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Labour / Le Travail

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 70, automne 2012

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Citer ce compte rendu (2012). Compte rendu de [Reviews / Comptes Rendus]. Labour / Le Travail, 70, 261–364.

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John Clarke, The Ordinary People needs, which reflected their interest in of Essex: Environment, Culture, and continuity and stability even as they built Economy on the Frontier of Upper new homes in a sometimes strange coun- Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- try. Bound by religious and ethnic ties, Queen’s University Press 2010) they attempted to cluster together and, if there were a critical mass of popula- The Ordinary People of Essex is an tion (as there was for French and English exhaustive study of the ways in which Canadians, Americans, and Germans), people shaped the land and the land married within their own ethnic and re- shaped settlement in Essex County from ligious groups. As Clarke points out, the the early to the mid-19th century. Author best land was not always the most pro- John Clarke, Distinguished Research ductive land. Settlers preferred land in Professor of historical geography at proximity to settlements, kin, or those Carleton University, has written a suc- who shared cultural or ethnic roots to cessful follow-up to his Land, Power, provide maximum support for their fam- and Economics on the Frontier of Upper ilies. Most settlers found that land was Canada (2002). With 738 pages, includ- affordable and obtained a patent in ap- ing 470 pages of text, 141 pages of notes, proximately eight years. dozens of tables and maps, and 34 pages The role of origins (defined broadly of appendices, The Ordinary People of as ethnic, social, and distinct cultural Essex represents the scholarly mastery group) is central to the book. Clarke goes of relevant works on agriculture, eth- to great lengths to demonstrate that “cul- nicity, culture, and settlement in North ture is dynamic and not static” and that America and Europe as well as intimate immigrants from Europe as well as British study and knowledge of census returns and French North Americans made im- and numerous other manuscript sources. portant adjustments to local conditions. By focusing on one locale in great depth, (324) The author reveals the truth behind the author demonstrates the ways in the stereotypes of origins as they related which settlement proceeded and people to land tenure, farm production, and in- adapted to local conditions. Clarke has come. Did the Americans favour corn and made a singular contribution to the study hogs? Were the French Canadians most of frontier culture and agriculture that likely to have horses? Did Irish farmers will be of interest to historians in many grow more potatoes than other groups? different sub-disciplines, including so- While there may be some truth in these cial, ethnic, rural, and environmental stereotypes in some settings, members history. of each of these groups accepted change In Clarke’s telling, the people who in Essex County and charted their own came to Essex were not profit maximiz- course. Irish Protestants adopted corn, ers. Instead, they first looked to family all farmers favoured horses, and the Irish

Table of Contents for Reviews, pp. 5–6.

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appeared to be no different than their fel- particularly complete set of records from low settlers in terms of acreage devoted Malden Township, the author concludes to potatoes. Most foreign-born settlers that tenants were most likely to leave pursued a balanced production scheme Essex but it was not always the poorest while native-born farmers tended to pre- of tenants who left for greener pastures. fer a degree of market wheat production. African Americans, most likely former Clarke engages numerous debates slaves from the United States, tended to among historians and historical geogra- persist at higher rates than other groups, phers about the nature of frontier society, even though African Americans had the most notably the role of “king wheat” in smallest holdings of real and personal the economy of Upper Canada. While property. Tenants, however, managed to wheat was the “dominant cereal” grain in produce yields that were comparable to Essex due to the fact that it was a com- owners’. Scots managed to outperform modity with a ready market, it was less other groups, possibly due to the fact important in Essex than it was in other that they arrived comparatively early and parts of Ontario. (170) Corn was better managed to secure some of the most fa- suited to conditions of settlement and vourable land for cultivation. was grown on more farms than wheat, but The Ordinary People of Essex is a de- the overall acreage devoted to wheat was manding and sometimes difficult book. greater than that to corn. King wheat, ac- One of the principal difficulties is that cording to Clarke, was apparently a much the author often foregrounds the meth- less significant monarch than scholars odology and moves the land and people previously supposed. of Essex, the true subjects of the research, A significant portion of the book (much to the background. The author actually of Chapters 7 and 8) is dedicated to de- recognizes that his technique does “not fining and advancing our understanding always make for elegant text, and may of mobility and material success in the actually frighten some of the readership.” period under study. To that end, Clarke (xxxii) All too often the text is about chi- deals with tenancy and persistence, an- squares and coefficients, stepwise regres- other longstanding issue for social, rural, sion, and bivariate analysis. Clarke is, of and agricultural historians. Tenancy was course, within his rights to do this, but a common institution in Essex County, by tailoring the writing toward those with members of all ethnic and cultural who are most interested in the method groups renting at some point in the first of statistical analysis, readers who want half of the 19th century. Clarke’s study to know about the people and the land indicates that tenancy rates for Essex will be left wanting a clearer, jargon-free were similar to elsewhere in the prov- statement of the author’s findings. ince, ranging from approximately 37 per That said, Clarke has made a note- cent in 1825 to 40 per cent in 1851/52. To worthy contribution to the study of the assess the role of mobility (physical and history of settlement, cultural origins, socioeconomic), agricultural systems, agriculture, and environment in North and the relationship between origins America. The author simultaneously syn- and tenure, the author examines land thesizes the scholarship on the physical clearance rates and changes in the size settlement landscape of Upper Canada of landholdings. Farm families tended and provides extensive documentation to clear the most land in the first few of the social background of settlers, land years of settlement. Clearing slowed once use, and the economy of farming in Essex farming began in earnest. Based on a County. He does not, however, presume

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that the final word has been written on ouvriers (« canaliers ») qui s’y trouvaient. the subject. In the conclusion of Chapter Ici Viau s’appuie principalement sur 8 as well as the conclusion of the book, des sources secondaires, ce qui lui sert Clarke suggests that additional work may parfaitement bien pour son introduction provide more context and firmer expla- du projet et de l’organisation du chantier, nations for the changes he documents. mais moins bien quand il se tourne If there are difficult aspects of the book, vers les travailleurs eux-mêmes. Faute there is much more to gain from the in- de sources touchant explicitement les credible amount of data and analysis and ouvriers du canal Beauharnois, l’auteur from Clarke’s thoughtful questions and extrapole par des généralisations tirées suggestions for future research. Patient d’études portant sur d’autres canaux, readers will be rewarded. tels ceux de Welland et d’Érié. Des Joe L. Anderson généralisations informées par d’autres Mount Royal University études sont nécessaires considérant la pauvreté de la documentation primaire sur les travailleurs de cette époque, mais Roland Viau, La sueur des autres. Les fils les ouvrages que Viau choisit d’utiliser ne d’Érin et le canal Beauharnois (Valleyfield: sont pas toujours les meilleurs. Une de Triskèle 2010) ses principales sources par exemple est le livre de Freidrich Engels sur la condition La place des travailleurs irlandais de la classe ouvrière en Angleterre, un engagés dans la construction des classique, certes, mais comme il fut canaux de l’axe laurentien au cours de publié en 1844 une étude plus récente la première moitié du xixe siècle dans aurait peut-être été préférable. le développement de la classe ouvrière Après avoir dressé un bilan du chantier au Canada-Uni est bien connue. Dans de Beauharnois et des travailleurs y un article classique publié en 1948, œuvrant, Viau se tourne vers la grève qui H. C. Pentland, un des fondateurs de éclata en juin 1843, et la lutte acharnée que l’histoire ouvrière canadienne, les mena les canaliers pour l’obtention d’une appela même le premier prolétariat au augmentation de salaire et pour fixer une Canada. L’interprétation de Pentland limite des heures de travail (137), le tout est maintenant dépassée – nous savons culminant avec la journée sanglante du aujourd’hui qu’une classe ouvrière 12 juin 1843, le « lundi rouge » (162–163). indigène était déjà en formation Viau constate que le déclenchement de avant et en même temps que l’arrivée la grève n’était pas un acte spontané, de l’immigration irlandaise – mais mais démontre plutôt un impressionnant l’importance des travailleurs qui niveau d’organisation de la part des construisirent avec pelle et pic les grands travailleurs. L’auteur voit dans ce pouvoir canaux demeure primordiale. C’est organisationnel la preuve de l’existence pourquoi il y a matière à réjouir dans la de sociétés secrètes qui opéraient parmi publication d’une nouvelle étude portant les travailleurs irlandais du chantier. sur les travailleurs du canal Beauharnois. Pour élucider les événements entourant La monographie de Roland Viau, la grève, Viau fait principalement appel intitulé La sueur des autres, est étalée à la commission d’enquête mise sur pied sur deux temps. En première partie, par la suite pour tenter d’expliquer la il introduit le projet de canalisation à violente conflagration, et l’auteur fait un Beauharnois, construit entre 1840 et travail colossal pour tout sortir les détails 1844, et trace un bilan ethnographique des de cet excellent document. De plus, il

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fait preuve de grande créativité pour Viau démontre persuasivement qu’il tenter de réviser le nombre de victimes avait au sein des travailleurs irlandais une du « lundi rouge », calculant qu’il y avait conscience ouvrière en développement au moins 21 travailleurs qui sont tombés bien avant les années 1850, et même si et non cinq comme le propose la version nous croyons qu’il a tort à invoquer un officielle. (181) rôle déterminant des sociétés secrètes Par contre, en suggérant que la grève irlandaises, son travail sur la grève fut l’œuvre d’une société secrète à de juin 1843 demeure une fascinante Beauharnois, Viau trébuche quelque peu. contribution dans l’histoire de cette C’est bien possible, voire probable, qu’il eût première génération de travailleurs. de telles sociétés au canal, les émigrants Jean-Philip Mathieu irlandais les amenant fréquemment Université du Québec à Montréal avec eux quand ils quittaient l’île émeraude. Mais, comme Viau admet, il n’y a absolument aucune preuve, aucun Carole Gerson, Canadian Women in document, démontrant leur existence au Print, 1750–1918 (Waterloo: Wilfrid chantier de Beauharnois. Comme unique Laurier University Press 2010) indice, Viau cite un article du Montreal Gazette parlant d’une femme qui a tenté Carole Gerson established her author- d’amener des soldats britanniques vers ity on early Canadian literature with A une embuscade. Il constate que les Molly Purer Taste: The Writing and Reading of Maguires, une société secrète nationaliste Fiction in English in Nineteenth-Century irlandaise bien connue, utilisait souvent Canada (1989). Around that time, she des hommes habillés en femme comme took a feminist stance in two important tactique dans leurs conflits en Irlande, articles: in “Anthologies and the Canon et donc que l’anecdote du journal of Early Canadian Women Writers,” montréalais indique l’existence des Molly from Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers: Maguires durant la grève à Beauharnois Nineteenth-Century Canadian Women (207–208). Encore une fois, ce n’est pas Writers, ed. Lorraine McMullen (1990), impossible, mais il aurait fallu des traces she demonstrates that the representa- beaucoup plus concrètes pour affirmer tion of women in the first anthologies comme il le fait que cette société était au of Canadian literature was diminished centre des événements de juin 1843. Être by the “decanonization” of subsequent organisé par une société secrète n’était editors; in “The Canon Between the pas une condition nécessaire pour mener Wars: Field-notes of a Feminist Literary une lutte de la sorte à cette époque, et Archaeologist,” from Canadian Canons: Viau aurait probablement tiré profit d’un Essays in Literary Value, ed. Robert regard plus large sur les autres grèves Lecker (1991), she argues that “one for- qui ont marqué la période au Canada- mative dimension in the construction of Uni, par exemple celle des charpentiers the Canadian canon has been the valo- navals de Québec qui ont mené un rization of national themes (e.g., man débrayage victorieux en hiver 1840–41 against the land) which implicitly exclude sans organisation clandestine pour les the work of many women writers active encadrer. before the current era.” (46) After much Même avec ses lacunes, La sueur des other work, including collaborations with autres demeure une importante étude Veronica Strong-Boag in a critical study portant sur une période souvent négligée (2000) and an edition (2002) of Pauline par les historiens du travail au Canada. Johnson, Gerson was involved with the

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History of the Book in Canada project, the 19th century, women were prominent which “situates literary and other writ- among librarians, but “James Bain, the ing within the larger cycles of authorship, Toronto Public Library’s first chief librar- production, dissemination and recep- ian, earned an annual salary of $2,000, tion in print.” (xii) All of these interests while the women’s salaries ranged from inform Canadian Women in Print 1750– $300 to $600.” (14) Most of the volunteers 1918, which won the Gabrielle Roy Prize in Methodist Sunday schools were wom- in 2010. en, yet “women remained in subordinate The book is a meticulous survey of all positions within the schools’ manage- aspects of the subject, from the role of ment.” (141) The very idea of writing for women in early Canadian publishing to money was in part determined by a lack the interest in the New Woman at the of other options: “Chronically underedu- end of the 19th century. Gerson focuses cated, barred from professional training, on writing in English, but she is careful and conditioned to remain within the to refer to writing in French as appropri- home circle, middle-class women who ate. She provides comparisons with wom- needed to earn money or desired relative- en writers in England and the United ly respectable self-expression exercised States, and a late chapter, “Addressing their pens, whether in Europe or North the Margins of Race,” moves away from America.” (91) For Gerson, however, pub- the assumptions of most of the writers lication is itself suspect, since “presenting she celebrates in the rest of the book. She her work in the shape of a book both valo- discusses both general trends and such rizes an author and violates her, simulta- surprising details as Marshall Saunders’ neously giving her an enduring identity Beautiful Joe (1894), the “first Canadian and subjecting her to discomforting pub- novel reputed to sell over a million copies” lic scrutiny.” (68) The word “violation” (98), and Tried! Tested! Proven: the Home seems extreme for such indomitable Cook Book (1877), “selling over 100,000 writers as Susanna Moodie and Margaret copies by 1885.” (74) As before, she chal- Atwood, both mentioned at this point. lenges the idea that women writers have Gerson’s understanding of gender is sim- flourished in Canada: “Canada takes ilarly one-dimensional in her account of pride in the prominence of its women the animal story: “Male writers such as authors, noting the first Canadian-born Charles G.D. Roberts and Earnest [sic] author was a woman (Marie Morin), the Thompson Seton, who focused on adven- first novel set in Canada was written by tures in the wilderness, were welcomed a woman (Frances Brooke), and the first into the Canadian literary canon, where- native-born author of a novel was like- as female writers, who stressed children’s wise female (Julia Catherine Beckwith humanitarian treatment of domestic ani- Hart). Yet other data belie the notion that mals, were sidelined as sentimentalists.” the country’s print culture has particu- (79) More than nationalism was involved larly favoured women.” (43) in the international success of Roberts Often using statistics to prove that and Seton, as Theodore Roosevelt rec- women succeeded as printers, binders, ognized when he debated Roberts at the librarians, teachers, and writers of many White House. Returning to the issue of kinds, Gerson emphasizes the resistance the status of women’s writing in Canada, they faced. Active in Canadian publish- Gerson concludes that “the correct ques- ing from the beginning, women were of- tion is not why Canada produces so many ten paid less, since they “were not seen as women writers, but why writing remains family breadwinners.” (7) By the end of the area in which women have most

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commonly achieved recognition,” adding nation’s cultural edifices through the that the “recognition has been partial and 20th century. These structures would limited.” (198) undergo frequent renovation as tastes Gerson contrasts her book with altered; during the mid-20th century era Silenced Sextet (1992) by Carrie of high modernism, the hegemony of the MacMillan, Lorraine McMullen, and men’s smoking room would relegate most Elizabeth Waterston, and The Woman’s women to the hallways and closets from Page (2007), by Janice Fiamengo: “their which they would burst forth in second- authors chose to approach a collective wave feminist writing in the 1960s. But situation through chapter-length studies their grandmothers had staked their of individual writers. In a sense, I have right of occupancy to the parlour and the done the opposite, with my chapters pro- study as well as to the kitchen and the viding studies of collective situations in nursery, and would not be evicted. (xvi) which individuals operated and which Recent studies by Brian Trehearne, Ann they helped to shape.” (xiii) Her claim is Martin, Sandra Djwa, Dean Irvine, and fulfilled, though the book needs more of others suggest that modernism in Canada the compelling analysis that she provides was always more conflicted than Gerson for such major figures as Pauline Johnson implies. Nonetheless, this book will be a and Sara Jeannette Duncan. It is good to useful resource for years to come. read that the “Patty Pry” letters in the Tracy Ware Halifax Novascotian in 1826 are “delight- Queen’s University fully ironic” (31), but the point would be more compelling with supporting quo- tations. Gerson states that Agnes Maule Barbara Lorenzkowski, Sounds of Machar was “Victorian Canada’s out- Ethnicity: Listening to German North standing female public intellectual” (154), America, 1850–1914 (Winnipeg: and her “scores of thoughtful and often University of Manitoba Press 2010) lengthy articles dealt with topics rang- ing from higher education for women to This first book by Concordia addressing the needs of the poor” (153), University (Montreal) historian Barbara but no quotations follow. Furthermore, Lorenzkowski offers a new and creative Gerson is vague on the relation of aes- model for thinking about the creation of thetic value to literary history. She argues ethnic identity in North America. Based that the interests of American readers on an award-winning doctoral disserta- “encouraged most professional Canadian tion, the study’s innovation lies mainly in literary women active after 1880 to aim the author’s use of “sound” – specifically their sights at the popular market rather language usage and music – as a category than the loftier realms of high modern- of analysis, rather than written or spoken ism” (98–99), but whatever she under- ideas about ethnicity itself. The study stands by “high modernism,” it would not focuses on two different communities – have been available in 1880. The point is rural Waterloo County, Ontario, and ur- more than a slip, for the last paragraph ban Buffalo, New York – both of which of the introduction suggests that women are in the Great Lakes region and thus in writers would have flourished in Canada the “borderland” between Canada and if it were not for “high modernism.” the US Both locales saw significant mi- By 1918, women writing in both French grations from Germany during the 19th and English had drawn the blueprints century that resulted in vibrant and self- for the rooms they would occupy in the assured German ethnic communities,

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whose culture and identity was publicly between Germans and Anglo-Saxons; displayed at least until World War I. inter-ethnic harmony emerged from The book is divided nicely into two their shared enthusiasm for the music. parts: Part I on “Language Matters” and Interestingly, the singers’ festivals simul- Part II on “Music Matters.” The three taneously reinforced an identification chapters in the first part analyze lan- with the German “fatherland” even while guage usage in the popular press and in they helped Germans in North America public schools. Both arenas were charac- affirm their new hyphenated identities terized by an ongoing dynamic between and attachment to Waterloo and Buffalo. the language purism espoused by ethnic Overall, Lorenzkowski shows that lan- élites who wished to reinforce “proper” guage and music were not just by-prod- German vocabulary and grammar, and ucts, or “echoes” of ethnicity but were the “rank-and-file” German immigrants the actual voices with which Germans who gradually adopted an idiom that free- in North America expressed their iden- ly mixed German and English vocabulary tity, as it existed in the imaginary and and syntax in their resultant hybridized real spaces between the old and new speech. Lorenzkowski argues against an homelands. Both vehicles of expression interpretation that would equate the de- allowed immigrants and their descen- cline of a standardized language with the dants to retain their loyalty to and affin- loss of ethnic identity. Rather, she pro- ity with their German origins, while also poses that fluidity characterized both the allowing their speech and song to evolve evolution of the German language in the as they became Canadian and American. Great Lakes region and also the ethnic Scholars of migration, ethnicity, and identities that emerged as Germans hov- transnational identities have much to ered between the old and new worlds and learn by considering the novel approach also across the border between the US offered here: Lorenzkowski posits ethnic- and Canada. ity, not as something defined according The four chapters in Part II discuss to boundaries of group belonging but music making in the context of large local rather as something that happens, that is and cross-border music spectacles. Large- performed. Drawing on the growing body scale singers’ festivals were common in of research on performativity and spec- both Waterloo and Buffalo from about tacle, the author’s interest is directed at 1860 through to about 1912, attended by the “aural” – what was sounded out and hundreds of Germans from across North heard – more so than what was “visual.” America but also enjoyed by local non- While she utilizes a case study approach Germans. Some of the festivals discussed based on research in two specific locales, by the author were called “peace jubilees,” the analysis that ensues is transnational which celebrated the 1871 military victo- in that the “soundscapes” created by ry of Germany over France and were thus writers, speakers, and musicians went imbued with nationalist rhetoric. To the well beyond the local and the national. extent that German newspapers reported The international border was a porous on the jubilee festivals, print and perfor- one that witnessed visits and exchanges mance came together in the construction in both directions; the aural culture that and dissemination of ethnic symbols and arises was shaped by this cross-border myth making via music. The sounds of interaction. music-making in the context of shared What emerges in the book is the experience as performers and audience “sound” of a new and ever-changing also worked to bridge cultural difference German North American ethnicity

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that isn’t exclusively German, nor is it well researched study of Chinese settle- Canadian or American. While notions ment in Manitoba to date. Marshall’s about ethnic or cultural “fusion” are in- work moves beyond traditional ap- creasingly commonplace in considering proaches to studying the Chinese in the development of immigrant identities Canada, which have tended to focus sole- in both Canada and the US, Lorenzkowski ly on the Chinese experience in British has creatively demonstrated how this Columbia or in large urban areas. It also fusion occurs through the medium of moves beyond exploring labour patterns “sound,” resulting in a “symphony of in restaurants and laundries and the de- overlapping, harmonious, cacophonous velopment of Chinatowns to explore the sounds and melodies.” (18) private lives of early Chinese settlers. To My only critique of the book is that it do this, Marshall explores the everyday makes minimal mention of the varieties practices and rituals that these “bach- of German-ness in both communities, elor” immigrants used to shape their in particular the quite different religious relationships with each other and with affiliations present amongst German im- non-Chinese. These practices and rituals migrants in North America. Were the were also crucial to identity formation. “sounds” of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Marshall maintains that the influence and Mennonitism the same? The cultur- of the Chinese Nationalist League or ally German Mennonites of Waterloo Kuomintang (kmt) and the spaces pro- County, who were the first European vided by Chinese laundries and restau- settlers to arrive in the area from rants were instrumental in shaping and Pennsylvania at the outset of the 19th cen- redefining Chinese religious practices tury, receive scant attention. Although and identities. The result of a multi-year they were largely eclipsed in numbers study that relied on personal interviews, by the end of the century by continental archival research, and personal partici- German immigrants, their expressions pation in community events and rituals, and understanding of both language and The Way of the Bachelor is profoundly music were notably different. insightful. Lorenzkowski’s book has many more In her ethnographic and historical strengths than weaknesses. The book is study, Marshall suggests that kmt lead- beautifully written; the author’s prose ers such as Sun Yat-sen became Chinese is as lyrical as the sounds of ethnicity Canadian gods in a new form of religious that she describes. It is neatly organized, practice that linked religiosity to Chinese drawing from a wealth of primary sourc- and Canadian patriotism, morality, and es, and accompanied by some engaging citizenship. Marshall is quick to point early photographs. out, however, that these new practices Marlene Epp did not displace or reject other Chinese Conrad Grebel University College religions. Rather, with few public places University of Waterloo of worship, other forms of Chinese reli- gious practices moved into the private sphere. The worship of Chinese gods Alison Marshall, The Way of the Bachelor: such as Guanggong or the Guanyin Pusa Early Chinese Settlement in Manitoba took place in private in the back rooms of (Vancouver: ubc Press 2011) cafés, restaurants, and boarding houses. In Manitoba the Chinese did not become Alison Marshall’s The Way of the less religious as they managed to eke out Bachelor provides the richest and most an existence. Rather, their religiosity

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shifted and changed as the circumstances appealed to many Chinese men in they found themselves in changed. This Manitoba because he had also lived out- denotes agency on the part of Manitoba’s side of China and away from his family. early Chinese settlers and works to dis- He also came from a small southern vil- mantle the stereotype that early settlers lage, as did the vast majority of Manitoba’s were victims of circumstance rather than Chinese community. Additionally, Sun active participants in the new communi- was also baptized and could identify ties they settled in. himself as a nominal Christian, as would Marshall explains this change through many of the research participants in her use of efficacy as a lens of analysis. She Marshall’s study. Sun’s ability to function asserts that ritual actions performed sin- as a Christian and as a non-Christian, as cerely and according to established pat- the situation depended, was copied by terns by both human and divine agents Chinese settlers in Manitoba. As nomi- have efficacious results. These rituals, nal Christians, many Chinese men were however, can be adjusted and changed able to gain limited entrée into white so- when they no longer meet human needs. ciety and enhance their status within the This is important in understanding the community. As Marshall adroitly points religious practices of early Chinese im- out, being known in this way was effica- migrants. Without temples or other pub- cious. Marshall’s findings in this regard lic places of worship and without women, ring true for other Chinese communities who often maintained and practiced outside large urban centres. Her use of religious traditions, early male Chinese efficacy to explain and understand the settlers to Manitoba were left struggling religious lives of early Chinese settlers to make their religious practices fit their to Manitoba demonstrates the adeptness everyday needs in a new land. Traditional of these settlers in not only making lives deities could do little for Chinese settlers for themselves in a foreign land but also in Canada. To fill this gap, men like Sun making these lives meaningful as well. Yat-sen and early Chinese immigrants Prior to the opening of kmt organi- to Manitoba were transformed into god- zations and buildings, it was Manitoba’s like figures that could be worshipped by Chinese laundries that served to connect Chinese settlers. Gradually, kmt offices Chinese settlers to a homosocial network came to function as Chinese religious in- that would give them the support and stitutions. Marshall’s work is the first of resources they needed to make a living. its kind to make such a connection in the Aside from the obvious harsh living and Canadian context. working conditions, these laundries pro- Marshall’s exploration of Sun Yat- vided private spaces where traditional sen as a deity is particularly interest- events could be hosted and organized. ing. According to Marshall, Sun became Marshall argues that this would have an important figure in the lives of early an important impact on the function of Chinese settlers in Manitoba because Chinese religious practices, since private his life patterns were similar to those of altars could be erected in back rooms Manitoba’s early Chinese. While scholars behind screens and away from the pry- have explored the importance of the kmt ing eyes of white customers. While white in early Canadian Chinese communities, community members assumed that the few have gone as far as Marshall in exam- lack of Chinese public places of wor- ining the relationship between Sun and ship was further evidence of the sup- the religious practices of Chinese immi- posed heathen nature of the Chinese, grants in Canada. Sun, argues Marshall, the Chinese were quietly practicing

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traditional religious rituals and adapt- valuable insight into the personal ex- ing these rituals to fit their new lives. periences of these men. What is more, Marshall’s discussion of the laundry as Marshall’s clear passion for the subject a place where religious practices were she has spent so many years researching developed and transformed is an impor- is bound to inspire anyone interested in tant contribution to the historiography this area of Canadian history. Beautifully of Chinese laundries in Canada. While written, The Way of the Bachelor is also Marshall does spend more time discuss- a portrait of Marshall’s personal journey ing the everyday rituals that took place as a researcher and academic. Her voice in laundries as opposed to discussing the is often heard as she guides the reader development of religious rituals, her work through the material and the tone of the is nonetheless impressive for the atten- book is conversational. Although it is not tion it pays to the function of the laundry without faults – such as the elongated as a religious space. discussion of Chinese restaurants, which Marshall’s analysis of Manitoba’s seems to stray away from the main prem- Chinese restaurants and the function ise of the book and become bogged down of food in the lives of early Chinese set- in interesting facts and personalities, or tlers also links back to both religious the book’s limited contextualization – practices and rituals and the develop- The Way of the Bacheloris an important ment of homosocial relationships. Once text that is easily accessible for academics again, Marshall peels back the layers of and general readers alike. mystery surrounding the private lives of Krista Li Manitoba’s early Chinese to shed light University of Alberta on how religious practices functioned in Chinese communities that did not have public paces of worship. As Marshall Frances Swyripa, Storied Landscapes: correctly argues, meals and food offer- Ethno-Religious Identity and the ings provided opportunities to establish Canadian Prairies (Winnipeg: University vertical connections between human and of Manitoba Press 2010) divine agents and horizontal connections with fellow settlers. Comparing food to Storied Landscapes is an elegantly efficacy or ling, Marshall shows that food written, intricately researched study for early Chinese settlers to Manitoba about identity and belonging among carried with it important global, reli- major late 19th- and early 20th-century gious, and social meanings. European immigrant groups, and their The findings presented in The Way of descendants’ “quest for roots” (244), the Bachelor will undoubtedly have im- in the so-called Canadian West. This portant implications for future research- book is inspired by the author’s rural ers interested in the history of Chinese Western Canadian childhood, during settlement in smaller and less urban which she developed a keen curiosity Canadian towns and cities. Her superb about her “own backyard.” (4) Her study analysis of the functions of Chinese re- is based on the “return” to her rural ligious practices and their impacts on roots, where she conducted extensive the lives of early Chinese settlers does fieldwork in selected localities in Alberta, Canadian history a great service. Through Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Historian Marshall’s discussion of these practices, Frances Swyripa, who has written ex- we are able to navigate the complex lives tensively on immigration and ethnicity led by early Chinese bachelors and gain in Canada, here offers a comprehensive,

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comparative introduction to the settle- attests that on such drives the historical ment experiences and prairie heritages existence and lasting visual impression of Ukrainians, Mennonites, Icelanders of diverse ethnic and religious groups (by and Doukhobors, as well as Germans, way of distinct place names and build- Romanians, Jews, Poles, Swedes, Danes, ing structures) on the countryside be- Finns and Norwegians. Specifically, came especially clear. The vastness and Swyripa’s study contributes a fresh as- strangeness of the land somehow became sessment of the construction of regional familiar and comforting and fostered a and national consciousness by analyz- sense of rootedness, of returning to one’s ing the complex interplay of immigra- own backyard. tion, rural settlement, heritage, religious Notwithstanding the diversity of faith, material and emotional ties to people who have historically made their place, community growth, and collective home in this prairie place, and despite memory. the ever-increasing ability of the many One of the book’s major strengths is urban descendants of the European set- its nuanced engagement with historian tler generation to become lost in this ru- Gerald Friesen, who has famously assert- ral landscape, a sentimental attachment ed that the idea of a distinct Canadian to the land remains prominent in the West may no longer be a useful tool for ethno-religious identity of immigrants analyzing contemporary Canadian iden- and their descendants to the area. This tities, politics or culture. Swyripa’s book sense of belonging, at once real and imag- counters that the traditional prairie West ined, seems to transcend group bound- remains a vital framework for under- aries and time, informing the regional standing the evolution and expression of self-identity of groups and individuals ethno-religious identity among pioneers in the prairie provinces. The remainder and their descendants in the area. With of Swyripa’s study traces the beginnings its thorough examination of the inextri- and evolution of this persistent and col- cable roles of religion and ethnicity in lective sense of rootedness and the mean- processes of migration and settlement, ing of “place” through the lens of pioneer family, home, community, and institu- ethno-religiosity. She ends by comment- tion building, Swyripa’s study raises im- ing on the relationship between this lo- portant questions about the centrality of cal, “physical and emotional intimacy two key features of European immigrant with the land” (74) and the formation of life in the shaping of a distinctive, col- identity among immigrants in the larger lective prairie and Canadian Western Canadian nation state. identity. Chapter 1 lays the foundation for the The author opens her study by relay- study by providing an overview of the ing the memory of a formative childhood prairie homesteading experience dur- pastime – one quite feasibly held in com- ing the formative years of large-scale mon with all sorts of longtime Canadian European immigration to western prairie dwellers – involving lengthy, Canada at the turn of the 20th century. countryside drives along dirt roads on Swyripa demonstrates not only that the Sunday afternoons, interspersed with Canadian West has long been character- brief stops at country stores for ice cream, ized by multiculturalism, but also that visits to old churches and cemeteries, the groups of varying ethnic and reli- walks through expansive grain fields, gious backgrounds shared experiences and curiously timid explorations of old, of migration and settlement and thus abandoned houses and barns. Swyripa came to imagine themselves as part of

