istic programs to win operators' gratitude hours at low pay. Countering that reality, for small concessions. Loyal operators Green maintains, Bell System managers cooperated in their own devastation, constructed an idealized image of opera­ since automation ultimately meant tech­ tors as perfect "ladies" who could placate nological displacement, a fact that "AT & customers. "[T]o ensure the fact that tele­ T deliberately distorted ... for publicity phone operators resembled nine­ reasons." (167) Management promised teenth-century servants or factory work­ that innovation would bring better-paid ers more than upper-class "ladies," man­ craft and managerial positions for men, a agers fostered notions of white privilege promise union leaders welcomed. by excluding African American and se­ "Low-paying [female] operators' jobs lect groups of immigrant women." (53, could be sacrificed at the altar of 'prog­ 55) Publicizing its exclusivity in hiring ress.'" (169) only proper classes, Green concludes, the Green's final chapters skillfully re­ company consciously maintained a "rac­ count how after decades-long campaigns ist hiring policy," which reinforced work­ for fairness, Black women slowly gained place control. (55) access to operators' jobs. By the late Operators who embraced the "white 1960s, that workforce had largely been lady" self-image and valued its status transformed from White to Black women, nonetheless refused to become entirely due to both demographic characteristics passive, joining early 20th-century of the urban labour market and the Bell REVIEWS 307

System's profit-driven desire for favour­ ership the excuse to ignore minority able publicity. Initially excited by new women's concerns. opportunities, Black women failed to rec­ Drawing policy lessons from her case ognize they had landed dead-end jobs. study, Green concludes that "operators' The period 1960-1981 witnessed a 40 per experiences inform us about the obstacles cent drop in total operator numbers. to creating and maintaining avenues of re­ "Managers deliberately hired African dress in a workplace in which continuity American women into an occupation that and change occur in relation to the impact not only paid low wages but was becom­ of technology." (261-2) She suggests that ing technologically obsolete. An enor­ although "work degradation and mous public relations campaign obfus­ deskilling are not inherent in new tech­ cated this travesty of inclusion." (227) nologies," unions proved inadequate crit­ In turning to Black labour, manage­ ics of industry's technical control and ment necessarily abandoned the "white workforce manipulations. (7) Green's lady" identity it had constructed for oper­ harsh indictments of unions and of the ators and withdrew former benefits. With Bell System may make some readers workplace degradation, Blacks found that blink, but her arguments are strongly con­ "the job did not bring the same prestige structed. Her book represents a beautiful and deference as it had for white women." model for how scholars can blend labour (19S) Black operators were harassed by history, business history, and history of customers, scorned by White colleagues, technology; offering benefits to all per­ and made into scapegoats for poor ser­ spectives. She provides an unrivalled vice. Most seriously, Green accuses the case for exploring complicated intersec­ industry of deliberately using racism as a tions of race and gender, power and con­ dividing force, tricking workers into jock­ trol, and technology and employment in eying for vanishing jobs. Even as AT&T the modern workplace. The powerful im­ publicly courted praise for equal-oppor­ plications of their analysis make Green's tunity surface measures, Green charges, it book essential reading for historians of manipulated integration to intimidate 20th-century labour. White workers, spark an anti-affirma­ tive-action backlash, and thus maintain Amy Sue Bix workplace control. Iowa State University In recent years, "[c]omputerized work measurements and strict supervi­ sion combine frequently with racism and sexism to form a virtual hell" for Hadassa Kosak, Cultures of Opposition: marginalized Black female workers at Jewish Immigrant Workers, New York City. 1881-1905 (Albany: State Univer­ New York Telephone, Green contends. sity of New York, 2000) (241) Modernized equipment sends in­ coming calls to idle operators within mil­ liseconds and enables supervisors to dis­ THE BEST LABOUR HISTORY recognizes cipline workers who spend more than a the totality of workers' lives; in the work­ half-minute per customer. "The human place, association, home, markets, telephone operator is almost extinct. The church, and diverse community settings. few who still exist work at electronic Hadassa Kosak's Cultures of Opposition: speeds, under both human and inhuman Jewish Immigrant Workers, New York supervision," risking stress disorders and City, 1881-1905 seeks to utilize this carpal-tunnel syndrome. (261) Techno­ breadth of perspective in analyzing the logical displacement and job degradation lives of working-class Russian Jewish im­ had relatively less impact on White male migrants in the turn-of-the-century me­ workers, Green argues, giving union lead­ tropolis but in a particularly ambitious manner. Specifically, Kosak uses this his- 308 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

torical perspective both to re-emphasize of mutuality, and, in short, defined "new the continuing efficacy of the la­ political agendas" reflecting the interplay bour-cultural nexus suggested by E.P. of the several realities emerging from the Thompson and Herbert Gutman, and re­ historical immigrant experience. (160) vise traditional labour historiography Fundamentally, the outcome of the Rus­ concerning late-19th-century Jewish sian Jewish immigrant experience was to working-class immigrants. Kosak's am­ create a political consciousness anticipat­ bitious scope may largely explain the ing equality and liberty in material and study's few problematic areas, while the cultural realities that would contribute author's skillful discussion of historiog­ significantly to a continuing commitment raphy, cultural expression, community to social progress and justice in labour or­ identity, and ethnic relations makes many ganization and left politics. of the author's bold assertions appear The thrust of Kosak's interpretation quite persuasive. centers upon a politicized working-class Kosak introduces the study as one culture as evinced through historical po­ specifically describing "the character of litical action. Citing both Thompson and labor activism and how it reached new Gutman, the latter of whom the author ac­ heights in the garment industries of New knowledges as an inspiration for this York in the 1880s and 1890s," ( 12) which, study, Kosak attributes class-conscious­ in itself, is an important contribution but ness among the immigrant Russian Jews hardly does justice to the following narra­ to the interplay between their cultural her­ tive. The six chapters and conclusion that itage and the material and social realities follow a heavily historiographical intro­ of New World industrial capitalism, duction describe a sequential evolution of which manifested itself in diverse forms the immigrant experience. Kosak's initial of collective behaviours, associations, chapter on the Russian experience is espe­ and rhetoric. This process, according to cially vital since it establishes several of the author, resulted in the invention of a the author's key points: the foundational new language "based on a dynamic rein- culture that both mediated and responded terpretation of different cultural compo­ to the immigrant experience, experiences nents." (4) This concept of a "new lan­ with oppression that gave cultural expres­ guage" for the Jewish immigrants fits sion to resistance, and the distinctive eco­ nicely with recent emphases upon rheto­ nomic reality of the homeland that proved ric and symbol in negotiating power rela­ so radically different from the new coun­ tions, and Kosak is quite comfortable em­ try. The following chapters explore in ploying it as a central focus for the work. succession the processes of migration, One wonders at times whether or not the new economic realities, emergence of an concept may be a bit amorphous, particu­ ethnic enclave, cultural responses to op­ larly when linked to perceived immigrant pression, and the creation of a new "lan­ democratic yearnings in a fundamentally guage" of cultural expression that linked undemocratic epoch. Nevertheless, the workplace, association, family, identity, correspondence, periodicals, and other and community in an activist work­ text-based sources upon which the author ing-class consciousness. From the inter­ relies heavily reflect the significance of action between immigrant culture and language and its evolution from American material realities, Kosak con­ 19th-century Russia to 20th-century New cludes that the Russian immigrant experi­ York, at least in this narrative form. Yet, ence created new opportunities for demo­ as important as the creation of a new lan­ cratic participation, transformed tradi­ guage may have been to these immi­ tional ways of life, included women as grants, the incorporation of symbolic con­ full participants in the process of histori­ sciousness into specific political actions cal change, articulated new expressions in the workplace and community in the REVIEWS 309

latter part of the study proves to be the ther homeland culture nor American real­ more gripping analysis and suggests a ity evinced such a democratic ethos is, at need for revising traditional labour histo­ times, dissatisfying, the author's discus­ riography. sion of immigrant self-empowerment In creating a° new political language seems more convincing, especially when and putting it into daily practice, the Rus- located in a collectivized sense of com­ sian Jewish immigrants of munity. Also, the author's penchant for turn-of-the-century New York proved downplaying material forces of history as these historical actors to be activists con­ opposed to cultural ones seems belied by stantly seeking their just due and not vic­ the later emphasis of the book, where tims of oppression. Here, Kosak posits a workplace issues appear as principal fac­ need for a new historiographical lens for tors in promoting political and social ac­ the pre-1905 generation of immigrants tivism among the immigrant community. since analyses of workplace and labour Certainly, material and cultural forces organization experiences fail to fathom can not be disassociated from one another the much more complex nature of immi­ in the historical experience, but one may grant working-class consciousness and argue persuasively for the primacy of in­ class formation. In this aspect of the dustrial relations and forces in shaping study, the author weds the experiences of class formation and consciousness. the Russian Jewish immigrants to those of For scholars of the immigrant and the already established Jewish German working-class experience at the turn of Americans, whose relations to the former the 20th century, Cultures of Opposition often reflected patriarchal and/or exploit­ is a useful tool in uncovering the dynam­ ative patterns, and shows how inherited ics of community networks, class identity cultures and differing economic agendas, and behavior, and inter-ethnic relations. in fact, divided rather than drew these dif­ Kosak's inclusion of diverse intellectual ferent immigrant generations together. sources, including Thompson, Gutman, For Kosak, Russian Jewish orientation to­ Werner Sollors, Margaret Somers, and ward social justice and even militancy, at others, evidences the continuing efficacy least for the pre-190S generation, who did of the inter-disciplinary basis of social not experience the material transforma­ and cultural history. This work succeeds tions in Russia later generations did, re­ in giving voice to the pre-190S Russian sulted from a communitarian-based strug­ Jewish immigrant generation, which rein­ gle for social equity and cultural expres­ forces the need for scholars to avoid view­ sion and not primarily from workplace ing immigrant groups as monolithic enti­ struggles or labour organization. In this ties but instead as discrete communities regard, non-wage workers, particularly identified by generation, nationality, women among the Russian immigrants, class, and the like, and that fed into other appeared as visible agents of community diverse immigrant streams. Hadassa action. Kosak's Cultures of Oppression truly rec­ Cultures of Opposition represents a ognizes the totality of workers' lives, in solid piece of scholarship, effectively the workplace, association, home, mar­ combining perspectives from labour, eth­ kets, religious institutions, and diverse nic, and urban historiography. Kosak's community settings, and serves as a work contributes to the continuing exami­ model for not only labour history but im­ nation of working-class people as histori­ migrant, ethnic, and community history cal actors actively engaged in the shaping as well. of both their individual communities and the broader social milieu. While Kosak's Tim Draper readiness to assign a democratic con­ Waubonsee (IL) Community College sciousness to immigrants for whom nei­ 310 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Sol Dollinger and Genora Johnson III is made up of three brief articles on the Dollinger, Not Automatic: Women and making of "Babies and Banners," the dis­ the Left in the Forging of the Auto pute over who led the Flint Sit-Down Workers ' Union (New York: Monthly Re­ strike, and Sol's final comments on the view Press, 2000) UAW, each valuable in Its own way. Part II is a 37-page reprint of a pam­ THIS VALUABLE WORK is really a col­ phlet by Genora Johnson Dollinger on her lection of extended pieces by Sol years in the auto workers' union in Flint Dollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger. and Detroit. It contains a wealth of infor­ Each in its own way makes an important mation and insights from that era. She had contribution to our understanding of the the ear and eye for the telling detail. She formative years of the United Automobile notes how in the pre-union shops workers Workers (UAW) and will be of use to both were never called by their names. They scholars and activists. would just be "Whitey" or "Shorty" or Part I is Sol Dollinger's history and some other nickname, working in an envi­ participant's account of the left and the ronment that stripped them of their per­ UAW from 1934 to 1948. Dollinger sonal identity. She also catches the op­ stresses the importance of thousands of pressiveness of the GM plants, complete union-conscious non-party workers in with lip readers who would spy on work­ taking on some of America's biggest cor­ ers' conversations. These conditions porations. Although much of his work make the resistance by men and women deals with the various left groups and fac­ all the more thrilling. At a crucial moment tion fighting within the newborn organi­ during the Flint Sit-Down strike, when zation, he never loses sight of the many Genora was trying to rally women from extraordinary leaders thrown up in the the crowd watching the struggle, a lone heat of battle. He shows that "the auto women struggled to come forward. "A workers' organizational drive was a great cop had grabbed her by the back of her volunteer movement unparalleled in the coat. She just pulled out of that coat and history of labor." (54) He devotes special started walking toward the battle zone." attention to Toledo (Auto-Lite and Chev­ (134) Such was the heroism that won the rolet strikes) and Flint (GM Sit-Down). As strike. She is also keen on the changes that the UAW began to grow he traces the fight victory brought, how "the auto worker be­ against Homer Martin and then against came a different human being." ( 144) She the No Strike Pledge. Dollinger writes notes the changes in the home as well as from a Trotskyist perspective and does the shop floor. Genora also shows the not claim any evenhandedness. For him power of workers who are engaged in a the combination of Walter Reuther, the culture of solidarity. When she began to Taft-Hartley Act, and the rise of play an active role at Briggs in Detroit, af­ McCarthyism meant the destruction of a ter she could no longer work in Flint, the cadre of unionists who had built the union company fired her before she had finished "from the bottom up," and meant that the her probation. Eighteen thousand work­ next generation of unionists would be un­ ers promptly walked out and forced the able to learn from them. Dollinger also de­ company to rehire her. That was union votes special attention to the beating in­ power. flicted on Genora Dollinger by Mafia thugs connected to the Briggs Manufac­ There are some problems with this turing Company. The Reuthers showed book. Sol Dollinger assumes a great deal little interest in this attack and were thus of knowledge about the 1930s US left. If unprepared for the murderous assaults on you did not know the difference between a Walter and Victor, probably from the Lovestonite and the Proletarian Party, he same source, in the following years. Part does not tell you. The latter parts of the book need to be read by someone who has REVIEWS 311 seen the marvelous documentary, "With Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Babies and Banners." But what a good Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern reason to see the film. American City (Ithaca and London: Cor­ The Dollingers' book bears compari­ nell University Press, 2001) son to two other workers' memoirs that were published at about the same time. US LABOUR AND URBAN historians have Jack Metzgar's Striking Steel (Philadel­ recently produced a variety of studies fo­ phia: Temple University Press, 2000) fo­ cusing on the second half of the 20th cen­ cuses on his experiences as the son of a tury and particularly on the decline of steelworker during the 19S9 steel strike. organized labour, racial problems in Cheri Register's Packinghouse Daughter northern cities, and the fate of liberalism. (New York: Perennial, 2001) recalls her In this engaging study, Heather Ann life as the daughter of a packinghouse Thompson combines all three concerns as worker during the 1959 Wilson & Com­ she reveals a history of political struggle pany, Albert Lea, Minnesota strike. Each among conservatives, liberals, and radi­ book reminds us of the value of personal cals in 1960s and 1970s Detroit that accounts. Of course, the Dollingers were shaped the future of the city. Although mature activists while Register and Thompson, who grew up in Detroit and is Metzgar were teenagers. Yet the three now a professor of history at the Univer­ works remind us that the 1930s were truly sity of North Carolina at Charlotte, offers a decade of advances, while by the 1950s few explicit comparisons from other cit­ unionists were glad to be able to hold on to ies, she argues that this conflict was repli­ past gains and enjoy the fruits of their la­ cated elsewhere and that as liberalism bours. Genora Johnson Dollinger cele­ declined in national politics it triumphed brated the fact that workers could begin to in inner cities, which had become centers send their kids to college in the 1940s and of political power and economic opportu­ 1950s. Register and Metzgar are those nity for the Black middle-class. kids. Building on the work of other histori­ But if these books portray a tale of ans of Detroit such as Tom Sugrue and working-class victory, Sol Dollinger's Jeffrey Mirel, Thompson paints a vivid grim description of the triumph of the picture of the plight of Blacks in the city Reuther machine and the crushing of that led them to take to the streets in July worker democracy tells a different side of 1967 in the bloodiest riot the US experi­ the story. Workers' struggles are not like enced during that tumultuous decade. some sort of tide that must inevitably ebb After World War II, as more Blacks and neap. Their forward gains are not pre­ moved into Detroit, Whites segregated ordained. Had working people been able Blacks into overcrowded and inferior to withstand the conservative winds of the housing, underfunded schools, and un­ 1940s, how much further might they have skilled work, and Blacks faced higher travelled down the road to workers' levels of unemployment than Whites. power, and how much better off might we Black civil rights activists sought to inte­ be in this era of reaction? grate the neighbourhoods, schools, and workplaces, and Jerome Cavanagh, lib­ Seth Wigderson eral mayor of Detroit from 1962 to 1970, promised to use government money to al­ University of Maine at Augusta leviate the worst ravages of racism, but both were unable to achieve much. While stressing the role that economic factors played in fueling the 1967 riot, Thomp­ son pays particular attention to police brutality. Blacks repeatedly clashed with 312 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