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one, broader community, with a common which worked to unite different immi- heritage and future goal. The second and grants and generations and to preserve third chapters consider the multiplic- a particular collective memory and na- ity of ways the immigrant generation tional identity. “configured” (29) the prairie west with Swyripa’s chief finding is that ethnicity the naming of places after homeland and religion, jointly central in the North heroes and founding fathers. Early set- American lives of European settler peo- tlers also “Christianized the landscape” ples, in turn uniquely shaped the prairie (44) by erecting churches and cemeter- region. She also finds that the enduring ies. Together, these actions fostered both relevance of the land, by way of an ever- the physical and the emotional inter- evolving physical and emotional attach- mingling of old traditions in and on the ment to soil and place common in each new land. Chapter 4 contrasts regional group’s narrative, was equally influential and national self-identities, as well as in shaping the construction of a collective inter-ethno-religious group narratives, to ethno-religious and specific Canadian demonstrate that ethnicity and religion identity. The study as a whole might have played a distinctive role in the way these benefited from greater analytical atten- groups imagined their participation in tion to the central categories of religion the building of a larger Canadian society. and ethnicity and the nature and extent Chapter 5 adopts a transnational angle of their inseparability in subsequent, showing how diaspora consciousness and urbanized generations. A fuller engage- cross-border North American religious, ment with the growing literature on the economic, and institutional bonds influ- relationship between secularization, enced the ways immigrant settler peoples multiculturalism, and a contemporary on the prairies developed a sense of “oth- rupture of ethnic and religious identities erness” that informed ethno-religious would also have been welcomed. identity in the Canadian West. (157) The Nonetheless, Swyripa’s sound “storied” sixth chapter considers the important approach eloquently and insightfully role of symbols – those transplanted demonstrates the centrality of both reli- to the prairies from the homeland and gion and ethnicity in the creation of the those adopted in western Canada – in the Canadian prairie West and peoplehood. building of a distinctive ethno-religious The study’s focus on an assortment of identity. Especially intriguing is Swyripa’s group narratives, myths, actors, symbols discussion of wheat as both a sacred and and memorials, landmarks and rituals, as a secular symbol, used on a variety of oc- well as its transnational reach, intergen- casions, to express a growing rootedness erational attentiveness, and sentimental, in the prairies. Finally, Chapters 7 and 8 perceptive underpinnings make it a valu- consider the many ways Canadian-born able contribution to the ongoing discus- descendants of the immigrant generation sion of identity, immigration and culture “mobilized their pioneers in intimate and in Canada. symbolic ways.” (191) Swyripa suggests Susie Fisher Stoesz that the building of museums, efforts to University of Manitoba conserve historic sites, the erection of monuments, and participation in reli- gious pilgrimages helped later genera- tions to identify with their beginnings in the Canadian West. She understands these actions as a “return to the land,”

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Reinhold Kramer and Tom associations and an array of ideological Mitchell, When the State Trembled: and legal tools to respond to a defiant and How A. J. Andrews and the Citizens’ mobilized working class. The book pro- Committee Broke the Winnipeg General vides a powerful, critical, and long-over- Strike (Toronto: University of Toronto due contribution to the fields of labour 2010) and working-class history, legal history, and the political history of Winnipeg, It is difficult to say something new Canada, and beyond. about the Winnipeg General Strike of Initially organized to restore the 1919, that high-water mark of working- distribution of bread, milk, and petro- class unrest so many scholars of Canadian leum in the strike-bound city (and in- labour and the left have interrogated. formed by earlier “Citizens” movements In When The State Trembled, Reinhold in Winnipeg, Minneapolis, and other Kramer and Tom Mitchell deftly and el- North American cities), the Citizens’ egantly exceed this objective. Committee of One Thousand deployed Challenging a prevailing historiog- the universalist language of citizenship raphy focused on the role of the state in to restore prevailing property and labour crushing the militant and radical mo- relations and defeat the potential of the ment of 1919, Kramer and Mitchell illu- widest sympathetic strike Canada had minate the opaque entity known as the ever known. Andrews and his cohesive Citizens’ Committee of One Thousand group of three dozen businesspeople and its leader, Winnipeg lawyer and one- challenged the language and logic of class time “boy mayor” A. J. Andrews, who for in their newspaper the Winnipeg Citizen, nine decades has lurked in the shadows of appealing to middle-class sympathies the historiography of the strike. in favour of law, order, and “constituted Through meticulous use of previ- authority,” as well as racist stereotypes ously untapped correspondence between against Eastern Europeans and “enemy Andrews and acting justice minister aliens.” (and future prime minister) Arthur As the strike unfolded, Andrews and Meighen, Kramer and Mitchell depart the Citizens expanded their ambitions from the usual protagonists of labour and operations, entering into a private and working-class history: the workers, correspondence with Meighen that deftly their unions, and their political parties. presented and shaped information on the Their 322-page interpretive narrative, il- unstable events in Winnipeg. Warning of lustrated with photographs and a selec- a Bolshevik conspiracy (at times ampli- tion of printed material, is structured fied into an apprehended “insurrection”), chronologically, offering a day-to-day, which threatened to descend Canada into play-by-play account of a city where class the red ruin the country was combat- relations had been turned upside down. ting militarily in nascent Soviet Russia, This detailed narrative illuminates the Andrews was appointed as Meighen’s actions and motivations of both the personal “representative” in Winnipeg. Citizens and the strikers, augmented by This amorphous role remained ill de- frequent and valuable analytical forays fined from the middle of the strike to the on the role of Andrews and the Citizens conclusion of the privately initiated but during and after the strike. publicly financed prosecution of the lead- What emerges is a compelling case ers (which cost the federal government study of a local bourgeoisie in a state of nearly a quarter million dollars [in 1919 crisis, and how it mobilized closely knit currency] in legal fees for Andrews, Isaac

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Pitblado, and other Citizen-affiliated working class never again found itself in lawyers). the saddle. Rather than Meighen, provincial As Kramer and Mitchell note, “the Attorney General T. H. Johnson, or Winnipeg General Strike would deter- Winnipeg Mayor Charles Gray directing mine how large a union could be, and the state’s response to the strike and the whether general strikes would now be- alleged seditious conspiracy of its leaders, come a regular weapon in the arms race Andrews and his class-tinged Citizens between labour and capital.” (25) Like (note the capitalization) effectively filled citizens’ committees elsewhere in North the legal and political vacuum occasioned America, appeals to law and order and by the strike, delicately positioning them- “constituted authority” were contradict- selves as the legitimate custodians of law ed by élite-led actions that contributed to and order in Canada’s third-largest city. violence and disorder. Navigating the distinct interests and Kramer and Mitchell write in a pro- responsibilities of local, provincial, and vocative and engaging – at times almost federal authorities, Andrews and his colloquial – style, which keeps their nar- private organization came to wield im- rative accessible and vibrant. While their portant state powers (if not entirely sympathies are clearly with the workers, in fact, then crucially in appearance). they strive to problematize our percep- From the decision to deputize special tion of this famous moment in Canadian police constables to replace Winnipeg’s history, conceding that R. B. Russell, Sam labour-friendly police force, to persuad- Blumenberg, and other strike leaders ing federal and provincial authorities were motivated by a revolutionary intent, against brokering a mediated settlement, even if this did not translate into explicit- to the preparation of warrants for the ly insurrectionary acts. They suggest the arrest of the strike’s British-born and decision to issue an ultimatum to regular Eastern European leaders, to the conduct police, who remained on duty under the of Immigration Act deportation hear- authority of the strike committee rather ings and Criminal Code sedition trials than the mayor, and to deputize special (based on legislative amendments they constables was a reasonable response to had helped to draft), Andrews and the a situation where the legitimacy of law’s Citizens shaped – at times conducted violence was in flux. – the state’s response to the Winnipeg Further challenging the historiogra- General Strike. “When the state trembled phy, Kramer and Mitchell reject the ei- in 1919, the Citizens stepped forward to ther/or dichotomy characterizing many become the principal “subject” shaping previous studies of the strike, which the response to the Strike,” Kramer and sought to cast the dispute either in terms Mitchell suggest. (180) of the innocent pursuit of free collective Though concealing their aims in the bargaining or alternatively as part of a language of citizenship and law and or- world-wide revolutionary plot. Their evi- der, Andrews and the Citizens were mo- dence and analysis point to the events in tivated by distinctly class goals: first, to Winnipeg as being located somewhere in prevent a negotiated settlement, and, the middle, drawing from accuracies and once this objective had been achieved distortions in the Citizens’ claims against with the leaders’ arrests and the Bloody the strikers. Saturday violence, to mount ideologi- Touching on the dynamics of gen- cally charged immigration and criminal der, which are otherwise absent from proceedings to ensure that Winnipeg’s the study, the authors suggest that

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the Citizens’ legal crusade against the (167) Les hommes et les femmes habitant British-born strike leaders represented cette municipalité sont en effet témoins a wider ideological goal: “to defeat these et acteurs au tournant du xxe siècle, men would be to defeat British radical comme ailleurs au Québec, d’une série masculinity.” (237) de transformations de l’espace urbain Could the book be improved? et de la vie urbaine sur lesquelles porte Certainly. Kramer and Mitchell’s sourc- l’ouvrage de Jean Gaudette. L’auteur se es, though largely untouched by previ- fait ici ethnographe en décrivant les « … ous researchers, are fairly conventional, conditions matérielles de la vie des citadins consisting primarily of correspondence, d’autrefois … ». (7) Soucieux de rapporter newspaper reports, and court records. « ce qui a existé » plutôt que « ce qui s’est The authors’ day-by-day, play-by-play passé » (8) entre 1880 et 1930, Gaudette narrative could have been enriched by offre des chroniques d’une urbanité en oral historical accounts and other less évolution. Cette période est marquée par common sources to illuminate the social diverses avancées technologiques et de life of Winnipeg, its élite, and its work- nombreux changements de pratiques, de ing class during the strike. Moreover, key normes et de représentations, bref par elements in the prosecution of the strike l’émergence d’une « modernité urbaine » leaders, such as Bill Pritchard’s address to sur laquelle, par ailleurs, l’auteur ne the jury, are not mentioned. But this criti- s’étend pas au plan conceptuel. Le choix cism does not detract from an otherwise des thématiques abordées est issu des meticulously researched and fluidly writ- préférences personnelles de Gaudette. Le ten and argued book. dépouillement systématique des journaux Kramer and Mitchell have provided de Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu est au cœur the most comprehensive and original de sa démarche méthodologique. Il porte account of the Winnipeg General Strike sur la presse le regard critique nécessaire to date. Boldly departing from the meth- afin d’en tirer une interprétation juste. od and accepted wisdoms of Masters, Les procès-verbaux des délibérations du Bercuson, and others, they tell this labour conseil municipal et des annuaires sont story from the perspective of Winnipeg’s également mis à profit, tout comme un ruling class. In the process, Kramer and grand nombre d’études rassemblées dans Mitchell have inverted the methodology une bibliographie touffue. – and raised the bar – for the practice of Dans une introduction aux allures labour and working-class history and le- de chapitre contextuel – l’avant-propos gal history in Canada and beyond. constituant sa véritable introduction –, Benjamin Isitt Gaudette présente un historique de University of Victoria Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu et dépeint son évolution sociodémographique durant la période 1880–1930. Il s’attarde Jean Gaudette, L’émergence de la également à démontrer son statut de ville modernité urbaine au Québec. Saint- par l’analyse des différentes fonctions Jean-sur-Richelieu, 1880–1930 (Québec: urbaines en présence. Cet examen lui Septentrion 2011) permet d’annoncer la teneur des douze chapitres composant cet ouvrage de 273 Dans l’édition du 4 décembre 1903 pages fort agréable à lire et fruit d’un du Canada Français de Saint-Jean-sur- élégant travail d’édition. Les trois premiers Richelieu, un journaliste écrit : « Nous chapitres sont consacrés à la mobilité sommes dans un siècle de progrès … ». de déplacement et aux infrastructures

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qui y sont associées. Les questions de Les chapitres sont divisés en diverses l’état et de l’entretien des artères de la sections thématiques où sont exposés municipalité, de l’accroissement de la changements, continuités et anecdotes les circulation automobile et des aléas des illustrant. La place occupée par certains déplacements pédestres (rues, trottoirs, sujets apparaît disproportionnée par traverses) sont successivement abordées. rapport à leur pertinence. La récolte de L’approvisionnement alimentaire de la glace sur la rivière Richelieu, abordée même que les lieux centraux où il est au sixième chapitre, en est un exemple. À réalisé, la halle et la place du marché, sont l’inverse, certaines dimensions d’ordres l’objet du quatrième chapitre. L’auteur divers utiles à la compréhension de ouvre, par la suite, une fenêtre sur les l’évolution du quotidien urbain, comme services de santé et d’assistance en se l’utilisation domestique des glacières et penchant sur les œuvres des Sœurs de la vie paroissiale, sont peu approfondies, la Charité à Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu résultat d’un choix de l’auteur ou de leur (hôpital, hospice, jardin d’enfance, faible présence dans les journaux de patronage). Les eaux structurent les Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. sixième et septième chapitres, qui portent Grâce à une plume assurée et claire, notamment sur les activités ludiques et un appareil iconographique intéressant commerciales reliées à la rivière Richelieu et pertinent, de même qu’un lexique et sur l’approvisionnement des citadins expliquant les canadianismes et les en eau potable. Des considérations anglicismes présents dans les nombreuses entourant la qualité de l’eau fournie par citations ponctuant l’ouvrage, l’auteur l’aqueduc, l’auteur passe à celles portant dépeint un portrait détaillé de la vie à sur l’arrivée de l’électricité au huitième Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu entre 1880 et chapitre en traitant, entre autres, des 1930. Le lecteur se représente aisément compagnies impliquées et de l’utilisation l’animation des rues, les bruits et les de l’énergie électrique par la municipalité odeurs de la ville, ainsi que les vicissitudes et ses résidants. Gaudette porte ensuite des hommes et des femmes, de tous son regard sur l’aménagement des parcs, statuts socioéconomiques, qui l’habitent. leur gestion et leur investissement par Les thématiques abordées ne sont certes les citadins (ch. 9), sur la cohabitation pas nouvelles. Gaudette a néanmoins urbaine des Johannais avec les animaux désiré « […] les explorer d’une façon et sur leur rapport à ceux-ci (ch. 10), ainsi originale et plus détaillée » (8). Ce désir que sur la gestion des déchets (ch. 11). mène bien, comme il le voulait, à une « […] Le douzième chapitre est consacré, pour reconstitution à petite échelle, minutieuse, sa part, aux lieux d’inhumation et aux «terre à terre», des faits et gestes des pratiques funéraires. citadins d’autrefois et du milieu dans Cinq chapitres débutent par un survol lequel ils évoluaient » (251). Ceci l’amène de l’origine et du développement du sujet parfois à des considérations techniques abordé durant la période, deux autres, plutôt arides. Certains citoyens illustres par des « considérations générales ». Bien reviennent ici et là au fil des chapitres, que cette volonté de mise en contexte soit témoignant de l’implication multiforme louable, la frontière est souvent mince entre des élites locales dans la vie urbaine. Le cet exposé et le corps du chapitre, certains propos bénéficie de quelques comparaisons éléments pouvant aisément être échangés. régionales, peu à l’échelle québécoise. Il De même, des chapitres ne comptent pas apparaît que la ville de Montréal, dont la de telle introduction alors qu’elle aurait sphère d’influence couvre Saint-Jean-sur- été pertinente afin de bien ancrer le sujet. Richelieu, constitue la principale

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référence d’acteurs johannais soucieux Peter Campbell, Rose Henderson: A que leur cité suive le rythme des divers Woman for the People (Montreal and progrès technologiques et changements Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press d’habitudes de vie, bref qu’elle ne reste pas 2010) en plan sur le chemin de cette nouvelle modernité. In Rose Henderson: A Woman For the L’auteur souligne que les sujets abordés People, Peter Campbell examines the life, dans son ouvrage ont été négligés par les politics, and activism of Rose Henderson historiens du point de vue qu’il les traite (1871–1937). Henderson was a promi- (8), voire qu’ils les mépriseraient (9). nent advocate for the rights of women, L’historiographie de plusieurs d’entre eux, children, and workers, and a woman of comme la voirie, l’assistance, l’aqueduc whom Campbell himself admits, “the ou les parcs par exemple, est relativement vast majority of Canadians have never dense, et il est vrai que les perspectives heard.” (3) Indeed, Campbell’s desire to adoptées sont, pour la plupart, différentes reclaim Henderson’s life and legacy from de celles des ethnographes. Cela ne relève the proverbial dustbin of history funda- pas du mépris, car dans le but d’étudier mentally shapes his study. As he states les dynamiques du changement social, in the introduction, “The task at hand is l’historien ne peut se limiter aux faits divers to demonstrate that there was something et aux anecdotes. Les transformations de compelling about Henderson, to convinc- l’espace urbain et de la vie urbaine dans ingly argue that she is worth remembering les petites villes québécoises gagneraient after all this time.” (3) To achieve his goal, à être étudiées à travers les tensions Campbell sets out to recount Henderson’s politiques ou la négociation entre divers life in a way that allows her “to speak to us groupes d’acteurs, perspectives en marge in our own day and age, to bring mean- ou absentes de cet ouvrage. Cela tient ing to our lives across the intervening de- en partie à l’objectif initial de l’auteur, cades since her death.” (3) In the process, en partie aux sources utilisées. Cet Campbell not only details Henderson’s ouvrage constitue néanmoins un apport life of public activism but also sheds light appréciable à la littérature sur la vie on many facets of Canadian history, in- urbaine québécoise de la fin du xixe siècle cluding feminism, the left, labour and et du début du xxe. On viendra avec profit y the working class, francophone and an- puiser des illustrations du quotidien et des glophone Montreal, and Depression-era informations sur la genèse et l’évolution Toronto. By examining the particulars of d’infrastructures et de services publics Henderson’s life in relation to such broad et privés dans les villes de petite taille, historical moments and movements, Rose de la médicalisation des soins de santé Henderson highlights the connections, aux habitudes pour se débarrasser des tensions, and contradictions of everyday déchets, des réseaux d’approvisionnement activist life, and thus makes an impor- alimentaire à l’impact de l’utilisation de tant contribution to the historiography on la radio sur les relations de voisinage, et feminism, labour, and the left in Canada. des difficultés des débuts de l’aqueduc à la Campbell divides his study of longue marche vers une cité plus sûre et Henderson into nine chapters, bookended plus verte. by an introduction and conclusion. He Dale Gilbert begins by situating his work in relation to Centre Urbanisation Culture Société previous histories of feminism and social- Institut national de la recherche ism in Canada, arguing that Henderson’s scientifique life does not fit easily into the existing

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historiography, divided as the latter often Henderson moved to Toronto in the late is into movement-specific studies. In con- 1920s and soon became known as “a lec- trast, Campbell argues that Henderson turer on women, children, drama, and can only be fully understood by linking the peace movement, and … as a Quaker.” what he considers to be the disconnected (152) However, Campbell explains that historiographies of Canadian feminism by the mid-1930s, “Henderson’s life of and labour and the left. Specifically, draw- public activism increasingly centred on ing on Barbara Taylor’s argument that the Toronto public school system and the until 1845 utopian thinkers in England lives of disadvantaged children in it,” work viewed feminism and socialism as funda- that put her into contact with a variety mentally connected, Campbell’s thesis is of prominent leftist organizations, most that Henderson’s “life of social activism notably the Community Party and the was a powerful evocation of the ‘ideologi- Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. cal tie’ between the liberation of women (187) Though her life as a middle-class and the liberation of the working class.” educational reformer seems a far cry from (5) her early days as a passionate lecturer on The book examines this central theme the evils of capitalism, Campbell con- in relation to Henderson’s public activ- tends that Henderson nevertheless “left ism in Quebec and Ontario. Chapters 1 an indelible mark on the political culture through 4 discuss Henderson’s early life of her adopted city, as she continued to ex- and activities in Montreal in the first two pose the hypocrisy of the better offs and decades of the 20th century. Campbell shone as bright a light as she could on the explains how Henderson quickly became dark corners of Toronto the Good.” (188) known as a prominent activist for the Campbell concludes his study by high- rights of women, children, and workers, lighting the legacy of Henderson’s life through her work as a volunteer with for the cities of Toronto and Montreal in the Children’s Aid Society and as a paid particular and our understanding of the probation officer with the Juvenile Court. complexities and contradictions of a life of Campbell maintains that it is difficult to activism on the Canadian left in the early categorize Henderson’s politics in this decades of the 20th century in general. period as exclusively feminist or social- One of the strengths of Campbell’s ist, as she consistently linked women’s analysis is his careful reading of sources. and children’s issues to a broader critique In addition to incorporating an impressive of capitalism. Chapters 5 and 6 examine amount of secondary source material on Henderson’s life in the interwar period, in- the many subjects with which Henderson’s cluding her activities outside Canada and life intertwined, Campbell uses munici- her participation in the peace movement. pal, federal, and provincial archives, ar- Campbell argues that during this period, chival collections of various feminist and Henderson’s activism was shaped by the socialist groups, and numerous women’s, notion that “war was capitalism’s evil off- labour, and leftist newspapers. Despite spring and the inevitable outcome of a the numerous sources he analyzes, male-dominated world. Peace would come Campbell consistently emphasizes the when the immorality of militarism was many mysteries and gaps that still exist replaced by the morality of international in our understanding of Henderson’s life motherhood.” (128) Chapters 7 through due to silences or inconsistencies in the 9 look at Henderson’s life in Depression- historical records. Indeed, in several cas- era Toronto and her involvement in leftist es Campbell is careful to point out that politics and the municipal school system. without private papers or, in some cases,

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accurate historical records, “only specu- the connections and tensions between lation is possible.” (11) these movements and thus broadens our Campbell’s work does have some understanding of the history of activ- shortcomings. At the book’s conclusion, ism, feminism, and labour and the left in the reader is left with little sense of who Canada. Henderson was as a person beneath her Julia Smith public persona as an impassioned activ- Trent University ist. As Campbell explains, this is largely due to a lack of personal papers; however, the limited discussion of Henderson on Françoise Noël, Family and Community a more personal level detracts from the Life in Northeastern Ontario: The strength of the book as a biography. In Interwar Years (Montreal and Kingston: addition, at times Campbell overstates McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009) the case for his study of Henderson, re- peatedly stressing that, “few Canadians Françoise Noël’s Family and of her generation so insistently, so in- Community Life in Northeastern Ontario: sightfully, and so intelligently laid bare The Interwar Years creates a comprehen- the contradictions of patriarchy and the sive history of the city of North Bay, its capitalist system.” (127) Campbell’s in- environs, and its population base. Noël sistence that Henderson “had few, if any, not only creates a solid contextual ge- equals” comes across as somewhat heavy- ography and history, but also delves into handed and, ultimately, unnecessary, as several major themes about community Henderson’s life of activism makes for an life, such as population demographics, interesting study in and of itself, regard- unemployment, family constructs, and less of whether it is unique. (5) Moreover, community development. Noël’s in- Campbell also argues that the histo- depth analysis of the District of Nipissing riographical divide between women’s transforms her micro-history into a bold history and labour history “has made it statement about rural and urban life in difficult, if not impossible, to bring to Ontario’s northern frontier during the light a life dedicated to the ideological early 20th century. ties between feminism and working-class The inclusion of maps and charts to protest.” (5) Specifically, Campbell claims break down statistics is one of the book’s that “the scorn that many male Marxists strongest features as Noël establishes the had for ‘bourgeois’ women reformers in text’s historical context. The maps and Henderson’s own day has its echoes in charts are not only strategically placed, the writing of Canadian labour history, but also clearly disseminate complex in- and Canadian women’s history is replete formation, such as population increas- with condemnations of the sexism and es and several demographic statistics: misogyny of male-dominated socialist country of origin, ethnic origin, and re- and labour movements that marginalized ligious background. Through visual aids, women and their concerns” (5); however, Noël tracks trends in population chang- he does not provide any specific citations es as migrant workers from Ontario to support this assertion. Given that and Quebec settled along the Ottawa Campbell is attempting to fill what he ar- and Mattawa Rivers. As the District gues is a gap in the literature, a more thor- of Nipissing experienced a population ough historiographical discussion would boom due to industrial expansion, the strengthen his claim. Nevertheless, like city of North Bay quickly emerged as the its namesake, Rose Henderson highlights region’s largest community and became

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a major northern Ontario economic cen- Contrary to traditional stereotypes tre. Accordingly, North Bay’s larger pop- about the Canadian North, the lum- ulation led to greater diversity and higher ber industry, rather than the fur trade, numbers of immigrant workers. was this region’s main attraction for Even though Noël offers a thorough migrant workers during the late 19th and comprehensive history of North Bay century. Accordingly, because of the re- and its surroundings, her text is not with- gion’s economic dependence on natural out fault. Noël provides several stories resource-based industries, unemploy- through interviews with North Bay and ment rates soared during the interwar area residents. However, in the process, era due to decreasing market values and Noël’s mention of the Dionne family gets demands. Noël explains thoroughly lost amidst a flurry of other anecdotes. how English-speaking residents seemed Noël mentions the Dionne family brief- the least affected by the Depression, as ly throughout her text, beginning with they held more educated, skilled posi- an introduction and alluding to several tions. However, unskilled working-class milestones in their history. Because the French, Italian, and immigrant work- Dionne family, famous for having living ers were often uneducated and felt the quintuplets, quickly became a symbol brunt of the nation’s economic downturn of family life in Northern Ontario dur- of the 1930s. In addition to her analysis ing the interwar period, Noël could have of unemployment rates, Noël spends a turned her discussion of the Dionne fam- great deal of time explaining how unique ily into a major case study of larger fami- neighbourhoods grew because of ethnic lies during the interwar era, the social and economic bonds, and how family support they needed and received, and constructs and community life differed their legacy for the community of North between neighbourhoods. Bay. One of the major influences in the Noël’s analysis of community life District of Nipissing’s development was in North Bay discusses several major the Church and its role in developing themes: ethnicity, unemployment, reli- strong family values and personal vir- gion, education, and leisure. Outside of tues. As commonly seen in early 20th- the city of North Bay, the region’s popu- century rural towns, the Church played lation base lacked major diversity due to a significant role in the community. Rite the available unskilled jobs in natural re- of passage rituals educated the region’s source-based industries. As Noël states, residents about virtues, religions, and liv- a striking majority of the population was ing a good life. These rituals had an air of Western European descent, particu- of extravagance and brought numerous larly French and English, and belonged members of the community together to to a Christian-based religion. Within the celebrate personal milestones, including city, however, significantly more immi- baptism, communion, and marriage. Due grant workers resided, including Asians, to the significance of faith and the Church Italians, and Scandinavians. Regardless in community life, the Dioceses of Sault of ethnic diversity, the majority of North Ste. Marie, North Bay, and Thunder Bay Bay’s population spoke only English spent thousands of dollars building new or French. The growing rift between places of worship and support in com- French- and English-speaking residents munities throughout Northern Ontario. undoubtedly dominated community life As seen with the workforce, churches during the interwar years. were often segregated by ethnicity and

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language. The education system differed became an integral part of community little. life and brought all members of the com- While Noël’s overview of the Church munity together. during the interwar period does not Noël’s Family and Community Life in thoroughly differentiate between urban Northeastern Ontario, therefore, touches and rural examples, her analysis of the on several major themes about commu- education system not only describes both nity and family life in Northern Ontario, French and English separate and public including population demographics, un- schools, but also creates a clear image employment, religion, education, and of the role of education in rural and ur- leisure. Through her use of illustrations, ban communities. One of Noël’s most interviews, and primary research, Noël compelling arguments is her analysis of creates a fully comprehensive history of delayed responsibility. Delayed respon- North Bay’s infancy and its development. sibly refers to the increase in secondary Noël’s text is a fantastic addition to the and post-secondary school enrolment. library on Northern Ontario history, not Education became a significant prior- only because of her thorough analysis ity for employment. Negatively, however, of community life, but also because the as Noël reveals through interviews with themes she presents provide insight into locals, seeking a post-secondary educa- life across Northern Ontario. tion distanced families and changed the David Alphonse Blanchard way family members interacted with one Lakehead University another. One of the final aspects of community life and development that Noël addresses Benjamin Isitt, Militant Minority: British is the role of sport and leisure. She first Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New mentions how extra-curricular activities Left, 1948–1972 (Toronto: University of became an increasing important aspect Toronto Press 2011) of the daily lives of North Bay’s youth. The region’s youth were not the only ones Benjamin Isitt’s Militant Minority to enjoy leisure activities. Various church takes its title from the work of the late parishes and social clubs across the re- labour historian David Montgomery. The gion hosted events throughout the year: term describes those workers who have Women’s Auxiliary thanksgiving dinners historically “endeavoured to weld their in October, the Knights of Columbus fa- workmates and neighbours into a self- ther and son dinners in March, and so aware and purposeful working class.” on. Movies and community dances also (3) Isitt combines political economy, la- became prominent in North Bay during bour, regional, and a good dose of 1960s the interwar years. Team sports were history in telling the story of those men another addition to daily life and also al- and women who provided “the bridge be- lowed women to participate. Bicycling, tween the ‘Old Left’ and the ‘New Left’ in softball, and baseball were prominent in Cold War BC.” (4) the summer, while hockey was a winter Isitt begins by outlining the political pastime. Arenas were built in several economy of post-war British Columbia communities, amateur teams received lo- (BC). Resource extraction constituted cal funding, and teachers volunteered to the bulk of economic activity. The state coach and referee school games. Sports, served capital by providing infrastruc- as well as other leisure activities, quickly ture, enacting management-friendly

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labour laws, and granting a social wage such as the Canadian Association in the form of healthcare, education, and of Smelter and Allied Workers, the social services to an increasingly mo- Canadian Association of Industrial, bilized working class. BC’s Communist Mechanical and Allied Workers, and Party greatly contributed to this mobi- the Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of lization. The Party exercised influence Canada. Burgeoning public sector unions far beyond its numbers in shaping the representing healthcare workers, teach- province’s labour movement. It also built ers, and others added to this new mili- the province’s first post-war peace move- tancy. Working-class mobilization and ment, garnering thousands of signatures the new social movements played a vital for the 1950 Stockholm Peace Appeal, role in BC’s 1972 New Democratic Party and was the first to draw attention to the (ndp) electoral victory. war in Vietnam. But the Party’s failure to Isitt credits structural changes in apply the same antimilitarist criteria to BC’s economy and its working class for the Soviet Union as it did to the United the brief interruption in Social Credit States led to “ideological and organiza- rule. (196) But the ndp victory can be as tional crises.” (66) While Conservatives evenly accredited to a split in bourgeois and Liberals had dominated the province political formation as to the efforts of a prior to the war, an increasingly popular militant minority. Isitt acknowledges Co-operative Commonwealth Federation that a revived Conservative Party took (ccf) moved them to form coalition gov- nearly thirteen per cent of the vote in ernments until traditional party support 1972, allowing the ndp to achieve vic- imploded in 1952. But instead of electing tory with almost 40 per cent. (194) But the ccf, voters opted for the conservative between 1949 and 1972 ccf/ndp support populism of Social Credit, which ruled remained fairly constant, neither drop- without interruption for two decades. ping below 30 per cent nor breaking its 40 Other left formations emerged in the per cent ceiling. The increase in ndp sup- late 1950s and early 1960s. Prominent port between the 1969 and 1972 elections were those collectively referred to as the constituted less than six per cent yet was new peace movement. These included enough to win. Sixty per cent of British the Voice of Women, the Committee Columbians voted for parties to the right for the Control of Radiation Hazards, of the ndp, over 40 per cent for parties to and its campus counterpart, the the right of the Liberals. Even at the head Combined Universities Campaign for of a majority government, the ndp still Nuclear Disarmament (as well as the represented a militant minority. latter two’s successor organizations). The book’s greatest strength lies In 1961 the League for Socialist Action in its analysis of the contributions of (LSA) resulted from the merger of pre- the Communist Party to BC’s labour existing Trotskyist groups. All of these movement. The Party’s role cannot be organizations participated in growing understated. Throughout the 1950s com- anti-Vietnam War protest, which in turn munists led the province’s second and generated other social movements. third largest unions, Mine Mill and the Throughout the 1960s breakaway in- United Fishermen respectively, as well dustrial unions and growing public sector as several smaller unions. (197) While unions characterized much of BC’s labour acknowledging these contributions, Isitt movement. Increasing numbers of BC lo- refutes the mythology of rank-and-file cals seceded from internationals, form- democracy, indicating how the Party ing militant independent organizations routinely meddled in internal union

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affairs, especially regarding the hiring of especially his treatment of Trotskyism staff. (55) But ultimately, says Isitt, “the and its relationship with the ndp and the Communist Party, warts and all, helped antiwar movement. Given the dearth of sustain an oppositional working-class published material on post-war Canadian culture in Cold War BC.” (83) Trotskyism, Militant Minority is invalu- One of the primary challenges of this able in revealing some of the intricacies book lies in its use of the terms Old and of Canada’s other historic communist New Left. Often such terms confuse movement. But Isitt merely whets the more than explain ideological formation appetite, leaving the reader hungry for and development. Where and how they a more sufficient examination of the are used often determines their meaning. Trotskyist movement’s contributions For instance, how E. P. Thompson might to BC’s political landscape, especially have defined a new left after departing in the 1960s. More critically, given the the Communist Party of Great Britain foundational role of anti-Vietnam War in 1956 likely differed from how Tom protest in paving the way for later so- Hayden employed the term at Port Huron, cial movements, more attention could Michigan, in 1962. While acknowledg- be given to this subject. Much of what ing the work of Ian McKay and Maurice Isitt offers on the antiwar movement is Isserman, Isitt never defines or identifies convoluted and sometimes inaccurate. the characteristics that constitute old or For instance, Isitt argues that Canadian new left. Nor does he cite the above his- opposition to the war emanated from torians in offering their interpretations. opposition to Canadian complicity in The author merely agrees with them that America’s war effort. Evidence, however, old and new left exist on a continuum, suggests the opposite. While Isitt cites a that they are not divided by an ideologi- 1963 Communist Party document con- cal rupture. (6) But it remains worthwhile demning Canadian support for America’s to locate these groups on this continuum. war, such statements remained second- For instance, no one would disagree that ary in mobilizing Canadians compared the Communist Party was and remains to the napalming of South Vietnamese an old left party. But what about the ccf/ villages and the bombing of cities in the ndp? Despite its 1961 name change it is North. Similarly, the author inaccurately still old. The Trotskyist movement pres- states that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident – ents a more interesting challenge. Having America’s rationale for escalating its war existed in various manifestations since – took place in 1965. (129) (It was 1964.) the Stalin-Trotsky split, the movement Isitt also credits the ndp for opposing the still shares many characteristics with its war earlier than it actually did, referring Stalinist rival, and yet made tremendous to “a resolution opposing the war” passed contributions to the antiwar movement, at the party’s July 1965 federal conven- a phenomenon largely (and often inac- tion. (185) But one of the sources that Isitt curately) associated with the new left. cites, a 1971 article in the Trotskyist jour- Absent is an indication as to where on nal Labor Challenge, indicates that the this continuum the left has moved. Did it resolution meekly called for negotiations become more democratic, or democratic rather than the withdrawal of US troops, in a different way? Did it become less so- and that as late as September 1965 ndp cialist, or simply more pragmatic? Deputy Leader David Lewis still defend- Similarly, Isitt’s chapter on “Other ed the presence of US troops in Vietnam, Lefts” is perhaps his most rewarding equally blaming Hanoi for the continuing and at the same time most frustrating, conflict. Isitt also ignores the tremendous

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influence of American antiwar organiza- La publication de cette recherche est une tions on the Canadian movement. He initiative de cette institution et elle vise à is, however, absolutely correct in plac- souligner le 40e anniversaire du fameux ing the Trotskyists at the centre of BC’s Bill 290 (Loi sur les relations du travail antiwar movement. He quotes the late dans l’industrie de la construction, 1968). Hilda Thomas, one-time leader of the L’ouvrage expose l’évolution de ce Vancouver Vietnam Action Committee: régime particulier (sectoriel) de relations “I was the token non-Trotskyist chair of de travail et de conditions de travail et that committee.” (129) d’emploi (i.e. main-d’œuvre) en intégrant This is a relatively short book, despite ses dimensions économiques, sociales et its bulk. Only 203 of its 458 pages consti- politiques depuis ses origines lointaines tute text. The rest is consumed with ap- (début xixe siècle) jusqu’en 2008. pendices, notes, bibliography and index. La présentation matérielle de cette The work is certainly well documented, publication est très réussie. On y retrouve as 146 pages of notes and a 36-page bib- nombre de photographies d’archives liography attest to. In addition to oral et de reproductions de documents history interviews, Isitt has consulted d’époques qui agrémentent la lecture numerous archival collections, govern- du texte par ailleurs jalonné de sous- ment documents, and union and radical titres qui soutiennent l’intérêt. En outre, newspapers. He also uses several on-line l’ouvrage est parsemé de 44 tableaux tools, including the Socialist History statistiques et d’encadrés thématiques, Project from which he has accessed valu- tous fort pertinents. Précédé d’une table able sources. The book also features 24 des matières très détaillée, l’ouvrage pages of photos, though without credits. se termine par une bibliographie assez Militant Minority is an important con- exhaustive et un index des noms cités. tribution to Canadian labour, social, and Fondamentalement, l’exposé adopte regional history. Those interested in the une structure chronologique qui donne post-war history of British Columbia, la- lieu à une périodisation conforme aux bour unions, radicalism, and the growing grands tournants de l’évolution du literature on Canada’s 1960s will benefit régime. Le premier chapitre intitulé from this book. It is written in accessible « Retour aux sources », remonte à language and would be appropriate for l’apparition des premières associations both the undergraduate and graduate syndicales puis met en évidence classroom. l’élaboration du régime fondateur que fut Christopher Powell celui des décrets de convention collective Edmonton, AB (1934). L’analyse est pénétrante et doit beaucoup aux travaux de Gérard Hébert. On aborde ensuite le phénomène de la Louis Delagrave, Histoire des relations rivalité syndicale csn-ftq des années du travail dans la construction au Québec 1960, reflétant une concurrence pour (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval l’emploi et une rivalité Montréal-régions, 2009) qui aboutit à l’adoption du Bill 290, une formule originale reconnaissant le L’auteur est économiste de formation pluralisme syndical et la négociation et occupe un poste de direction en sectorielle. recherche à la Commission de la Le second chapitre, « 1969–1975 : le construction du Québec (ccq) où il Bill 290 à l’épreuve », nous fait revivre oeuvre depuis de nombreuses années. les premiers pas du régime marqués

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par l’enjeu du placement syndical, la Le cinquième et dernier chapitre, provincialisation des négociations, la « 1993–2008 : place aux conventions « sentence Gold » (reconnaissant une collectives », s’ouvre sur le Sommet forme d’ancienneté, sans lendemain), sur l’industrie de la construction la création de la Commission de amenant, inexplicablement, le Projet de l’industrie de la construction (cic, loi 142 (dérèglementation d’une partie organisme paritaire), la scission csn- substantielle du secteur résidentiel CSD, le célèbre Bill 9 (validation qui sera rapidement abolie par le rétroactive d’une convention collective gouvernement suivant, et, surtout, non conforme à la loi), l’exacerbation instauration d’un régime de négociations des luttes intersyndicales avec, comme de conventions collectives par secteurs point d’orgue, le saccage de la Baie James. qui, lui, demeurera). Il se poursuit avec Le tout se termine avec la création de l’analyse de la singularisation du secteur la Commission Cliche, le dépôt de son résidentiel. Le reste de la période, dite rapport et les suites législatives qui lui de consolidation, est caractérisé par furent données [étatisation de la cic des problématiques récurrentes telles qui devient l’Office de la construction que l’assujettissement de la machinerie du Québec (ocq) ; création par voie de production et les querelles Québec- législative d’une association patronale Ontario en matière de mobilité de main- unique, l’Association des entrepreneurs d’oeuvre. On rappelle la passation avec en construction du Québec, un précédent succès du test des Chartes par le régime qui, aujourd’hui, serait questionnable au (adhésion syndicale obligatoire). plan des Chartes; tutelles syndicales; Parallèlement à l’exposé chronologique, encadrement du délégué de chantier; l’ouvrage est jalonné de tableaux et etc.]. d’encadrés s’intéressant à divers thèmes Le troisième chapitre s’intitule qui transcendent la vie du régime. Ces opportunément « 1975–1985 : une insertions regroupent des informations industrie sous tutelle ». Cette période relatives aux problématiques les plus est notamment marquée par le blocage importantes du régime dans une des négociations et, en conséquence, perspective qui fait bien voir les ruptures par des interventions gouvernementales et les continuités. Ces compléments répétées (décrets), par l’adoption d’un expliquent de façon accessible des règlement de placement, par la scission questions parfois complexes. Ainsi, Conseil provincial du Québec des simplement à titre d’illustration, on métiers de la construction-ftq et par les retrouvera sous ces formats l’évolution du problématiques du travail au noir et de champ d’application de la loi, celle de la l’artisan. réglementation sur le contrôle quantitatif Le quatrième chapitre, « 1986–1992 : de la main-d ‘œuvre, sur le placement et le pari de la maturité », moins dense et sur les certificats de compétence, celle visant une période plus difficile à définir, des négociations Québec-Ontario sur la s’intéresse à des projets qui, tout en mobilité de la main-d’œuvre, etc. D’autres mobilisant des énergies, ne connaîtront tableaux récapitulent la chronologie, pas de résultats concluants, à savoir la entre autres, de la représentativité déréglementation et la revendication syndicale, des nombreuses rondes de d’un régime de sécurité du revenu. On négociations et de l’activité législative et note cependant une rentrée en grâce de l’intervention gouvernementale par progressive du paritarisme avec la ministre du Travail en titre (synthèse création de la ccq succédant à l’ocq. particulièrement réussie). Enfin, chaque

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période étudiée fait l’objet d’une mise en institutionnelle). Il l’est égale- contexte économique, ce qui, souvent, ment comme subventionnaire de explique bien des événements ou grands projets confiés à l’entreprise comportements. privée ou lorsqu’il cherche à attirer des L’ouvrage se termine sur un « Bilan » investisseurs. Il y a aussi le gouvernement intitulé « La réalité derrière les clichés » et le parti politique au pouvoir qui n’est qui s’attache à réhabiliter le régime pas indifférent aux doléances des députés souvent stigmatisé par des préjugés (frontaliers par exemple lorsqu’il s’agit (violence, intervention gouvernementale de la mobilité interprovinciale de la systématique, coûts des salaires, main-d’œuvre), non plus qu’au support inaccessibilité à l’emploi, etc.). électoral que certains acteurs de relations Dans l’ensemble, cet ouvrage est du travail peuvent lui apporter (il en fut une réussite et un apport précieux. Il question devant la Commission Cliche est accessible autant au profane qui et il en sera peut-être question devant la désire comprendre qu’à l’initié qui Commission Charbonneau). Cela aussi désire se remémorer ou rassembler des permet de comprendre pourquoi il est informations souvent éparses. intervenu dans les relations du travail en L’ouvrage se mérite cependant quelques plusieurs occasions. critiques. Je m’en tiendrai à trois. Enfin, à une vingtaine de reprises au Pour avoir été impliqué dans le milieu moins, on fait référence à l’intervention des relations de travail de cette industrie, des tribunaux en certaines circonstances. je puis dire que l’index des noms cités On permettra à un juriste de souligner (plus de 200) est particulièrement qu’il aurait été appréciable que les exhaustif. J’ai toutefois constaté l’absence références aux jugements, les plus de toute référence à Michel Bourdon marquants du moins, figurent en notes qui, président de la csn-Construction de bas de page. de 1973 à 1979, fut un des protagonistes Carol Jobin les plus médiatisés de cette époque Université du Québec à Montréal turbulente et le principal démarcheur syndical amenant le gouvernement à adopter un règlement sur le placement. Diane Crocker and Val Marie Johnson, La thèse de l’omission involontaire eds., Poverty, Regulation & Social serait tout simplement incroyable. À ma Justice: Readings on the Criminalization connaissance, pour l’époque concernée, of Poverty (Winnipeg and Black Point: un seul nom d’acteur de premier plan a Fernwood Publishing 2010) été oublié et c’est le sien. Inexplicable et gênant… With the demise of the National Sur un plan général, la dimension Council of Welfare and the long form politique de l’analyse me semble census it is even more critical that we have incomplète. L’industrie de la construction books that document the lives of the mar- est radicalement politisée, à bien des ginalized. This is precisely what Poverty, égards, et ne pas le faire ressortir, c’est se Regulation & Social Justice: Readings on priver d’un éclairage essentiel. Il fallait the Criminalization of Poverty attempts dire que l’État est un investisseur majeur to do. And for the most the authors ad- de l’industrie, qu’il est directement et mirably succeed. In four important ways indirectement une partie intéressée this edited collection moves forward de- (routes, hydro-électricité, construction bates about poverty.

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First, this collection is vital because marginalized. We hear from Wayne it links poverty with criminalization MacNaughton who recounts his experi- in a way that much of the literature on ences of homelessness in Halifax and how welfare, retraining, and inequality does the bus station has established new rules not. This is particularly important in that prevent the homeless from using the the shadow of the Harper Government’s station’s lockers. And we also hear from crime agenda when increasing numbers Greg X, a homeless youth, who provides of our citizens are deemed criminal and an important class analysis of how the severely punished. We see how neo- wealthy can drink alcohol in public but liberal policies support market capital- the poor cannot. These are important ism and ensure that those who remain contributions that enhance our under- outside the labour market (as squatters, standing of how poverty and criminaliza- beggars and welfare recipients) are exces- tion are experienced in the everyday. sively punished. Through case studies of Lastly, the collection addresses some the homeless in Vancouver, the squat- complexities that occur when gender, ters in Ottawa, and the squeegee kids in race and class privileges and oppressions Toronto we see a growing pattern of how interweave. Galabuzi addresses how race local police forces harass, charge and and masculinity come together so that imprison those who are not in the work- low-income African Canadian men expe- force. Through case studies of welfare rience gender privilege at the same time fraud in Alberta and single-mom welfare as race and class oppression. Amanda recipients in Nova Scotia we also see how Glasbeek appreciates how women’s anxi- state administrators investigate and pun- eties about public safety can justify fur- ish, often in similar ways to the police. ther demonization and criminalization We also see how the public discourse is of poor people eking out a living in the shaped to ensure that those who are mar- streets. These are important contribu- ginalized from the workforce are blamed tions that dispel the myth that all are for this marginalization, thus justifying equally criminalized in their poverty and any heightened state coercion. encourage social justice leaders to think Second, this collection appreciates carefully about how to frame campaigns how racism accounts for who amongst that may promote safety for some people the poor are criminalized. In particular, at the expense of others. Grace-Edward Galabuzi’s chapter “The Of course with any book on poverty I Intersecting Experience of Racialized want even more. I would like to see the Poverty and the Criminalization of the important critical race analysis devel- Poor” is a must-read for all scholars of oped in Galabuzi’s chapter to be central social work, sociology, politics and gen- to many of the other authors in this col- der studies. Too often we have ignored lection. Except for Galabuzi there is no the profound ways race and poverty mention of the legacy and current prac- merge, and specific racialized groups, i.e. tices of colonialism that deeply affect the African Canadian and First Nations citi- degree that First Nations peoples experi- zens, have been discriminated against in ence poverty. Surely we need to do better the labour market, on welfare, and on our than make a passing reference to those streets. Galabuzi attempts to rectify this who are most impoverished. And I’m still glaring omission. waiting for a book, and a social justice A third strength of this collec- movement, that entwines issues of sexu- tion is that it includes the voices of the ality with poverty. When will we address

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the fact that there are a number of queer compassionate tolerance and inclusion of citizens who do not fit thedink stereo- the destitute in the 21st century. type but are part of the working poor as Hood opens with a discussion of Judith sex workers, shelter workers, and other- Fingard’s 1989 The Dark Side of Life in wise impoverished? Victorian Halifax. In a book aimed at a I’d like to see more of the sophisticated general audience, the emphasis on his- analysis of both Galabuzi and Glasbeek toriography so early in the work is a in their unpacking of gender, class, and welcome surprise, though I wish the au- race privilege as well as oppression to thor had engaged with a wider variety provide a more nuanced understanding of Canadian scholarship instead of con- of how identities of privilege and oppres- centrating so heavily on a single book sion complicate social justice politics. written twenty years ago. Hood takes ex- So I’m hopeful that this is the begin- ception to Fingard’s suggestion that the ning of a new conversation about the poor were culturally and socially differ- criminalization of poverty – a conver- ent from their respectable working-class sation that needs to grow to more fully neighbours. He argues that Fingard “as- encompass the lives of all those impov- cribed agency to her underclass subjects, erished by race, class, gender and sexual but she seems to see them as striving to identities. And I’ll do my part to promote operate outside of prevailing morality this conversation by using this collec- rather than attempting to fit in the best tion as a central text in my courses about they could.” (9) Yet, much of Hood’s evi- inequality. dence actually supports Fingard’s argu- Margaret Hillyard Little ment, particularly his documentation Queen’s University of his subjects’ long-term and sustained involvement in the informal and illicit economies of urban Halifax. While there David Hood, Down But Not Out: is much to be critiqued in Fingard’s in- Community and the Upper Streets of terpretation of the character of the cul- Halifax, 1880–1914 (Winnipeg and Black ture of the urban poor – particularly her Point: Fernwood Publishing 2010) use of the now-out-of-vogue sociological category of “underclass” – her suggestion Despite Halifax’s historical impor- that many of the city’s poor did not share tance as a regional centre of economic an identical moral and political outlook and political activity, the city has re- with their middle-class neighbours does ceived relatively little attention from not deserve Hood’s outright dismissal. social and urban historians in the last Certainly, her work would have benefit- decade. David Hood’s Down but Not Out ted from more nuance, but nothing in is one of the few recent works to attempt the work of either Fingard or Hood con- to remedy this paucity of scholarship. The stitutes evidence that most of Halifax’s book is a study of poverty and commu- poorest residents simply wanted to be nity in Halifax in the late 19th and early culturally middle-class and Hood’s own 20th centuries, and is organized loosely account obscures the culture of the very around the lives of five Haligonians who people he is hoping to rescue from the consistently were in conflict with the law. condescension of history. Rather than being a detached academ- Hood’s insistence on attacking ic history of Halifax at the turn of the Fingard’s interpretation of the val- century, Down but Not Out is a defence ues of Halifax’s destitute is as much a of the dignity of the poor and a call for political and ethical concern as it is a

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historiographical one. He argues that it commitment to humanizing his subjects is important to “recognize [the extremely is obvious and effective. Unfortunately, poor’s] efforts to follow prevailing norms the structure and organization of Down and to empathize with their plight and in but Not Out makes it difficult to trace doing so generate at least the possibility the actual narrative of the individual of recognition and empathy in the pres- lives that Hood sets out to document. ent.” (14) What Hood leaves unsaid is his The book bounces between narrative and problematic assumption that the reader’s analysis, with the narrative itself split empathy for the turn-of-the-century across too many subjects. As a result, the poor is predicated on a sharing of values years and events in the lives of Hood’s and goals, ignoring entirely the possibil- subjects never coalesce into a coherent ity of seeking solidarity despite the radi- whole. Much of this problem is the result cal differences between the reader and of the limited sources available on the the book’s subjects. lives of the extreme poor, and Hood’s at- Central to Hood’s argument is the as- tempt to recover the stories of people like sumption that the residents of Halifax’s Thomas Berrigan and Sarah Shepherd is upper streets constituted a coherent commendable. However fractured, the community, but the author never pro- anecdotes about the lives of the poor fill vides a clear definition of what is meant in many of the gaps concerning daily life by “community.” On an empirical level in Halifax’s poorest neighbourhoods, and Down But Not Out lacks the geographic, Hood does succeed in providing the read- demographic and economic details that er with a visceral understanding of turn- one would expect from a book about a of-the-century poverty. single Halifax neighbourhood, and the Down but Not Out is a book that rightly social and physical boundaries of the will find enthusiastic readership among upper streets are never clear. More fun- Haligonians with an interest in reading damentally, Hood never interrogates about the city’s less famous residents and the historical and theoretical meanings events. The reasonable length of the book of “community.” Similarly, the question and its quick prose and clear style will of spatial differentiation and slum for- also make Hood’s text a solid addition to mation – all theoretical territory well the syllabus of undergraduate courses on mapped by critical geographers – is not Atlantic Canadian history. at all discussed. The reader is left to guess Christopher L. Parsons at how one part of the city became home Trent University and to so many brothels, bars and derelict Dalhousie University buildings. While it is unfair to expect popular histories to delve into theoreti- cal problems concerning spatiality and Joan Sangster, Through Feminist Eyes: community, it would have been beneficial Essays on Canadian Women’s History to jettison much of the historiographical (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press detail and instead include at least some 2011) explanation of what was meant by terms like community, exclusion and, even, up- Joan Sangster’s new volume of her per streets. collected essays is a rich and thoughtful Hood’s prose is accessible, engag- addition to women’s history. It includes ing, and passionate. This is not a book substantial original material as well as meant to be read with cold objectivity or ten previously published articles, care- academic detachment, and the author’s fully chosen to reflect “the changing

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concerns and debates in women’s his- relations that have created and sustained tory.” (2) Organized chronologically and social inequalities.” (4) grouped into five thematic sections, the Sangster’s deep engagement with the articles span over three decades of histor- theoretical debates within women’s his- ical scholarship from the late 1970s to the tory since the 1960s is evident through- present. In a long and amply annotated out the collection. In many of the essays introductory essay written expressly for Sangster passionately defends her “theo- the collection, Sangster offers a sweep- retical proclivities favouring feminist ing interpretative overview of the shift- historical materialism.” (392) Her gen- ing course of Canadian women’s history eral framework is thus a co-mingling of since the 1960s. She also prefaces each of Thompsonian cultural Marxism (with the book’s five sections with an extended its appreciation for the particularities critical commentary on her own essays of time and place and the agency of in- and the intellectual and political moment dividuals) and feminism (with its atten- in which they were written. tion to multiple sites of exploitation and The subjects Sangster engages with the differentially situated positions of range broadly. There are essays on strikes men and women). She can be quite criti- and women’s labour activism in turn- cal of post-structuralism, particularly the of-the-century Toronto; the Canadian writings of Joan Scott, but she also draws Communist Party and the woman ques- fruitfully on Foucault and a wide range of tion in the 1920s; corporate paternalism other postmodern theorists in analyzing and female wage-earner consciousness in the meaning and significance of histori- mid-20th-century Peterborough; cross- cal sources. cultural encounters between white and The essays themselves skillfully com- Inuit women in the Canadian North in bine her theoretical and political concerns the 1940s and 1950s; women’s letters with empirically grounded history. Each to Canada’s Royal Commission on the essay opens with a broad and pointed crit- Status of Women in the late 1960s; the ical review of the relevant theoretical and “labouring bodies” of Indigenous and historical literature. A thickly researched white women “skinning, sewing, and sell- historical case study follows. Regardless ing” in the fur industry in the 1950s; and of her evidentiary base – whether the women, criminalization, and the law in dozens of interviews she conducted in Ontario. Peterborough, the legal records underpin- Yet despite the varied subject matter, ning her tales of female criminal defen- Sangster’s consistent concern in these dants, or the travel diaries of sojourning essays is with unequal relations of power white women in Northern Canada – and how such relations are experienced Sangster scrutinizes her sources with keen and sustained. These are the “feminist intelligence, ever attentive to their limits eyes” through which history is viewed. and possibilities. Indeed, her commentary As she elucidates in the introduction, on the process of writing and researching what matters is not the distinction be- history, its joys as well as its frustrations, tween “women’s history” and “gender is a kind of metanarrative accompanying history” but whether what we practice is the historical tales she constructs. Many “feminist history.” For Sangster, feminist of the essays would be excellent for teach- history means, among other things, “un- ing precisely because of their critical en- derstanding the ‘why’ of women’s agency, gagement with a wide range of scholarly analyzing women’s inequality where it literature and their astute commentary on existed, and probing the multiple power historical method and craft.

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Sangster closes the volume with and finds a way of recognizing both indi- one of her most impressive recent ar- vidual agency and structural constraint. ticles, “Making a Fur Coat: Women, the The women “consent” to paternalism but Labouring Body, and Working-Class that consent has limits, and paternalism History,” first published in 2007. The itself changes in response to their subtle essay is a superb theoretical addition to and not-so-subtle resistances. “body studies,” rightly noting the need Sangster’s introductory essay nicely for attention to the labouring body as lays out the aims of the volume and pro- well as the erotic body; the producer as vides a helpful historiographical context well as the consumer. It also manages to in which to situate the articles. Sangster convey three distinct worlds of female la- does not shy away from debate; indeed, bour. We are taken first to the Subarctic she makes a case for how it is a positive and Arctic North where Sangster uncov- force in historical scholarship. She ends ers the hidden history of Aboriginal and the introduction by calling for more de- Inuit women’s labour in fur extraction. bate and for scholars to move beyond the The essay then travels to the urban man- “debatophobia” (30) she judges as all-too- ufacturing firms filled with fur sewing characteristic of historical exchange. Her women, largely Eastern European Jewish introductory essay may help do just that. immigrants, and lastly to the retail spaces In it, she makes many provocative and where women engage in the “bodily per- pointed claims worth serious consider- formance” of fur selling. (408) Sangster is ation and debate. masterful in capturing the distinct mate- Most refreshing for me as a US wom- rialist dynamics of each of these labour en’s and labour historian, was her bold exchanges and the ways in which gender, assertion that “I see no reason to privi- class, and other ideologies structure the lege transnational history as far superior work and social relations. to those histories bounded by the nation, Another standout essay for this read- since good transnational histories must er was “The Softball Solution: Female ultimately be built on accounts of the re- Workers, Male Managers, and the lationships, entanglements, and conflicts Operation of Paternalism at Westclox, between the local, regional, national, and 1923–1960,” published originally in 1993. global.”(17) In the US the “transnational By the late 1980s, Sangster notes, she turn” has been intellectually invigorat- had moved “from writing about the hope ing, but it may not be a medicine that of socialist opposition” to writing about can or should be universally applied. As “class incorporation” (127), and, not sur- Sangster rightly notes, Canadian history, prisingly, she looks to Gramsci and theo- unlike US history, has always been trans- ries of hegemony to frame her study. Yet national simply by virtue of the domi- she never lets the theory dominate or nance of the US market and the necessity flatten the voices of the many women to be in dialogue with US scholars. she interviews. She listens to what they Sangster’s introductory essay offers have to say and presents their political other comparative insights into the tra- consciousness without condescension or jectories of US and Canadian scholarship. idealization. She sees the larger power But most of it is devoted to the twists and structures in which they operate and turns of Canadian women’s history. Here thus can appreciate the constraints shap- too Sangster does not shy away from ing their ideas and their choices. In this controversy. She rejects what she sees essay, as in many others, she adroitly bal- as the Whiggish version of Canadian ances the theoretical and the empirical women’s history with its narrative of ever

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“onward-and-upward progress.” (20) In cover a lot of ground. This book extends this version of women’s history, “a more beyond the arts as they are usually under- naïve, celebratory form of women’s his- stood – the literary, visual, and perform- tory” was displaced by a “more complex ing arts – to also study architecture and one” (23); “gender history” improved its patronage in Canada. This interest upon “women’s history”; and a superior in state-sponsored buildings and archi- poststructuralist-inflected cultural his- tectural styles as part of larger govern- tory triumphed over an earlier, outmod- mental arts programs and policies adds a ed materialist social history. In contrast, richness to the discussion that also high- Sangster offers an overview of Canadian lights the differences between ephemeral women’s history since the 1960s that is as artistic performances and the solid en- attentive to what has been lost as to what durance of buildings. Another way that has been gained. Vance restricts this vast topic to reason- Through Feminist Eyesis autobio- able proportions is to focus more on the graphical and self-reflexive. Sangster has institutions of culture, and particularly been involved in history making as well on cultural funding by various state and as history writing, and she meditates in arms-length institutions, than on the interesting ways throughout the book cultural production or artists them- on how her life experiences and political selves. As a result, the overarching thrust involvement shaped her own historical of this book is that Canadian culture scholarship. Sangster turns her critical should be understood as part of nation- feminist lens on herself as well as others. building projects as defined by vari- Through Feminist Eyes allows us to see ous state institutions and governments. how we are all made by our histories and While the author acknowledges that such how the historical actors we seek to rec- a study will have to leave out some iconic reate can only be retrieved encased in the and much-loved cultural producers (Neil historical moments in which they lived. Young, Mr. Dress-Up), Vance’s focus on Sangster is a gifted historian whose many the history of institutions of nationalist decades-long contributions to the mak- culture rather than cultural history itself ing of feminist history can be savoured in means that whole segments of indepen- this gem of a book. We are all in her debt. dent, internationalist, radical, and dissi- Dorothy Sue Cobble dent Canadian culture do not make it in Rutgers University to this study, and neither does the role of the arts in contesting the state or offering alternate visions of the nation. Jonathan F. Vance, A History of Canadian The first two chapters cover pre-con- Culture (Don Mills: Oxford University tact Aboriginal culture and European Press 2009) contact respectively, and Vance is par- ticularly strong in detailing the artistic Jonathan F. Vance’s A History of and artisanal practices of First Peoples Canadian Culture is an ambitious proj- across what is now Canada. While there ect to account for the emergence, con- is not necessarily new material here, solidation, and sponsorship of the arts in these opening chapters offer a balance Canada from pre-Confederation to the between detail and concision to suggest present. In his introduction, Vance de- a larger picture of the diversity of artis- fines “culture” as a “synonym for the arts” tic endeavours from the Northwest Coast and acknowledges that this is a limited to the Arctic. The second chapter argues definition, albeit one that allows him to that, in the contact period, religion and

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culture went hand-in-hand such that 18th and 19th centuries. He offers some there were possibilities for the intermin- lively descriptions of theatre productions gling of Aboriginal and European cul- in the military and religious institutions tural practices, such as music, to form a of the 18th century and pays attention to new hybridized culture. As this chapter francophone culture and the efforts to concludes, however, European colo- forge a distinctive French-Canadian cul- nizers were less interested in adaptive tural identity in literature and painting. cultural forms than in expanding their He also considers the role of 19th-century cultural and political dominance across popular culture in the chapter “Common the continent. Regrettably, Vance leaves Showmen and Mountebacks,” artistic Aboriginal artists and culture behind at and craft practices in settler societies in this point and proceeds to tell the story of “Culture on the Frontier,” and the reform- non-Aboriginal Canadian culture for an- ist impulses of literary societies and the other two hundred years before return- early library movement in “Dreams of ing to contemporary Aboriginal artists in Useful Knowledge.” These sections on the the final chapter, “Towards the Future.” highs and lows (in all senses of this term) What happened to Aboriginal, Inuit, and of Victorian culture in Canada point to Métis culture and artists between the the diversity of cultural pursuits, hodge- early 18th century and today? By follow- podge of cultural institutions, and spec- ing an all-too-predictable narrative of the trum of amateur to professional artistic pre-contact fertility of Aboriginal cul- productions available to those living in tures and their dormancy until the end both rural and urban Canada. The pattern of the 20th century, Vance writes out two of the book starts to change in Chapter centuries of cultural resistance, adapta- 7, however, when Vance’s discussion of tion, and survival. Instead of integrating “Streaks on the Horizon” establishes his this cultural history into the rest of the underlying argument that Canadian cul- book, Vance backtracks chronologically ture has overwhelmingly been articulated in the final chapter to mention the 1950s to cultural and political nationalism and federal government sponsorship of Arctic used to forge official narratives of the -na artistic cooperatives rather than includ- tion. The next two chapters, on imported ing this discussion in the long chapter on and exported Canadian culture, focus “The Cultural Flowering” of the 1950s. on debates about whether an imbalance His comment in the final chapter that between foreign and domestic cultural a continuity worth noting today is “a production is a sign of national inferiority revived interest in Aboriginal art that in the international cultural marketplace. echoes the fascination expressed by the While it is certainly the case that liberal first Europeans to encounter Canada’s nationalism, and the desire to create a na- natives centuries earlier” assumes that tional culture through the arts, has given Aboriginal artists only ever produce for shape to the field of Canadian cultural non-Aboriginal audiences, that this work production and determined many of its only occurs under government sponsor- internal systems (e.g. funding, awards, ship, and that it is not part of the main- commemoration, and so on), this section stream history of Canadian culture that could also acknowledge the long history takes up the rest of the book. of resistance to such an articulation of Vance is strongest, in terms of detailing culture and state and the many Canadian actual cultural production as well as its in- artists who have long challenged the role stitutional sponsorship, in the chapters on of the state in determining the cultural the primarily Anglo-Saxon cultures of the life of the nation.