an overwhelmingly White racist and vio­ sitions of power in the company and the lent Detroit police force. Little wonder UAW, and protested racist supervisors. that a police action against an illegal Subsequently, the RUMs united and drinking party led to the riot in the sum­ formed the League of Revolutionary mer of 1967. Black Workers (LRBW), which blended After the 1967 riot, White liberal pol­ Marxism and Black nationalism by de­ iticians in Detroit faced increasing oppo­ claring Black workers as the vanguard of sition from Black and White radicals, a revolution. While Detroit's RUMs and who wanted a revolutionary overhaul of the League had virtually collapsed by society, and White conservatives, who 1971 because of opposition from UAW opposed the Great Society and the civil leaders and because they alienated most rights movement. Between 1967 and White workers and some Black workers 1972, groups of Black nationalists and with their sectarianism, factionalism, and White leftists organized in opposition to Marxist rhetoric, worker dissent over the liberal establishment, which had working conditions and safety continued. failed to improve the lot of Blacks. They In response to a series of wildcat strikes in gained popular support for their opposi­ 1973, however, the UAW leadership not tion to police brutality, their demand for only sided with the car companies but Black control of schools in Black neigh­ gathered their supporters together and vi­ borhoods, and their call for economic olently attacked the picketing workers, justice. While Blacks accused Stop the forcing them back to work and ending the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets (STRESS), rank-and-file rebellion. a special unit the police department, of While labour leaders set out to de­ brutality, White conservatives supported stroy the Black radicals, civic liberals their touch stance on crime. White con­ gained new respect from the city's grow­ servatives accused the liberal establish­ ing Black working-class and poor as they ment of appeasing lawbreakers and op­ appeared more activist and sympathetic posed school integration and bussing. to Black demands. In particular, Thomp­ Throughout the book, Thompson son claims, liberal judges and politicians draws links among developments in city proved especially adept at dealing with hall, on the streets, and in the city's auto the high-profile court cases involving plants. As police brutality fueled resent­ Blacks who challenged racist practices. ment in Detroit's Black neighbourhoods, She especially focuses on the case of racial discrimination, the abuses of White James Johnson Jr., a 35-year-old Black foremen, and deteriorating working con­ automobile worker at the Chrysler Plant ditions angered Black autoworkers. The who killed two White foremen and a leadership of the United Automobile White fellow worker on 15 July 1970, Workers (UAWO, long recognized as ra­ and used racial discrimination and con­ cial progressives, promised to end racial ditions at the plant as part of his defense discrimination in hiring and promotion in his 1971 trial. Thompson weaves the and stop foreman abuses but, in practice, story of James Johnson throughout the union officials bowed to the wishes of book as a metaphor for the discrimina­ their conservative White members who tion, hopes, disappointments, and frus­ wanted to maintain their monopoly on trations of all Black Detroiters. When skilled jobs and promotions. In May 1968 Johnson was found not guilty of murder Black workers in the Chrysler Assembly by reason on insanity, Thompson claims Plant (Dodge Main) founded the Dodge that liberalism and electoral politics Revolutionary Union Movement gained new credibility and the appeal of (DRUM), the first of a number of "RUMs" radicalism declined. throughout the auto plants, which called for the appointment of more Blacks to po­ REVIEWS 313

As many White conservatives left the of the late twentieth century US and is a city and the radical Left waned, the stage welcome addition to the literature. was set for the rise of Black liberalism. In 1973 the city elected its first Black mayor, John F. Lyons Coleman Young, a UAW organized in the Joliet Junior College 1930s and civil rights activist. Subse­ quently, Young maintained the support of Black Detroiters by employing Blacks in city positions, including the previously Janet Lee, Comrades and Partners: The all-White police department, and by por­ Shared Lives of Grace Hutchins and Anna traying himself as a defender of Black De­ Rochester (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman troit against increasingly hostile White and Littlefield, 2000) suburbs. Because the White population continued to flee the city and the car com­ GRACE HUTCHINS and Anna Rochester panies relocated or cut workers' wages, shared a life together for nearly 50 years. Thompson concluded that Black liberals For 40 of those years, they were members came to political power in Detroit as the of the Communist Party: a Party that re­ city faced economic crisis and as liberal­ peatedly condemned same-sex relation­ ism declined in national politics. ships. Despite the incipient tension between their ideological commitments Thompson's study is a triumph of so­ and their lifestyle, each found the Party a cial and political history. She connects in comfortable intellectual home, and, as a most engaging style events on the street, Janet Lee reveals, in this creatively-con­ the factory floor, and the courtroom, and ceived biography, each used it as the stag­ convincingly shows the political realign­ ing ground for a series of remarkable ments that have remade Detroit. The book achievements. could have been improved, however, it Thompson had spent more time finding Rochester, born in 1880, and out the views of those in the White neigh­ Hutchins, born in 188S, both came from borhoods. She makes extensive use of lo­ prominent and wealthy families; each at­ cal archives and oral history collections, tended Bryn Mawr College, though only but undertook virtually no oral interviews Hutchins graduated; each migrated herself. Oral interviews would have through different routes to Christian so­ helped to undercover in greater detail the cialism in the early 1920s, when they set­ ideas of White conservatives who do not tled down together. Rochester worked get the same coverage as liberals or Black with and for Denison House (a social set­ nationalists, and often remain faceless tlement), then the National Child Labor and nameless throughout the book. Committee, and the US Children's Bu­ Thompson also claims that the findings in reau, associating with the likes of Flor­ Detroit on the triumph of city liberalism ence Kelley and Julia Lathrop as she did and the decline of organized labour are so. Hutchins went to China as a mission­ applicable elsewhere but offers little evi­ ary in 1912, returning after four years to a dence for this. Focusing on the UAW lead­ European world at war that, she claimed, erships' destruction of the rank-and-file converted herto pacifism. The two settled rebellion in the 1970s, for example, she into a communal household together in argues that the actions of union leaders 1921, and when it disintegrated three played a large part in the decline of the US years later, they established a home of labor movement. To substantiate this their own that they would maintain for the claim, however, she needs to make far rest of their lives. They became activists more comparisons with other cities and for peace — working first for Christian other unions. Despite these limitations, groups like the Fellowship of Reconcilia­ this book adds much to our understanding tion — and then abandoning Christian so­ cialism to join the Communist Party in 314 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

1927. Within the party, they took separate sources help us to understand how trajectories. Hutchins focused on labour, Hutchins and Rochester survived, they do particularly on women's wage-work; not offer much in the way of explanation. Rochester devoted herself to issues of im­ Many privileged women lived disso­ migration, and then to economic analysis. lutely, and many unprivileged women Although they largely supported them­ found ways to live their faith. If bourgeois selves by writing and editing, parental al­ privilege helped the pair to retain their lowances and inheritance expanded their economic independence during the diffi­ capacity to devote themselves fully to cult McCarthy period, it does not explain their political lives. Both distinguished why they kept faith with communism long themselves as authors and activists; and after the Party's bloody purges became both remained loyal to the Communist public knowledge in 1956. Party throughout their long lives. Roches­ Lee tells us that Grace and Anna did ter died in 1966, and Hutchins three years not see themselves as lesbians (166) at later. least partly because "they had strong in­ Lee's strategy in writing this biogra­ centives not to do so." This remarkable phy is to focus on "the process whereby statement is followed by a discussion of subjects are formed through historically the Communist Party's early and increas­ defined processes." (4-5) "While ing opposition to homosexuality — posi­ Hutchins and Rochester were constituted tion that Hutchins and Rochester appar­ as political actors across widely differing ently supported despite their own experi­ ideological landscapes," she tells us, ences. Are there not issues here that "these landscapes molded them in partic­ require exploration? Their companion­ ular ways that I explain throughout the ship, the lifestyle and the relationships book." (5) This search for the creation of that ensued from it are part of an explana­ the persona poses an exciting challenge to tory framework that might help us to un­ the reader eager to understand the cre­ derstand their politics. We learn of indi­ ation of a life (or two lives in this in­ vidual friends and friendships; but de­ stance); yet it is never fully realized in the spite close connections with networks of book. And the attention Lee pays to the women around World War I, Hutchins task of constructing the subjective experi­ and Rochester do not seem to have main­ ence seems in the end to be somewhat tained many women friends after the dis­ counter-productive: to detract from her ruption of their commune in 1924. Is this willingness to engage with issues of connected to their apparent lack of femi­ growth and change, of contradiction and nism? Lee comments on their lack of fem­ tension. inist insight, and tells us how excited she For example, we are repeatedly re­ is when she catches them taking a femi­ minded that the bourgeois backgrounds of nist position she likes. (1 17,173). But she these women, their class privilege, li­ has a hard time explaining how their own censed their travels, their exposure, and relationships to women's issues may have their capacity to live well. Strong loyal­ served them well both in the Party and ties, Lee writes, "were possible because among other women of their day. The pair of their socioeconomic privilege. They fit comfortably into a social feminism that lived their faith because they could live was not unusual among educated women their faith." (109) Towards the ends of in the mid-20th century — a position that their lives, when McCarthyism played the author acknowledges in the text yet havoc with the Party apparatus and the dismisses as "liberal" in the accompany­ lives of its members, their substantial fi­ ing box. (116) nancial means enabled them to campaign Equally troubling is the way Lee in­ on behalf of civil liberties and to bail serts herself into the narrative both in the friends out of jail. But while their re­ text and in a series of "boxes" sprinkled REVIEWS 315

throughout the text. Lee uses these boxes biographical inquiry rather than the to comment on her own thoughts as she centerpoints of a significant historical engaged with her material. She raises moment. Readers interested in the project questions about biography as a genre; ru­ of biography writing will find this attrac­ minates about her doubts and decisions; tive, but I confess to disappointment in evokes her own subjective experiences in my search for the larger meaning of these relation to those of her protagonists; and two very important lives. shares her fantasies and wishes about Hutchins and Rochester. The boxes ap­ Alice Kessler-Harris pear on nearly every page, occasionally Columbia University two to a page, sometimes informative, oc­ casionally insightful, and inevitably dis­ tracting the reader from the argument in process. While I appreciate the post mod­ Daniel Rothenberg, With These Hands: ern concern for identifying the sub­ The Hidden World of Migrant Farm ject-position of the writer, I wonder about Workers Today (Berkeley: University of the effectiveness of a strategy that draws California Press, 1998) so much attention to the writer at the ex­ pense of insight into the subject. At one AT A TIME when consumers are readily point, we are told, for example, that Grace enlisted in the "fast-food nation" (the title and Anna were in India when Lee's of a recent bestseller), when bio-techno­ mother was born. (136) What are we logical patents are a significant source of meant to make of this? At another, Lee in­ corporate power and profits, and when terrupts a perceptive analysis of the devel­ family farms are relentlessly displaced by opment of Hutchins' and Rochester's industrial production, the work of culti­ thought to introduce her own concerns vating a critical mindfulness about what about whether she might have constructed we eat is especially urgent: who produces herself as a "fictive character" in this food, and under what conditions? In that book. I would be willing, even eager, to work, Daniel Rothenberg's fine study of read about that in an introductory essay, migrant farm workers in the United States but I am irritated when my eye is drawn to will be essential reading. It is aimed di­ it in the midst of something substantive. rectly at what he calls a "form of social In the end I am left confounded. These forgetting" that is reinforced by the geo­ lives raise crucial issues that promise to il­ graphic isolation of urbanization and luminate much about the history of 20th class. (326) While North American super­ century American politics, including the markets are filled with produce "as if by transformation from religious faith to magic,... few people realize that virtually party loyalty; the contradictions between every vegetable and piece of fruit we eat lifestyles financed by inherited wealth was handpicked by a farmworker" (xvii); and commitments to ideologies of equal­ one of a poorly-paid, poorly-protected ity; and the tension between lesbian sensi­ caste of at least two million, mostly men, bility and membership in a party appara­ mostly immigrant, mostly invisible, but tus that rigidly espouses heterosexuality. still essential to a continental food sys­ Janet Lee opens all these questions, and tem. For the paradox of large-scale com­ more, to examination. For this, as well as mercial agriculture, capital-intensive, for introducing us to two fervent and pas­ and technologically-advanced, is that it sionate lives, I am grateful. But in Com­ "cannot do without hand labor, people rades and Partners, she leaves the big willing to stoop in the fields; climb lad­ questions for others to explore, turning ders in orchards; and fill buckets, baskets, Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins into bins, and tubs with fruits and vegetables." effective vehicles for an experiment in (326-27) Not only that: migrant workers — often entire families — continue to 316 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