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Vance spends the rest of the book which moves somewhat predictably studying Canadian culture in the 20th through the important role of propagan- century from the position of official -na da in World War II, the post-war debates tional culture with primary attention to leading into and arising from the Massey programs and policies. In the chapters on Commission, the consolidation of culture World Wars I and II, he takes the domi- through the Canada Council, and the reg- nant position that World War I both cre- ulatory role of the state on such issues as ated new cultural consumers and showed Canadian content. This is not necessarily that “their culture was derivative rather new ground, but Vance does synthesize a than distinctly Canadian” (241), which great deal of policy debate and connect it would then motivate the modernists of to developments in official Canadian arts the interwar years to seek a Canadian and architecture. Ultimately, however, it culture of their own. There is no mention is this focus on state and official cultural here of the lively pacifist and socialist arts institutions that constrains this book that World War I and domestic events from seeing and analyzing how the unof- such as the Winnipeg General Strike also ficial has always stood beside the official inspired, nor is there any recognition in the field of Canadian culture. Thus, of the internationalism to which some perhaps my disappointment with this Canadian artists subscribed in their en- book lies in a misleading title: this is less thusiasm for the League of Nations and, a history of Canadian culture than it is a subsequently, for the Popular Front in history of Canadian cultural institutions Spain. Vance’s nationalist paradigm thus and state policy. obscures a range of positions in the field Candida Rifkind of Canadian cultural production and University of Winnipeg a more radical, cosmopolitan cultural heritage than that promoted by the state and boosterist organizations such as the Paulette Regan, Unsettling the Settler Canadian Authors Association. Equally Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth disappointing is the writing out of im- Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada migrant contributions, which of course (Vancouver: ubc Press 2010) often developed without any state spon- sorship or nationalist commitments, but Will contemporary Canadian settler which sustained a diverse range of liter- society eventually recognize its immense ary, visual, and performing arts and even privilege, inherited as a by-product of the architecture that are also part of the sto- brutal colonization of Indigenous people? ry of Canadian culture. There are times Will it wake up from the cultural amnesia when Vance’s conflict model, as in his as- that has so successfully erased that histo- sertion of struggles between 19th-centu- ry from its collective consciousness? Will ry élite and popular cultures, or interwar non-Indigenous citizens who do come to traditionalists and modernists, seems terms with their past learn how to be- both too simplistic and out of step with come allies of Native activists? Will that a scholarly field long influenced by more be possible, given the poisonous legacy of complicated models of cultural develop- the Indian residential schools and its ef- ment, most notably Raymond Williams’ fect on Indigenous communities today? theory of the coexistence of residual, Will settlers ultimately arrive at a space dominant, and emergent cultures. of healing where we resist stereotyping Vance’s tight focus on official govern- Native people as ill, but instead learn ment culture shapes the rest of the book, that the sickness exists in our society not

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theirs? These uncomfortable questions, and reconciliation. According to Regan, a and many more like them, act as a per- key goal of the trc is educating the non- sistent refrain in Unsettling the Settler Native majority in Canada about the dev- Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth astating effects of residential schools and, Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada. in the process, to insist that they and not Its author, Paulette Regan, is a “white its survivors take personal responsibility settler” who writes specifically to a non- for it. Only then can the journey towards Native audience. Her main agenda is to reconciliation begin. As a result of her fo- provoke Canadians, even a few, to such cus on the trc, Regan places it in context an extent that they undertake the long, for the first time, discussing not only the destabilizing journey towards critical problems with the adrp that led to the self-reflexivity, the necessary first step to founding of the trc but also the current decolonization and one she describes as difficulties and criticism it now faces. Her “unsettling the settler within.” Only then, important contribution to the field also she argues, can they participate with includes both a critical analysis of other Indigenous people in “restorying” their forms of restorative justice, including an past. This dialogue holds the potential for in-depth account of Australia’s Council reconciliation between Indigenous and for Aboriginal Reconciliation, and the settler societies; however, it also involves nature and effectiveness of official apolo- truth telling on both sides. Unfortunately, gies to Indigenous peoples in Canada and most Canadians have proved themselves elsewhere. unwilling participants. Educating the public on both the histo- Regan is director of research for the ry of residential schools and their legacy, Truth and Reconciliation Commission which includes the cycle of dysfunction of Canada (trc). While noting she does and despair suffered by Indigenous com- not write from that position, she recog- munities throughout Canada, is a key nizes that her unsettling questions come recommendation made by the trc in from her involvement with the trc and its interim report released in February as an alternative dispute manager with 2012. Teaching students in schools and its precursor, the Alternative Dispute universities this history as well as the Resolution Program (adrp). Her work in Indigenous counter-narrative to tradi- both arenas initiated an examination of tional Canadian history is also a vital as- her own complicity in the failed but still pect of Regan’s Critical Hope pedagogy. destructive assimilationist policies of the Another important goal is to destabilize residential school system. Such knowl- the mainstream myth of tolerance, which edge has had a transformative effect, allows the non-Native majority to engage teaching her the importance of compas- in what Regan calls “selective forgetting”; sion and humility in her often-futile at- as a result, we live in denial over the in- tempts to establish trust with residential justices imposed on minorities by succes- school survivors. Her focus in the book, sive Canadian governments. Such denial then, is to bring that experience to bear in also permits systemic racism to go, for formulating a critical, decolonizing peda- the most part, unchecked. Other impor- gogy, one she names Critical Hope after tant aims include learning to represent Pedagogy of Hope, Paulo Frere’s ground- Indigenous people differently, as survi- breaking book advocating radical educa- vors and not victims; resisting scholarly tion as central to the struggle for freedom practices that attempt to “know” Natives and justice. Strategies incorporated into by researching and analyzing their lives Regan’s project begin with truth telling and cultures; and beginning to engage

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in a different, potentially transforma- it, concerned that when deployed by in- tive, Indigenous and settler relationship experienced teachers, it may exacerbate by moving to a space of “not knowing.” those power struggles and lead to the re- Situated here, as Regan suggests, we are cycling of traumatic experiences for taught to listen “differently – with a de- Indigenous students, certainly further colonizing ear” to Indigenous counter- silencing them. After years of teaching narratives. (15) Here, too, we give voice in similar contexts, I understand the dif- to our own truths, specifically acknowl- ficulties and peril inherent in facilitating edging the role of bureaucrats, policies such courses; however, like Regan, I’ve makers, and ordinary citizens like us in also witnessed the joy of those students supporting oppressive Canadian govern- who feel actively heard and are, therefore, ment regimes. Such reciprocity involves finally free to tell their stories. turning our liberal notion of benevolent Storytelling is also central to Unsettling charity on its head; instead, we must the Settler Within. Brief passages of re- learn to work with Native people, mak- flections on her personal experiences not ing ourselves vulnerable by humbly ask- only teaching but also working with the ing for permission to do so and, therefore, adr and the trc are interwoven with taking the necessary risk that we may theoretical sections. As a result, Regan well be rebuffed, ignored or, indeed, hu- has created an innovative, bi-cultural miliated. Only then can the pernicious text informed by Indigenous and western duality between settlers and Indigenous knowledge, one reflecting reconciliation people, one that identifies the colonizer and truth telling on which her project as superior to the colonized, begin to be of Critical Hope is centred. Her project, dismantled. Regan outlines here an inno- however, may seem pointless for those vative politics and pedagogy of resistance with expectations of the trc. Certainly within the Canadian context, one that in- its work to date exists under the radar volves a dedication to non-violent activ- for the non-Native majority. Regan rec- ism and struggle by allies of Indigenous ognizes, however, that “critically hoping” peoples. Key here is the role she envi- begins in the moment, in the everyday sions for non-Native Canadians in the forms of activism that eventually change Indigenous fight to overturn centuries of our world. Reading her book has been an colonial abuse and betrayal. No excuse act of “critical hope.” It will be required exists for their non-engagement. reading for my third-year course on Combining Indigenous and western Canadian culture, history and politics. knowledge is also key to Regan’s project. Molly Blyth Regan incorporates traditional teach- Trent University ing into her cross-cultural courses at the University of Victoria. By appropriating the pan-Indian concept of the circle, she Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, ed., Gender, creates spaces for First Nations, Métis, Health, and Popular Culture: Historical and non-Indigenous students to come Perspectives (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier together. Despite tensions and the in- University Press 2011) evitable play of western power dynamics in each group, she argues that eventu- Cultural and gender historians in ally this pedagogical format allows her this collection have seized upon health students to take risks and share their issues as the context for exploring pub- stories. While Regan may have found lic perceptions and representations of success with her circle work, I’m wary of femininity and masculinity. Although

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the essays are heavily weighted towards abortion services for Canadian women. women’s health, the articles convincingly Sethna effectively demonstrates how show how gender has influenced various women, in spite of the rhetoric of choice aspects of health experiences, including and even liberation, mobilized to lobby the flow of information, the availability the federal government for service provi- of services, and displays of healthfulness. sions that matched the legal decision to Editor Cheryl Krasnick Warsh points out make abortions legal. She explains that that “viewed through the lens of popular in spite of the change in the federal law, culture,” material, print and celluloid cul- women continued to rely on “health tour- ture help to show how gender and health ism,” meaning that they travelled outside combine to produce dominant, norma- of Canada in order to secure medically tive ideologies that reinforce the image of sanctioned therapeutic abortions, which health and perfection among women who thus limited the access to women with are “white, young, slim, prosperous, and sufficient means. Pointing out the dis- free of disabilities.” (vii) The contribut- crepancy between the law and the ing authors build upon this notion with practice, Sethna effectively argues that studies aimed at reinforcing this central through an examination of popular cul- theme. tural products such as novels and travel This collection contains twelve essays, literature, in combination with contem- which are separated into two sections: porary legal statutes and the Commission the transmission of health information of Inquiry into the Status of Women, it and popular representations of the body becomes clear that abortion emerged as a in sickness and health. The seven articles contested site for both feminism and the in the first section centre on advice lit- status of women in the 1970s. erature, women’s activism, and programs Heather Molyneaux’s article comple- designed specifically for women’s health. ments this argument by drawing atten- The authors are careful to tease apart the tion to the advertisements for the birth public health discourse from the patterns control pill and the changing faces of of behaviour and advice set by women women used to represent and sell contra- themselves as they encounter different ception. Molyneaux argues that informa- sets of experts claiming to know what is tion about the pill arrived hand-in-hand best for women’s bodies. The majority of with somewhat more subtle moral un- these articles zero in on issues related to dertones directing the advertisements reproduction, from childbirth to mother- at married, heterosexual women. The hood, menstruation to contraception and prominent placement of wedding rings abortion, to cervical cancer programs. and staged facial expressions set amidst Together these essays reinforce the his- images of flowers or natural surround- torical pattern that relegates women’s ings reinforced a specific set of val- health to the domain of reproduction, ues associated with pill consumption. and they show how women’s health and Regardless of the commercial opportuni- feminism have worked together to create ties beyond this segment of the popula- space for women’s programs and services. tion, the moral discourse surrounding For example, Christabelle Sethna’s article contraception constrained advertisers on abortion tourism explores how the in their depiction of contraception for feminist movement coalesced with the approximately a decade. By the early decriminalization of abortion and Sethna 1970s, Molyneaux suggests, those images exposes some of the practical obstacles slowly gave way to a more heterogenous and impediments to providing ample community of pill-consuming women,

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who did not readily present a married or for fat women, playing on similar goals of even responsible character. Like Sethna, self-esteem, beauty and health. Molyneaux’s article exposes some of the Body politics play out differently in ways consumers influenced the shape of Christina Burr’s article about Jamie Lee the advertising campaigns. Curtis, whose celebrated and sexualized The second part of the book explores body became the source of her personal some of the ways in which men and wom- insecurities and led to her public revela- en have been represented through popular tion about the realities of aging women culture, beginning, somewhat differently, and body image. Burr cleverly walks with an essay from Ric N. Caric on delir- readers through Curtis’ career as a het- ium tremens in antebellum Philadelphia. erosexual sex symbol and her later public This article provides some content for defiance of this characterization, which discussion about masculine health, but is encouraged Curtis to reflect openly otherwise a bit of an outlier in a collec- on the representation and infatuation tion of articles primarily about women in of particular kinds of women’s bodies. 20th-century North America (with one Merging film studies with popular cul- on Australia). Caric’s study considers how ture and Curtis’ own candid reflections, delirium tremens and the popular culture Burr unpacks some of the discourse of drinking shaped masculine identities about allegedly “perfect” bodies to bring in the mid-19th century. Taken together to light some of the inherent insecurities with articles on anatomy, which consider and unrealistic portrayals that persist in a long history culminating in the popular popular culture. though controversial Body Worlds exhib- Taken together, these essays provide its, the 1980s aerobics craze as it applied sophisticated models for exploring the to “fat women,” Jamie Lee Curtis’ body interplay between health and gender as politics, and parents dealing with their represented in popular culture. The book gay sons in the wake of aids, Caric’s essay might have been strengthened with more seems somewhat out of place. strategic attention to the ways in which The remaining articles on bodily rep- some of these themes run across femi- resentations highlight some of the in- ninity and masculinity, or how healthful novative work being done in this field by discourses play into heterosexual ideals exploring more recent manifestations of (with the exception of Murray’s article on gendered identities and creatively chal- parents of gay men, which raises this is- lenging the idea of women as a collec- sue somewhat indirectly). Those themes tive. In the studies focused on the 1980s, lie behind some of these contributions the collusion of feminism and health as- and the overall arrangement but are not sumes different ends. For instance, Jenny directly confronted. Although the major- Ellison’s provocative study of “Aerobics ity of the articles focus on Canadian de- for Fat Women Only” problematizes the velopments, the North American breadth idea that all women subscribed to com- creates space for comparative studies, mon ideals of beauty or even fitness. such as the one explored in the side-by- Drawing from a larger study of fitness side articles on cervical cancer screen- and body politics, Ellison shows in this ing programs in the US and Canada. The article that the 1980s aerobics craze had book will likely appeal to a wide variety reinforced particular ideas about thin- of readers with interests in health, femi- ness, but that women challenged those nism, reproduction, and body politics ideas and produced fitness communities and offers a provocative collection of

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historically engaging and historiographi- activism and transformative action, the cally rich articles. book aims to deliver concrete examples Erika Dyck of how these media “permit increasing University of Saskatchewan cultural and social agency among indig- enous groups, and how aboriginal media producers conceive of traditional knowl- Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson and edge.” (Introduction, 7) The volume is Marian Bredin, eds., Indigenous Screen structured in three parts and features re- Cultures in Canada (Winnipeg: University cent case studies in Aboriginal film and of Manitoba Press 2010) communication projects. Several articles focus on aptn and its audience recep- The study of indigenous media is a tion, and three essays are by scholars of relatively recent development, bridging Aboriginal descent. visual anthropology, cultural studies, The first part, “The Cultural History cinema, communication and media stud- of Aboriginal Media in Canada,” draws ies, among other area studies. In Canada, from established scholarship and inde- the field has emerged mainly from com- pendent research to provide a necessary munication and media scholars. The re- framework to the development of aptn cent publication of anthologies such as and other Aboriginal media projects. Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada Chapter 1 reprises and updates Lorna attests to the richness and relevance of Roth’s exhaustive research on the cre- this field. The main goal of this collec- ation of aptn, previously published in tion of essays was to generate a volume 2005. Roth traces a succinct historical that would express the development of overview of Aboriginal television in six policies and practices that have led to phases, placing emphasis on media pol- diverse forms of cultural expression and icy, infrastructure and territorial con- representation of Aboriginal peoples in siderations. She explains the challenges the Canadian territory, with a particu- of moving from a grounded localized lar emphasis on the development of the community television project to a na- Aboriginal Peoples Television Network tional network and values the thrust (aptn). In this sense, it’s the first publi- towards internationalization of aptn’s cation to bring together interdisciplin- programming. She also comments on ary scholarship that situates the current the relative marginality of aptn despite production and circulation of Aboriginal having secured an important renewal on media throughout Canada, and that Canada’s major cable carriers. Chapter 2 specifically addresses “contemporary by Jennifer David (Chapleau Cree) veers programming practices and content toward the more specific questions of emerging from Aboriginal media organi- the actual possibilities of Aboriginal zations.” (Introduction, 7) language preservation and revitalization The starting point of Indigenous offered by broadcast media, and points Screen Cultures in Canada was a con- out the limited data available on actual ference panel on aptn at the Society for reception of such outlets. Cinema and Media Studies convened by Part II, aptn and Indigenous Screen Hafsteinsson in 2006. Following the no- Cultures, opens with a chapter by the vol- tions of Indigenous media scholar Faye ume’s co-editor Sigurjón Hafsteinsson, Ginsburg on how aboriginally controlled who argues that aptn journalism media production enables cultural practices exercise “deep democracy,”

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delving into the policies and best prac- youth identity, where American ’hood tices innovated by aptn journalists, both and global hip-hop aesthetics engage lo- Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. From cal cultural responses to the economic program content and reporting styles to and racist legacies of colonialism in dis- the ethics of giving voice and showing im- enfranchised urban communities. ages of sacred moments, the essay lucidly Part iii of the book, “Transforming establishes the differences between the Technologies and Emerging Media aptn news teams and mainstream news Circuits,” opens with a study by Doris agencies. Aspects of cultural and lin- Baltruschat on the co-production of the guistic sensitivity, first person and com- film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, by munity storytelling, staffing, training, Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, the and mentorship are taken into account, second feature film by the Igloolik Isuma as they contribute to “foster practices Productions. Baltruschat explores the that are deeply local but simultaneously possibilities that new digital media such transnational.” (53) More broadly, they as hd video and web-based platforms also forge new possibilities in the his- have brought independent producers, torically contested relationship between especially those from a long-standing Aboriginal communities and the media. oral storytelling tradition like the Inuit, Marian Bredin’s chapter in this section as well as the implications international on aptn and its audiences evidences the co-production can have for such a film challenges in attempting to satisfy an ex- project. tremely diverse viewership – northern/ The last two essays in the volume ad- southern, urban/rural, Aboriginal/non- dress research on Aboriginal media Aboriginal – offering a model of analysis from an insider-outsider perspective, that triangulates an ideal, an active and that of the Aboriginal researcher. Mike an actual viewer from the perspective Patterson (Métis) complements the more of both producers and stakeholders of academic studies with a glimpse from the network. Kerstin Knopf’s essay on within, charting some of the early pro- aptn’s programming and acquisitions ductive uses of the Internet at the hands policy becomes one of the most inter- of Native artists and Aboriginal online esting interventions when laying out the communities that inserted themselves discursive strategies of aptn. Knopf also into the public sphere by engaging in points out the potential contradictions activism, creating educational tools to and ambivalences that such a network serve future generations and dispersed must confront in balancing real econom- communities, or starting online busi- ic needs (such as attracting commercial nesses to become self-reliant, while keep- sponsors) and maintaining a firm decolo- ing issues of access to these technologies nizing stance against historic Aboriginal in the foreground. With a refreshing dose misrepresentation. of humour and actual postings from chat Programming content is also explored rooms and discussion threads, Patterson in film scholar Christine Ramsay’s illu- brings his own view alongside other minating article on the Regina-produced Native voices that recognize the need to series Moccassin Flats, “the first dra- use these technologies critically and in a matic television series in North America timely way. to be created, written, produced and The final chapter, “Taking a Stance, performed by Aboriginal people.” (105) Aboriginal Media Research as an Act of Ramsay analyzes this successful series Empowerment,” by Métis scholar Yvonne as a ripe site for rethinking Aboriginal Poitras Pratt is more about the search

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for methodologies that a Native scholar Oneida women’s voices – based on in- might find useful in doing research in terviews with twenty women from the Aboriginal communities. Pratt’s journey Oneida territory in Ontario – are central reveals the dual and often uncomfortable to the narrative, so are crucial aspects “insider dynamics” (175) Aboriginal re- of Onyota:aka epistemology, particu- search brings, but also signals the impor- larly the Creation Story and the forma- tance of engaging in active research that tion of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. can generate the committed involvement Perhaps the most unique aspect of the of community members, particularly in book, however, is its rigorous attention the design of local media projects, which to theories of nationalism, and the appro- are still often viewed as double-edged priateness of nationalism for decoloniz- swords. Her election to carry out a criti- ing the Oneida nation and as a process of cal and active ethnography may serve as liberation for Oneida women. an important model for other Aboriginal Sunseri, who is Turtle Clan from scholars that have to satisfy multiple de- Oneida of the Thames and an active mands within their research. Her chap- participant in the Longhouse at Oneida, ter builds on the critical work of Maori began her research at Oneida in a re- scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, known for spectful manner, by discussing it first Decolonizing Methodologies: Research with her Clan mother and other Oneida and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed women, and refining the research topic in Books 1999). that manner. Her research also involved Written in accessible prose, which may participating in traditional ceremonies, attract wide readership, this book will be teachings, workshops and conferences, in of particular interest to communication particular a weekend workshop at Oneida media scholars as well as to those inter- territory in New York State where the ested in Aboriginal self-representation land claim dispute between Oneida and and decolonization processes. Readers New York State was addressed. Her con- unfamiliar with Canada’s media policy cerns in writing the book were twofold: or its Aboriginal nations will find the on the one hand, to include Oneida wom- introductory texts helpful, and the vol- en’s perspectives as knowledgeable con- ume succeeds in opening up internal tributors to Indigenous discourse and, debates on Aboriginal issues within the on the other, to engage with postcolo- Canadian mediascape that may very well nial and feminist theories of nationalism serve as models for critical media studies and to explore their relevance to Oneida elsewhere. women’s struggle for decolonization. Amalia Cordova Sunseri grounds the work in two for- Smithsonian National Museum mative narratives of Haudenosaunee of the American Indian/ peoples: the Creation story and the for- New York University mation of the Haudenosaunee League (otherwise known as the Iroquois Confederacy). Indeed, the Creation story Lina Sunseri, Being Again of One Mind: is analyzed a number of times, in order Oneida Women and the Struggle for to exemplify the healthy relationships Decolonization (British Columbia: ubc Oneida women seek to build in order to Press 2011) “Be of One Mind,” to address the wom- en-centredness of Oneida cosmology, This book discusses Oneida women, and to introduce a history of the Oneida nationalism and decolonization. While nation. Similarly the foundation of the

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Haudenosaunee League is addressed as She then turns to Indigenous theorists part of Oneida history, as are the prin- such as Kiera Ladner, Taiaiake Alfred, ciples of the League and their relevance Audra Simpson, and Dale Turner. In ex- to contemporary decolonization. In amining their writings she expounds on doing this, Sunseri reflects a circular the different ways in which they address process of building knowledge, rather the relevance of nationalism to differ- than more typical linear academic mod- ent Indigenous communities; ultimately els. The effects of colonial wars on the these theorists create space whereby dif- Haudenosaunee League, the splitting of ferent frameworks of Indigenous self-de- the confederacy and Oneida’s experience termination can be understood. as allies of the United States, their loss While Sunseri’s rigorous exploration of land and the fragmenting of the na- of nationalism clarifies its relevance for tion into three communities (New York, Indigenous communities, her discus- Wisconsin and London, Ontario), as sions with Oneida women reveal that the well as the imposition of a colonial order women are struggling with the down- within Canada are all addressed in order grading of their roles under colonialism. to frame the issues the community faces. Noting that for Oneida women the con- It is Sunseri’s analysis of nationalism, cept of “Mothers of the Nation” has al- however, which makes this book truly ways been about claiming the power that unique. While a number of Indigenous was traditionally inherent to women in scholars have addressed aspects of Haudenosaunee societies, Sunseri ques- Indigenous nationalism, Sunseri tackles tions whether the process of reclaiming this issue front and centre. She focuses tradition could potentially empty this first on mainstream theorists who view concept of its empowering traditional nations as social constructions irrevo- meanings, so that it becomes a tool to cably tied to modernity and the state, in- oppress women. Because of this, she fo- cluding Ernest Gellner, E. J. Hobsbawm, cuses extensively on questions of gender Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith. and nationalism. Through the writings of In carefully articulating the different ap- Floya Anthias, Nera Yuval-Davis, Nahla proaches utilized by these theorists it be- Abdo, Kumari Jayawardena, Neloufer de comes clear that through their profound Mel, Cherifa Boutta, Neluka Silva, Anne Eurocentrism they cannot address the McClintock, Cynthia Enloe, Himani existence of pre-colonial Indigenous na- Bannerji, Mariana Valverde, and Enakshi tions. Turning to postcolonial theorists Dua, Sunseri addresses women’s roles next, Sunseri articulates the important in national liberation struggles ranging contributions of Homi Bhabha, Stewart from the Algerian War of Independence Hall, Edward Said, and, of course, Franz to Palestinian and Tamil resistance, to Fanon in connecting colonialism to the decolonization of India, Indonesia, questions of nationalism, race, culture, Turkey, and Egypt. She also focuses on identity, and hybridity. While she notes the ways in which newly invented forms that these theorists provide important of cultural nationalism can be revolution- questions that Indigenous peoples en- ary or reactionary and can particularly gaged in decolonization struggles need be used to subordinate women, as well as to consider, she challenges the pervasive the particular manner in which women assumption of many of the writers that have been affected by different nation- colonialism inevitably eradicates pre-co- building projects. Sunseri uses this in- lonial cultures and identities or that the formation as a backdrop through which nation is always a modern phenomenon. to view Oneida women’s perspectives

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on nationalism, cultural identity, and back” to postcolonial, transnational fem- tradition. inist and anti-racist theorists, who for Sunseri is the first Indigenous scholar too long have premised their works on to have focused so extensively on nation- Indigenous absence. alism. Undoubtedly this is the strongest Bonita Lawrence feature of the book, and these chapters York University alone make this book well worth read- ing. The chapters expressing the voices of Oneida women are a good backdrop Christopher N. Matthews, The to these theories, as we hear the women’s Archaeology of American Capitalism: perspectives, which voice local concerns The American Experience in an mirroring the theories explored above. Archaeological Perspective (Gainesville: Hearing the women talk about their University Press of Florida 2010) hopes for rebuilding the Oneida nation and the strength tradition offers them, This book is an essential contribution and yet the struggles needed to overcome to Social Archaeology and American male dominance in the community and Historical Archaeology. It primarily re- the rewriting of tradition in ways that fers to the United States of America but erase women’s centrality, highlights the the implications of its discourse are not relevance of this work for Indigenous limited to that nation, and could be high- women. Indeed, Sunseri’s final chap- ly relevant to any scholar interested in ters address a number of concepts that the processes of materialization in other Indigenous women in Canada (as well as capitalist systems. The author presents in the United States) are struggling with, an analysis of archaeological evidence including how Canada has successfully attesting to the social transformations bifurcated “Indigenous women’s rights” caused by the advent of the capitalist and “Indigenous rights,” the relevance of system, from a theoretical point of view feminism to Indigenous women, and the mostly inspired by Marx and Weber. reality that different Indigenous commu- This book comes as a necessary addition nities have experienced colonialism dif- to some key recent publications largely ferently and therefore may have different focused on the transformative effects of priorities. Sunseri concludes with a call the introduction of a capitalist frame- for Indigenous women and men to engage work in society, but it also looks at the in struggles to decolonize. She addresses conception, uses and misuses, practice the power of dreaming, which will be a and interpretations of present-day ar- necessary part of envisioning a decolo- chaeology (Yannis Hamilakis and Philip nized future for all of us. Duke, Archaeology and Capitalism: I enjoyed reading this book immensely. From Ethics to Politics; Randall McGuire, Scholars who primarily seek a linear his- Archaeology as Political Action), as well tory of Oneida may struggle somewhat as concentrating on specific colonial or with the traditional and more circu- post-colonial contexts (Sarah Croucher lar focus Sunseri utilizes, however her and Lindsay Weiss, eds., The Archaeology analysis of nationalism and its central- of Capitalism in Colonial Contexts). ity to Indigenous decolonization is a In his book, Matthews supports the powerful contribution to contemporary idea that a new archaeological praxis Indigenous discourse. It is also an ex- should be defined to support non-capi- tremely valuable contribution to a grow- talist alternatives within archaeological ing body of Indigenous writing that “talks interpretations. The main purpose of this

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book is then to explore how archaeology history within the metropolis of the can facilitate an understanding of the Northeast, and the underdeveloped pe- processes that lend to people accepting riphery of the Midwest. Archaeological their own commodification as individu- remains show the acceleration of capi- als. The central interpretative tool pre- talist domination over all aspects of life, sented in Chapter 1 is drawn from the notably by exhibiting qualities of the idea that the material properties of daily capitalist ideals of the private home and living embedded in capitalism can be in- the nuclear family. This new domination terpreted through three different levels contributed to drastic change of the ur- of understanding of the objects: their ban landscape: the separation of work use, the mechanisms of exchange they structures from those domestic, men involve, and their fetishization (i.e. when from women (while subordinating the the social value attributed to an object latter), and separating classes into a hier- is endowed not by the maker but by its archy. Similarly, in the Midwest the new owner). mining towns reproduced the new capi- In Chapter 2, the author presents the talist social order and imposed the cor- simultaneous mechanisms of inclusion porate company’s rules and policies on and exclusion involved in the capital- its population. The rapid development of ist system that might be traceable in ar- competitive individualism against united chaeological records. To do so, Matthews and cohesive social, political and ethnic scrutinizes the archaeology and history communities generated isolation and a of the Narragansett and the Mohawk pressure to conform. This conformity re- peoples in the 18th century. The integra- quired following middle-class capitalist tion of First Nations people into a capi- ideals, and embracing all its material at- talist system was firmly established in the tributes. The material culture associated fur trade, and in several food and crafts with ideal urban life was thus primarily exchanges. In turn, this system afford- recognized for what value objects were ed a specialized function for colonized endowed with and represented in the groups, maintaining trade within them capitalist system rather than for their in- for as long as they were economically vi- tended function. able. Meanwhile, the colonial structure The subsequent two chapters are dedi- established a definition for the group cated to the recognition of archaeological as “Indians,” ensuring their distinction material associated with any form of re- from the rest of society and disallowing sistance against capitalism in American their integration. This process of exclu- history. According to Matthews, during sion was completed as soon as the First the 19th century, women’s attempts to Nations groups could no longer partici- break their isolation in the home, regain pate in the capitalist system as “Indians,” independence from men, and establish that is when their functional viability for community solidarity were generally trade and value came to an end. At the not successful. Additionally, the author end of the American Revolution, coloniz- recalls that most utopian self-sufficient ers considered “Indianity” useless or even American communities were systemati- threatening. It was then declared incom- cally dissolved, with the exception of the patible with the new white capitalist soci- Shakers. However, archaeological records ety, leading to a quasi-total exclusion. revealed that this success was in fact due Through Chapters 4 and 5, Matthews to an active and close, although hidden, develops his argument by examining the collaboration with the market, render- later changes in 19th-century American ing the community not so different from

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the rest of the American middle class. unconvincing archaeologists that profess Finally, one of the rare testimonies of re- to be collaborative. Ultimately, Matthews sistance against capitalism is to be found strongly recommends that archaeologists in African American assemblages from reconsider their motivations for practic- the 17th and 18th centuries, although ing archaeology, and do so by shifting not through the objects themselves or their focus away from preserving and their primary use, but rather through controlling archaeological resources to the alternative significance these ob- direct engagement with communities, so jects had taken on in the lives of enslaved as to reconnect them to the remains of peoples. African Americans achieved the past. this through various means of spatial This book will be particularly useful appropriation and the re-appropriation for American scholars and professionals of objects. They did so by adopting, for specialized in history and historical ar- example, European ceramics standards, chaeology and who intend to practice an while according objects their proper use ethical archaeology derived from strong and symbolic meaning. These processes, critical thinking. My sole criticism would which can be observed in archaeological be that the connection between some ar- records, contributed to the development chaeological evidence discussed in this of a sense of belonging in a divergent book and its re-interpretation can appear community, which subsequently af- somewhat detached from the original firmed their position within mainstream set of data. However, the diversity of the society and challenged the justifications case studies as well as the originality and of racial segregation. Such processes re- provocative quality found in the latter stored some dignity and relations to a part of this book render it a fundamen- system that had commodified the entire- tal contribution for anyone interested ty of African American existence. in building a theoretical background for Finally, in the last chapter, the author archaeological practice and who wishes challenges current archaeologists to to counteract such capitalist manifesta- work outside the influences of a capital- tions in archaeology as so-called Cultural ist logic. Matthews points out that ar- Resource Management. This book will chaeologists generally tolerate or have help to develop a critical voice within the even assumed the fundamental ideas current prescriptive and normative capi- of capitalism. Despite this, he suggests talist structures in which archaeology that various ethical issues should be evolves. addressed: first, archaeologists should Nicolas Zorzin urgently take into consideration the University of Melbourne, Australia modern political-economy framework in which archaeology is produced to en- sure a critical distance from an archaeol- David Lee McMullen, Strike! The Radical ogy serving market interests and logic. Insurrections of Ellen Dawson (Gainsville: Second, he proposes that it is necessary University Press of Florida 2010) to integrate questions concerning past and present exclusion and oppression of In his concluding chapter to Strike!, people from the very start of discourse. entitled “My Personal Observations,” Third, while he appears to see some hope author David Lee McMullen describes in the development of “collaborative ar- one of the tasks of the biographer as chaeology,” he stresses the scarcity of making connections “between scholar- that type of project and the occasionally ship and imagination.” (185) Indeed, it is

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imagination that made possible the writ- members of Dawson’s family belonged ing of Strike! because the entirety of Ellen to the Co-operative Society, and that the Dawson’s life for which McMullen has Dawson women “may well have been” convincing evidence would fit nicely in an (25) members of the Women’s Guild. article of twenty to twenty-five pages. On McMullen’s chapter on labour radical- this basis, readers will likely have one of ism and the “Red Clydeside” is crucial two responses to Strike!; either they will to his claim that Dawson became a left- question its publication as a book, or they wing labour organizer in the American will understandably admire McMullen’s textile industry as a result of being radi- determination, resourcefulness, and calized as a youth. The impact of World dogged refusal to allow the memory of War I and the labour radicalism of 1919 Ellen Dawson to be erased from the his- are described, but in the words of other torical record. women activists such as Mary Macarthur Ellen Dawson was born into working- and Mary Brooksbank. Ellen Dawson re- class poverty on 14 December 1900 in mains silent, although this does not re- Barrhead, Scotland, one of the country’s strain McMullen from claiming that she early industrial towns. Part of the met- was “a disciple of Red Clydeside.” (50) The ropolitan area of Glasgow, Barrhead’s strength of McMullen’s chapter is his single largest industry was textiles, and short biographies of John Maclean, James in 1901 slightly more than half the textile Maxton and Mary Macarthur, not what workforce was female. (13–14) McMullen he has to tell us about Ellen Dawson’s radi- provides compelling evidence of over- calization. The problem is that McMullen crowded housing, primitive sanitary has no real evidence of this process of conditions and the high infant mortal- radicalization. Once again, almost ev- ity rate, but little of it directly related to erything he argues is based on inference. women in the textile industry that was For example, McMullen follows his biog- to become Ellen’s Dawson’s life. He pro- raphy of Macarthur with the claim that vides more information about wages and there is “every reason to believe” (35) that working conditions in the foundries than a young Dawson saw Macarthur speak in the textile mills, focusing on Dawson’s and was inspired by her. father Patrick. In fact, there is every reason to believe Following a chapter on Barrhead’s in- that as a young girl Ellen Dawson was dustry, workforce and living conditions more influenced by and involved in the McMullen details the associational life of Catholic Church than she was involved Barrhead’s working class. Next, a chapter in and influenced by labour radical- on co-operation gives us a revealing look ism. In his introduction, McMullen ob- at the Barrhead Co-operative Society and serves that Dawson was born and died a the local Women’s Guild. By now the main Catholic, and “lived most of her life as a characteristic of the first half of the book devout Catholic.” (xxiv) McMullen does has been established: a well-researched not even consider the possibility that and evocative look at the working-class Ellen Dawson spent her youth involved world in which Ellen Dawson was raised, with the Catholic Church, not being radi- accompanied by a problematic attempt to calized by the working-class culture in locate Ellen Dawson within that world. which she lived. McMullen may be right, Lacking membership rolls for either the but he does not convince the reader that Co-operative Society or the Women’s he has ruled out being wrong. Guild, McMullen can only suggest that In 1919 Dawson moved with her fam- the evidence “seems to indicate” (23) that ily to Lancashire. McMullen is unable to

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explain why such an impoverished work- that Dawson had a higher profile out- ing-class family was able to rent not one, side Passaic than in Passaic itself, where but two dwellings there. (52) Nonetheless, she was “less uniquely newsworthy than the author is able to provide evidence when she was in another community or- of Dawson’s employment as a spinner ganizing the workers.” (77) and weaver between December 1919 In 1928 Ellen Dawson was involved in and April 1921, at which point Dawson the New Bedford, Massachusetts strike, and her brother set sail for America. As when 30,000 cotton mill workers pro- the scene shifts to America there is the tested a ten per cent wage cut. McMullen expectation that we will begin to hear focuses on the 60 per cent of the workers Dawson’s own voice; instead we are given who were women, quite understandably the words of another young Scottish im- dealing with the challenges of organiz- migrant, Agnes Schilling, explaining why ing women workers in “male-domi- she left Scotland. (59) nated immigrant communities.” (116) Ellen Dawson came into her own in All of the actual comments McMullen the textile strike in Passaic, New Jersey, provides on organizing women work- when some 16,000 woollen mill workers ers in New Bedford, however, come went on strike between October 1925 and from Sophie Melvin, Ann Craton and February 1927. Driven to militant action Elizabeth Donneley, not Dawson herself. by unsafe working conditions, low wages, Consequently, McMullen inadvertently brutal foremen, and uncaring owners, pushes Dawson even further into the the largely immigrant workforce fought background. McMullen does, however, a compelling struggle against great odds. make a convincing case for Dawson’s im- Ellen Dawson was a significant figure, portance; she was arrested several times first as secretary of the communist- and sentenced to three months in prison, directed United Front Committee of and then to an additional twelve months. Passaic Textile Workers, then as secre- (125) tary of Local 1603 of the United Textile In his account of Ellen Dawson’s work Workers of America when control of the in the 1929 Gastonia strike McMullen is strike passed to the American Federation finally able to bring her into focus and put of Labor. While McMullen does con- some flesh on the bones of the heroic im- vince us that Dawson has been unfairly age he has attempted to portray thus far. overshadowed by better-known strike The issue is race, and McMullen provides leaders such as Albert Weisbord, doubts convincing evidence that Dawson’s com- remain. James Cannon, writing in the mitment to racial equality was genuine, a June 1926 issue of the Labor Defender, genuineness testified to by Black commu- identifies Lena Chernenko and Nancy nist John H. Owen. (160) Here, at last, af- Sandowsky as the “moving spirits of the ter 160 pages, we meet the Ellen Dawson picket line” in the Passaic strike, while that McMullen told us we would find at McMullen writes that Dawson “walked the beginning of the book. Yet even here on picket lines.” (75) Chernenko and we are presented with a conundrum. Sandowsky are nowhere to be seen in McMullen notes that Dawson spoke at Strike! Nonetheless, newspaper coverage, the first public rally held in Gastonia notably in the New York Times, does re- by the communist-led National Textile veal that Dawson toured and spoke on be- Workers’ Union on 30 March 1929. On half of the relief effort in the company of page 138 he comments that she was the legendary labour leaders such as “Mother “first speaker,” and on page 145 says she Bloor.” McMullen insightfully observes was “preaching a message of worker

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solidarity.” Neither description does jus- suffered, an old story that has still not tice to the power of Dawson’s speaking gotten old. evoked in a quotation to be found in John Jay Lovestone and some 200 of his fol- Salmond’s 1995 book Gastonia 1929. This lowers created their own Communist quotation is not in McMullen’s book, but Party organization, and Ellen Dawson it is on Wikipedia. Literally starved for remained active in it until 1931. At that direct evidence of Dawson’s impact, why point, however, she appears to have does McMullen not provide this most ceased her radical activities for reasons compelling example? that remain unclear. McMullen then In October 1929 Ellen Dawson was deals with the remaining half of her life embroiled in a deportation trial in in a chapter of six pages. She married in Trenton, New Jersey. Judge William 1935, and retired in 1966. The next year, Clark ruled in Dawson’s favour, stating on 17 April 1967, she died. that she could not be prosecuted for her Strike! has much to commend it. It opinions. Dawson was not so lucky where brings to life a long-neglected working- her position in the Communist Party class organizer who deserves to be re- was concerned. Following her expul- membered and respected. In the process sion from the United Textile Workers of of writing it the author has brought alive America, she had joined other commu- the history of working-class Scottish im- nist militants to organize the National migrants, the immigrant communities of Textile Workers’ Union of America. (133) Passaic and New Bedford, and the pover- Dawson became the first vice president ty and struggles of textile workers in the and, according to McMullen, “the first American south. That said, McMullen woman to be elected to a national lead- has pushed to the limit the possibilities ership position in an American textile of working-class biography, and alerted union.” (134) In February 1929 Dawson us to the fact that there may be a point attended the Sixth Annual Convention beyond which we should not be willing to of the Workers (Communist) Party of go. At some point the inferences we need America, the organization headed by Jay to make, the choices we must impose Lovestone, and was named to the party’s on our subjects, and the assumptions Central Executive Committee. (137) we have to make in and of themselves Jay Lovestone went to the Soviet Union become the kind of condescension that in March 1929, where he angered Joseph Edward Thompson warned us against. Stalin. By the time he returned to the In attempting to rescue working-class United States in June he had been ex- women like Ellen Dawson from the con- pelled from the Communist Party as descension of later generations we risk a “right deviationist.” As a supporter doing the same thing ourselves. On bal- of Lovestone Ellen Dawson suffered a ance David Lee McMullen has made the similar fate; she lost her position on the right choice, but perhaps there are other Executive Committee of the Communist working-class activists who, their contri- Party and was expelled from the National butions notwithstanding, are best left to Textile Workers’ Union. Here McMullen rest in peace. provides a compelling account of the way Peter Campbell in which individuals with little or no ex- Queen’s University perience in the mills replaced working- class activists like Dawson, who had actually worked in textile mills for many years. In the end it was the workers who

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Erik S. McDuffie,Sojourning for Freedom: communist street speaking, introduc- Black Women, American Communism, ing figures such as Grace P. Campbell, and the Making of Black Left Feminism Williana Burroughs, Maude White, (Durham and London: Duke University Helen Holman, and Hermina Dumont Press 2011) Huiswood. If such women tended to be overshadowed in Black radical circles It is surprising how little we know by their counterparts in the nationalist about the history of African American Garveyite movement, they nevertheless women and communism, on the one clearly emerged as a forceful presence hand, and, on the other, their contribu- in New York African American circles. tion to Black feminism. Erik S. McDuffie McDuffie reconstructs their intense -in provides a pioneering excavation of some ternationalism and concern with the important burial grounds, where obscure global place of women, as well as their histories have rested undisturbed for de- community activism in organizations cades. The result is an engrossing book, like the Harlem Tenants League, by piec- and one that makes a wide interdisciplin- ing together accounts of speeches, sift- ary contribution to the study of women, ing through rare articles in the Black African Americans, and the revolution- and communist press, and outlining the ary left. meanings African American women If you can not judge a book by its cover, drew from their trips to the Soviet Union. you most emphatically can get a sense of As the Communist Party developed this study’s approach and subject by its its Black Belt Nation thesis in 1928 and index. Four women have lengthy, com- upped the level of its anti-racist agitation plex, cross-referenced entries: Claudia in the Third Period (1929–1934), “the Jones, Louise Thompson Patterson, Negro Question” assumed a place of in- Esther Cooper Jackson, and Audley creasing prominence for all Party mem- “Queen Mother” Moore. Jones, the sub- bers. Black women were more likely to be ject of an existing scholarly monograph, featured in Party activities, especially as joined the Communist Party in the US leaders and writers, and this nurtured the in 1936 out of a commitment to anti-fas- important second generation of African cism, a cause that also attracted Jackson American women that figure so deci- to the Party. Patterson and Moore, who sively in McDuffie’s account. Weaned on were drawn to the Communist Party in Scottsboro agitations, the Soviet Union’s the early 1930s through mobilizations commitment to expose the American to free the Scottsboro Boys, preceded cancer of racism in its creation of a pro- Jackson and Jones in their enlistment. paganda film, Black and White, Harlem’s McDuffie’s focus on these four women League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and their recruitment to the Communist Depression-era rent strikes, unemployed Party in the 1930s structures his book in councils, and tenants’ movements, and particular ways. the post-1935 Popular Front campaigns The early years of communism and associated with anti-fascist mobilizations Black women’s involvement in the Party, relating to Ethiopia and Spain, Black for instance, are suggestive, if sketchy. women of the first and second genera- McDuffie alludes to the importance tions of American communism figured of a significant and little-appreciated forcefully in a broad range of activities. cohort of African American Harlem McDuffie outlines how this period saw women who were centrally involved the politics of a particular Black femi- in the African Blood Brotherhood and nism cohere, one of its most articulate

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statements being Louise Thompson’s Cold War, Black women continued to [Patterson] groundbreaking 1936 article, play vitally important roles in ongoing “Toward a Brighter Dawn,” which ap- struggles for social justice. For women peared in the official voice of the CP’s like Esther Cooper [Jackson], travels to National Women’s Commission, Woman the Soviet Union and the 1945 London, Today. Thompson’s critical contribution England World Youth Conference were was to elaborate an understanding of the linked to anti-colonialism and support “triple exploitation” Black women work- for Third World independence move- ers confronted on a daily basis, “as work- ments, which received strong endorse- ers, as women, and as Negroes.” (112) ment from Popular Front organizations McDuffie suggests that this may well like the World Federation of Democratic have been the first time that this phrase, Youth. Non-communist Black women “triple exploitation,” so pivotal in the like Birmingham, Alabama’s Sallye Bell emergence of Black feminism, appeared Davis (mother of Angela Davis, argu- in print. Thompson also wrote a 1937 ably the most well-known Black feminist article, “Negro Women in the Party,” in the modern communist movement) suggesting that communist promotion crossed paths with Cooper and others in of interracialism had the detrimental ef- civil rights struggles, churches, women’s fect of leaving Black women isolated and clubs, and trade unions. In Los Angeles alone as African American movement Charlotta Bass, the septuagenarian pub- men had access to white women while lisher of the influential African American Black females were reduced to being newspaper, the California Eagle, linked “wallflowers” at Party social events. (119) up with these increasingly vocal women. One year later a group of Black commu- This expanding and now generation- nist women unsuccessfully petitioned ally complex milieu of Black women pio- the Communist International in Moscow neered a radical and underappreciated and Party officials in the Harlem branch early 1950s African American feminist to ban Black-white marriage. Audley opposition to racism, from the Jim Crow Moore, arguably the single figure in South to the battlefields of the Korean McDuffie’s account who gravitated away war, the Sojourners for Truth and Justice. from communism to a more vociferous McDuffie sees this short-lived body as “a Black nationalist politics, later insisted black women’s international.” This may that African American women were be overstated, but it suggests the unde- guarded about taking their men to Party- niable importance of pivotal women like organized events for fear that aggressive Jones, Jackson, and Thompson Patterson, Jewish women would put sexual moves who lived through the repressive travails on them: “they all had black men.… A of the Cold War (Jones was deported) black woman, if she took her husband and linked the communist-led struggles in there, he wouldn’t last long. ’cause the of the 1930s to the activism of the 1960s, white women would grab him.” (120) when Jackson edited the lauded African By the 1940s and 1950s, with the American literary and political journal, struggle against Jim Crow accelerat- Freedomways. Not only did this magazine ing and moving into the modern civil publish the writings of Black male lumi- rights era, new generations of African naries of the left such as W.E.B. Du Bois, American women linked arms with their Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, its predecessors. Schooled in bodies like pages were the initial outlets for the work the Southern Negro Youth Congress, of African American feminists such as but scarred by McCarthyism and the Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Audre

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Lorde. It was in Freedomways that Angela it in the sectarian and ultraleftist context Davis published articles after her release of the Third Period or the cross-class col- from prison in the 1970s. And it would laborations of the Popular Front, does be Davis who would insist on the ongo- not really factor into McDuffie’s book. ing relevance of Thompson Patterson’s And yet this shifting ground, and the understanding of the burdens an inter- further moves to right, left, and centre sectionality of class, race and gender that would unfold over the course of the imposed on Black womanhood in her res- 1940s, actually played into the ways in urrection of what she now called “triple which the Communist Party ended up oppression.” handcuffed in its capacity to resist the McDuffie has thus provided an -in tide of reaction that swept it repressively sightful and illuminating cartogra- into particular corners in the 1950s. All phy of the continuity of Black feminist of this registered negatively with the thought from the 1920s to the present. women McDuffie is studying, who were To be sure, there are quibbles that can necessarily constrained and, as he useful- be raised about this reading of history. ly shows, often driven to battle with one The strength of Sojourning for Freedom, another under the pressures of the state’s for instance, lies in its attention to the anti-communism. experience of African American women One part of this process emerges in who happened to be affiliated with the McDuffie’s outline of the transforma- Communist Party, rather than to the tion of Audley Moore. She moved from Party and its politics. On the one hand the dynamic, dedicated, and indefati- this is understandable; on the other it in- gable campaign manager of communist evitably places McDuffie’s account under Benjamin J. Davis Jr’s election to New some question marks. Obviously some- York’s City Council in 1943 to some- what distanced from the revolutionary thing quite different by the late 1950s. In left that is the background of this study her own “conversion” narrative, Moore of Black feminism, McDuffie refers to the recounted how she came to be “reborn” International, as opposed to Industrial, when Communists dropped their po- Workers of the World, within which litical position that African Americans some of his first generation communist constituted a nation. “And then it struck women learned the art of soapboxing. me that we weren’t Negroes, but actually Interpretation of Communist Party poli- Negroes were made out of us.… Oh my tics is a minefield, and the issues raised God – I nearly died. Bile began to pile up in the contemporary historiography are in me. And one day that bile came out – not ones easily sidestepped. Yet McDuffie Oh! I was vomiting from my mouth, on never adequately addresses the often con- the walls – shooting back and forth, I tentious politics of the Party that attract- went out like a light.” (134) Following this ed Jones, Thompson Patterson, Jackson, epiphany, Moore’s identity was no longer and Moore, whether it be on the par- that of the “red” Negro. She had become ticular ground of programmatic stands African, her “Queen Mother” self-identi- like the Black Belt Nation thesis, which ty harkening back to the royal genealogist certainly demands critical scrutiny, or of the 19th-century Asante Empire. on the more generalized, overarching This political shift also smacked of op- issue of Stalinism, which can hardly be portunistic political accommodation, as ignored. The periodization of the 1930s, McDuffie suggests gently. As much as so central to understanding how commu- he sees Moore as a “savvy activist” who nists conducted their anti-racist work, be grasped that communism’s “heyday was

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coming to an end,” a new political align- Erik S. Gellman and Jarod Roll, The ment in African American circles being Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s inevitable, McDuffie also argues that the Southern Prophets in New Deal America red scare drove her into retreat. (190) The (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2011) nature of Moore’s changing politics, how- ever, are somewhat fudged in McDuffie’s Southern Prophets begins with an telling. The eclectic, eccentric, and at account of the early lives, and the so- times contradictory melding of the poli- cial, intellectual, and religious forma- tics of feminism, Marxism-Leninism, tion of its two protagonists, framed in Garveyism, and much else that came to- a sweeping narrative of the post-bellum gether in the Black nationalism of “Queen Southern United States. The emergence Mother” Moore was, at times, a bizarre and contours of Jim Crow society – caste, fusion, but it is presented by McDuffie distress, exploitation, transience, and as a “creative weave.” (207) At the same poverty – that kept men like Whitfield time, McDuffie has to acknowledge that and Williams apart is built up through Moore ended up dismissing feminism as these separate biographical narra- nothing more than an “alien ideology,” a tives. Both were born into poverty; both promotion of middle-class white wom- eventually found a religious calling. anhood. Women, she thought, should Mississippi born, Owen Whitfield be- subordinate themselves to men unless, came a Black sharecropper and itinerant presumably, they managed to attain royal Baptist preacher. Early on, Whitfield had stature. Moore also opposed abortion as been a Garveyite distrustful of whites. a form of Black genocide (not unlike the Whitfield’s Depression-era introduction Nation of Islam), and abhorred interra- to the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union cial unions. This contradictory trajectory convinced him that racial division was a appears to be rationalized by recourse bar to economic and social justice. to academic suggestion that “black na- Claude Williams, a white native of tionalism is often progressive in relation Tennessee, began life as a conventional to white supremacy and conservative in Cumberland Presbyterian. He was taught relation to the internal organization of to view Blacks with disdain. After mili- black communities.” (210) tary service during World War I (he did Nonetheless, Sojourning for Freedom no fighting), he became an innovative takes scholarship into important regions and unorthodox Presbyterian minis- of the communist past, where Black ter. A turn to social Christianity began women and their struggles have too often with Harry Fosdick’s Modern Use of the been cul-de-saced. Like most rich schol- Bible that led Williams away from the arship it is at its best as a suggestion of white supremacist milieu in which he where new researches can begin, provid- had been raised. At a summer institute at ing a baseline from which future study Vanderbilt University under Alva Taylor advances. in 1929, Williams began the cultivation Bryan D. Palmer of an idiom of radical social Christianity. Trent University He developed an association with Lucien Koch and others at Commonwealth College located at Mena, Arkansas. He began studying Marx and sought out col- laborations with organized labour and the Arkansas Socialist Party. All of this,

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almost predictably, culminated in his in a wide range of manuscript collections departure from the Presbyterian Church (including fbi records), oral histories, in the spring of 1934. Relocated to Little and personal interviews. Rock, Arkansas, Williams created The The central premise of this meticu- New Era School of Social Action and lously researched and compelling book Prophetic Religion in 1935 “to train pro- is that a joint biographical account of spective leaders in social and economic the interrelated lives of Whitfield and thought and action.” (65) Funds for the Williams would illuminate “an unstable project came from Williams’ network of world of social protest that entangles Popular Front associates. and blurs neat conventional historical Williams became deeply involved with categories: white, black, rural, urban, the fledgling Southern Tenant Farmers’ secular, religious, North, South.” (4) The Union (stfu), founded in 1934. Here the story of Williams and Whitfield – Joyce biographies of Whitfield and Williams Williams and Zella Whitfield suffered intersect. E. B. McKinny, a Black Baptist and sacrificed with their families for the preacher and tenant farmer organizer work of their husbands – should, they as- who was associated with Williams in the sert, challenge historians “to rethink the stfu, brought Williams and Whitfield dominant narratives of American history together. Williams reordered Whitfield’s in the 1930s and 1940s.” (4) In particular, religiosity: he embraced Williams’ radical Gellman and Roll challenge historians of social Christianity; he stopped “whoopin the “southern working class to take seri- and hollerin at God and started preach- ously the dynamic power and centrality ing the gospel of … economic and spiri- of religious ideas in social and political tual renewal through collective action.” movements.” (2) (74) An account of the declining arc of Men make their own history, but the lives of Whitfield and Williams as ac- they do not make it under self-selected tivists in the Williams’ inspired Peoples’ circumstances, Marx tells us, and this Institute of Applied Religion, the declen- was certainly the case for Williams and sion of radicalism with the advent of the Whitfield. Southern Prophets opens the Cold War, and the resurgence of the civil door to what it meant to grow up share- rights movement in the 1960s completes cropper poor (white and Black) in the Jim the text. Crow South and discloses how the Great The title of Southern Prophets suggests Depression propelled both Williams a broad focus on southern radicals during and Whitfield to the left and, eventu- the New Deal Era, but, while the cast of ally, to national attention as leaders of characters here is diverse – Lucien Koch, dispossessed agricultural workers in the Alva Taylor, Myles Horton, Norman southern United States. Drought, govern- Thomas, Howard Kester, Harry Ward, ment-sponsored recovery programs, and James Dombrowski, Lee Hays, among greed displaced farm labourers, tenant others, all make appearances – Gellman farmers, and sharecroppers across the and Roll place Claude Williams and southern United States. Some responded Owen Whitfield centre stage with others with apathy and passivity. Not so in the only in supporting roles. They have built Black Belt of Alabama and the Arkansas on the work of Cedric Belfrage, Anthony delta where dispossession ignited wide- Dunbar, Donald Grubbs, Robert Craig spread unrest among those who suffered and others by extending the foundation sudden and drastic deterioration in eco- of their study through extensive research nomic status. Here, union membership

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and collective bargaining became bul- combined strands of fundamentalism, warks of resistance and self-defence liberalism, and Marxism in a potent through the (stfu) organized under the mix catalyzed by the symbols, language, leadership of H. L. Mitchell. stfu activ- and folk traditions that already existed ists – including Williams and Whitfield in American working-class communi- – and members met violence, illegality, ties.”(3–4) Have they demonstrated that and infringement of civil liberties. religion was a dynamic force shaping The dramatic and convoluted story southern protest in New Deal America? of the involvement of Whitfield and There is no doubt that religion was cen- Williams and their fractious associ- tral to the lives of their protagonists, ates in this turmoil is related in detail; Whitfield and Williams. However, by Gellman and Roll give us an insider’s their failure to probe the rich body of account of these developments with data they have assembled, Gellman and Williams and Whitfield taking on orga- Roll may have missed an opportunity to nizing and executive roles in the stfu clinch their thesis. Did the deep social and the United Cannery, Agricultural, crisis of the late 1930s in the American Packing and Allied Workers of America. South evoke different responses among The narrative is thorough, detailed, and the dispossessed? Were tenant farmers dramatic: though Gellman and Roll are and workers – Black and white – who loath to criticize or to judge too harshly responded to Whitfield and White more they don’t ignore charges of duplicity and likely to come from regions of relatively demagoguery levelled at their protago- greater affluence, from regions in which nists. They also disclose how Williams, in crisis was more sudden and dramatic? his role in the demise of Commonwealth This appears to be the case. If so, it would College, and Whitfield, in his involve- suggest that it was the suddenness and ment in the Bootheel crisis in 1939, degree of dispossession that triggered contributed to the destruction of organi- resistance. Surely a religious discourse zations for which they had some respon- could shape and propel protest but equal- sibility. Though matters of affiliation and ly the appearance of ostensibly religious intent are sometimes difficult to sort out or faith-based social protest might simply definitively, Gellman and Roll leave their disclose how literacy, moral outrage, and account of Williams’ murky relationship boldness made Whitfield and Williams with the Communist Party – a significant effective organizers and leaders of pro- theme in Williams’ association with both test. Readers are told that Whitfield and Commonwealth College and the stfu – Williams worked out a model for tapping at rather loose ends. the religious faith of workers so that the As promised, religion emerges as a Congress of Industrial Organizations be- central theme of Southern Prophets. came a moral cause that demanded the Williams and Whitfield were powerful destruction of Jim Crow, but the evidence evangelists for social justice. Whitfield to sustain this claim is rather thin. (116) had a particular talent for vernacular Similarly, the assertion that Williams’ forms of social Christianity; Williams approach to allied religion through the espoused a radical social gospel. We People’s Institute of Applied Religion hear their voices in the pages of Southern “stuck like pine tar to southern workers” Prophets. The creation of an earthly (119) has to be taken largely on faith. “kingdom of God” was at the centre Notwithstanding these analytical of their discourse, a discourse “that reservations, Southern Prophets tells a