bear the costs of travel from job to job, the cial tensions, but also bringing the risks of bad weather, pesticides, and, in promise of local revitalization. the 1990s, the downward pressures on Ultimately, what gives With These wages and working conditions created by Hands its strength (and, in places, its in­ an abundance of recruits from Mexico and congruous beauty) are the extensive Central America. field-work interviews that are inter­ The story of migrant farmworkers is spersed throughout each chapter. An ac­ as old as Steinbeck's fiction and as in­ tivist and anthropologist, Rothenberg fused with righteous anger as the grape may not be an ambitious social theorist, to boycotts organized by Cesar Chavez's un­ judge from this book, but he must be a ion movement a generation ago. To this first-rate, tireless, and sometimes fearless story Rothenberg makes several distinct interviewer— one for whom intellectual contributions. At one level, he documents inquiry is a deeply moral undertaking. He the changes in fruit and vegetable produc­ successfully invests farmworkers of all tion, in public policy, and in the demo­ kinds with dignity and intelligence. He graphic composition of the migrant la­ lets them speak for themselves about their bour sector, partly, no doubt, to dispel a histories and the changes in their indus­ complacent popular assumption since the try, about their skills, their aspirations, 1970s that the situation must have contin­ their need of respect, their sense of obli­ ued to improve. Instead, Rothenberg gation, and in some cases the freedom shows readers a world marked by fear, in­ they find in mobility or the peace they timidation, and dehumanization, espe­ find in working the land — so long as cially in the transition to agribusiness cor­ "you're getting paid for it." (44) These porations to whom, as one worker puts it, farmworkers are seldom mere victims. "you're just a machine to get fruit from Sometimes they are lifelong union orga­ the tree"; at its extreme are forms of nizers. Sometimes they are children who, old-fashioned debt slavery. more adept at learning a new language, serve as translators and negotiators for At another level, this book sketches their parents, or who, educated in spite of some of the social and culture conse­ great obstacles, return from university to quences of political-economic interde­ teach summer school programs in the pendence in a continental food system. field. Sometimes they find an entrepre­ While the US-Mexico border remains a neurial way out, like the woman who used dangerous "symbolic space" — the do­ her savings from years of farmwork to main of smugglers and guards — there are buy a small restaurant, feeling she had "fi­ subtler, profounder changes at work nally arrived," but acutely aware of the lo­ across it. One is the formation of networks cals' wariness of migrants and hopeful linking Mexican workers to jobs and re­ that through her own business "I could be sources in the US, which for Rothenberg is the one that makes everyone realize, a more significant factor in increased mi­ 'Lord, have mercy, those tomatoes I ate gration than economic desperation alone. yesterday? Somebody picked them with Another is the reconstitution of once insu­ their own hands.'"(204) lar rural Mexican communities around the cyclical demands of farm work: absent Rothenberg's interviews with others males, individualism, disparities of in the same food system invest their lives wealth, and new patterns of consumption and choices with complexity if nothing (cars, appliances, satellite dishes) af­ else. It would be impossible not to sympa­ forded by success in the North. A third is thize with some of the small, struggling the little-noticed "Latinization" of large growers who employ migrants: the pep­ parts of the rural US where migrant work­ per farmer who provides year-round con­ ers have begun to settle, sometimes over­ tracts, higher wages, medical coverage, whelming social agencies and stirring ra­ and good housing — but quietly, in order REVIEWS 317 not to offend his neighbours; or the prejudice, the implications of an emerg­ corn-and-soybean producer who works ing political-economic order are some­ alongside the migrant families that return times still disclosed most clearly in the annually, who speaks of shared family countryside — all the more reason for this and rural community values, but who book to have a broad, sustained, and care­ worries about the threat to her own liveli­ ful reading. hood posed by corporate farms. If there is a hint of paternalism here, the mentality Roger Epp nonetheless is vastly different from Augustana University College that expressed by the large operators who extol the virtues of competition and choice against meddling bureau­ crats. Rothenberg allows them to speak John C. Rodrigue, Reconstruction in the for themselves too. He gives flesh, blood, Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor and voice to the small-time labour con­ in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes: tractors who operate at the edge of trans­ 1862-1880 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana portation, insurance, and labour-stan­ State University Press, 2001) dards regulations; to the Mexico-based human smuggler, age 24, who claims to SET IN SOUTHERN Louisiana, John C. make as much as a doctor; and even to the Rodrigue's Reconstruction in the Cane Washington lobbyist for a growers' asso­ Fields traces the social, political, and eco­ ciation who sees her members as "vic­ nomic consequences of emancipation and tims" of "class-war litigation." (213) its role in the creation of a wage-labour system. Before freedom, Rodrigue ar­ In the end, With These Hands is not so gues, sugar production "transformed much a manifesto as it is a richly-drawn southern Louisiana from a society with documentary of a world that is scarcely slaves into a slave society," which helped known to those who consume its oranges, create both a slaveholding élite as well as bell peppers, and tomatoes. The key char­ a large slave community that became a acteristic of that world, however, is that Black majority on the eve of the Civil "[fjarmworkers have long been the poor­ War. (10) After the Union victory, the est of America's workers, recruited from specialized knowledge, agricultural among the most powerless among us, his­ skills, and work routines that made sugar torically denied equal protections, and plantations profitable for planters before still, after repeated exposes, campaigns, the war allowed former slaves to negoti­ and legislative acts, their poverty and ate the meaning of freedom. marginalization continues." (325) This is troubling enough, and the requisite struc­ Freedpeople "rejected masterism," tural change in the farm-labour system for Rodrigue argues, "but they repudiated which Rothenberg calls is, by his admis­ neither sugar production nor its planta­ sion, unimaginable in the short term. tion regimen." (41) Former slaves who Rather, if the era of migrant farmworker stayed on sugar plantations after freedom exceptionalism is passing, he suggests, it understood the realities of sugar produc­ is because manual workers in the service tion — that a short growing season re­ and other sectors now increasingly are quired careful timing of planting, harvest­ employed under similar conditions: "un­ ing, and processing or else the entire crop certain, shifting, temporary jobs" — ar­ could be ruined — and used this under­ ranged by contractors and subcontractors standing as a tool to improve their work — "that provide no benefits and often do conditions, drive up wages, and negotiate not pay enough to keep workers and their payment schedules. So long as "planters families above the poverty line." (325) did not think of and treat them as slaves," Contrary to the great weight of modernist freedpeople consented to gang labour, performed arduous tasks, and adhered to 318 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the strict timing needed to produce a good he concedes, "planters and white Louisi- crop of sugar. (41) anans resorted to stronger methods." (38, Although freedpeople worked within 95, and 100) Rodrigue admits that White labour structures rooted in slavery, they planters sometimes led terror campaigns used their new status as well as the emerg­ that "witnessed unparalleled brutality," ing market ideology to repudiate some of yet fails to cite detailed examples. (100) slavery's lingering assumptions. For ex­ Although Rodrigue describes a riot in St. ample, freedpeople refused to dig canals Bernard Parish in 1868 in which "sixty and patch levees in the snake-infested cy­ people, mostly freemen, died in politi­ press swamps, demanded extra pay for cally motivated violence," he says little chopping the wood that fueled sugar pro­ else, leaving the reader to wonder what duction, and insisted on time off on Satur­ actually happened. (101) Did Whites kill day afternoon and Sunday. When planters the freedmen in an effort to force others to equivocated or refused to honour their de­ vote Democratic? Did Blacks fight back? mands, freedmen frequently staged work Rodrigue's silences may rest on his slowdowns and small strikes or simply sympathy for the planters; he argues that quit. "demands on the planter, if qualitatively Planters adjusted to wage-labour and different from those placed on slaves (and emancipation reluctantly, yet, according freedmen) were also exacting." ( 16) Ex­ to Rodrigue, with considerable equanim­ cuses and exclamations of how hard life ity. "Rather than continue an exercise in was for sugar planters after the Civil War futility," Rodrigue points out, planters make their way into too many of "reconciled themselves to the new order Rodrigue's arguments. Consider the fol­ and determined to make the most of it." lowing: "The perils of sugar production (65) This seems hard to believe, consider­ had caused planters enough anxiety be­ ing planters' efforts to reestablish mas­ fore emancipation; now they had to bar­ tery after Emancipation by enacting the gain with laborers who were free to Black Codes; and, after Radical Recon­ leave"; "As if the planters did not face struction, restricting mobility, enforcing enough challenges, Louisiana Unionists labour contracts, withholding wages, and approved a state constitution ... that for­ inflicting violence or the very real threat mally abolished slavery"; "With much of of violence. Freedpeople carved out some their capital investment wiped out and al­ autonomy on sugar plantations by forcing most forced to beg for loans, planters planters to deal with them, but planters faced a bleak future"; and "As though did not negotiate as "putative equals," as their labor problems were not enough, Rodrigue asserts. (69) Planters showed a planters would soon reap an equally bitter remarkable willingness to risk losing political harvest." (50,53,60, and 94) No­ their crops and even their property rather body knows the trouble they saw. than negotiate with Black labourers and Rodrigue's strongest chapter, where compromise the status and power rooted he recounts the Thibodaux Massacre, is in an ideology of White supremacy. his last. On 3 November 1887 prominent Rodrigue is unsettlingly silent on the sugar planters, led by Judge Taylor Beat- planters' use of violence, force, and fraud, tie, led a campaign of terror and violence and downplays their ability to limit and that destroyed one of the largest and best control freedpeople's lives. While organized strikes by Black cane workers, Rodrigue repeatedly argues that "labour" rescued White Louisiana from Radical and "capital" met on equal ground and Reconstruction, and left over 30 Blacks that free Blacks cowed White planters dead and thousands more homeless. Mary into accepting their demands, he alludes W. Pugh, wife of a prominent Louisiana to planters' "scorched earth policies" and planter, hoped the "Thibodaux Massacre" "strong-arm tactics." When those failed, would finally "settle the question of who REVIEWS 319 is to rule: die nigger or the White man for ana's sugar fields. Still, the story the next fifty years." (Quoted on 183) Rodrigue tells is important and interest­ Rodrigue's account of the Thibodaux ing and ought to expand scholarship that Massacre is riveting and is an excellent investigates the complex contest between account of the bitter race and class strug­ Black freedom and Southern free-labour. gles between Black labourers and White planters during Reconstruction and fi­ Danielle McGuire nally, Redemption. Rutgers University The Thibodaux Massacre, Rodrigue argues, was an unfortunate yet "all but in­ evitable ... epilogue to the story of eman­ cipation." (190-91) If the Thibodaux Carol Polsgrove, Divided Minds: Intel­ Massacre served as an inevitable ending lectuals and the Civil Rights Movement to the decades of struggle by freedpeople (New York: Norton, 2001) after emancipation, then Rodrigue's main argument — that the exigencies of sugar THE ROLE of the intellectual in politics production in Louisiana provided and in print is often most vexing when the freedpeople powerful tools used to secure two fields are combined. In Divided advantages and autonomy within a devel­ Minds, Carol Polsgrove studies intellec­ oping free-labour market — loses its tuals who employed this combination punch. Violence was decisive but not in­ from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s. evitable. In fact, he argues in earlier chap­ More specifically, her book is an exami­ ters that Redemption was not foreor­ nation of a select group of mostly male dained, but only possible after Republi­ writers, academics, and journalists, be­ cans began to slowly lose their seats to ginning with William Faulkner and mov­ planter-friendly Democrats in the ing to various others including Robert mid-1870's, who bolstered planter power Penn Warren, James Baldwin, C. Vann with the coercive power of the state. In­ Woodward, Ralph Ellison, Richard consistencies like these weaken Wright, Howard Zinn, and Kenneth Rodrigue's argument in the long run and Clark. Arguing that those with the re­ point to areas that ought to be explored sources, position, and privilege to call more fully. themselves "intellectuals" are inherently engaged in politics, Divided Minds de­ Ultimately, Rodrigue falls short of his picts the varied engagement of White and promise to "place slaves and freedmen at Black intellectuals with racial justice, the center of the story" by failing to en­ freedom of speech, and the demands of gage sources that speak to the experiences multiple loyalties. While certainly inter­ of Black sugar workers. (3) Too often, the ested in developing the frequently dispa­ author relies on planter diaries and out­ rate positions that divided Black and dated secondary sources that filter Black White intellectuals, Polsgrove is also at experiences, motives, and aspirations pains to show the differences that could through White fears and anxieties. Cer­ separate those whose similarity (of class, tainly Rodrigue could have utilized the re­ colour, or politics) was sometimes more cent scholarship on freedpeople, espe­ apparent than real. Perhaps the greatest cially freedwomen — who are virtually strength of the book is that it places nu­ invisible in this account — to investigate merous styles of academic and literary in­ freedpeople's efforts to carve out their tellectual engagement on view. In this own meaning of freedom. By focusing on sense, Divided Minds is a collective biog­ planters more than freedpeople, Rodrigue raphy for a certain kind of leadership provides an unbalanced and sometimes class, as Polsgrove designates them in her inconsistent account of the transforma­ prologue. tion from slavery to free labour in Louisi­ 320 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