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compelling story and is a fine and power- combined undershirt and underpants, ful addition to the literature on New Deal known as union suits, were produced. America. The blended fabric made these union Tom Mitchell suits more comfortable than the notori- Brandon University (retired) ously itchy all-wool variety Americans living in cold climates commonly wore. In fact the improved garments proved Susan Marks, In the Mood for so popular that the Northwest Knitting Munsingwear: Minnesota’s Claim to Company was almost a victim of its Underwear Fame (Minnesota: Minnesota early success. Orders went unfilled be- Historical Society Press 2011) cause the company couldn’t handle the demand, and disgruntled customers In The Mood for Munsingwear: wrote letters complaining they had not Minnesota’s Claim to Underwear received promised goods and cancelling Fame is a brief and lively history of the orders. An infusion of capital in 1887 by Minnesota-based underwear manufac- three wealthy businessmen who joined turer Munsingwear told largely from the board of directors, including Charles the company’s point of view. Author A. Pillsbury of flour mill fame, provided Susan Marks mines the rich materials the needed funds to expand output. The Munsingwear donated to the Minnesota 650,000 square foot Minneapolis factory Historical Society to provide an overview was built between 1904 and 1915; work- of the company, from its founding in ers produced 10,000 garments a day there Minneapolis as the Northwest Knitting by 1917. Company in 1886 by George Munsing Like other American companies, and two associates, to its 1923 incorpo- Munsingwear benefitted from govern- ration as the dominant manufacturer in ment contracts during both world wars. the trade, to its nadir in 1981 when what Between the wars, the company had was touted earlier in the century to be the expanded production beyond multiple world’s largest underwear factory closed styles of union suits to include a range of its doors. However, this did not mean the fashionable women’s body-shaping gar- end of the Munsingwear brand; its trade- ments and hosiery. Thus, Munsingwear marks and logos are currently owned by was well positioned to profit further fashion giant Perry Ellis International, during the post-war economic boom. Inc. Written as a catalogue to accompany To take fuller advantage of such pos- a museum exhibition at the Minnesota sibilities, Munsingwear acquired two History Center, the 116-page book is lav- brands known for their alluring inti- ishly illustrated with black and white and mate apparel, Vassar of Chicago and colour images of factory buildings, con- Hollywood-Maxwell of Los Angeles, and ditions and amenities, notable individu- manufactured brassieres, sleep wear, als, workers on the job, company social lingerie, and delicate undergarments functions, promotional materials, and in addition to supplying contemporary advertisements. corsetry revived by post-war fashion George Munsing’s distinctive and trends for waist cinching. These gar- profitable 19th-century innovation was ments were produced in a range of co- in creating a fabric incorporating silk lours, prints, and styles and marketed and wool from which one-piece un- under their own labels and for the ris- dergarments for men and women that qué Frederick’s of Hollywood. In the

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mid-1950s, Munsingwear expanded pro- company team. Yet Marks, relying pri- duction of menswear with its Penguin marily on the in-house monthly news- line of golf and bowling shirts. The shirts letter, The Munsingwear News, lauds as proved popular and were worn by athletes progressive and singular the company’s and celebrities. However, despite these extensive welfare capitalism (a term she successes, Munsingwear’s sales slipped doesn’t employ) instituted in the 1910s in the 1970s as management struggled and 1920s. Though the company’s medi- to respond to the changing strategies of cal care, cultural activities, picnics, and competitors, such as offshore production sports teams undoubtedly provided some and the emphasis on designer branding. benefits and were successful in fending Relying on sparse secondary texts cited off unionization at Munsingwear until in source notes provided at the end of the 1936, as the baseball player’s complaint book, Marks touches on significant his- indicates, paternalistic programs could torical concerns, such as working condi- also provoke additional grievances and tions, the company’s efforts to fend off were not necessarily viewed as leisure labour unions, and changing advertising activities. Similarly, fascinating photo- strategies. For example, Marks describes graphs of the factory floor and amenities how local labour activist and journal- like the kitchen that provided employee ist Eva McDonald Valesh infiltrated the meals beg for analysis of how such imag- Northwest Knitting Company factory in es depicted an idealized view of working 1888 and published an article in the St. conditions the owners may have dissemi- Paul Globe about abuses, including the nated to rebut union appeals. A quote stealing of workers’ lunches by a super- regarding the factory’s closing, “No one visor, unfair distribution of piece work, was left to wrinkle a nose at fumes from and prohibitions against talking, singing, the bleach vats,” suggests the tidy factory or laughing while working. Marks relates tended by improbably well-dressed work- these problems to the nationwide ex- ers depicted in company photographs ploitation of garment workers evidenced was not the full story. by the 1909 “Uprising of the 20,000” in Marks does question the management New York City and subsequent organiz- perspective at times. She doubts the ing drives by the nascent International claims of air quality inside the factory, Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ilgwu) recounts incidents of workers whose fin- in other urban garment centres. She also gers were punctured by sewing machine mentions the Triangle Waist Factory fire needles, and points out that the company of 1911. medical staff didn’t just to tend to injuries Such historical contextualization and provide preventive care, but also vis- could be more fully brought to bear in ited workers who had called in sick to en- analyzing subsequent events. For ex- sure they were not faking illness. Overall, ample, Marks describes reports made by however, Marks portrays labour unions as an undercover Burns Agency detective contrary to the best interests of the com- hired in 1915 to catch workers stealing pany without considering how union- union suits to supplement meagre wages. ization and the labour codes instituted The detective also identified union -or during the New Deal benefitted the gar- ganizers, and discovered that workers ment industry by limiting work stoppages knew they laboured among informants. and creating a more level and stable play- Intriguingly, one worker caught stealing ing field for competing firms. Moreover, complained that he had never been paid the newsletters produced by ilgwu as promised for playing baseball on the locals and those distributed by other

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companies included similar personal sto- urban parks today, but Mello’s account ries of life transitions enjoyed by work- brings to life a very different portside ers, reports from employees who left the world, one where tens of thousands of factory for the army during World War longshoremen struggled to make a liv- II, and descriptions of after-work union- ing and to gain some measure of control sponsored cultural activities. In other over their working conditions. As Mello’s words, Munsingwear was not as unique detailed historical work makes clear, as Marks claims. Consulting additional these struggles led rank-and-file work- historical literature might also have clar- ers into confrontations not only with ified Marks’ account of contending mid- their employers and political élites, but 1930s claims made by the ilgwu and the also with corrupt officials in their own Textile Workers Organizing Committee union, the International Longshoremen’s for Minneapolis Munsingwear workers’ Association (ila). membership. In addition, though she de- Drawing on the archives of rank-and- scribes the impact of the neighbouring file newsletters, oral histories of water- Strutwear Knitting Company strike in front activists, several interviews, and a 1935, the wider contexts of trade union range of secondary sources, Mello homes and progressive efforts for economic jus- in on the three decades following the tice undertaken in Minnesota are not end of World War II. The book asks two addressed. questions: “First, what were the limits In regard to advertising, Marks raises imposed by business elites and political gender issues, with attention to homo- authorities against rebellious dockwork- erotic sub-texts in men’s undergarment ers? Second, what was the longshore- advertisements and displays of female men’s political capacity to succeed given sexuality in women’s. More than a cor- the limits to class action?” (1) porate history undertaken for promo- In responding to these questions, the tional purposes and not intended as a book moves gingerly between the dis- rigorously researched study, In the Mood tant and the local. Mello describes the for Munsingwear provides a helpful nar- ways in which the general climate of anti- rative of this important underwear man- communist McCarthyism pervading the ufacturer’s history and an illuminating United States in the post-war era created look at the company’s archival collection, challenges for dockworkers fighting for which will undoubtedly be of further use greater control over their working lives, to scholars on a range of related topics. not least by provoking employers’ use of Jill Fields investigative agencies and loyalty pro- California State University, Fresno grams aimed at disarming rank-and-file activists. He speaks in particular about the barriers thrown up by the passage William J. Mello, New York of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and the Longshoremen: Class and Power on the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959, both of Docks (Gainesville: University Press of which ushered in new institutional con- Florida 2010) straints for unionists. Along the way, the Bi-State Waterfront Commission was With this book, William J. Mello offers created, altering historically entrenched a fascinating account of rank-and-file re- hiring procedures and shifting decisions bellion among East Coast dockworkers in about the waterfront labour process away the post-war era. The docks of Manhattan from the employer-union nexus, thereby might be overrun by condominiums and reducing workers’ capacity to intervene.

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To this we can add the host of difficul- Beginning in 1947, with the passage of ties workers encountered in their own the Taft-Hartley Act, the second phase of organization, where union officials often this history saw employers and political worked hand-in-hand with employers élites work to introduce regulatory mea- and politicians to silence rank-and-file sures that limited worker and union in- militancy. This was the case in 1939, for volvement in decision-making over the example, when union thugs murdered waterfront labour process. By the end of Pete Panto, an outspoken leader of the the period considered by Mello, rank- Brooklyn Rank and File Committee, and-file activism on the East Coast docks which was demanding changes to cor- was but a shadow of what it had been in rupt hiring procedures. It was also the the 1940s. case when the American Federation of This book is at its best when it delves Labor (afl) cooperated with government deep into the dynamics of rebellion on officials to spearhead a campaign to re- the docks. Mello brings us close to the place the ila with an equally conserva- activists who struggled to build mili- tive and violent afl-affiliated union. tancy among the ranks. The history of Amidst all of these challenges, rank- the labour movement is too often hid- and-file activists were hardly docile. den from mainstream view, yet it is the Though gangsters took the life of Pete stories of rank-and-file activists fighting Panto for his activism on the docks, their for democracy – in the economy, but also threats had not stopped the formation in their own unions – that rarely see the and growth of the Brooklyn Rank and File light of day. Mello does us all a service by Committee, nor that of similar groups. bringing these stories out into the open. Between 1945 and 1947, these efforts This book is also valuable for what contributed to an explosion of wildcat it reveals about the decline of labour strikes as longshoremen challenged their power in the immediate post-war period. lack of control over working conditions Often, accounts of the American labour and their union. Mello’s excellent docu- movement suggest that union power mentation of these wildcats and the rank- rose and fell alongside the rise and fall and-file organizing that underlay them of membership numbers, with the apex puts to rest the notion that East Coast of power occurring in the 1960s. Yet, as dockworkers were a conservative lot. Mello’s account makes clear, the capacity This activism led to some impor- of workers to make gains was seriously tant victories for East Coast longshore- undermined by interventions stretching men, including the establishment of a back to the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, even Guaranteed Annual Income for workers. as membership continued to grow. This is However, the overarching story revealed not a new finding, yet the historical detail in this book is one of evaporating space offered here sheds light on how this pro- for rank-and-file militancy. In the first cess occurred in one important sector of phase of this history, immediately fol- the economy. lowing World War II, workers respond- Nevertheless, the book also has several ed to high levels of coercion emanating weaknesses. To begin with, it is uneven from informal alliances between union in its treatment of detail. For example, officials, political élites, and employers Mello dedicates eight pages (33–41) to a by engaging in highly disruptive wildcat discussion of the murder of Peter Panto, strikes. As it became clear that the ila and a further seven pages to a discussion was incapable of keeping the rank-and- of a single wildcat strike in 1945 (45–52), file in line, these alliances broke down. yet the book has no sustained discussion

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of the ongoing organizing and education- Joseph McCartin, Collision Course: al strategies of rank-and-file activists. It Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, also contains far too little detail on the and the Strike that Changed America evolving economic climate that shipping (New York: Oxford University Press 2011) companies and dockworkers confronted – from the competitiveness of the New On a foggy morning in mid-December, York port, to concentration of ownership 1960, two jet airliners collided over Staten in the industry, to fluctuations of un- Island, New York, sending one fatally employment and wage levels in the New crippled plane hurtling toward Brooklyn York and American economy. More gen- while the other showered passengers and erally, the book relies on too few sources debris onto shocked onlookers below. The – for example, large swathes of the text crash killed 134 people and became, for a are drawn overwhelmingly from articles time, the worst air disaster in American published in the New York Times. history. A more substantial shortcoming lies In the opening pages of Collision in the book’s analytical weakness. One of Course, Georgetown University his- Mello’s central goals is to assess the po- torian Joseph McCartin recounts this litical capacity of dockworkers to achieve tragedy from the perspective of air traf- their goals, yet his research strategy fic controllers who would later remem- makes an estimation of political capac- ber it as a transformative event in their ity virtually impossible. In large part, this lives. Convinced that the crash could is because Mello fails to make better use have been avoided, and appalled by the of comparison in his research. The book Federal Aviation Administration’s abil- considers one failed case (East Coast ity to dodge responsibility, controllers dockworkers who wanted more control demanded changes that would allow but failed to achieve it), pointing to a long them to cope with the four-fold increase list of factors that likely contributed to in air traffic that had occurred over the its failure. Such a strategy leaves read- previous decade. These demands eventu- ers wondering which factors were most ally gained them allies around the coun- important in limiting workers’ political try and put them on their own collision capacity and why other cases not consid- course with President Ronald Reagan. ered here, such as the West Coast long- Most readers will be at least somewhat shoremen, experienced greater success familiar with the ill-fated 1981 strike by in expanding political capacity despite the Professional Air Traffic Controllers exposure to many of the same forces. Organization (patco). President Ronald These are difficult questions that demand Reagan’s decision to fire and permanent- a more rigorous research design than ly replace more than eleven thousand Mello offers in this book. striking patco members has taken on Overall, the strengths of the book out- near-mythical proportions in American weigh its weaknesses. This is a text that political lore, usually confirming pre- students of the American labour move- existing opinions of Reagan as either ment should read and build upon. saint or scoundrel. But McCartin breaks Jason Stanley out of this familiar cast, recounting a New York University story of institutional failure rather than moral turpitude. The absence of a work- able labour law for federal employees, he suggests, ensured an outcome with

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deleterious consequences for workers history interviews to give his narrative a and the broader public alike. vibrancy that is rare in academic histori- The book’s narrative begins by trac- cal writing. ing controllers’ evolving strategies Broader social and cultural trends for influencing the Federal Aviation helped make patco into one of the most Administration (faa). Collective ef- militant public sector unions in the na- forts began during the mid 1950s, when tion by the early 1970s. Despite con- controllers formed a professional asso- trollers’ professional aspirations and ciation to enhance their status and give indifference toward less-skilled work- them respectability and authority within ers, they “shared in common with other the faa. Ten years later, after the ap- disaffected Americans of those years a parent failure of these tactics to induce distaste for hypocritical, inflexible au- change in the air traffic control system, thority structures,” McCartin explains. many controllers adopted a more adver- Their willingness to challenge authority sarial stance toward their employer. The indicates “a different sort of rebellion” National Association of Government that was brewing alongside more famil- Employees (nage) attracted nationwide iar movements of student radicals, civil support during the mid-1960s by declar- rights activists, and second wave femi- ing that it would “not play dummy or ‘yes nists. (60) man’” to the faa. (45) But the organiza- During the second half of the 1970s, tion failed to follow through on its ad- however, the public sector union move- versarial rhetoric. By 1966, controllers in ment diverged from contemporaneous Chicago, New York, and other high-traf- rebellions. Federal civil rights laws pro- fic locations lost faith in nage and began vided many of these movements with ef- to assert leadership on their own. fective (though imperfect) institutional McCartin does an excellent job flesh- mechanisms through which they could ing out the individual characters who seek redress. Federal workers, by con- sensed this widespread dissatisfaction trast, failed to win legislation that would and channelled it into support for the grant them collective bargaining rights. organization that would become patco. Unions like patco thus lacked legal au- Jack Maher, a mild-mannered Korean thority to bargain over salaries, benefits, War veteran from Queens, initiated a and staffing issues at a time when public series of weekly after-work meetings sector workers bore the brunt of austerity that popularized the idea of an indepen- measures at all levels of government. This dent air traffic controllers’ union. One reinforced many controllers’ aversion to attendee of these meetings was Mike the compromises their moderate lead- Rock, an outspoken, Bronx-born son of ership could legally negotiate on their a police officer who would later become behalf. known to his colleagues as “Mike Strike.” The absence of an effective labour law In early 1968, Rock managed to recruit for federal workers put patco on a colli- the nationally renowned trial lawyer F. sion course with the federal government. Lee Bailey to serve as the public face of In 1978, a “fifth column” movement of the new union, launching what McCartin disaffected patco members successfully aptly describes as “one of the most un- ousted the union’s president and began usual collaborations in American labor planning for a nationwide strike to dra- history.” (65) Offbeat characters were matize controllers’ predicament. Two essential to patco’s early development, years later, this cadre turned their back and McCartin draws on numerous oral on the broader labour movement and

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endorsed Ronald Reagan’s presidential restraints that had kept private-sector candidacy, hoping that Reagan would re- anti-unionism in check,” he asserts. (13) pay them for their support. This proved a These “moral restraints” were rather fatal miscalculation on the union’s part. weak in the first place, and Reagan’s Though the Reagan Administration ini- broader assault on the regulatory state tially offered controllers’ unprecedented deserves prominent billing in any ac- concessions – “never before had the count of the changing balance of power federal government offered so much between workers and their employers. in a negotiation with a federal employ- But McCartin acknowledges these other ees’ union,” McCartin notes (262) – the sources of labour’s decline, and he should President refused to tolerate an illegal be lauded for weaving into his lively, strike. White House political aides con- character-driven narrative a discussion cluded, accurately, that a hardline stance of how patco both resulted from and against the strikers would be a boon to altered long-term trends in American Reagan’s domestic approval rating; policy political and economic development. His advisers believed that an uncompromis- success in this endeavour just might lead ing image would increase the President’s his readers to view recent attacks on pub- personal leverage with the Soviet Union lic sector unions in a new light. and other Cold War adversaries. patco’s Alexander Gourse strike, it seems, was doomed before it Northwestern University began. McCartin neither romanticizes nor condemns the actors on any side of this Dana Cloud with Keith Thomas, We story, emphasizing instead the institu- Are the Union: Democratic Unionism tional and environmental constraints in and Dissent at Boeing (Urbana and which they operated. He makes a con- Champaign: University of Illinois Press vincing case that the shape of the law 2011) was a crucial factor in (if not completely determinative of) patco’s fate. Finally, he Dana Cloud’s new study of democratic suggests an important takeaway point for unionism at Boeing is another valuable contemporary policymakers consider- contribution to the growing literature ing the merits of collective bargaining in on the conflict between union officials the public sector: “It cost more to break and the workers they purport to repre- the patco walkout than any other labor sent that has plagued organized labour conflict in American history.” (332) A since its inception and continues to this more effective labour law – one that gave day. For this reason alone it comes highly controllers the opportunity to bargain recommended. But it is also a sensitive over the issues they cared about most, examination of an important recent at- and that diminished Reagan’s political tempt to overcome this issue through incentives to break the strike at any cost rank-and-file initiative, incorporating – might have produced an outcome more and in dialogue with the voices of the advantageous to both controllers and the workers involved in this struggle. broader public. We Are the Union centres on the 69-day Some labour scholars may object to strike Boeing workers in the International the significance McCartin ascribes to the Association of Machinists and Aerospace patco strike as a catalyst for the long- Workers (iamaw) conducted in 1995. term decline of the American labour They won wage increases, preserved movement. Reagan “loosen[ed] the moral health benefits, and gained a number of

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guarantees against future subcontract- before. Coming from a background in ing. Perhaps the most significant thing communication studies, Cloud stresses about the 1995 strike, though, was the the important role constructing a coher- way that a simmering conflict between ent narrative played in shaping this rank- the union and its membership going back and-file alternative. A newsletter Thomas a number of years burst to the surface created called Floormikes did just that. when workers rejected a second, union- This combination of ideas and action pro- recommended contract from Boeing and vided a viable alternative to the official stayed on strike another three-and-a-half union, and many workers gravitated to it. weeks. This second contract was not sub- But the 1995 victory, and the decisive stantially different from the first, and the role the caucuses played in securing it, union’s recommendation of it suggested a was not enough to maintain their influ- conciliatory attitude on its part that had ence or sustain them as organizations. In increasingly bred mistrust among work- the aftermath, the udc disbanded. The ers. Their gamble paid off, as the contract decision to disband comes in for sus- they finally ratified contained numerous tained criticism from Cloud, represent- important gains, and avoided the conces- ing, in her view, a tendency to view the sions the company sought and the union rank-and-file as “unwilling or unable to recommended. In We Are the Union fight in their own interests.” (128) As a Cloud dramatizes this conflict, and sug- result, she says, the udc focused on elec- gests that it holds important lessons for tions and, after the 1995 strike, on indi- the labour movement today. vidual lawsuits against the iamaw using The seeds of democratic unionism McCarthy-era labour laws. at Boeing were sown in 1989. After a Perhaps the most significant aspect lengthy but successful strike, the union of Cloud’s work is that she provides touted as a benefit of the new contract a space for a dialogue between herself and series of joint initiatives between compa- Thomas on these issues, allowing him to ny and union meant to erode protections speak in his own words and defend his on health and safety as well as production actions himself. This suggests a remark- standards. Givebacks on health and safe- able sensitivity to the sometimes fraught ty may have particularly rankled a Boeing and always delicate relationship between worker in Wichita, Kansas, named Keith a historian and her subjects. Thomas is Thomas. Thomas had recently lost a close his own best advocate on these matters, friend at a young age due to Boeing’s neg- and this conversation is one of the book’s ligence on health issues. This willingness highlights. It raises important questions to compromise with management on for the direction of the labour movement these important issues alienated many today in an accessible way. workers from their union, and gave rise If Cloud spends an inordinate amount to caucuses around the country. Cloud of time discussing and criticizing the udc, uses the experience of Unionists for and allowing Thomas to respond, this re- Democratic Change (udc) and Thomas, flects the importance of its experience to its presumptive leader, as a foil to discuss her understanding of democratic union- her ideas about democratic unionism. ism. Democratic unionism originates in These caucuses gave dissident work- the militant struggles that created the ers an institutional home and, through Congress of Industrial Organizations. elections, educational leaflets, and their Hence it prioritizes rank-and-file ac- many campaigns, a chance to participate tion over “administrative, legalistic, in union politics in a way they never had and consumer-oriented strategies.” (13)

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Struggles that relied on these kinds of cio played in championing what David top-down actions, such as at Hormel and Brody called “workplace contractualism,” International Paper in the mid-1980s and which exchanged unruly direct action in the Decatur “War Zone” in 1994–95, for legal status through no-strike poli- all failed. Alongside these failures, demo- cies, management prerogatives, and dues cratic unionism struggled to establish check-offs. Without these criticisms, itself as a legitimate alternative. Its suc- democratic unionism comes off not as a cesses, according to Cloud, included major alternative to business unionism John Sweeney winning the presidency of but as a tepid corrective, able, through the American Federation of Labor and rank-and-file initiatives, to win some Congress of Industrial Organizations measure of temporary democracy within in 1995 and the growing influence of unions, but unable to address the divide his New Voices coalition; the success- between union officials and the workers ful Teamster strike against ups in 1997; they so often misrepresent. and the United Auto Workers victory The limitations of this approach against automakers in 1998. Institutions are clear. The gains workers achieved like Teamsters for a Democratic Union, through their militancy in 1995 were lost the Association for Union Democracy, in subsequent years through unremit- the popular journal Labor Notes, and, by ting attacks by the company. As a result, extension, revolutionary political organi- by the time of the successful strikes at zations Solidarity and the International Boeing in 2005 and 2008, the company Socialist Organization (iso) continue this had already won what it sought but failed legacy today. to achieve in 1995 – offloading, outsourc- The struggle at Boeing, then, is an un- ing, “team”-based lean production meth- comfortable fit with democratic union- ods throughout the company, all the ism. Relying on rank-and-file initiatives standard trappings of capitalism in our but at times cynical about the ranks era, often called neo-liberalism. This is a themselves, the udc and other caucuses sad coda to the remarkable battles fought still succeeded for a time in democratiz- by caucuses at Boeing against company ing their union and stemming the tide and union. At the same time, the limita- of concessions many other workers had tions of democratic unionism at Boeing grown accustomed to. are the limitations of the labour move- A similar ambivalence characterizes ment as a whole. Business unionism has Cloud’s own sense of whether she envi- exchanged class war for labour peace, sions democratic unionism as an alter- erecting a massive bureaucracy against native or a corrective to the business the democratic impulses of rank-and- unionism decried on the pages of Labor file rebels. How we might overcome this Notes and by organizations such as the conflict remains an open question. As iso and Solidarity. Her apparent sym- ever, rank-and-file initiatives like those pathies suggest the former, while the at Boeing are the only reasonable place evidence suggests the latter. Thus, while to start. pointing to the inclusiveness of the cio Michael Stauch and its rank-and-file militancy, she says Duke University nothing about its role in shifting unions from their once closely guarded indepen- dence and toward their current status as government-sanctioned legal monopo- lies. Nor does she mention the role the

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Cal Winslow, Labor’s Civil War in justice issues, such as universal health- California: The nuhw Healthcare Workers’ care, same-sex marriage, and its aid to Rebellion (Oakland: pm Press 2010) striking unite-here workers in 2004– 2006. In an industry Winslow describes In the past three decades North as being dominated by anti-union corpo- American workers and their unions have rations, uhw hospital members (mostly increasingly come under attack from neo- women, people of colour and immigrants) liberal governments that serve corporate received full healthcare, defined pension interests. With the recent economic cri- plans, and employment and income se- sis these attacks have intensified, as high- curity, as well as the highest wages in the ly paid unionized workers in the private healthcare industry in 2008. With nearly and public sector have been blamed for 150,000 members, uhw was the fastest corporate bailouts and municipal budget growing local within the seiu, no doubt shortfalls. Rarely do these attacks come due in part to its successful strikes and from within unions. In Labor’s Civil War willingness to place “organizing rights for in California: The nuhw Healthcare the unorganized” and the right of care- Workers’ Rebellion historian Cal Winslow givers to have a voice in hospital staffing recounts such a story – the tragic de- matters on the bargaining table. Thus it is struction of United Healthcare Workers- not surprising that uhw contracts, espe- West (uhw) by the Service Employees cially those with Kaiser Permanente, were International Union (seiu) and the strug- “referred to as the ‘gold standard,’ the gle to rebuild the union as the National best acute-care agreements in the United Union of Healthcare Workers (nuhw). States” (24–25) and that uhw was highly Throughout the narrative Winslow chal- regarded as a “model” union. “Wrecking lenges the reader to question the way uhw,” Winslow argues, “would be no forward: corporate unionism or social cake-walk.” (24) But why would seiu justice unionism? Organizing from the want to “wreck” its most powerful and top-down or the bottom-up? Which ap- successful local, a union that had nearly proach will help rebuild the labour move- doubled in size in less than eight years ment workers so desperately need? And and at a time when trade union member- which side are you on? ship in the US private sector had fallen to As seiu’s third largest affiliate and around 7.6 per cent? (13) California’s second largest seiu local, Winslow offers several explanations, Winslow describes uhw as “the most but only two issues have substance. powerful labor organization in the state” seiu charged that the uhw was guilty in 2007. (22) By trade union standards of “financial malfeasance” when it estab- uhw was democratic and “prided itself lished a $6 million healthcare education on workplace organization and mem- fund for the purpose of campaigning ber involvement.” (25) uhw was deeply on healthcare issues. Thoughuhw dis- rooted in Northern California where in banded the fund when seiu feared the 1938 it became the first hospital union entity might become a “union within in the United States, the result of an or- the union,” the charge later became the ganizing drive led by hospital porters basis for placing uhw in trusteeship, at San Francisco’s General Hospital, a but it was a charge difficult to prove. A drive Winslow explains as organized district court judge found nothing amiss “from the bottom up.” uhw was con- and dismissed all charges. More com- sidered progressive in its opposition to plex, however, was the charge that uhw the war in Iraq and its support of social was “obstructing the forced transfer of

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65,000 long-term care workers” to Local petitioned, wrote letters, sent emails, 6434 in Southern California. (27) While and made phone calls – all in defense the transfer of these workers seemed to not just of uhw but demanding member- be a fairly straightforward “organization- ship participation in democratic unions, al issue,” Winslow contends that uhw membership participation in bargaining, was in violation of seiu president Andy membership rule in the union. They op- Stern’s “top-down” corporate approach to posed the seiu’s mindless centralism, its unionism. sweetheart contracts with employers and At the heart of this battle was unwill- its backroom deals with politicians.” (53) ingness, on uhw’s behalf, to abandon de- The response was spectacular and the cades of struggle and the vision of building rank-and-file mobilization unparalleled. the union “from the bottom up,” in favour The subsequent Marshall Report found of seiu’s Alliance agreement – “an agree- no basis for trusteeship: not malfeasance; ment on the part of the employers not to not conspiring with other unions; not oppose, within highly specific param- neglecting contracts; nor restricting free eters, union organizing.” (32) The seiu speech – there were no grounds for seiu also agreed to relinquish control over trusteeship. Despite the rift in the union which healthcare facilities could be orga- uhw remained loyal to seiu and in a last nized, banned strikes, limited collective ditch effort to reconcile, uhw President bargaining, prohibited worker organizing Sal Rosselli proposed that uhw’s 65,000 and agreed not to place employers “at an long-term care workers be given the op- economic disadvantage” by demanding portunity to vote on the transfer sought pay rates or benefits for healthcare work- by Stern. But before the vote took place, ers. In 2007, when the Alliance contract Rosselli requested a guarantee from Stern expired the employers proposed, among that the new statewide local the workers new restrictions, a 50-year agreement – were transferring to would be “demo- seiu and Local 6434 supported a revised cratically structured and responsive” (57) 20-year agreement instead. When uhw to its membership. If this guarantee was opposed the renewed Alliance agreement not made, Rosselli threatened to resist on the grounds that it “prevents work- trusteeship and decertify from seiu. No ers from engaging in struggle to improve guarantee was made. their working conditions,” adversely af- Occupation of uhw local offices by fects “our mission and goal to advance seiu officials followed, assets were seized, and defend the interests of our members” and uhw’s elected executive board and and comes too close to being a “company staff members replaced. uhw began the union,” Stern threatened to place uhw in long decertification process under the trusteeship. (34–36) uhw’s fight for work- National Labor Relations Board (nlrb) ers’ rights, however, was far from over. and in the process began organizing to In summer 2008, seiu began moni- build nuhw. Without access to offices, toring uhw activity and when it an- computers, an organizing budget or nounced that trusteeship hearings were paid staff, nuhw set out to build, or as scheduled for September, the union Winslow argues, “rebuild the union” in bombarded uhw members with mail- the workplace, “by denying seiu the right ings, robo-calls, personal visits and to represent Kaiser workers.” (67) nuhw threats. uhw fought back by organiz- also began the process of organizing non- ing. “Tens of thousands of uhw mem- unionized home healthcare workers in bers and supporters,” Winslow explains, Fresno, California, but found it difficult “took to the streets, packed meetings, to compete with the seiu’s army of staff