The White response of Part One, once the protests of the late 1950s and "Brown v. Board and the White Resis­ early 1960s began, there was less room tance, 1954-57," is not the massive resis­ for disengagement. tance of Southern Whites to the Supreme It was also true that there was less Court's decision: it is the slow and incom­ room for merely well-intentioned White plete awakening of White intellectuals to engagement. In part two, "Gathering their participation in the nation's racial Strength, 1957-1963," James Baldwin is problems. Barely cognizant of White the central figure. Already an intellectual privilege and the structural presence of and literary force in New York City, with racism in the North, White intellectuals' the publication of "Letter from a Region discourse on race in the early 1950s was at of My Mind" in The New Yorker in No­ best muffled. Any change was to be made vember 1962, Baldwin moved into the only at the infinitesimal rate allowed by small group of intellectual Black repre­ the politics of gradualism. William Faulk­ sentatives to White America. Baldwin put ner was a limit case for this kind of di­ eloquently into print the despair and con­ vided and dilatory White intellectual, and tempt for Whites — both those Polsgrove's depiction shows him caught well-meaning and racist — that was com­ among a loyalty toward home, a desire for mon among Black intellectuals and Black national change, and a conviction that lo­ Americans more widely, and did so in a cal change must happen slowly. His 1956 national magazine. The effect on his pub­ rhetoric of supporting Mississippi inter­ lic presence was electric, and Polsgrove, ests "even if it meant going out into the working from Baldwin's essays, other street and shooting Negroes," ( 15) shown published accounts of his public activi­ here as typical of Faulkner's divided pub­ ties, and some original fieldwork, crafts lic persona and perhaps the product of un­ one of the best narratives yet of this period scrupulous reporting by interviewer Rus­ of his life. Her rendition of the volatile sell Warren Howe, dramatically brings meeting ofBaldwin and a varied group of out the unwillingness of White intellectu­ Black and White intellectuals, artists, and als to consider justice from the point of political workers with Robert Kennedy in view of those on the receiving end of seg­ late May 1963 is vivid, and suggestive in regation. its links to the federal government's later civil rights policy. Polsgrove shows In addition such major figures as Baldwin constantly on the move at this Faulkner, there are many who enter and time, adding to our knowledge an account then depart after brief attempts to mark of his activities in Selma, Alabama, in late the debate. Hannah Arendt published, 1963 and early 1964 in support of civil then later recanted, an argument against rights. forced desegregation in the wake of the federal government's 1957 intervention For Polsgrove, Baldwin acts as a fig­ in Little Rock. Norman Mailer published ure of great contrast to all the others in Di­ the first parts of what became "The White vided Minds. His lack of a clear political Negro" at this time, employing shock and history insulated him from the kind of dis­ sexuality to re-center the debate around appointment with direct action that what he saw as the true cause of racial Wright and Ellison underwent in regard to conflict: not white fear of desegregation, Communism; in addition, his uncompro­ but of miscegenation. Yet nationally, Di­ mising rhetoric toward White America vided Minds shows that Arendt and gave him credibility among Black Ameri­ Mailer were exceptions, finding some cans. His status as activist-without-port- way to place their concerns about race and folio stands in strong relief to one of civil rights on public view, even if their Polsgrove's background themes: the con­ intellectual peers disputed their analysis, flicts that arose among intellectuals who or questioned their seriousness. However, wrote, the intellectuals who published the REVIEWS 321

writings, and the intellectuals who re­ of the division of minds, splitting the ceived and read them. For Baldwin, free­ words of those who write from their own dom of speech was not limited by institu­ limited context and intentions, and un­ tional affiliation, a problem manifested leashing them for the irritation and inspi­ here in academic freedom, particularly in ration of others. the circumstances surrounding C. Vann Woodward, Lawrence Dunbar Reddick, David LaCroix and other Southern historians who broke University of Wisconsin - Madison scholarly silences about race and the leg­ acy of slavery. Yet this same focus serves as a significant limit for the book, build­ ing a definition of "intellectual" around C. Fred Alford, Whistleblowers: Broken the resources of time to write and access Lives and Organization Power (Ithaca: to serious publication venues, and per­ Cornell University Press, 2001) haps inadvertently around the male privi­ lege that constituted a right to speak polit­ C. FRED ALFORD's new book presents a ically in the United States. powerful commentary on the professional and material costs of blowing the whistle, Further, while Divided Minds occa­ or reporting illegal or unethical behavior sionally invokes the tension between ac­ that occurs at one's workplace. He de­ tivism in print and activism through pub­ bunks the stereotypical image of the lic action, some consideration of these in­ brave and righteous man or woman whose tellectuals in relation to other civil rights personal risks are ultimately rewarded by era political workers would have served the society his or her actions protected. to fulfill Polsgrove's central thesis about Instead, most whistleblowers, he argues, engagement. It should be noted that the lose their career and their savings, many debates most under her scrutiny are those lose their house and family, and ulti­ that were carried out in politi­ mately their sense of place in the world. cally-minded journals, in academic fo­ Worse, few whistleblowers succeed in ef­ rums, and in a few national publications fecting change. Even if whistleblowers like The New Yorker. Divided Minds does are ultimately vindicated, many are un­ show various styles of print-based politi­ able to continue working in their profes­ cal work, and the third section, "The Last sional field due to informal blacklists Campaigns, 1963-1965," does to a degree against which there is no protection. The turn to more direct political action by typical whistleblower, Alford says, is a Baldwin and Howard Zinn. But the vast divorced 52-year-old nuclear engineer portion of the discourse on race and civil rights covered here is of the written kind, who lives in a two-bedroom apartment which at times makes more for an internal and sells computers at Radio Shack. Most history of this select group than a study of whistleblowers he interviewed claim they their engagement with the ci vil rights pro­ would not do it again. cess as such. That the essays and other Using narrative, along with moral, publications of these writers were read ethical, and political theory, Alford delin­ outside of their own circles, especially in eates the motivation for individuals to act the case of Baldwin and the New Yorker as whistleblowers, for organizations to piece of 1962 (which a year later became expel them, and for society to abandon the majority of his famous essay The Fire them. Alford begins with a discussion of Next Time), seems both inarguable and the moral motivation for whistleblowers, potentially useful to Carol Polsgrove's which he calls "narcissism moralized." portrayal of these figures. It must be ac­ He argues that whitstleblowers are com­ knowledged that the process of writing pelled to act out of a fear of disassociation and publication is itself a positive process with one's ideal self. They do not have an empathetic association with a sufferer, as 322 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

a rescuer might. Instead, whistleblowers supporting evidence. It seemed biased to­ feel morally corrupted by association wards those stories that support his theory with an aggressor (89), and "blow the in several ways. First, he defines whistle- whistle because they dread living with a blowers by the organization's response, corrupted self more than they dread isola­ rather than by the individuals' acts. When tion from others." (90) This is a "selfish an employee reports unethical or illegal motive for people to sacrifice the appar­ behavior to her boss, who thanks her for ently objective interests of the self." (93) I the information and corrects the problem, found this to be a very interesting and Alford says, "she has performed an act of thoughtful analysis. However, though he whistleblowing, but ... she is not a carefully distinguishes narcissism moral­ whistleblower. She becomes a whistle- ized from blatant self-interest, the discus­ blower only when she experiences retalia­ sion connotes a blame-the-victim mental­ tion." (18) In statistical terms, he is effec­ ity at times. Furthermore, 1 found his ef­ tively selecting on his dependent vari­ forts to compare narcissism moralized able. with other tenets of moral theory confus­ Second, his data are drawn primarily ing and ultimately offering very limited from observations and interviews with insight. people in a whistleblowers' support Alford's presentation of the implica­ group and from highly publicized ac­ tions of whistleblower experiences for or­ counts in the media. The people who are ganizational and political theory was also in support groups and whose stories get interesting, and I personally would have publicized are those whistleblowers who liked to see it earlier in the book. He de­ have had the most extreme negative expe­ scribes organizations as constantly bat­ riences. Someone who blows the whistle tling to maintain their boundaries in an and is supported, vindicated, and re­ eat-or-be-eaten competitive environ­ warded has no need of a support group and ment. Because organizations try to main­ the media never shows up to interview tain total control over their internal envi­ them. The reader, therefore, can not tell if ronments, whistleblowers are viewed as Alford is representing typical whistle- "traitors in our midst" who represent ex­ blower experiences, or drawing from the ternal interests that threaten the organiza­ tail end of the population. Thus, in addi­ tion's integrity. In response, the organiza­ tion to defining whistleblowing accord­ tion "will remove him, not just beyond the ing to his dependent variable, he seems to margins of the organization, but all the select his sample from a segment of the way to the margins of society." (54) Al­ population that is most likely to have had ford offers evidence that most legal pro­ experiences that support his theory. tection for whistleblowers is "illusory," Finally, even within this already bi­ since it is "the purpose of law to enshrine ased sample, Alford excludes contradic­ existing power differences in society." tory data. He tells a story about a member ( 111 ) As such, he presents organizations of the support group, Ted, who says, "I'm and society as institutions dedicated to the a new man. Every day I learn something destruction of moral individualists. good about myself." Alford goes on to Alford's presentation and interpreta­ say, "Ted protests too much. For that rea­ tion of the retaliation experienced by son I distrust his account." (39) This is the whistleblowers is powerfully written, only example of a positive interpretation even though it tends towards melodrama by his interview subjects, and he rejects it. at times. Despite the gross over-simplifi­ He exacerbates the problem by failing to cation of his Big Brother description of offer any counter-examples when, for ex­ social institutions, I found his point of ample, he describes the unwillingness of view refreshingly unconventional. I was professional organizations to support troubled, however, by how he selected his whistleblowers' actions. (166) REVIEWS 323

These methodological decisions un­ for each period, a surprising variety of in­ fortunately undermine Alford's theoreti­ tellectual and political contexts. The clar­ cal arguments, which rest on the univer­ ity of his introduction to Meiklejohn's sality of the whistleblower's experience philosophical education and development as he presents it. His version of organiza­ pays justice to the faith the man himself tional and social theory depends on the had in making available complex ideas of collective assertively squelching the the past to all who wished to study. moral voice of the individual whistle- Meiklejohn reflected on the meaning of blower. The implications he presents for social life in a secular world. His group of moral theory rely on the prevalence of idealist colleagues and students opposed narcissistically moral behavior. Because the dominant pragmatists of their time, he failed to offer the reader sufficient in­ chiefly John Dewey, for the danger they formation to evaluate the representative­ risked in their uncritical assumptions re­ ness of the whistleblowers' stories he garding the values of democracy. In time, does tell, I found that many of his asser­ he came to be weary of their emphasis on tions ultimately lacked credibility. activity at the expense of meaning. In the zeal with which young university-edu­ cated Americans curtailed liberties in the Corinne Bendersky name of war, in 1917-1918, for instance, University of California, Los Angeles he recognized the relativism of their phi­ losophy and their lack of reflection on the nature of authority in education. Adam R. Nelson, Education and Democ­ Meiklejohn believed that the preser­ racy: The Meaning of Alexander vation of democracy resided in strong dis­ Meiklejohn (Madison: University of Wis­ cussions around agreed terms, which consin Press, 2001) would not only be transmitted, but had to be re-examined by each generation. His FROM HIS UNDERGRADUATE years in conviction that common standards would philosophy at Brown University in the allow bearers of different opinions to col­ 1890s, to his defence of an absolute defi­ laborate, brought him in close contact nition of the freedom of speech after with an exceptional variety of intellectu­ World War II, the Scottish-born Ameri­ als, reformers, and philanthropists, of can philosopher and educator Alexander many social backgrounds and political al­ Meiklejohn pursued one idea: to promote legiances. The gathering of their hopes institutions that would put into practice around his projects, such as the Experi­ the ideal of free and democratic citizen­ mental College in Madison, Wisconsin, ship. Meiklejohn chose higher education between 1925 and 1932, reveals the re­ as the main field of his activity, moving markable scope of contemporary possi­ from Brown to Amherst, Madison, and bilities, as well as the practical limits of Berkeley, mainly as an administrator, al­ free deliberation in American society. ways as a scholar, in a tireless effort to create a "liberal college." At the centre of He met many setbacks, as he pon­ his work, historian Adam R. Nelson in­ dered why the very democratic institu­ sists, was the paradox of Socratic teach­ tions he promoted decided to curtail free­ ing: how can one instructor transmit the dom: the promotion of professional sport desire to be free, how can one at once by assemblies of students against his own command the authority to teach the prac­ ideal of amateurship; the decision by his tice of self-government without impeding colleagues at Brown to enlist campuses in the student's own practice of freedom? "military preparedness" during World War I; and the opinion of the closest of his The author has followed Meiklejohn's colleagues that Communist propaganda action, thoughts, and vast influence in a and extreme right opinions had no place thoroughly research essay, identifying, 324 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

in a free public world and their subsequent education in the 1940s in San Francisco, failure to defend from imprisonment citi­ all one had to promise was to participate zens who refused to answer the questions in discussions and be open-minded. of the House Un-American Activities The history of the many institutions Committee. of Meiklejohn's making is also marred With experience and a changing con­ with the problems of idealism: the impor­ text, Meiklejohn's practical propositions tance of charisma in his teaching and his evolved. Initially, he sought material sup­ relations with colleagues often made for port for his endeavours amongst philan­ uneasy relations with older faculties; the thropists by appealing to the sense of their inordinate amount of authority and prox­ social position. With the Depression, he imity vested in tutors' prerogatives wor­ came to rely on the state as the necessary ried parents and students; his own uneasy provider of the support for education. In relation with the truth in the face of col­ doing so, he developed a demanding un­ leagues' opposition; and excessive derstanding of the conditions of existence spending at the institution's expense of a democratic state. Initially, also, he jeopardized academic solidarity. While believed in setting the college apart from Nelson provides many insights into the society, a haven of excellence untouched joys and excesses of Meiklejohn's family by the pressing demands of the material life, he could have discussed further his and political world; only with this dis­ thoughts about the role of families in the tance could scholars and students make education of citizens. sense of their world, with the help of their Concerning the history of labour and intellectual forebears. With time, he en­ of the working class, Meiklejohn at­ visaged institutions of learning in closer tempted to make higher education eligi­ relation to their world, a position that ble for all who wished to study. Aware of asked for different ways to maintain the the extraordinary discrepancy of incomes intellectual integrity of the college, espe­ and privileges, partly thanks to his own cially the protection of the First Amend­ working-class origins, he sought to find ment. fair and dignified ways of helping strug­ His belief in a dynamic search for gling students. His various colleges were meaning took the form of a permanent typically more open to a variety of quest for a unified understanding of soci­ classes, ethnic, and religious groups than ety, a philosophical synthesis that should their contemporaries. He also established at once make sense of the modern world institutions of adult and workers' educa­ and pay justice to past thinkers. To this tion related to universities, with the con­ end, Meiklejohn promoted unified curric­ viction that the practice of democracy ula in the early years of the college. Open was a constant exercise. His efforts cul­ programs represented an abandonment of minated in 1934 and 1940, with the San the responsibility of teaching. Vocational Francisco School of Social Studies and its courses, he further believed, had no place branch, the Pacific Coast School for in the modern college. Typically, he pro­ Workers, which taught hundreds of peo­ posed a year or two of study of the institu­ ple organized in rigorous discussion tions of Greek democracy. To this groups "not only in the methods of critical ever-present core, he added years on the deliberation and democratic debate but enlightenment, on modern America, or on also in the practical methods of labor or­ the social problems of industrialization. ganization, from bookkeeping and arbi­ Around carefully selected lists of books, tration to wage contracts and collective his method remained the same: a vast bargaining." (211). Curiously, Nelson ex­ amount of personal readings followed by plains, such institutions bloomed in the open discussions led by demanding tu­ 1930s because of unemployment. tors. To register in his program of adult Meiklejohn's second wife, Helen Everett REVIEWS 325

Meiklejohn, a reformer and adult educa­ of political flux, and only one of these re­ tor in her own right, collaborated with mained with the party for more than a few many trade unions and contributed to var­ years. The Communists did, however, ious institutions of workers' education, play a role. In the 1940s and 1950s, they such as the Summer Institute for Social represented a substantial ramp of work­ Progress offered to women workers by ing-class sentiment. Left-wing frustra­ Wellesley College, (Massachusetts) in tion at the slow progress of parliamentary the 1930s. socialism was most easily expressed His defence of free deliberation led to through the trade unions. Where there involvement in many sectors of Amer­ were unofficial strikes, or confident shop ica's public life. His theoretical elucida­ stewards willing to speak out against gov­ tion of the First Amendment exerted a ernment 'austerity,' then active (or for­ considerable influence in the defence of mer) Communists were rarely far behind. the Hollywood Ten, and in the struggle of While the historiography has grown lecturers against university administra­ to such a point that there are now four tions that asked them to sign statements of full-length histories of the party from its political belief during the McCarthy era. birth in 1920 to its demise 70 years later, His reflection on the central place of edu­ there are still few biographies of leading cation in democracy helped to lay the in­ British Communists. Even those accounts tellectual parameters of UNESCO. that do exist have too often relied on a Nelson's biography represents a jour­ style of "exemplary" writing. The "good ney through more than half a century of Communist" dedicated his or her life to American educational, social, and politi­ the political struggle, leaving all other cal reform through the eyes of a man who personal or domestic considerations be­ never ceased to believe in the promises of hind. Any admission of weakness, by the the use of reason. At the time of his death, memoirist or the loyal biographer, could in 1964, he counted colleagues, former only diminish the cause. The results were students, and close friends amongst the criticized, in one telling review, by the la­ leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and bour historian Sidney Pollard of a biogra­ he witnessed with them the violent repres­ phy of the Sheffield Communist, George sion that hadjust followed the early victo­ Fletcher. "Did George Fletcher never ries of the movement. have doubts himself, one wonders? ... Here was no party hack, no 'profes­ sional'... was there ever a dilemma in his Dominique Marshall mind? ... Was he happy about purges in Carleton University Russia, the sectarian position of the CPGB, the absence of democracy in the Third International, which he once at­ John Mcllroy, Kevin Morgan and Alan tended as a delegate? ... Are good Com­ Campbell, ed. Party People, Communist munists really never assailed by doubts? Lives: Explorations in Biography (Lon­ And if they are, do their biographers re­ don: Lawrence and Wishart, 2001) ally perform a service to the Party by hid­ ing them?" (Sidney Pollard, "Leaven of THE STORY of the Communist Party of Life: The Story of George Henry Great Britain has exercised a surprising Fletcher, Bulletin of the Society for the fascination on historians. Compared to Study of Labour History, 4 ( 1962), 56-7). the mass Communist Parties of France, It­ The authors of this collection employ aly or Greece, the British organization the insights of the biographer in a differ­ was weak, ill rooted, and insecure. In the ent fashion, to explore a subjective world 70 years of the party's existence, its mem­ of experience and emotion, normally con­ bership peaked at just 50,000. Three of its cealed from both official party biogra- five MPs belonged to the 1920s, a period 326 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

phies and conventional political history. tra-left politics of the late 1920s As the editors suggest, "writing biogra­ Comintern, and the claim that "right- phy can be an exciting and rigorous way wing" parliamentary socialism was the of writing history, one which restores the twin of fascism. Persuaded by his com­ flesh and blood, the inspiration and per­ rades to visit the Soviet Union in 1931, spiration to Communist lives; it is also a Arthur Horner then published a series of form which gives proper weight to human recantations, and returned to the party agency as well as its constraints." (5-6) fold. Fishman's conciliatory account of The main contents of this book are eight this sinister process contrasts with Camp- biographical accounts of the lives of bell and Mcllroy's lives of Allan, prominent British Communists. The first Proudfoot, and Moffat, which bring out is devoted to Dora Montefiore, one of the the sheer stupidity of the Communist de­ best-known women Communists at the sire to establish separate "left-wing" un­ party's foundation. The second and third ions at this time. It also sits oddly beside chapters record Arthur Reade, aesthete Barry McLoughlin's chapters, which list and 1920s student activist, and William the several British victims of Stalin's Rust, full-time party officer and editor of mass purges. What might have happened the Daily Worker. The fourth and fifth to Horner, we might ask, had he arrived in biographical chapters describe'Rose Russia not in 1931, but in 1934? Smith, another party full-timer, and Ar­ The conventional criticisms that his­ thur Horner, the President of the South torians have made of biography describe Wales Miners' Federation. The sixth is its tendency to sensationalize, the devoted to three Scottish Communists, over-concentration on famous personali­ also prominent among the mineworkers, ties to the exclusion of more mundane but Willie Allan, David Proudfoot, and Abe generally felt realities, a tendency to pro­ Moffat. The remaining biographical vide pseudo-psychological explanations chapters belong to Randall Swingler, of longer-term historical processes. This Communist poet, and Jack Gaster, a late collection is admirably free from most recruit from the left wing of the Independ­ such flaws, but not the middle one. The ent Labour Party to the Communist bu­ most typical British Communist was a reaucracy. These substantive chapters man or woman working in a skilled work­ follow a general, historiographical intro­ ing-class or lower-middle-class profes­ duction. The penultimate chapter, "Visi­ sion. Where, in this book, are the engi­ tors and Victims," records the experience neers who dominated party conferences, of British citizens in the USSR after 1930. when the CP was at its height? The party There is then a short afterword. was able to sustain meetings not just in This is a thoroughly compelling and London and the capitals, but also in pro­ enjoyable book. It breathes the air of real vincial cities, and in many small British lives spent in struggle. Although it is the towns. What kept such people going, even product of eleven different contributors, when their branches were rootless, mar­ the book coheres around common epi­ ginal, and small? How indeed did the na­ sodes and themes. Indeed a variety of per­ ture of their commitment change between spectives is positively revealing, when the heady, frightening days of the 1930s, different chapters cover similar ground. and the slow, dull world of the 1950s? The Nina Fishman's study of Arthur Horner political activity of such ordinary Com­ tends if anything to play down the drama munists consisted mainly of paper sell­ of Horner's clashes with the British Com­ ing, electioneering (especially after munist hierarchy. Horner was one of the 1951), or work around just one or two ap­ best, independent leaders of the miners' proved party "fronts." Unless we can gain unions. Unlike other leading Commu­ access to the minds of the party rank- nists, he was unwilling to submit to the ul- and-file, we will never answer the great REVIEWS 327

question of Communist historiography. similar to Jan Wong's Red China Blues Why did so many Communist Party mem­ (1996) and Jan Wong's China (1999) as bers accept so loyally the twists and turns well as Michael Dutton's Street Life in of Moscow-originated policy, when these China ( 1998). However, Cosbey utilizes a changes committed them to making outra­ more comprehensive approach in at­ geous intellectual somersaults, and even tempting to integrate the lives of people though the Party leadership lacked the or­ within the sweeping changes of political ganizational means to impose such views economy. on its members? Cosbey's text is neither doctrinaire If any writers are well equipped to an­ nor polemic; indeed, he does not use the swer this question in the future, then it is self-descriptor "socialist." In a way he the editors of this book. For Party People, elaborates Herbert Marcuse's argument Communist Lives is but the first fruit of a that "social change needs to begin at major project of Communist biography, home;" if it does not do so, then it merely based on the work of a group of scholars at replaces one authoritarian order with an­ Manchester University. The authors have other. Although strongly supportive of been engaged in constructing a large data­ many aspects of Chinese culture, Cosbey base of several thousand life-histories, works arduously to create a sense of bal­ which when complete, should tell us more ance in the text. He is as critical of the ex­ than anything about the lives of the Com­ cesses of the Mao era and the "Gang of munist rank-and-file. The publishers de­ Four"as he is of what Karl Polanyi refers serve our thanks for bringing out this first to as a "market mentality," characterized volume, but it will also be interesting to by free-agent workers and the inclination see what discoveries lie ahead. to view human life in terms of an ex­ change of commodities. He has come to understand the moral dimensions of polit­ Dave Renton ical commitment — to engage a shared vi­ Sunderland University sion of equality and justice when con­ fronted with expansive changes in social conditions. Cosbey's pragmatic social­ Robert Cosbey, Watching China Change ism causes him, therefore, to focus on the (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2001) extent to which Chinese society "pro­ duces high-quality goods at a profit, but WATCHING CHINA CHANGE aims to also to make a good life for the peo- sketch in broad outline the historical tran­ ple."(xvi) sition from socialism to a market econ­ Chapter Four unfolds Cosbey's most omy, demonstrating the impact of social, substantive analysis of the benefits of a economic and cultural changes for the socialist state. He is at his best highlight­ people of China. Spanning some twenty ing socialism's "iron rice bowl" features years from 1972 as part of Mao Zedong's including guaranteed jobs, housing, med­ "Cultural Revolution," and lasting until ical care, free schools, and the provision the death of Deng Xiaoping in 1997, the of old-age pensions through the factory book presents the reader with an opportu­ system. He draws interesting contrasts nity to reflect on how ideologies and poli­ between older economic policies "to cies play a role in informal social serve the people," and Xiaoping's "so­ interactions that permeate Chinese daily cialism with Chinese characteristics," in life. Although a political idealist, Robert which, as a throwback to 19th century un­ Cosbey sees a need to move out of the regulated capitalism, the rallying cry is world of ideas and into the world of Real- "to get rich is glorious." (xxi i) Two politi­ politik. Thus ordinary life becomes a fo­ cal visions are differentiated — the for­ cal site rather than a neglected domain of mer, doctrinaire, and associated with investigation. At first blush, the read is 328 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