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members and $10 million organizing report poor facility conditions to state budget. And while seiu claimed victory regulators – are integral to the healthcare in the Fresno organizing drive allegations industry, patients, families, and nursing of misconduct abound. seiu considers it- home reform advocates. Unionization self the victim in this battle, and nuhw of the industry by social justice orient- the raider. ed unions like nuhw can ensure that Though Winslow studied at Warwick both workers’ and patients’ rights are University under the direction of the protected. late E. P. Thompson, Labor’s Civil War The real lesson in this struggle is in California is not an academic study whether or not workers have the right of the seiu attack of the uhw, but rather to choose their union. Or are they, as an informal attempt to recount the story Winslow questions, “the property of a of California healthcare workers and labor organization – to be organized and the destruction of uhw from the work- reorganized as its leaders see fit?” (101) ers’ point of view. According to Winslow Currently in the United States work- this story needs to be told, and he does so ers have difficulty decertifying under quite passionately. Therein lies the only the nlrb; the process, as described by fault of Labor’s Civil War in California. Winslow, is “cumbersome and time- Winslow and his daughter Samantha, consuming,” often reflecting “the politics an organizer for uhw from 2004 to of the party in power.” (71) It is a system 2009 and a founding member of nuhw hindered by delays, postponements, and (122), are actively involved in the nuhw appeals, and in which employers are struggle against seiu and the narrative, free to intimidate, harass and terminate at times, reflects Winslow’s frustration. workers while they await resolution. The Sarcastic remarks and insider humour Employee Free Choice Act (efca), since can be found throughout his writing. In defeated, was an attempt to try and rem- its current format the book works better edy these failings by amending the nlrb as a memoir of Winslow’s and his daugh- “making it easier for workers to form, ter’s struggle and experience in founding join or assist labor organizations and nuhw. Winslow’s research notes and ex- to provide for penalties for unfair labor tensive collection of interviews, as well practices, particularly in organizing ef- as statements in the introduction about forts.” (71–72) But freedom of choice, as “having more to tell” suggest, however, Winslow argues, is also an internal union that a formal academic study may be in matter. the works. In the case of seiu “leaders preside The approach to Labor’s Civil War in over huge, consolidated locals with few California is but one small flaw. The book structures for membership accountabil- does an excellent job of highlighting the ity or control,” they are appointed rather precarious nature of work in the health- than elected by the rank-and-file, and lo- care industry, an industry Winslow ar- cal by-laws have been fixed to ensure they gues not only “produces poverty” for its are not easily replaced. (56) seiu leaders workers and “barriers to decent condi- like Stern are “union bosses” who prac- tions” (32) for those that live in long-term tice corporate/business unionism. There care facilities but also silences its work- is little participatory democracy or “so- ers from reporting instances of abuse for cial movement unionism” in the way seiu fear of job reprisal. Workers’ rights to free operates. When workers form or join speech – the ability to openly discuss and unions, they do so with the expectation

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that through collective participation interviewees presented a fundamental and struggle they will gain a voice in the paradox: homelessness is profitable.” (3) union, the workplace, and the commu- From this starting point, Kerr’s goal in nity. uhw was built on this democratic Derelict Paradise is to shed light on how foundation and nuhw rebuilt from the homelessness became so entrenched in bottom up by the rank-and-file at a time, the city of Cleveland. The book is a rich Winslow describes, “when much of labor compendium of stories, incidents and remained silent, cowed by seiu trium- activities that highlight links among phalism and its ever handy checkbook.” racism, poverty, power and urban devel- (103) Labor’s Civil War in California is opment in ways that seldom resulted in a testament to the struggle of workers’ good news for those with less privilege. rights in an age of increasing corporate/ Kerr argues for the benefits of engaging business unionism. It is a must read for deeply with a local perspective. Only any union activist, as the struggle to keep through this lens, he argues, is it possible nuhw democratic is not the first of its to link structural change and everyday kind in American history, nor will it be social relations. the last. Kerr details the manner in which, his- Brandi Lucier torically, two élite initiatives – the scien- University of Windsor tific charity movement and for-profit day labour services – operated in conjunction with one another to narrow the range of Daniel R. Kerr, Derelict Paradise: options for poor individuals who needed Homelessness and Urban Development (and wanted) to work and have access in Cleveland, Ohio (Amherst and Boston: to decent shelter. He couples this story University of Massachusetts Press 2011) with that of élite interest in transforming downtown Cleveland into a “playground The author of Derelict Paradise, for the wealthy” and how urban planning Daniel Kerr, begins his examination of and redevelopment initiatives by local the links between homelessness and ur- and state politicians tried to support this ban development in Cleveland, Ohio by goal. Although not all of these élites were explaining why he decided to use his- self-serving, those that were not tended torical and archival evidence: his inter- to find their progressive efforts undercut est was to shed light on the reasons that by their more ruthless peers. Moreover, so many of the hundreds of unhoused he notes that more recently, the margin- persons that he had encountered over a alization of those with a criminal record seven-year period, beginning in 1996, has forced such individuals to accept the were long-time Cleveland residents who most marginal of jobs and shelter options had worked in a wide variety of jobs. His in ways that closely parallel earlier inter- many conversations and formal inter- actions between élites and those who are views “radically changed my understand- marginalized. ing of ‘homelessness.’ Rather than seeing Kerr has organized his examination the phenomenon as a condition faced by historically as a series of “spotlights” on individuals without access to housing, I particular events and social interactions, came to understand ‘homelessness’ as a with the greatest level of detail being set of institutionalized relationships that given to the period before World War benefit some at the expense of others.” (3) II. Each chapter’s title is meant to entice Furthermore, “over and over again, my the interest of the reader. For example,

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Chapter 1, “Employment Sharks and in Chapter 1 including the role of pri- Spying Organizations,” examines the vate charity organizations. As well he period between the late 1870s and the reiterates the extent of disconnect be- 1930s. He begins with a story of labour tween élites and marginalized workers: disputes centred on the railroads but “Although the desires of Cleveland’s elite the focus soon turns to how Cleveland may seem to have little to do with the re- business leaders “grew determined never ality of the unhoused and unemployed, again to leave their fate in the hands of their plans shaped and at times sought even well-behaved workers … ‘a commit- to eradicate the independent survival tee of prominent citizens’ announced networks of the homeless and the unem- the formation of the First City Troop ployed and their alternative visions for a and the Cleveland Gatling Gun Battery.” more equitable society.” (39) Whereas the (14) Closely following the details of this élite looked to tourism, and thus a city initiative, he notes that “city business with an attractive appearance, as a way to leaders turned their attention to revamp- turn around Cleveland’s declining eco- ing the ways the city provided aid to the nomic circumstances, the marginalized poor” (15), and so introduced Cleveland’s sought recognition as individuals in need engagement with the scientific char- but worthy of fair treatment and respect. ity movement. He further makes links The growing number of panhandlers on between these activities and urban re- the streets therefore was an unsurprising development: “City elites moved seam- catalyst for clashes between these two lessly from their fixation on maintaining orientations. control of the lives of the unemployed Subsequent chapters similarly address and unhoused to their grander visions the themes introduced in the two open- of resculpting the city’s landscape in a ing chapters, albeit in a manner that more orderly fashion.” (15) This over- certainly acknowledges the broader eco- view is followed by a series of detailed vi- nomic and political contexts and timing gnettes drawing upon in-depth archival of key events (Chapter 3 “The Nation’s evidence. Thus, the reader learns about Housing Laboratory,” on the early 1930s; how the Charity Organization Society Chapter 4, “Businessmen Gone Berserk,” in Cleveland was formed, its proponents, on the 1940s and 1950s; Chapter 5, its philosophy, and its links to other such “The Urban Renewal Doldrums,” cover- organizations across the United States. ing the 1950s and 1960s; Chapter 6, “A Further details are also provided, includ- Bombing Run,” on the 1960s and 1970s; ing the names of the organizations that and Chapter 7, “Open Penitentiaries,” on became involved and those that were shut the 1980s and 1990s). While the author down as a result of an inability to success- makes an effort to balance the details of fully provide an alternative to this orien- Cleveland-based events, activities and tation to welfare. In the course of each personalities and the broader contexts, vignette, Kerr also highlights the con- the details often seem to overwhelm the testation that did take place to challenge contexts. For readers without knowledge such initiatives, such as the Unemployed of how Cleveland’s land uses and neigh- Council, which was formed in 1927. (37) bourhoods are arranged, the references In Chapter 2, “A City with a Smile,” to streets and districts are difficult to fol- the focus is on the period of the 1930s low and absorb. Kerr provides little in the Depression, told both from the perspec- way of aids for these readers. There are tive of local élites and that of workers. only two maps of Cleveland’s streets (one Kerr continues the themes introduced from 1933 and the other from 1965) in the

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entire text, both located on the same page and Mexican migrants as well as their at the very beginning of Chapter 1 and ties. For instance, many Mexicans in never explicitly referred to in the text. California are part of mixed-status fami- While this book does make an important lies where some are undocumented and contribution to American urban history some are documented. in detailing the ways in which home- The book makes other important con- lessness has been institutionalized, and tributions. The first is that it focuses on identifying the many groups who benefit one site, Santa Cruz County, and follows from this phenomenon, his potentially the lives of migrants as well as the chang- powerful conclusion is lost in the level ing politics, economics, population and of detail he contributes. Nonetheless, his infrastructure. For instance, in Chapter conclusions should provoke soul search- 3, “The Working Poor,” Zavella takes ing among the many different groups he time to describe the living conditions includes as beneficiaries of institutional- of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in ized homelessness. Santa Cruz county, with its high housing Fran Klodawsky costs, large number of temporary resi- Carleton University dents who work in the agricultural sec- tor, and networks of people who come from the same town in Mexico. She also Patricia Zavella, I’m Neither Here nor discusses the work opportunities avail- There: Mexicans’ Quotidian Struggles able to the working poor, migrants, and with Migration and Poverty (Durham and undocumented in the region (of course London: Duke University Press 2011) these are not mutually exclusive cat- egories), which she argues are organized Patricia Zavella’s book is the re- along racial and gender lines. Finally, she sult of thirteen years of research in the links the context of Santa Cruz county Santa Cruz area of northern California. with transnational processes, particular- Drawing on transnational, assimilation, ly with the implementation of the nafta queer, feminist, and border theories, and the subsequent moving of agricultur- Zavella tracks the trajectories, in terms al and canning operations abroad. Zavella of time and mobility, of differently situ- demonstrates how workers, specifically ated Mexicans. Her respondents include in the canning industry, mobilized both undocumented migrants, migrants who modes of resistance to restructuring and have received permanent residence and solidarity with workers in Mexico where Mexican-Americans or Chicana/os who their employment moved. grew up in the US. In addition to migra- The second strength of the book is tion, both internal and international, conceptual. Zavella develops “peripheral Zavella’s respondents have another factor vision” as a way to describe the transna- in common: they come from working- tional subjectivity of many of her respon- class communities and encounter day-to- dents. She proposes peripheral vision as day struggles to make ends meet. This is a response to arguments that migrants one of the strengths of the book. The di- experience a “social death” when they mi- versity in respondents disrupts the image grate to a new place. Echoing the work of of undocumented migrants living apart transnational migration scholars, Zavella from those who are documented and the demonstrates that migrants are not up- idea that their struggles are diametrically rooted; they produce ties with “home” different. In fact, Zavella demonstrates and “host” countries, however tenuous. the tensions among Mexican Americans This peripheral lens demonstrates how

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the Mexican diaspora in the US is in- familial and other interlocking processes, vested in what happens in Mexico, even Zavella therefore produces a rich and nu- if they were not born there. It also dem- anced account of how different families onstrates that people experience trans- navigate the borders that divide them. national ties and peripheral vision even Chapter 6, “Transnational Cultural if they have not migrated. Put differently, Memory,” analyzes popular music as a peripheral vision, as a transnational sub- site of political and cultural production. jectivity, is not unidirectional. Like other Drawing on the work of cultural theo- sites in the US, Santa Cruz County has a rists, Zavella describes her case stud- large number of migrants from specific ies as “archives of feelings,” that is sites towns in Mexico due to the extensive net- that produce meaning not only through works that have been produced through their production, but also their reception. continuous migration. Residents of those One example is the role and the power of small towns experience peripheral vision Spanish-language radio both in the US, through their interests in US politics and where the industry has grown at a time current events, which affect their fam- when radio in general is less popular, and ily members and co-nationals abroad. rural Southern Mexico, where it allows Finally, Zavella argues that the ties pro- Indigenous and marginalized communi- duced through peripheral vision extend ties to produce and consume information beyond family affiliations to also include and culture. These archives of feelings, political and cultural connections. Zavella demonstrates, are transnational One of the drawbacks of the book is the and also embody peripheral vision. The large amount of interview data that ap- chapter focuses on three musicians/ pears in early chapters, which in my opin- musical groups – Los Tigres del Norte, ion the author could have engaged more Lila Downs and Quezal – looking at extensively. This approach changes in the their history and how their music genre last two chapters, which for me were the and body of work have been taken up in most nuanced and developed. Chapter 5, Mexico and the US Los Tigres del Norte “The divided home,” delves into the fam- play norteño music, a genre “influenced ily lives of Zavella’s respondents, focusing by German and Czech settlers” in north- on how “the family often becomes [both] ern Mexico featuring “the accordion and a site where surveillance and struggles polka-style dancing.” (193) Their music for social control take place and is also discusses varied topics including migra- viewed as a refuge from the vicissitudes tion stories, deportations, the femicides of a cruel world.” (157) The chapter does in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and the drug not offer a romanticized notion of fam- trade. Although Los Tigres do not iden- ily. Instead, it demonstrates the cracks or tify themselves as political, despite their borderlands that develop in some fami- role in migrant rights marches in the US lies due to migration, poverty and other since 2006, Zavella demonstrates the social and personal issues. In describing transnational political links Los Tigres families as “borderlands” (159), Zavella create in the US and Mexico through draws our attention to how borders ex- their music. The work of Lila Downs tend beyond those produced by states. and Quetzal is also transnationally po- Borders also include those created by vio- litical, taking up a “peripheral vision.” lence, distance and resentment. Zavella Both try to disrupt static representations also delves into another borderland, that of Mexicans, Mexican-ness and being of being queer in this context of migra- Chicana/o. Particularly important is how tion and poverty. In analyzing gendered, the group Quetzal discusses its political

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influences and decision-making process enter into more desirable occupations to making music, which is influenced by that were defined as “white” jobs. (61) Chicana feminists. Branch aptly illustrates that when race Zavella’s book is an important read for and gender are taken into account and scholars of migration, transnationalism, linked to privileges and disadvantages in citizenship, and political economy, as the world of work, the story of US labour well as those whose work engages gender, radically changes. It becomes less about sexuality and race. While set in the US, self-determination and meritocracy and Zavella’s conceptual frame and analysis more about how opportunities are given can be a useful tool for Canadian schol- to some and withheld from others. As ars, particularly those working in the ar- Branch’s evidence clearly reveals, “The eas of migrant integration, immigration history of the U.S. labor market is fun- status and racialized poverty. damentally the story of who people were Paloma E. Villegas rather than what they did.” (21) oise/University of Toronto The labour market then is far from a neutral site in that it privileges and con- fers benefits and disadvantages based Enobong Hannah Branch, Opportunity on race and gender. While at differ- Denied: Limiting Black Women to ent historical moments white men and Devalued Work (New Jersey: Rutgers Black men (because of their maleness) University Press 2011) and white women (because of their gen- der and whiteness) had access to desir- A historical comparison of Black able jobs (with white men dominating women’s labour force experience with all desirable occupational categories), white and Black men as well as with Branch maintains that Black women ex- white women reveals that each group has perience virtually absolute disadvantage. held very different types of jobs. Using Moreover, unlike white women, Black intersectional analysis in conjunction women’s gender offered no protection with census and other empirical data, against exploitation. Following emanci- Branch judiciously maps how race and pation, Black women worked in the fields gender coalesced over a 100-year period alongside men performing gruelling, to restrict Black women to undesirable backbreaking work just as they did dur- positions. Branch begins chronologically ing slavery. Branch asserts that, “Black in 1860 and carries her analysis through women’s compulsory performance of 2008, focusing on Black women as farm men’s work in the field appears at odd in a labourers; as domestic, clerical and fac- society that crystallized gender roles, but tory workers (which includes meatpack- their field work reinforced racial roles.” ing and slaughtering); and as professional (27) Deeply entrenched ideas about racial workers. The author begins from the and gender roles born in slavery were also premise that the work Black women reproduced in domestic work and on the performed during slavery subsequently factory floor. For Black women, domestic laid the foundation for their exploita- work was essentially a permanent, life- tion post-emancipation. Confining Black long occupation, which did not lead to women to devalued work was systemati- new occupational activity. In contrast, cally supported by state and federal laws, for white immigrant women, domestic individual employers, employees, and work was a “bridging occupation.” It al- local communities who mounted resis- lowed them work to acquire new skills, tance when Black women attempted to resources and values, which helped with

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their social mobility. For white immi- location, Branch pointed out that “no job grant women, their whiteness rather than was too hard, too dirty, or too demean- domestic work itself then became the ve- ing” for Black women. (89) The racist and hicle for upward mobility. sexist practices that produced a labour Race as opposed to skill determined force segregated by race and gender had the jobs workers were assigned, and when important consequences for Blacks. The gender is accounted for, Black women existence and perpetuation of a racial and were further disadvantaged particu- gendered hierarchy “justified the unequal larly in meatpacking and slaughtering distribution of social goods (in this case, which was considered a men’s industry. occupational opportunities) among races Excluded from handling finished food reflected by their place in the hierarchical products based supposedly on the pub- structure.” (98) As a result, Blacks’ abil- lic’s fear of their hands on meat, Black ity to improve their quality of life was se- women were relegated to the most un- verely impacted. attractive and disagreeable tasks in the From the mid-1960s to the 1970s, the meat factories where the work conditions racial hierarchy and job segregation that were distasteful and unpleasant. A simi- was typical of the earlier decades slowly lar argument about public concerns was eroded. The marked improvement in the also used to virtually exclude Black wom- occupational distribution was reflected en from clerical work. While the open- in Black women’s salaries. By the 1980s, ing of new clerical occupations changed Black women saw a four-fold increase in the work landscape for white women, it their wages. Branch, however, cautions was not until 1950 that discernible ef- against ignoring Black women’s artificial- fects were seen for Black women. Branch ly low wages in 1940 and 1960 suggesting is reluctant to attribute Black women’s that Black women were simply catch- entrance into clerical work as a sign of ing up. When attempting to account for changing attitudes on the part of em- the dramatic transformation in relation ployers. She maintains that white women to Black women’s work in the late 20th were unable to keep up with the unprec- century, Branch points mostly to the edented growth of clerical work. She revolutionary Civil Rights Act of 1964, also adds that Black women eventually specifically Title vii, as opposed to World became overrepresented in clerical work War II or Affirmative Action, the latter due to employers’ investment in the sup- of which was hardly enforceable. While posed innate differences between men Black women made inroads in the world and women. Branch also insists, “employ- of work in the 1970s and early 1980s, ers did it as they always have always done Branch concludes that regardless of how in periods of labor shortage. They turned progress is measured (wage equality, oc- to workers lower in the labor queue.” (140) cupational distribution, or authority in Notwithstanding employment opportu- the workplace), “Black women’s quest nities created as a result of both world for definitive progress has been illusory.” wars, Black women continued to experi- (149) ence the debilitating effects of their dual Overall, this is a wonderful, well-writ- subordinate status: “Black women were ten and carefully argued book. Branch universally recognized as laborers of the does an excellent job of demonstrating last resort, a reserve labor pool available how historical inequalities can take hun- when the economy expands or labor is for dreds of years to remedy. This book will short-term projects.” (88) Regardless of be useful to both general and specific au- which war, type of factory, or geographic diences (graduate and undergraduates)

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and anyone interested in women’s work Jamie Swift’s nuanced historical and labour. political-economic analysis and the re- Karen Flynn flexivity of the people he worked with University of Illinois, maintain a balance to be appreciated, Urbana-Champaign one that all researchers in the social sciences should strive to achieve. The methodology appears to be a morphing Jamie Swift, Brice Balmer and Mira Community-Based Research methods, Dineen, Persistent Poverty: Voices from where collaboration between the inves- the Margins (Toronto: Between the Lines tigator and the community organization 2010) – in this case, isarc – occurs to produce a more rounded and grounded knowl- Persistent Poverty: Voices from the edge. It is also important to recognize Margins presents the reader with a the extremely important work isarc prime example of the delicate balance engaged in by collecting the data for the between scholarship and activism and 2010 social audit. In a country where less the ways in which academic scholarship and less attention is paid to understand- can challenge traditional ways of inves- ing and improving the social welfare of tigating and reporting. Methodologically Canadians, it is important that docu- this work is valuable for minimizing re- ments and research like this continue searcher-researched power imbalances. to exist in order to counter Canadians’ It allows for a sharing and collaboration dominant understandings of poverty of knowledge between the “researchers” with not only quantitative but also quali- and the “community” or the “research- tative data. With little popular resistance ers” and “researching assistants.” This to the government’s recent slashing of collaboration ultimately produces a work funding for critical poverty organizations much more rich in qualitative knowledge like Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, it and understanding, and allows for the is clear that not only policy needs to be reader to identify the ways in which her/ changed, but also our communities’ un- his life is affected by poverty. This book derstandings of it. As such this study pro- is extremely important in situating the vides the Canadian public, but also those poverty that occurs “out there” and “out- interested in social policy, with a way of side of us” directly within our lives and understanding the ways in which poverty our experiences with fellow Canadians. has been actively maintained by our gov- As stated by Dave Bindi, quoted in this ernments through intentional privileging text, “when you live in a big city, homeless of business and private interests. As the people start to become like pigeons … be- authors argue, “Two decades of strip- cause they’re so ubiquitous, they seem ping back income supports and putting part of the city’s wallpaper, which the more emphasis on market-based solu- citizenry largely moves past, rarely paus- tions repurposed the role of the state and ing to consider how near we are to their left ordinary Canadians, suddenly faced condition.” (15) Jamie Swift, Mira Dineen with the most brutal recession since the and the dedicated folks at the Interfaith Second World War, more exposed to the Social Assistance Reform Coalition economic risks associated with jobless- (isarc) contribute to the production of ness than at any time since those earlier a counter-hegemonic discourse of pov- years.” (21) erty that, more than ever, is desperately In short, the statistics provided, for needed in Ontario. example that Canadian food banks serve

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more than 700,000 Canadians/month our kids to eat healthy … I have to give (77), combined with statements like “I up my heart medicine, stomach medi- thought that garbage-picking was only cation, and migraine medication, and I needed in the Philippines, Africa or other do it because our kids come first.” (80) third world countries” (76) contribute to Stories like these are common through- the destruction of the myth that Canada out the book, which not only gives pov- is a resource-rich nation, a “first-world” erty a “human face” but also supports nation. the statistics provided and complicates The authors have collaborated with our understandings of poverty beyond their colleagues to produce a piece of simply “welfare.” These stories revealed work that highlights the systemic and the ways in which services beyond social unrelenting economic violence im- assistance are critical to one’s experience posed on those sectors “left behind” by of poverty and one’s emergence from it. Canadian social policy. The study does Accessible and affordable transportation, an excellent job of demystifying and de- healthy and affordable food, job opportu- individualizing constructions of poverty nities, and sufficient funding for public in Ontario, which, as the authors rightly service workers all figured into the narra- point out, underpin the very hegemonic tors’ daily experiences with “the system,” understandings of poverty that were con- a system which often left them feeling left structed during the neo-liberal common behind, victimized, or guilty. sense revolution. Welfare bashing and But beyond eliciting feelings of frus- criminalization of poverty are all direct tration or anger for the reader, and be- results of the ways in which our under- yond portraying these people as victims, standings of a collective well-being were the book also provides the reader with a dismantled, justifying the slashing of sense of the unrelenting agency and will public services (particularly during the of those experiencing what appear as in- Harris regime) and the deconstruction of surmountable barriers to their survival. the welfare state. The book provides us with examples of Beyond identifying the systematic the energy required to continue looking constraints that restrain and reproduce for work when you live away from centres poverty, the authors provide countless of work and there is no public transit or examples of the ways in which people ex- money for it. It provides us of examples perience those structural impediments. of just how inaccessible our public ser- In particular, the authors identify the vices are. It provides us with countless ways in which those living in poverty, examples of the barriers assembled in or- particularly women (who more frequent- der to ensure that there is a healthy sup- ly occupy levels of poverty), feel and ex- ply of poverty, and thus people forced to perience poverty in their daily lives. The “choose” to work for less, and longer, in most powerful sections of the book are order to meet their basic necessities, or those allotted to testimonials, which, even not meet them at all. more than anything, elicit feelings of Although the authors do address pov- anger, frustration, and despair, feelings erty and trace its exacerbation to neo- clearly expressed by those sharing their liberalism’s roll-backs the book fails to experiences. For example, a mother in provide a more radical alternative, that is North Bay reveals the difficult but nec- to say an alternative that does not justify essary decisions she is forced to make the continued existence of capitalism. For on a daily basis to care for her children. example, the tone throughout the book is She claims, “If my husband and I want that the solution to these problems is a

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quasi-reinstatement of the welfare poli- government. Despite the debt-fear that cies of the past. There is the assumption they are creating, their economic priori- that building a social democratic govern- ties are securitized. That is to say, there ment like those in Scandinavia will allow is massive federal investment going into for cushion and alleviate some of the ex- military and prison spending. Instead of treme poverty we are facing in Ontario dealing with poverty as a systemic issue and in Canada at present. The authors that can be rehabilitated and eliminated make reference to the Scandinavian’s gov- by making other aspects of one’s life liv- ernments’ successes with unionization able, poverty is (1) criminalized or (2) and nearly eliminating mortality rates taken advantage of by sending to fight in and, as is common with most Canadian foreign countries young Canadians who social policy research, the Scandinavian are either drowning in university debt or north is put on somewhat of a pedestal, who jump at the opportunity to have a a goal to be attained, a goal Canada once decently paid job with benefits and pen- closely knew. For example, we could ex- sion, one of the few existing today. pand their analysis in particular ways to Although the strategies the authors anticipate the criticism that naturally is provide for a more social democratic wel- made of work demanding more social in- fare state may be effective in the short vestment: “Where do we get the money?” term and are very important for the im- Fear of debt and national debt accumu- mediate experiences of those presently lation was strategically planted with the living in poverty, the problem with these Mulroney government and is continu- solutions is that they enable the contin- ously re-enforced within all of the cur- ued existence of capitalism, which neces- rent political and opposition parties. sarily requires poverty and exploitation Firstly, the political-economic analy- for its survival. Ideally what I would have sis lacking in, or which could be added liked to see from the authors is more to, this work is the question of natural short-term and long-term goal structure resource ownership. It is no secret that regarding policy. The long-term “how we national management of strategic re- want to live discourse,” which is “we want sources the Canadian government once to live better,” was lacking here. The book owned has been sold off to foreign in- is missing ways of imagining how Canada terests. It is also commonly known that could emerge as a nation that truly lives our ownership of Canadian oil reserves up to the reputation of the people it is minimal which, when combined with houses. neo-liberal offloading to the provinces, Overall, this work is an extremely im- leaves Canadians fighting for the scraps portant example of the kinds of academic of some of the largest oil reserves in the work Canadian scholars should be pro- world. Nationalization is not the ultimate ducing in order to make their work acces- goal of a politic that tends to adequately sible and readable, and thus effective for redistribute wealth, but it is one that is the Canadian public at large. certainly important now, in terms of Kirsten Francescone regional fragmentation, in order to not Carleton University only re-unite Canadians, but also en- able a richening of our public services, which are in desperate need of national investment. Second, Canadians need to speak out about the priorities of the Harper

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Geoffrey Baker,Buena Vista in the what started as dance music for a racially Club: Rap, Reggaetón, and Revolution mixed crowd into a movement imbued in Havana (Durham and London: Duke with pro-Black, Marxist ideology. University Press 2011) A large portion of Buena Vista in the Club is devoted to an analysis of the The latest addition to Duke transnational three-way dance among University Press’s Refiguring American Cuban officials, rappers, and activists Music series, Buena Vista in the Club that shaped the sound and position of offers a compelling analysis of the ef- Cuban rap in the last decade of the 20th fects that the transnational circulation century. Insisting that the Cuban bureau- of music, scholarship, and capital have cracy is too fragmented to produce an had on Cuban popular music. In doing effective state policy, Baker explains how so, Geoffrey Baker captures both musi- the nationalization of rap in Cuba has cal and social life in contemporary Cuba been the product of key Cuban and North and highlights the role of scholars in the American intermediaries with a strong global flow of cultural production. knowledge of hip hop culture and a deep Baker is an early music scholar who understanding of the practical workings previously wrote about colonial Latin of Cuban politics. These intermediaries America. While some may view Buena built on longstanding ideological con- Vista in the Club as a new and surpris- nections between North American Black ing direction in his research, it actually is Nationalist thought and Cuban revolu- the culmination of nearly seven years of tionary discourse in order to shore up of- research on rap and reggaetón in Havana, ficial support for a potentially subversive stretching from 2003 to 2010. Baker ac- music. knowledges that being white and British Baker’s analysis of hip hop as urban made him an outsider to the music. practice allows him to reveal the complex However, rather than being a hindrance, interplay between state support, govern- Baker’s position enables him to propose ment control, and artists’ resistance that a critical, and at times revisionist, ap- is an integral part of the Cuban rap scene. proach to the study of global hip hop. Analyzing the many aspects of rap per- No single thesis emerges from Buena formance in the city, from stage appear- Vista in the Club. Instead, the four main ances to the interplay between audience chapters function as nearly independent and artists, to the impromptu freestyle essays, each addressing a distinct prob- battles that occasionally break out in lematic and contributing a different per- public spaces, Baker is able to reveal com- spective to the study of urban beat-based plex dialectics between elements that are musics in Cuba and their position in a too often presented as simply opposition- global hip hop network. Baker’s great- al: the local and the global, hustling and est contribution to hip hop studies is his moralizing attitudes, or “keeping it real” expansion of this network to encompass versus “selling out.” not only the circulation of musicians and Likewise, Baker challenges the di- recordings, but also the work of inter- chotomy between rap and reggaetón, a national scholars, journalists, and activ- new musical genre that emerged from ists. Indeed, Baker argues that the many the localizing of rap in Spanish-speaking documents produced by foreigners do Panama and Puerto Rico and took Cuba more than record the local manifesta- by storm starting in 2002. Although tion of a cultural expression; rather, they Cuban rappers, along with activists and have played an integral role in turning scholars on both sides of the Florida

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Strait, have been quick to denounce reg- international reception of Cuban rap or gaetón’s overt hedonism and supposed the commercial success of reggaetón in “lexical violence,” Baker demonstrates Cuba. I would have liked to see Baker ad- that the new music and its associated dress how rap and reggaetón may in fact dance actually represent “a statement of appeal to different taste communities. It liberation from social, political, and even should be noted, too, that most of the re- economic constraints.” (137) Thus even cordings discussed throughout the book reggaetón’s lyrics – with their focus on are fairly difficult to acquire outside of girls, sex, and dancing – express a po- Cuba. litical stance that resonates with many Analyzing how nostalgia has shaped young male Cubans caught between a the reception of rap and reggaetón in struggling socialist state and increased Cuba, Baker writes that rap’s fascination capitalist pressure. with its past is “evidence of a modernist Buena Vista in the Club is a fascinat- worldview.” (145) In contrast, he argues ing read. By mixing ethnographic obser- that reggaetón’s lack of reference to na- vations, personal interviews, secondary tional musical traditions is symptomatic sources, and analysis of song lyrics, Baker of postmodernist cultural expressions. is able to convey the complexity of both On the surface, this analysis runs con- the music scene and everyday life in trary to the common distinction between contemporary Havana. His description modernity and postmodernity in music of a marathon meeting between Harry scholarship. Shouldn’t reggaetón’s sup- Belafonte and Fidel Castro during which posed break with its musical past mark it the two men discussed the political mer- as modern? Conversely, doesn’t rap’s con- its of hip hop is fascinating and all the stant recycling and re-contextualizing more effective because Baker balances of past musical creations through sam- this view from the top with many de- pling make it an essentially postmodern scriptions of musical practices at street form? Delving more deeply into these level. In fact, Baker contributes to the significant questions would allow Baker study of music and nationalism by chal- to consider the intersection of socialism, lenging both top-down and bottom-up capitalism, and aesthetics to a greater models of the nationalization of music, degree than he does. Indeed, criticism of substituting instead a focus on institu- modernism has figured prominently in tions and individuals. aesthetic debates under socialist regimes. While the book offers a compelling Conversely, scholars such as Fredric portrait of contemporary Cuban musical Jameson have posited postmodernity as life, I would have liked a deeper engage- the cultural expression of late capital- ment with the music itself. Baker focuses ism. Thus, these categories are important his analysis on lyrics and, although he tools with which to theorize the position does touch on the sound of the music, a of music that exists at the articulation of more thorough examination of musical the two economic systems. aesthetics would have been welcome. It is Overall, Buena Vista in the Club is an interesting to read that rap does not have essential addition to the growing schol- to rely on musical markers of Cubanness arship on global hip hop. Baker adds to to sound Cuban and that, in spite of its this scholarship in two significant ways. grounding in the habanera rhythm, First, unlike his predecessors, he refuses many Cubans consider reggaetón to be a to isolate the study of rap from reggaetón, foreign style. Yet one wonders what role preferring instead to analyze the inter- aesthetics have played in shaping the play between the two genres. Second, he