"brutal excesses" that purged the country of communalism, as evidenced in the of intellectuals, and sent "tens of thou­ campaign to eliminate flies in which each sands of young people to learn from the individual was assigned a daily kill quota. peasants in the countryside," and demol­ Equally regrettable are cultural shifts in ished all things artistic such as the flower­ the national opera company's political ing gardens of Nankai, in the name of a fu­ performances of "Going to the Fields," ture "of self-interest and production for transformed to vacuous presentations that profit through the 'Four Moderniza­ suggest more traditional feminine roles tions'" of agriculture, industry, the army, and social divisions along ethnic lines. and science and technology. (99) Thus, Cosbey wants the reader to appreciate the slogan, "Black cat, white cat, what the fact that starvation, high infant mor­ does it matter so long as it catches mice" tality, massive illegal trading in smug­ became exceedingly popular as economic gling opium, and waves of conquerers changes were initiated by post-Mao gov­ characterized the period prior to 1949. In ernments. (203) telling the tale of what socialism has Cosbey points out that as a result of achieved for China, he points out as well the introduction of market forces, surplus the internal strife between the National­ value is being squeezed out of labour by ists headed by Chiang Kaishek and the "new managers," and 100,000,000 people Communists led by Mao Zeodong. Given have become unemployed and largely un­ that the Chinese government is currently qualified for emerging jobs in the new encouraging investment by foreigners economy. It is argued that concentrating "who intend to take out profits for their on reforming agriculture through collec­ companies back home," Cosbey is incred­ tives and building the country's infra­ ulous that "this time the Chinese are mak­ structure (including heavy industry and ing the rules."(89) Neither is the paradox hydroelectric dams) during the Great lost on Cosbey of Mao replacing a hierar­ Leap Forward provided the material base chical caste system based on personal au­ upon which the current con­ thority with a collégial system, only to be sumer-oriented society rests. While worshiped as an emperor (a role rejected Cosbey admires changes taking place in by Xiaoping). Nor does he shrink from the new economic zone of Xiamen that criticizing the heavy hand of Mao bureau­ have produced higher wages, upgraded cracy that forced people into factories and plant assembly lines, and provided nu­ on farms against their will. Nonetheless, merous consumer goods in modern, some of his strongest criticism is reserved free-enterprise stores, he is also cognizant for the rampant corruption, drugs, and that throughout the country many people prostitution that permeate the culture of no longer enjoy job security, social ineq­ new China. In contrast to Mao's commit­ uities have increased, and the noise and ment to an interventionist state, pollution of traffic has replaced Xiaoping's "Responsibility System of hand-pulled carts, as the entire region is Farming" swept away the commune sys­ transformed into a marketplace. It is sug­ tem. Although more individual initiative gested that combining economic liberal­ emerged, plots of land were often too ism with political and social repression small to cultivate, a few farmers became (an adaptation of the Singapore model), wealthy at the expense of others, and almost inevitably led to the 1989 protests there was a growing tendency to keep in Tiananmen Square. Despite the provo­ children (and especially girls) out of cation of the demonstrators, Cosbey school to work in the fields. makes it clear that no government is ever justified in utilizing the army against its The analysis in Watching China people in such a heinous fashion. A la­ Change stands in sharp contrast to dis­ ment is heard for the passing of the spirit courses of liberal democracies that stress that generating employment and wealth is REVIEWS 329 the only purpose of political life. Cosbey and degrees, was less elitist and more rel­ argues against engaging in competition in evant to the needs of society. Upon retir­ a global Darwinian contest that will fur­ ing from the University of Regina and ther polarize Chinese society. While ad­ taking up a teaching position at Nankai vocating for a society that is less bound to University, he faced, however, the con­ uncritical notions of progress and fixed temporary situation in which his students dogma, he has not given up on the great memorized enormous amounts of mate­ socialist experiment. Private enterprise rial and looked to their teachers to pro­ and the free market based on unhindered, vide opinions and ideas rather than de­ competitive individualism are inimical to veloping their own powers of reasoning Cosbey's hope of creating economic sys­ and analysis. tems that enable people to take control The text ends with a brief section ti­ over their lives and seek a politics of jus­ tled "Women: Holding Up Half the Sky," tice. Even Adam Smith, the foremost widening the focus to include gender. thinker in the hagiography of neoliberal- The myth that Cosbey seeks to dispel is ism, advocated the principle of self-inter­ that women have made substantial prog­ est with limitations, and only insofar as it ress in the new economy. Yet another promoted the common good. irony of his work deals with one of the The chapter on Ningxia offers an significant goals of the Cultural Revolu­ analysis of inequities, since this Muslim tion — to allow women to achieve equal­ area is one of the poorest in all of China. ity with men. Practices such as foot bind­ Despite the fact that Mao's minority ing and concubinage of the old China policies were some of the most progres­ have been eliminated and women's sta­ sive in the world, the unleashing of the tus improved as a result of the contribu­ Red Guards (to eradicate local customs tions they made to the revolution of and cultures that served as an extension 1949. Cosbey demonstrates, nonethe­ of centuries of discriminatory legisla­ less, that women when compared to men tion favouring the Hans) is deplored by have not obtained jobs in equivalent Cosbey in a "classless society." He uti­ numbers in the business sector, and he lizes small vignettes such as the change underscores the paradox of female em­ in diet from sea slugs and snakes to fast ployment in which sex segregation in the food, and the disappearance of the old labour force has served to devalue the teahouses with traditional storytellers nonmonetary contributions of female do­ to illustrate changes that have both unin­ mestic labour. His skepticism about the tended and somewhat welcomed conse­ possibility of improving the future status quences. Transformations in Chinese of women is well founded but unfortu­ political economy have necessitated for nately he offers few suggestions that ad­ example, that parents pay for their chil­ dress women's oppression. dren's schooling and have resulted in The descriptions offered in Watching the disappearance of "barefoot doc­ China Change are largely based on per­ tors." sonal experience and anecdotal evidence, Cosbey is well aware that universi­ and for the most part do not move below ties were the first target of the Cultural the surface to explore the theoretical un­ Revolution. Nonetheless, a quote from derpinnings of analysis George Lin takes Mao, "if you want to be the people's up in Red Capitalism in South China teacher, first be the people's student," re­ (1997) or Charles Trenck's treatment of veals the approach to education that he China's growing dependency on the favours. Grappling with issues of power global economy in Red Chips and Global­ embedded in teacher/student relations, ization. (1999) Nonetheless, Cosbey's he concludes that the Chinese system of well-written, thoughtful overview de­ Mao's vintage, devoid of examinations serves a wide readership for providing an 330 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

exemplary study of China's changing po­ thor unravels discourses of domesticity litical economy. and true womanhood that revolved around the idea of the male breadwinner. Diane Meaghan The notion of motherhood as a defining Seneca College aspect of womanhood reinforced a new gender order centered on the home-work separation. In the first half of the 20th century, the issue of special protective Elisabeth Prilgl, The Global Construction legislation for women created a split of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Po­ within the global women's movement. litical Economy of the 20th Century (New While equal-right feminists condemned York: Columbia University Press, 1999) such legislation for its discriminatory ef­ fects, union women defended protective IN A FINELY NUANCED, and perhaps the legislation, arguing women's work condi­ first serious study of homework, Elisa­ tions were at times objectively different beth Priigl unravels the gendered econ­ from those of men. Curiously, those fa­ omy of those who "sew garments, vouring protective legislation also fa­ embroider, make lace, roll cigarettes, voured a ban on homework, leading in the weave carpets, peel shrimp, prepare food, late 1920s to a split in the International polish plastic, process insurance claims, Alliance of Women. edit manuscripts, and assemble artificial Although both defenders and enemies flowers, umbrellas, and jewelry." ( 1 ) On a of protective legislation preferred equal presumed path of social progress, how­ employment status for women, those who ever, homework emerges as an anomaly. favoured protective legislation regarded After all, we are all made to expect a women and actual and potential mothers, change away from "traditional" to "mod­ recognizing motherhood as a disadvan­ ern" ways of life where the realms of tage in the labour market. Equal-rights home and work were neatly separated. feminists, on the contrary, defined Economic theory had long predicted that women as free individuals in the liberal progressive industrialization would move sense, and thus contested the association all production into factories. With its fail­ of womanhood with weakness and de­ ure to disappear from the modern land­ pendence. Confining womanhood to scape, homework became an anathema to motherhood legitimized inequality; in­ modern work practices, a problem to be deed, national bureaucracies used pay solved, and a setback to global expecta­ rates 50 to 65 per cent lower for women in tions of modernity. It was not until the Britain and Germany in the 1920s and 1980s that homework received some le­ 30s. At the time, both the International gitimation, ironically enough, under the Labour Organization and International flexible economy of temporary labour Labour Office opposed equal pay and that has valourized forms of production equal protection for women. After the previously considered marginal. 1950s, another rift occurred in the femi­ In order to uncover the highly con­ nist space between Western feminists and tested terrain of home-based work, I will feminist nationals from newly independ­ discuss three major faultlines along ent countries from Asia and Africa. The which Prilgl's analysis moves simulta­ symbolic and economic value of neously: gender, labour, and language. home-based craft for these nations cast Along the dimension of gender, Prilgl doubt on the efforts of women in the Roo­ shows how feminism itself has not been sevelt administration who had discussed an unbroken unity or a single movement industrial homework as a place of exploi­ in its response to an emergence of indus­ tation and inefficiency. It was not until trial patriarchy that progressively ex­ the 1980s and 1990s that feminist activ- cluded women from paid work. The au­ REVIEWS 331

ists from the South, for example, the employers stopped viewing domestic Self-Employed Women's Association commitments as impediments to income (SEWA) in India, attempted a synthesis earning. between crafts production and industrial The linguistic dimension of home­ homework, and gained acceptance in work is no less important. Language is not global debates. Within Western feminism a mere passive bearer of existing power too, the language of maternalism was ac­ relations, it also actively structures per­ cepted without giving up demands for ceptions about what counts as legitimate. equal rights. With the development of the The exclusivity of categories enables par­ post-Fordist flexible mode of production, ticular power relations, as reflected in however, homework was no longer a Fordist class categories of "employer" problem but an opportunity for the em­ and "employed." The author documents ployers to cut costs and gain flexibility. battles around the categorization of home The rhetoric of flexible labour workers as "self-employed," as it has im­ "de-feminized home-based work and cre­ portant consequences. When defined as ated an androgynous worker flexibly inte­ "self-employed," homeworkers are in­ grated into a new technologically enabled serted into the "employer" category, circuit of production." (106) which, despite sounding nice, is a losing The author notes that homework came proposition. In this way, homeworkers into increasing conflict with organized la­ lose labour rights, protections, and access bour by the early 20th century. As unions to benefits that arise from the rules that turned to the state for protection from the defined worker and employer relation­ effects of the capitalist mode of produc­ ships under Fordism, in which workers' tion, they saw homework as undermining acquiescence to their own subordination factory legislation and thus the male was often forthcoming because it came breadwinner role that was vital to the in­ with protection. One of the major battles dustrial-era patriarchy. Some worker rep­ for the feminist activists under resentatives at the International Labour post-Fordism has been to destabilize clear Conference supported equal pay for hierarchies of employer and employee, homeworkers, as they feared that and thereby open the definitions of women's lower wages were a serious home-based work to include both threat to men's employment. Such think­ self-employed and dependent workers. ing, Prugl maintains, was based on the There are some minor issues that are not presumption that under equal-wage con­ clearly addressed in this otherwise so­ ditions, men would emerge victorious be­ phisticated analysis of home-based work. cause of their inherent superiority. With The author at times tends to combine all the rise of a post-Fordist regime of flexi­ subcontracted, temporary, and other con- ble accumulation, however, the Interna­ tingent workers in her image of tional Labour Organization adopted a homeworkers. (E.g., 121) But, where, for convention on homework in the 1990s, example do we fit in workers who are per­ adopting a guiding principle of the equal­ manent employees of a firm that supplies, ity of treatment between homeworkers for example, programmers to other com­ and other wage earners. "Home-based panies on a temporary project-based ba­ workers became ideal workers in a re­ sis. Obviously, such workers do not have structured global economy, providing much in common with home-based man­ ual workers, in contrast to flexibility and costing little "self-employed" home-based program­ Home-based work and microenterprises mers with whom they do. Second, the idea no longer provided a romantic alternative of the global as a social space, which is to global capitalism, but became an inte­ constituted by "a specific set of influen­ gral part of domestic and global produc­ tial agents, through practices that reach tion chains." (102) Increasingly, Western 332 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

beyond state boundaries," is not very The coverage of the book is impres­ clear. (IS) How does such a global space sive; it is productively broken into well achieve its unity in order to be called "a" thought out sections including Perspec­ space? What discourses or episteme form tives on Provision, Learning at the Local its basis? Is this space infinite and Level, Building the Union, Current Chal­ all-encompassing? Where are its bound­ lenges, and Reflections on the Future. aries? I do not think this concept is neces­ There are three types of gems to be found sary to "the global construction of gen­ in the book. First, there are deeply en­ der," which can easily be seen as crystal­ gaged pieces of straightforward reporting lizing from institutional encounters of that give an intimate feel for engaged different discursive practices around the campaigns (e.g. Wong's Chapter 6) and globe. Finally, the constant use of Nicho­ the complexities of political context (e.g. las Onufs awkward terminology of in­ Cooper's Chapter 3; Laurendeau and struction-rules, directive-rules and com­ Martin's Chapter 10). A standout that mitment-rules, appears tired and forced in goes beyond mere reporting is a piece on an otherwise clear and lucid analysis. In the use of research circles as an alterna­ short, Elisabeth Priigl deserves applause tive method of knowledge production by for bringing the long-neglected practices Hàrnsten and Holmstrand (Chapter 7). It of homework to our attention, a job she provides actual analysis and it is unusual has done with aplomb. in the collection in that it takes up the is­ sue of learning itself (as opposed to edu­ cational programming) to be the object of A. Aneesh inquiry. A second type of gem to be found Stanford University within, is the densely informative com­ parative chapters (e.g. Sterling's Chapter 2; Miller Chapter 12). Here there is a bal­ Bruce Spencer, ed. Unions and Learning ance of literatures assembled to paint a in a Global Economy: International and useful comparative picture of labour edu­ Comparative Perspectives (Toronto: cation. And finally, there is even a Thompson Educational Publishing, 2002) far-reaching, partly sociological, partly educational, account of the role of unions FOR THOSE INTERESTED in labour edu­ and education in regards to civil society cation an important book has just been re­ (Newman's Chapter 15). Standing on leased. Its importance is rooted in the fact their own, each of these pieces provides that, until now, no comparative, interna­ important information that is otherwise tional collection of labour education writ­ unavailable or else scattered through ob­ ing has existed. In Unions and Learning scure sources. in a Global Economy Bruce Spencer has This book, as 1 have indicated, is re­ drawn together a rare and useful collec­ ally the first of its kind, and therefore any tion of voices to provide a solid introduc­ critique must be taken with a grain of salt. tion to the area, building on related work But before proceeding, take a glance back that Spencer has published since the early at the title. This is probably based on a 90s. It has the rare quality of being able to marketing decision rather than on an un­ satisfy the needs of a diverse readership, derstanding of the material. Nevertheless, including those uninitiated to the field of given a title such as this, there are some labour education, those only familiar with significant gaps. In the first place, the col­ their own national context, as well as la­ lection does not quite deliver on its prom­ bour educators themselves and, to some ise of comparative international analysis. degree, labour education scholars who Beyond a few individual chapters, there is wish to delve into the comparative nu­ actually very little overall analysis across ances across countries. the various national contexts. Looking to- REVIEWS 333

ward the introductory and closing chap­ quite serious. It belies a faith in members' ters, we find they are descriptive rather capacities, not simply to learn and de­ than analytical. How has a global econ­ velop, but to also guide their own learning omy affected the character of education in and development. This emphasis, despite unions internationally? This is still a the most progressive pedagogical tech­ question mark at the end of the book. nique, affirms a mantra that's pounded An important missed opportunity for into members' heads from school through comparative analysis involved the issue to work: working people do not under­ of professionalization of labour educa­ stand, they do not know, they can not lead tion. Some authors suggest that the themselves, and they must be led. Not professionalization and formalization of paying serious attention to how members "union learning" is positive and neces­ learn individually and collectively out­ sary (e.g. Nesbit Chapter 4). Others, such side of courses (and the ways that unions as Cooper (Chapter 3), and to some degree can and do facilitate this learning) makes Hârnsten and Holmstrand (Chapter 7), an important instrumental error (in that seem to indicate this formalization and this is where members actually do most of professionalization may be a barrier for their learning), and a fundamental politi­ future development of the labour move­ cal one as well. ment. Do levels of formalized training Nevertheless, Spencer's Unions and co-vary with the success of the labour Learning delivers a rich, deeply informed movement historically? Who knows? The overview of the state of program delivery point here is that this seemingly central is­ across an impressive array of national sue (perhaps even the defining issue for contexts. It is, in my view, inappropri­ labour education scholars within the con­ ately titled, but otherwise fills an impor­ text of labour studies more broadly) is for tant gap in our understanding of labour all intents and purposes unaddressed in education internationally. It can not be ig­ terms of solid comparative analysis. nored by those interested in labour educa­ Another key critique deals with the tion. book's claims about "union learning" and "union education." The title suggests Peter H. Sawchuk we're going to read about learning when, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in fact, with a notable exception, the book is about educational programming. Al­ though Spencer provides a nice list of al­ ternative topics that could be used to look Andrew Herod, Labor Geographies: beyond educational programming, in­ Workers and the Landscape of Capitalism cluding involvement of mass media, joint (New York: Guilford Press, 2001) programs, museums, and cultural festi­ vals to name a few (17-22), there is little AT THE CONCLUSION of his book, An­ indication he has actually taken the idea to drew Herod states "that social praxis can­ heart. A book with "union learning" in the not be understood without an title could and should cover the full range appreciation of the spatial context within of learning activity that workers engage which it takes place. Put more bluntly, the in, and not limit itself to educational pro­ triumvirate of 'race, class, and gender' gramming. Indeed, the book is at its weak­ should really be a quadrumvirate of est when it simply provides, or worse, 'space, race, class, and gender.'" (269) simply decries the lack of program deliv­ Herod's study is a thoughtful scholarly ery statistics. The significance of an em­ effort to prod geographers to look closely phasis on educational programs to the ex­ at those four factors, and especially to clusion of analyses of members' learning consider workers seriously as conscious more broadly, to my mind, is actually actors in the production of physical land­ scape within the system of global capital- 334 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ism. His work is also an appeal to labour and act locally but also move decisively historians to see space as a source of on the world stage. power and an object of social struggle, not The following chapters highlight a se­ merely a flat stage for historical actors to ries of struggles where workers, in vari­ play out the drama of class conflict. ous organizational forms, shape regional Drawing on the seminal work of and global forms of capitalist develop­ Marxist geographer David Harvey, Herod ment. Herod begins by looking at the ef­ argues that workers and labour organiza­ forts of the garment workers' union tions need their "spatial fix" — "certain (ILGWU) in New York City to preserve a configurations of the landscape... in order mid-town Manhattan manufacturing dis­ for them to reproduce themselves (so­ trict during the 1980s real estate boom. cially and biologically) from day to day Using the authority of new zoning ordi­ and from generation to generation." (Xiii) nances, the union succeeded in its local Establishing such fixed points in a physi­ challenge to the power of global busi­ cal place and at a historical moment in nesses to amass more territory in the time will always be a process contested post-industrial city. The next two chap­ between labour and capital. Therefore, ters look at the challenges faced by long­ "molding the geography of capitalism is a shoremen during the post-war shift to key aspect of class struggle"; likewise, containerized cargo handling. Herod as­ "the process(es) of class formation and serts that these workers engaged in forms class politics are fundamentally geo­ of "spatial sabotage" as they negotiated graphic at heart." (2) Moreover, social ac­ work rules to control the dissemination of tors organize their "spatial activities at new technology across the nation's ports. particular geographic resolutions;" that Eventually, the unions went far beyond is, labour and capital are also in conflict their accustomed local interests to create over the physical size and context of land­ broader scales of collective bargaining scape, the "scalar fixes" that will define agreements covering larger regions and the terms of negotiation, (xiii) the entire nation. Herod structures his book around a The second half of the book shifts its particular "scalar logic." The early chap­ focus to "unions' international activities ters look at local and regional dimensions, and their shaping of the global political the later chapters encompass a more economy of capitalism" Herod argues global canvas. But before turning to spe­ that workers are often not "impotent in the cific conflicts over space and scale, Herod face of global capital." Rather, "they have begins his monograph with a theoretical frequently been actively involved in the framework that he hopes will move his very processes that are bringing about an discipline from a "geography of labour" (apparently) globalizing world economic to a "labour geography." This paradigm system." (10) Thus, Herod looks closely shift entails seeing workers not as inert at how organized labour has functioned as factors to be calculated into an ideal re­ both a "global agent" and an "agent of source mix at an optimal physical loca­ globalization" throughout the 19th and tion, but as active geographic agents who 20th centuries. One chapter recounts the shape the landscape differently than the history of international labour federa­ demands of capital. When workers debate tions and American unions' foreign pol­ local economic development policy, or icy. The following chapters are a rather unions struggle for national contracts, eclectic mix of essays on US unions un­ Herod believes these are deliberate acts derwriting the construction of coopera­ for creating a labour geography. Such a la­ tive worker housing in Latin America and bour-centered geographical model can be the Carribean in an effort to encourage lo­ potentially more radical and empowering cal development and undermine the ap­ for workers as they not only think globally peal of communism in the region, the REVIEWS 335

steelworkers' international campaign to essays based on a common theme, rather bring pressure on the financier Marc Rich than a completely formed and completed during a bitter strike at an aluminum pro­ text (at least in the way that most histori­ cessing plant in Ravenswood, West Vir­ ans construct their accounts of the past). ginia, and the work of international trade Despite such structural limitations, unions to reshape the post-Communist Herod's work does succeed in prodding eastern European economic landscape. geographers, historians, economists, so­ This is a book that often ranges be­ ciologists, political scientists, and others tween new theoretical models of geogra­ to take this concept of labour geography phy, basic ideas about physical space and seriously and apply it to a variety of scale in economic development, and his­ worker and labour organizations across torical narratives of union contracts and the globe. The idea of analyzing work­ strikes. Its empirical and analytical ing-class people as active agents shaping breadth is both a great strength and weak­ the physical and economic structures of ness — some chapters contain provoca­ global capitalism is a potentially radical tive insights, others seem more prosaic. In concept in both intellectual and political particular, Chapter Five becomes a de­ terms. Labour geography can be a meth­ tailed account of longshoremen negotiat­ odology to liberate scholars from static ing master contracts with little to say ways of thinking about space and work­ about labour geography except some ob­ ers' role in the historical creation of the vious references to the location of various built environment, and embolden orga­ ports and the distances between them. nizers to explore new ways for labour to Chapter 6 is a historical overview of the reshape a world where spatial and tempo­ links between US unions, foreign policy, ral barriers are changing rapidly. international trade federations, and the global economy. But there are few precise connections drawn between organized la­ David A. Zonderman bour and the physical geography of inter­ North Carolina State University national capitalist development. And Chapter 8 is often a ripping good story of how a union local used innovative tactics George Rigakos, The New Parapolice: and international connections to outflank Risk Markets and Commodified Social a rich corporate raider. There is certainly Control (Toronto: University of Toronto a geographic dimension to this story, but Press, 2002) much of the account has a more familiar David-versus-Goliath ring to it. Labour GEORGE RIGAKOS' The New Parapolice historians may actually be more at home is a timely addition to the growing debate in these chapters, rather than the more the­ concerning the governance and function oretical critiques of economic geography, of private policing. His analysis amply but there is not all that much fresh mate­ demonstrates the tension between public rial here for experts in either field. and private policing and the ease with which the boundaries of law enforcement Taken as a whole, Herod's book dis­ are blurred. Rigakos provides a rare em­ plays some intellectual coherence with pirical analysis of the private contract se­ each chapter providing empirical evi­ curity industry evolving in Canada. More dence for his larger arguments about the specifically, he offers a detailed importance of space and scale in workers' ethnographic study of the Toronto-based efforts to actively shape the landscape of "law enforcement company," global capitalism. Yet, at the same time, Intelligarde. This ethnographic snapshot the work lacks a clear narrative or chrono­ is the strength of this book. Rigakos' logical framework. Thus, the book often study has opened a door on, what has been reads more like a collection of individual until recently, a guarded and suspicious 336 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

industry, but more importantly he has and blemishes but illustrates the gritty en­ deftly captured the cultural nuances of vironment of private policing. Moreover, this evolving trend of security operative. Rigakos does not merely recount stories; It is within this cultural analysis that he takes great effort to critically assess his Rigakos illustrates the distinct differ­ findings in the context of evolving risk ences between public and private polic­ markets and the commodification of secu­ ing. Oddly, however, one of Rigakos' rity. His analysis ensures that the reader is central arguments is that these differences drawn back to the original objective of lo­ are minimal and that private policing cating private policing as a "profit mak­ agencies are no different from public po­ ing enterprise under the capitalist mode of licing. In order to make this argument he production." Disappointingly, his assess­ compares specific, but basic functions ment lacks reference to broad political that both public and private policing and economic factors driving the achieve. Unfortunately, the basis of this commodification of security. Given the analysis is simplistic and excludes vari­ impact of budget reductions, decentral­ ables of governance, training, mecha­ ization, and neo-liberal governance agen­ nisms of accountability, range of das, Rigakos' analysis would certainly enforcement tasks and prevention/deter­ benefit from a closer acknowledgment of rence functions. the current political/economic environ­ Rigakos' analysis begins with an in­ ment in which both public and private po­ teresting overview of the theoretical licing are evolving. framework from which private security Regardless, Rigokos' The New and social control have historically been Parapolice is an important volume in the examined. He leads the reader through growing scholarship of private policing both Marxian and Foucauldian ap­ and risk markets. This book's contribu­ proaches, settling finally on what might tion to the policing literature can not be be considered a Neo-Marxian analysis. underestimated. Its Canadian context is a While I am in agreement with his critique distinct asset, particularly when current of the various approaches, I find his police related research is frequently de­ quickness to discount the Foucauldian ap­ rived from examples in the United States proach somewhat disconcerting. As no or Britain. Moreover, Rigakos offers an one theory aptly explains the phenome­ opportunity to examine the inner work­ non of private policing, I found his dis­ ings of a unique and hybrid form of polic­ missal of the rich governmentality analy­ ing, a glimpse that should be of interest to sis problematic. Rigakos' critique of the all policing scholars and policymakers. governmentality scholarship ignores the need to build bridges to the various theo­ retical perspectives in an effort to grasp Curtis Clarke the complexity and hybridity of forms of Athabasca University rule. I would suggest Rigakos' efforts to understand private policing in the "con­ text of its existence, as a profit-making Simon Tormey, Agnes Heller: Socialism, enterprise under the capitalist mode of Autonomy and the Postmodern (Man­ production" (25) risks reproducing the chester and New York: Manchester Uni­ myopia he claims is evident in the versity Press, 2001) governmentality research agenda. The remaining chapters build on AGNES HELLER, a Hungarian-born phi­ Rigakos' rich empirical analysis of losopher and political theorist now resi­ Intelligarde operations. His detailed re­ dent in the United States, has produced an counting of interviews and participant ob­ enormous body of work over the last four servation does not gloss over the warts decades concerned with the great ques­ tions of socialism and social transforma- REVIEWS 337

tion, the moral foundations of political count of the ideas of a complex and de­ action and, latterly, the nature of moder­ manding thinker often brings forth from nity. The same age as Jurgen Habermas the reader the jibe Lord Byron hurled at (whose development in important re­ Samuel Coleridge: "Explaining spects she parallels), Heller first came to Metaphysics to the nation — I wish he prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a would explain his Explanation." Happily, member of the Budapest School. This was this is not the case here. In what is likely to a loosely affiliated group of Marxist intel­ be the dominant, English-language ac­ lectuals that formed around the great Hun­ count of her work for some time to come, garian Marxist philosopher, Georg Tormey offers a carefully detailed and Lukacs, and sought to develop an alterna­ clearly argued treatment of Heller's tive reading of Marxism that challenged ideas. He does so evenhandedly and fre­ the stifling orthodoxy of official Commu­ quently with penetrating insight. He iden­ nist doctrine. The School was committed tifies four phases through which Heller's to a philosophical and cultural reading of thought has evolved from the late 1960s Marxism and socialism that owed a con­ up to the late 1990s: humanist Marxism, siderable debt to Marx's early writings, critical or neo-Marxism, "post-Marxism" with their emphasis on alienation and cul­ and finally postmodernism. In the course tural transformation as the heart of the so­ of exploring and assessing each phase, he cialist project. This interpretation discusses key works and relates Heller's emphasized subjectivity and self-trans­ position to the intellectual and, to a lesser formation, and hence praxis, in socialist extent, political, context in which she theory and practice, in contrast to the wrote. Thus, the emergence of the New objectivist, scientistic and bureaucratic Left in the 1960s provided the setting for thrust of official Communism. Socialist her humanist Marxist period, which drew revolution was about realizing fundamen­ creatively not only on the ideas of Marx, tal human species needs, not achieving but also on phenomenological and exis­ the supposed objective interests of the tential currents of thought. With his em­ proletariat. It thus required a radical phasis on the public sphere and communi­ transformation of the entire social situa­ cative interaction, Habermas emerges as a tion, and not simply the elimination of key figure in the transition to neo-Marx­ economic class relations. Heller's ism. The post-Marxist current and the in­ best-known contribution to this "human­ creasing turn to liberalism and actually ist" Marxism, The Theory of Need in existing liberal democracy reflects the Marx, published in English in 1976, re­ concern with questions of justice associ­ mains a compelling expression of the po­ ated with the rise to prominence of John sition staked out by the School. Rawls and Robert Nozick as key figures in mainstream (primarily American) po­ Since then, Heller's philosophical litical philosophy. And as might be imag­ and political commitments have under­ ined, the postmodern phase exhibits for gone substantial and complex transforma­ Tormey more diffuse influences, espe­ tions, which have seen her abandon Marx­ cially in view of the fact that, in contrast ism and, more recently, embrace liberal to others, Heller's version of it "desig­ democratic and postmodern themes. Her nates a stance on the modern, not a differ­ intellectual trajectory provides interest­ ent place, and certainly not a non-modern ing insights into the vicissitudes of Marx­ world." (167) Nonetheless, Tormey iden­ ist and radical thought played out against tifies Foucault, Mouffe, and Laclau with the backdrop of the global political, so­ their emphasis on contingency and differ­ cial, and economic changes of the last ence, as thinkers with whom Heller shares quarter century. affinities. Simon Tormey has done an outstand­ ing job in charting this trajectory. An ac­ 338 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

For Tormey, Heller has remained that capitalism is part of the essential committed throughout to several key logic of modernity calls this into ques­ themes: "the stress on the individual as tion. Certainly what Heller calls the "gen­ agent; the hostility to the justification of eral orientative principle" of individuals, states of affairs by reference to non-moral that "persons with self-esteem respect the or non-ethical criteria; the belief in 'hu­ person-hood of other persons with man substance' as the origin of every­ self-esteem" (177) seems a flimsy basis thing that is good or worthwhile; and the for a politics critical of liberal capitalism. hostility to forms of theorising and politi­ A generous critic, Tormey is prepared cal practice that deny equality, rationality to give Heller the benefit of the doubt and the possibility of self-determination here, suggesting there are potentially rad­ in the name of 'our' interests or needs, ical implications in her view that what she however defined." (18) Marxist influ­ identifies as the three fundamental di­ ences remained central throughout most mensions of the modern experience — of her evolution as a thinker — until technology, a functional division of la­ roughly the mid 1980s Heller held to so­ bour and statecraft — could conceivably cialism as a fundamental political value be concretely enacted in different kinds of and identified this with "the continued institutions, including non-capitalist stress on the control over the conditions of ones. existence even within generalised com­ But in a nicely crafted and lucidly ar­ modity production, the emphasis on an gued critical conclusion, he wonders ethic of solidarity, and the degree to whether Heller's work, with its shift from which all issues to do with motivation and normative political theory to an "ethics of incentive are waved away as part of the personality," (206) any longer offers the rotten world to be got rid of in the course kind of critical potential he evidently of the 'social revolution.'" (121) thinks is needed to deal with the injustices But according to Tormey's account, of "the liberal- capitalist status quo." the final phase of Heller's development (195) Respectful of her willingness to re­ represents a more fundamental shift. The consider and even when necessary to jetti­ break with Marxism is now complete, and son long-held positions, and sympathetic gone with it is any emphasis on a to her concerns about the need for an ethi­ totalizing conception of social transfor­ cal or moral politics, rooted as that is in mation, now condemned as expressing a her wrenching experience as a dissident redemptive philosophy of history that vi­ in a repressive, Soviet-style regime (after olates the contingency and value plural­ writing The Theory of Need in Marx, she ism of the modern experience, and hence was virtually forced to emigrate to Aus­ the conditions of individuality and free­ tralia because of her apostasy), Tormey dom. Gone, too, is politics as "the expres­ nevertheless wonders if in the end what he sion of the collective will of parties and sees as the two-sided character of Heller's movements," replaced by "a politics political thinking — her utopianism and based on the ethical and moral impera­ her realism — constantly contesting with tives accepted by radically contingent in­ one another, proves paralyzing, the basis dividuals." (175) This is a politics of de­ of a peculiarly anti-political politics. cency and civility premised on a concern Heller viewed political theorizing as for others rooted in the Platonic maxim both a cure and a poison. It can orient us to that it is better to suffer than to do wrong. the world as it is and should be, even of­ Heller denies this rules out radical cri­ fering a 'crutch' to those unsettled by the tique of the status quo, or even radical radical contingency of modernity. But change. But her commitment to liberalism these same qualities can make it a way of as the only ideology with "contingency harming others, of justifying arbitrary awareness" (182) coupled with her view power and treating people as means, not REVIEWS 339

ends. In Tormey's apt conclusion, it is un­ ways in which many of the types of heal­ clear from Heller which of utopianism ing that North Americans classify as al­ and realism is the cure and which the poi­ ternative are traditional and fundamental son. Whatever the limits of Heller's to significant populations of immigrants thought or her specific political positions and indigenous people. They overlook (she has recently offered an account of 11 such issues as the cultural appropriation September as a clash between barbarism of healing that occurs when, for example, and civilization that would not be out of middle-class North Americans recast place in George Bush's White House), themselves as shamans. this is a dilemma worth pondering by Hans Baer's up-front acknowledg­ those committed to radical thought and ment of race, class, gender, and ethnicity fundamental social change. promises a welcome relief. Baer, a profes­ sor of anthropology, became interested in Phillip Hansen osteopathy and chiropractic — systems of University of Regina healing based primarily in the skeletal structure — almost twenty years ago. He describes Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems as the culmination of Hans A. Baer, Biomedicine and Alterna­ two decades of work and the outgrowth of tive Healing Systems in America: Issues his distinct but converging interests in al­ of Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender ternative health professions, spiritualism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, and healing, and medical dominance as a 2001) reflection of social relations in American society. He has now published books in NORTH AMERICANS have increasingly each of these areas. turned to a wide range of healthcare pro­ The book's lengthy genesis and dis­ viders, and as they have done so, scholarly parate roots have both positive and nega­ interest in "alternative" and "complemen­ tive implications. Baer introduces tary" care has grown. That scholarship is Biomedicine and Alternative Healing as deeply divided. Among some historians, an "historical and socio-political over­ medical doctors, and sociologists, osteop­ athy, homeopathy, naturopathy, and an view of medical pluralism in the United increasingly wide array of alternative States." Drawing on Vincente Navarro, health systems, are precursors to scientif­ he argues that "in capitalist societies, peo­ ically grounded biomedicine (also known ple in different class, racial, ethnic and as allopathic medicine). Anthropologists, gender categories tend to have different advocates, and others have attempted to ideologies, which are reflected in cultural understand why North Americans are dis­ differences." Baer's book, an impressive satisfied with allopathic medicine, and summary of and synthesis of studies of al­ they have promoted the virtues of natural ternative health, shows "how these alternatives. groups have constructed distinctive medi­ cal systems to coincide with their diverse Most of the scholarship is limited in views of reality ."(3) its lack of attention to issues of race, class, The promise is only partly realized. ethnicity, and gender among providers Baer begins the book with two theoretical and users of the wide range of "alterna­ tive" health systems that North Ameri­ chapters. The first outlines the history of cans have used for many centuries. alternative healing. The second, derived Written for, and from the perspective of, from an earlier essay, explores "the rise of middle-class consumers, most books and the American dominative medical system articles are for a popular audience, and under corporate capitalism." These chap­ they focus on issues of choice, scientific ters set the stage for the rest of the work in validity, and lifestyle. They overlook the more ways than one. Both are comprehen- 340 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

sive reviews of the literature, but neither presents the other professions as either introduces much new or primary material. fighting against or emulating the profes­ Baer's synthetic approach is both the sional and corporate structures of great strength and primary weakness of biomedicine, so that lay midwives and the book. Biomedicine and Alternative other alternative providers are seen as Healing reads like a lengthy review essay, struggling to obtain a kind of professional or literature review. It is thoughtful, if status, akin to that of allopathic MDs. sometimes not entirely up to date, and Moreover, despite the place of gender raises interesting questions for further in the title, Baer undertakes very little analysis. But this reader felt the absence gender analysis of healing professions. of primary research and independent find­ The book captures sex differences in the ings. Baer's approach made it difficult to composition of the healers, but there is lit­ discern any clear method. Was he writing tle here of the varied ways in which "val­ as an anthropologist? If so, where was the ues" and practices developed by men ethnographic component? Had he been a structured healthcare. Despite his con­ participant-observant and if so where and cern for ideologies and diverse realities, when? Was he writing as an historian? If Baer fails to acknowledge the ways in so, where was the archival research? which chiropractic and osteopathy grew Baer's open references to other studies from very male and medical models of and writers are refreshing in that they care. Nor does his review of the literature place this book squarely in the context of encompass feminist critiques of healing. other studies of alternative medicine, but This reviewer is not an advocate of the lit­ the result is that Baer's original contribu­ erature that argues for women's special tions are sometimes lost. Too many para­ and distinctive modes of healing; none­ graphs begin with sentences like, "A theless, a rich and varied literature exists study by the Stanford Research Institute that anyone who argues for diverse concluded that ..." (74); too few begin gendered ideologies must contend with. with a bold statement of Baer's own ob­ Biomedicine and Alternative Healing servations and research. Systems is consequently a very useful The greatest virtue of Baer's syn­ overview of the social science literatures thetic approach is that it allows him to on alternative healing systems in the take on the ambitious task of examining United States. It provides a much needed the history and evolution of multiple first step to further research and analysis. forms (otherwise known as modalities) of However the absence of primary case healing. While Baer clearly knows most studies and research leave the conclu­ about, and pays greatest attention to, sions and analysis both vulnerable and chiropractic and osteopathy, he also ex­ wanting. plores the development and prevalence of acupuncture, naturopathy, holistic health, Georgina Feldberg and folk medicine. Culling varied studies, York University Baer explores the internal structure and composition of these healing systems, and he compares and contrasts their pro­ fessional memberships and structures to Gary C. Bryner, Gaia 's Wager: Environ­ those of dominant biomedicine. How­ mental Movements and the Challenge of ever, the reliance on secondary sources Sustainability (Lanham, Maryland: and the comparative framework limits Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001) Baer's analysis. Inadvertently (and per­ haps because this is the lens of the authors SHOULD CANADA SIGN the Kyoto proto­ he relies on) Baer turns the dominant bio­ col and thereby commit itself to what is medical model into the norm. His analysis actually only a modest reduction in its emission of greenhouse gases? This is an REVIEWS 341

issue that is generating considerable de­ without introducing any fundamental bate in the mainstream media these days. changes in either technology or lifestyle. Typically, supporters of this accord cite In contrast, a "thick" sustainability scientific evidence indicating the need to prioritizes ecological survival over eco­ cut back on fossil fuel consumption in or­ nomic growth by allowing only economic der to halt global warming. Critics, ques­ activity that is consistent with maintain­ tioning the reliability of such evidence ing "critical natural capital." Acknowl­ and, indeed, the very existence of global edging the need to address how poverty wanning, talk instead about how cutbacks promotes environmentally-damaging in consumption would lead to an eco­ ways of eking out one's living and, be­ nomic slowdown. For political scientist yond this, the necessity of inculcating a and law professor Gary Bryner, Blaise sense of individual responsibility, "thick" Pascal's famous wager on the existence of sustainability fosters social justice mea­ God — believing saves us from eternal sures entailing a more equitable local and damnation if God exists and costs us noth­ global distribution of resources as well as ing if he does not — provides a relevant "strong" democracy. While he links the model for responding to the opposing po­ "thin" version to the Rio "Earth Sum­ sitions taken on the Kyoto Accord. Be­ mit's" Agenda 21 recommendations, cause the stakes associated with global Bryner sees the binding reductions in warming are potentially as damning, we greenhouse gas emissions outlined in the should pursue a similar precautionary ap­ Kyoto agreement as shifting debate to­ proach. Focusing on climate change as the ward a "thick" sustainability. Hence, at­ preeminent global environmental issue taining "thick" sustainability becomes a and one that is closely related to the inher­ matter of implementing effective public ently and strategically ambiguous con­ policies, establishing standards and regu­ cept of ecological sustainability, Bryner views the signing of this international le­ lations, and ensuring compliance with gal agreement as a key step in an orderly these policies by promoting cultural prac­ transition to an ecologically sustainable tices, and thus private behaviours that are society. Although he acknowledges that rooted in post-materialist values. Such the shift to renewable energy will entail public policies and personal behaviours, costly upfront investments for some eco­ however, fly in the face of a liberalism nomic interests, he insists that it will open emphasizing liberties and rights — espe­ up compensatory opportunities for others. cially the liberty of unrestricted consump­ Bryner, however, is pessimistic that the tion and the right to private property — in eminently attainable reduction in green­ contrast to one that is oriented instead house gases mandated by Kyoto is likely around responsibilities and obligations. to be undertaken by the United States in In essence, what Bryner is calling for is a the near future. His pessimism is rooted in shift from the American tradition of a whole host of reasons having to do with Lockean liberalism, oriented around neg­ what he considers to be the limitations in­ ative liberty, to a Rawlsian form of liber­ herent in contemporary American liberal­ alism rooted injustice. Hence, his call for ism, but not in liberalism per se. a "thick" for "strong" sustainability — like the "strong" democracy advocated by In order to understand Bryner's anal­ American democratic theorist Benjamin ysis of why the US is unlikely to ratify the Barber, which seeks to constrain the ex­ Kyoto Accord, it is useful to look at his cesses of capitalism by enclosing it in an notion of what constitutes "thick" "envelope" of laws and welfare measures sustainability and how it might be at­ — is ultimately just a call for the greening tained. For Bryner, a "thin" sustainable of capitalism. development attempts to balance eco­ Bryner's book provides a clearly nomic growth with ecological sensitivity written, comprehensively researched,