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takes reflexivity to a new level by reveal- more moderate and the other more radi- ing the ways in which the works of for- cal. While the many studies have differ- eign journalists and scholars have shaped ing points of emphasis, arguably the most the representation of Cuban rap and important difference is the conclusion facilitated its success. Although a large analysts reach about them. Ideologically portion of this material is available as centrist or conservative analysts view individual articles or essays in other vol- the more radical version skeptically. By umes, taken together, the four chapters in contrast, leftists are deeply disappointed this book offer a level of analysis whose with the acceptance of neo-liberal ideas depth, insight, and contemporaneity are and policies by moderate governments, remarkable. especially in the case of Brazil and Lula. Jerome Camal Emir Sader’s The New Mole falls squarely University of California Los Angeles in this latter category. Sader is a well- known and important figure on the left in Brazil – both as an analyst and as a Emir Sader, The New Mole: Paths of the political figure. His perspective on the Latin American Left (New York: Verso rise and apparent fall of neo-liberal hege- 2011) mony is particularly welcome. But, given the many outstanding studies (including The “hegemony” of neo-liberalism in Sader’s already published critique of Lula Latin America did not last long. By the and the Worker’s Party), the question end of the 1990s, the left began a return then is what, if anything, does this new to power across the region. However, the work add to our understanding of the series of electoral victories that brought phenomenon? leftists to power in diverse settings such Unfortunately, the answer is not that as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, El Salvador much. Sader is at his best on the “enig- or Venezuela did not mean a definitive ma” of Lula’s program. Under Lula and rejection of market-oriented models ei- Dilma, the Workers’ Party’s (pt) blending ther. In fact, the shifts in political power of policies that primarily benefit both -fi revealed a range of alternative approach- nancial capital and the poor defies easy es based on differing configurations of classification as either neo-liberal or public support. In some countries, such “post-neo-liberal.” But, Sader’s argument as Bolivia, Ecuador or Venezuela, elected here echoes his earlier published work leaders embraced more aggressive chang- and does not differ substantially from es, backed by long-neglected or excluded a large number of analyses of the pt of constituencies. In other countries, such various ideological persuasions. Sader’s as Brazil, Chile or Uruguay, newly elected main concern is how to build a genuine- leaders developed economic models that ly “post-neo-liberal” alliance that joins sought to develop a balance between state Brazil and other quasi-reformist govern- and market, supported by large swaths of ments with the real post-liberal efforts voters neither enamoured of nor hostile of Hugo Chavez’ Bolivarian Alliance for to markets. the Americas (alba) bloc. Sader’s argu- This shift to the left and the emergence mentation about the larger trend in the of competing models of political econ- region largely eschews social science omy has been, quite appropriately, the standards of evidence and argumentation subject of a good deal of work in recent and instead is written more like a Marxist years. The prevailing conclusion is that pamphlet. It features grand sweeping there are two basic alternatives – one statements and frequent references to

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social forces without any effort to specify evidence that force careful consideration them. Paragraph after paragraph makes of their arguments, regardless of whether enormous assertions, any one of which they conform to the reader’s ideological merits close consideration of evidence. preferences. Thus, given the vast array of Yet, none is offered. In short, the volume important and powerful critiques of neo- does not meet the expectations of empiri- liberalism and the rise of alternative lefts cal social science. in the region, it is hard to see what this So, the many weaknesses of the alba thin volume adds to the discussion. bloc economies and the questions about Peter Kingstone the viability of the Venezuelan or Bolivian King’s College London growth model go unexamined. Brazil’s implementation of an extreme and vio- lent neo-liberal program under Cardoso Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital, Karl and is not analyzed in any detail whatsoever Jenny Marx and the Birth of Revolution and the perception of virtually any non- (New York: Little, Brown and Company ideologue that Brazil never fully or deeply 2011) embraced the program is not considered. The corruption charges levied against the Mary Gabriel informs us that when Lula government, for example under the Marx’s first volume of Capital was fi- mensalão, are evidence of the resistance nally published after years of torturous of the right and its allies in the US. Of research, rewrites, and frustrating delays, course, we don’t know who these con- during which he physically and emotion- spirators are, nor do we have any consid- ally drove himself into the ground, with eration of the possibility that the charges dire effects on his family through years of had a valid basis. poverty, the great revolutionary critique One can write effective social sci- unveiling the capitalist system and bour- ence work that presents powerful cri- geois political economy fell on deaf ears. tiques of neo-liberalism. For example, One young Marx sympathizer who often James Petras’ The Left Strikes Back of- visited the London home (in part to court fers a very well supported analysis of one of the daughters) stated that, when the many variants of leftist resistance delivered the book he felt as if an elephant to market-oriented reforms across the had been delivered to him and that he region. Altneratively, David Harvey’s didn’t know what to do with it. Another Neoliberalism examines the efforts of ally delivered to the household an enor- financial élites and economic conserva- mous statue of the head of Zeus as a form tives to advance an agenda of reforms of congratulations. The flabbergasted across both the developed and develop- Marxes did not know what to make of ing worlds. Javier Santiso’s The Political it. Perhaps that bust was an anticipation Economy of Emerging Markets details the of what was to become of Marx’s legacy, inner workings of the financial world and artistically expressed in the enormous the ways it constrains choices, although granite head erected in the 1950s at the Santiso is not a leftist. Jorge Castañeda family grave site in Highgate cemetery. has been criticized on the left for being The symbol stares down almost godlike, too accepting of neo-liberal principles, celebrating the man’s powerful intellect but both Utopia Unarmed and Leftovers and reflecting a 20th-century Marxism are excellent empirical accounts sup- considering itself monolithic, unmoving, porting powerful arguments. In fact, orthodox. The names of the members of all of these works rest on rich bases of his family and household buried with

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him are hardly noticeable. The former such poverty, the constant appeals both grave was simple and unadorned. Karl and Jenny made for money to pay for The central figure of Gabriel’s well re- medicines, and burial of children at the searched book still remains Karl Marx, very moments when Marx is plagued by but more than any other work it has placed both illness and the seemingly unending him alongside the influence of his lifelong bitter personal attacks made upon him partner, lover, spouse, Jenny Westphalen, by opponents of both left and right often too often given side mention in Marx bi- make for difficult reading. ographies. It also places their lives within Gabriel’s history is just as much the a grand narrative sweep of revolutionary story of the building of a revolutionary history from the philosophical stirrings socialist movement as it is an intimate of German’s Young Hegelians through examination of one man’s key role. It is Europe’s national and class rebellions an insight into the difficulties of holding of 1848, years of counter-revolution, the together divergent groups, associations rise and dissolution of the International and rival factions of those who spoke Workingman’s Association, the US Civil in the name of the working class, the War, Fenian uprisings, and the Paris petty jealousies and backbiting within Commune. Great attention is paid to the the movement, intellectual debates, the political community that participated. endless hours spent in meetings, raising What is particularly important in monies, propagandizing, and publishing Gabriel’s work is her ability to cast events tracts, and the enormous toll taken in the in the light of human characters in their process. richness, foibles, and folly, detailing the Gabriel’s account is sympathetic, but struggling conditions of daily lives just to not uncritical. The history presented is survive while attempting to build a move- not a history of ideas and dogma. It is ment and hopefully a different society. placed in the context of real human rela- Reading the intimate details of the Marx tionships and the difficult personal deci- household one would almost think one is sions made in the context of momentous reading a Dickensian novel. Karl Marx, human and historical events. The reader plagued like Wilkins Micawber in David is better able to honestly judge the accu- Copperfield, forced to disguise himself sations often hurled at Marx that he was to avoid a host of creditors at the door so either a personal scoundrel, a closeted in- that he can slip out and visit the library to tellectual, at times too revolutionary, too continue his writings in peace; Jenny, of- moderate, too bourgeois, an intellectual ten deserted, trying to keep up Victorian elitist given to a form of “scientism” hav- bourgeois appearances while forced to ing an authoritarian personality reflected pawn clothes, silver, her children’s toys; into an authoritarian theory, a petty dic- the riotous calamity of boisterous, artis- tator, or an economic determinist who tic and intellectual daughters forced into simply did not understand the working the situation of many young women of class. Gabriel uses the extensive materi- the Victorian era to find husbands in or- als of Marx’s personal letters alongside der to survive economically. Their home those of Jenny and their daughters to dis- is invaded with the wildest array of flam- parage the invective. boyant revolutionaries, utopians, self- If there is any flaw in Gabriel’s book serving politicians, the occasional police it is that she has misinterpreted Marx’s spy, and starving emigrés from failed argument in Capital concerning the ex- rebellions. The dust, mire and smells of ploitative relationship between capitalist London’s slums, the emotional stresses of and worker. She has made the error that,

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according to Marx, the worker sells to so admirably. It is one of few studies to the capitalist his/her “labour” and then cross the divide of 1834, analyzing the is overworked, from which the capitalist system across the shift from Old Poor then appropriates the surplus value. This Law to New. This by itself is not alto- then becomes a matter of moral injus- gether novel, as Lynn Hollen Lees’ excel- tice. Rather, Marx’s discovery was that lent The Solidarities of Strangers (1998) the worker sold “labour power” in the shows. However, Green takes on a second original wage bargain and the capitalist challenge just as daunting by analyzing gained by the real labour output. Gabriel’s this system across the oceanic terrain error is indeed surprising considering of London. Because the system was ad- her otherwise positive and sympathetic ministered at the parish level, and be- understanding of Marx’s theoretical and cause London had well over 100 parishes, philosophical work, but it can for the mo- scholars hoping to generalize about poor ment be viewed as a minor distraction relief in the city face a bewildering array that does not detract from the overall ex- of policies and practices. How typical it cellence of a highly recommended book. is for scholars to execute case studies of The history presented by Gabriel is in- single parishes punctuated by disclaim- deed a story of love between two people, ers confessing ignorance about their typi- often heart breaking, seen through each cality for the rest of the city. Rather than other’s eyes and the eyes of their children. try to force generalizations on this sea It is also full of the dialectic of both love of variety Green explores how London’s and hate that transpires within a move- unique realities presented problems for ment wracked by fratricide and betrayal poor relief and how these concerns influ- and yet capable of being inspired by indi- enced national developments. vidual and collective heroism. It is indeed Green starts by exploring the situation a history of communities and nations prior to 1834, linking up his work with at a time of incredible ferment and pro- that of scholars exploring regional dis- vides greater insights into how they func- tinctions in poor law expenditure, nota- tioned, changed our ideas, and changed bly Steve King. Pauper Capital enhances the world. their findings showing that London saw Len Wallace much higher costs of per capita poor University of Windsor relief mainly because of its heavy use of workhouses. Green, a historical geogra- pher, demonstrates how population shift David R. Green, Pauper Capital: impacted relief in different parishes. The London and the Poor Law, 1790–1870 availability of affordable housing, for ex- (Burlington: Ashgate 2010) ample, changed over time, resulting in increasing class segregation, with some The poor law system touched the lives parishes housing growing numbers of of almost everyone living in 18th- and the working poor and fewer well-to-do 19th-century England, whether as rate- ratepayers and therefore facing rising payers or recipients. It cut to the heart demands for relief but dwindling tax of social relations and for that reason resources. has been the focus of considerable so- Addressing such inequities proved cio-historical analysis since the Webbs’ difficult because of local recalcitrance pioneering work. It would seem difficult to centralization. The politics of re- to enhance so deep a historiography form form the core of Chapter 3 where but David Green’s new book has done Green shows that opposition to the 1834

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reforms centred more on protecting local to build new workhouses in 1834 it may governing autonomy than on critiques have been because they were already rela- of the reforms themselves. Radicals and tively well served, a speculation that finds reform-minded Whigs linked their criti- support in Green’s evidence that more cism to issues of larger national impor- parishes chose to enlarge existing work- tance, such as taxation, representation, houses rather than build new ones in the and the franchise. Green successfully period before 1860. (131–33) shows how London poor law agitation In a chapter on how paupers negoti- helped drive national political discus- ated relief Green joins Tim Hitchcock, sions. About a third of London poor law Robert Sokoll and others who have ex- authorities did not adapt the 1834 statute, plored pauper agency within welfare but in one of the more surprising discov- exchanges. London’s uniqueness again eries in the book, Green shows that this shines through as Green analyzes pau- distinction mattered little, as these juris- pers’ opportunities to seek relief in mul- dictions ended up following similar poli- tiple parishes simultaneously, a scheme cies anyway. rural paupers could hardly dream of The 1834 reforms focused relief even pulling off. Readers of Labour/Le Travail more heavily than before on workhouses. may well sympathize with the poor when Chapter 4 explores London’s workhouse reading about such exchanges. However, system, showing that London lagged be- it is possible to feel sympathy, even if hind other jurisdictions in building new fleeting, for the overseers of crowded workhouses, in part because construc- London parishes, who Green shows of- tion was expensive but also because nu- ten stayed late into the night to listen to merous specialist institutions like charity the stories of hundreds of relief appli- schools and lunatic asylums helped free cants each day, tales they could do little up spaces in the workhouses. The chap- to verify and that evidence suggests were ter enhances our understanding of the frequently bogus. For example, one par- growth of specialist institutions in the ish made relief contingent on home visits city. However, one quibble concerns only to find that more than half the appli- Green’s decision not to explore more cants gave phony addresses. London pau- fully the history of London workhouses pers were also more inclined to make use before his starting point of 1790. Green of the courts when refused relief, again notes that the workhouse system that because of London’s special status as a would eventually be codified by the New massive, anonymous cityscape. Poor Law was already in place in the capi- Green also breaks ground by explor- tal well before 1834. The proliferation of ing negotiations inside the workhouse, workhouses in the capital from the 1720s analyzing how paupers might use work- marks one of the ways that London was houses creatively, entering them too late unlike any other English city. There were to be put to work, and resisting labour 80 workhouses in London by the time once they had eaten breakfast. Green of a parliamentary enquiry of 1776. It is wants to see these “pauper protests” as unfair to criticize a book as ambitious more than just attempts to squeeze re- and successful as this one for not tack- sources from parish paymasters, but as ling another seventy years of complex politically motivated critiques of the New history. However, for certain discus- Poor Law. A sense of moral legitimacy sions London’s longer history of work- was embedded in these claims for social house provision may matter. When, for justice, which were frequently couched example, London parishes did not rush in the terms of customary rights and

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reciprocal responsibilities. Such concepts policy shift ends with a point of conti- dated back centuries, and Green suggests nuity, for this was essentially already the that they still had purchase even after the case in the 18th century. One can only New Poor Law tried to erode these early hope that a scholar of Green’s daring modern social bonds. and talent will someday soon undertake Green closes his book with two chap- a similar study for 18th-century London. ters exploring how London’s welfare Pauper Capital is a major achievement. system faced a crisis by the 1860s that Kevin Siena drove reforms at the national level. Poor Trent University migrants continued to flood in, taking up residence – though frequently not poor law settlement – in poor suburbs offer- Hester Barron, The 1926 Miners’ Lockout: ing cheap housing. Such parishes faced Meanings of Community in the Durham growing relief demands and diminishing Coalfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press tax bases. Two solutions presented them- 2010) selves: moving people or moving money. Green explores removals, by which pau- Should we call the labour action that pers could be passed to their home par- convulsed Britain’s coalfields in 1926 a ishes. Such procedures could be time lockout or a strike? According to Hester consuming and expensive, so officials Barron, even participants in that event focused on low cost, high reward remov- disagreed on the terminology to use, als, like those of single mothers and their and that divisiveness is foregrounded in children who only needed shifting to her excellent study of community in the another parish within the city. Removal, locked-out Durham coalfield. Although however, could never solve the basic “community” itself is a vague and con- growing inequity; too many propertied tested term, Barron subjects to scrutiny Londoners inhabited parishes with low the Durham colliers’ community, using relief demands, effectively immune from thematic chapters to illustrate many ways shouldering London’s booming poor re- in which miners’ identities could divide lief burden. The jealously guarded local as well as unite them. system, in which another parish’s poor Lest occupational solidarity seem ob- were seen as someone else’s responsi- vious, Barron notes that miners were bility, had to be overcome. Green’s final significantly divided on the basis of skill chapter shows how the crisis in London level and mining region. The term “min- drove a series of parliamentary acts that ers” encompassed putters, mule drivers, recast parochial citizenship by reforming labourers and topmen, as well as the most residency requirements and, potentially skilled hewers at the coal-face. Different even more important, the Metropolitan levels of skill merited different levels of Poor Act (1870), which redistributed pay within the mine. Occupational pride relief costs across the city by creating a may have predisposed some workers to central fund. Poor sections of the city support the strike more than others, but, quickly built new workhouses they could as Barron shows, the Durham Miners’ not previously afford, helping to sustain Association locally helped to squelch dis- London’s unique pauper experiences. By sent as much as class consciousness may the 1890s London paupers were more have inspired cooperation. Moreover, than twice as likely as other Englishmen occupational solidarity did not mean to be relieved in a workhouse. It is ironic industry-wide solidarity: although own- that a book that charts such a seismic ers contributed to charities benefiting

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miners’ children and refused to evict Similarly, while most colliers were more striking workers from tied housing dur- nominally Christian than professedly ing the strike, the striking miners resent- religious, strike leaders were more likely ed the owners immensely. to emerge from Primitive Methodist The evidence is mixed about whether chapels than from Anglican churches. or not the isolation of mine communities Intriguingly, Barron notes that, for the built solidarity. Barron shows that strike- sake of their long-term success in the breakers were often new arrivals to a lo- field, clergymen remained publicly neu- cale. Conversely, mining families moved tral on the strike even when pushed one often, which eroded relationships or way or another by their personal politi- prevented them from forming. Loyalties cal inclinations. Schoolteachers, many of between miners and members of other whom were the children of miners, were occupational groups remained unpre- much more likely than were the clergy dictable. Shopkeepers who depended on to support the strike outright. Schools mine families’ custom often supported became a centre for community, by pro- the miners’ decision to stay out. In con- viding free meals to strikers’ children; trast, some non-mining manual workers public libraries and workers’ institutes who participated in the General Strike of helped fill miners’ suddenly expansive 1926 resented the fact that miners were leisure time with books and educational better paid than they were. opportunities. Family relationships could cut both In her final chapter, Barron compares ways in the coalfield. Boys often followed the collective memory of the 1926 strike, their fathers into the pits, and married what actually happened, and the way in miners’ daughters, which strengthened which the popular narrative of the strike their loyalty to the cause. But during a helped to condition miners’ behaviour strike, the masculinity of the solid union into the 1970s and 1980s. Individual nar- brother conflicted with the masculin- ratives of the strike cover a wide spectrum, ity of the successful breadwinner. This illustrating the variety of possible experi- explains why men would publicly refuse ences. Some children and young male to blackleg, but would privately steal coal miners experienced the strike as a won- and food, even from each other. Women derful moment of leisure, in a year of win- particularly suffered in times of male un- ning local football clubs and impromptu employment; rigidly gendered tasks like dances. Other witnesses recounted the cooking and cleaning could not stop just hardships of malnutrition and disease because women now lacked the needed incurred while trying to support fami- resources. Despite these hardships, wom- lies. Many described the strike as just one en did not uniformly oppose the strike; more example of the long oppression that some gleefully participated in demon- miners faced, conflating the 1926 strike strations, smuggled labour newspapers with the 1921 strike or the Depression to each other under their aprons, looted years. The strike entered collective mem- coal from coal cars, or threw potatoes at ory as a heroic and tragic event, a fact strikebreakers. Barron attributes to mining being a fa- Political, religious, and educational af- milial occupation, and the Durham coal- filiations were more likely to unite than field a place with a culture of storytelling. to divide colliery communities. Barron Having entered public consciousness in shows that striking miners generally this reified way, the 1926 strike became a voted alike, supporting Labour without pattern for promoting solidarity in other being attracted to communist principles. strikes, particularly in 1984.

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Although the book has very few short- for whom it ought to be required read- comings, Barron’s attempt to position ing, but also to the general reader inter- herself within the literature is awkward. ested in the way in which ordinary people She describes her book as a response to a coped with a time of great social and eco- hegemonic narrative, which has asserted nomic stress. that class consciousness kept the miners Jamie L. Bronstein united during the lockout. Unfortunately, New Mexico State University she associates that interpretation with only a single book, published in 1956, before local social history had become Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of a common labour history method. the Working Class (London: Verso 2011) Furthermore, even after her chapters have delved deeply into other possibly The working class has gradually dis- competing sources of worker identity, she appeared from social discourse in North concludes that union culture, or “occu- America. Referring to the middle class pational consciousness,” was extremely is much more politically acceptable. In important in holding the miners together Chavs: The Demonization of the Working during their months of unemployment. Class, Owen Jones shows that the work- Unless class consciousness is defined in a ing class must still be at the forefront of straw-man way as a static, Marxist analy- social, political, and cultural analysis. His sis of the problems of labour and capital analysis of the contemporary working that necessarily binds together workers class in the United Kingdom, principally in different occupational groups, then de-industrialized northern England, is a what Barron is describing is in fact class cautionary tale that should make North formation. To point out the many ways American policy makers pause and real- in which miners identified themselves – ize that class matters as much as it ever through politics, religion, occupational did. roles, and levels of education – compli- The English middle class has tradition- cates the picture but does not change ally been associated with professional the fact that they were willing or forced employment, public schools that are re- to subsume these identities for seven ally private schools, and deliberately months, usually at great personal cost, cultivated patterns of social behaviour. in the hopes that they and other miners Jones opens his narrative by recounting would benefit. an incident at a typical middle-class so- An assiduous researcher, Barron has cial event: a dinner party. A guest made a drawn widely from previously unused joke about the imminent closure of ven- oral histories, published memoirs, local erable British retailer Woolworths, and record office documents, church records, speculated about where chavs would be parliamentary reports, and an array of able to shop after the firm had closed. It is newspapers. Her willingness to quote around this term – chavs – that Jones or- the miners and their families at length ganizes his discussion. It is a derogatory provides the reader not only with their term used by the media, politicians, and impressions in their own words, but also average citizens to describe much of what with a sense of the local dialect and sense remains of the British working class. of humour. The 1926 Miners’ Lockoutis Jones devotes considerable, and jus- firmly rooted in the best tradition of “his- tified, attention to the period from the tory from below.” It has the potential to late 1970s to the early 1990s when the appeal not only to the labour historian, Conservative Party governed Britain.

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The British left has long argued that the Goody. From a mixed-race background, Conservative government, as the politi- she recalled seeing parts of her own up- cal committee of the capitalist class, had bringing in the film Trainspotting – a film a clear plan for shifting wealth away from based on Irvine Welsh’s book about drug workers and otherwise promoting mon- use in inner-city Scotland. (122) Goody, eyed interests at the expense of every- speaking in her working-class midlands one else in the country. Jones appears to accent, went on the television program have gained remarkable access to major Big Brother and was quickly referred to policy makers from the Conservative era as a pig by the popular press. (123) The – such as former Conservative minister working class, as personified by Goody, Geoffrey Howe – and confirmed that the was an object of derision and ridicule. left was correct. The rich were idolized, The working class has also disappeared and Britain gradually deindustrialized. from other forms of popular entertain- The Conservative and Labour parties ment in Britain. A country that created in Britain used to have distinct policy the music of white working-class alien- platforms, and were led by people with ation – heavy metal – now produces clearly different socioeconomic back- pop bands with middle-class pedigrees. grounds. Moving from a boarding school Professional sports, which were once such as Eton or Harrow to either Oxford marketed to working-class consumers, or Cambridge, then on to a well-connect- are now more of a middle-class leisure ed profession and into a safety seat as a outlet. Professional football (soccer) in Tory member of parliament was a com- England is dominated by the Premier mon career path for Conservative Party League and features highly paid play- leaders. Labour, at least prior to the last ers and costly ticket prices. Football is fifteen years of the 20th century, was not accessible to working-class sports led by people from much humbler roots. fans, who used to support it, but there Leadership in both parties changed as the is still a popular fixation in the British Blair era followed the Thatcher era. Jones press on so-called working-class football reveals current British Prime Minister hooligans. David Cameron to be even more of a child Jones correctly identifies the loss of of privilege than the media has shown. well-paid industrial employment as the Having flown to a birthday party in New cause for much of the working class’s cur- York City on the supersonic Concorde rent condition. He describes Birmingham, jet (a premier conveyance of the rich and once the home of Rover’s enormous famous) at age 11, Cameron is a quintes- Longbridge automotive assembly plant, as sential product of the British aristocracy. an example of the impact of deindustrial- (75) Tony Blair came from somewhat less ization. The plant closed during the Blair exalted roots, but there was ultimately lit- years, and 6000 workers became unem- tle social difference between him and the ployed. The community around the plant Conservative politicians he faced across gradually slid into a morass of social and the aisle in the House of Commons. economic despair. Right-wing politicians Jones spends a lot of time discuss- and reactionary media outlets respond ing the infamous British tabloid media, to such conditions by attempting to root and uses notable cases of working-class out suspected abusers of social assistance, people being particularly vilified for no and otherwise blame communities and other reason than their social status. One workers for job losses. particularly tragic episode involved an This is not an academic volume, and under-paid dental assistant named Jade it would have been helpful if Jones had

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offered some solutions for the genuinely Mark Driscoll, Absolute Erotic, Absolute bad socioeconomic policies that both Grotesque (Durham: Duke University Conservative and Labour governments Press 2010) promoted in Britain for the past 35 years. Race appears in his discussion, such In this self-consciously revision- as in his analysis of reactionary politi- ist study of Japanese imperialism, Mark cal movements like the British National Driscoll takes up the old question of Party, but including more analysis of race “how Japan came to be a world power in would have made this book even more a few short decades” from a subalternist, timely. Jones’ narrative is nonetheless Marxist perspective. (ix) Criticizing the compelling and raises many important traditional focus on the metropolitan, questions. Euro-American inspired core of Japanese The working class in Canada and the élite leaders and institutions, he concen- United States has also suffered in the past trates on the “peripheral marginalia” of 35 years, especially from deindustrializa- Chinese labourers, Japanese pimps and tion. It is not yet socially acceptable to forced female sex workers, and Korean publicly demonize working-class people tenant farmers, who he sees as the driving to the extent that is done in Britain, but forces of empire. By examining Japanese Canadians and Americans are getting imperialism at its outer edges, far away close to that point. Unemployed blue-col- from the centres of power, he seeks to lar workers, people who reside in dilapi- reveal Japanese imperialism’s true logic, dated inner-city neighbourhoods, and mechanisms of power, and horrific, ex- low-income single parents are humiliated ploitative nature. and patronized on television programs Driscoll’s Absolute Erotic, Absolute like Maury Povich and Dr. Phil. Popular Grotesque is informed by an elabo- media commentators like Don Cherry, rate theoretical framework which he who are generally ignored by middle- lays out in his preface and introduc- class media consumers, attempt to stoke tion. Synthesizing a number of perspec- working-class biases against progressive tives, including Marx’s theory of capital, social and cultural policies. Canadian Foucault’s biopolitics, Gilles Deleuze and and American readers of Chavs should Felix Guattari’s critique of capitalism, thus see the cautionary themes found Japanese modernist discourse of erotic- in its pages. Britain was a country that, grotesque (ero-guro), Tanabe Hajime’s although it was historically divided by absolute dialectics, and the bio-philos- clear class differences, was a manufac- ophy of Minakata Kumagusu, he argues turing power whose wealth was based on that Japanese imperialism was character- working-class labour. Manufacturing in- ized by a central, unresolvable struggle dustry is now gone, and the working class between two forces: the erotic – “the is marginalized and ridiculed. Canadians vital productivity of desire” – and the and Americans will hopefully not con- grotesque – “the violent usurpation of tinue to go down the same path. this desire by hegemonic power” (Marx’s Jason Russell “capital”). (10) For the modern, biopoliti- State University of New York, cal, capitalist Meiji state, the motor force Empire State College of profits (surplus) and hegemonic power was human life and its erotic, creative, life-producing energy. In its colonies, the state condoned and expropriated (“gro- tesqued”) it, and in the process became

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deformed by it, especially from the 1930s. oversexed Japanese masculinity. Chapter At the base of this weighty theoretical 6 introduces some of the representative structure is the Marxist view of Japanese ero-guro literature and shows how mili- imperialism as an advanced stage of capi- tary officers consumed it in increasingly talism, by which capital searches overseas sensationalist, morbid ways, especially for new markets and resources (labour) to on the battlefield. exploit and “subsume.” In the final stage, beginning with The book is divided into three parts the occupation of Manchuria in 1931, which examine the successive stages Japanese imperialism took on a nec- of Japanese imperialism: biopolitics ropolitical form characterized by the (1895–1914), neuropolitics (1920–1936), “deformal subsumption” of capital as the and necropolitics. Part I examines biopolitical life-sustaining, regenerative Japanese imperialism in its biopolitical aspects of rule were abandoned in fa- form in the first two decades of coloniz- vour of the consumption and disposal of ing Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria. The the “living dead” through forced labour first chapter examines Chinese migrant policies, drugs, rape, pillage, and murder. workers and their pivotal role in making Chapter 7 analyzes Manchukuo’s drug Japanese imperialism possible. Driscoll trade, money-laundering schemes, and portrays Gotō Shinpei as the consum- forced labour policies under the “new bu- mate “biopolitician” who endeavoured to reaucrat” Kishi Nobusuke, the gangster both improve life in Taiwan by promot- Amakasu Masahiko, and Nissan presi- ing better hygiene and skim off profits dent and Mangyō chief Ayukawa Giisuke. from opium consumption by placing it The last chapter covers old ground on under government regulation. Chapter Manchukuo, but highlights the corrup- 2 relates the accounts of Japanese pimps tion, sexual escapades, and forced labour such as Muraoka Iheiji in squeezing out policies of Kishi and the self-serving Chinese traffickers from the profitable business strategies of Ayukawa. trade in abducted Japanese female sex Driscoll’s work offers an interest- workers, the subject of the third chapter. ing spatio-structural approach toward Japanese pimps and prostitutes had been Japanese capitalism. Beginning at its left to fend for themselves or “liberated” outer circle, he examines the various vi- from the biopolitical Meiji state (as well tal resources from which capital sought as their families) to make a better life to draw surplus. Clearly, the essential on the continent and send back profits. resource, before all other material re- In Chapter 4, we see how Korean tenant sources, was the lowly paid, hardworking farmers stepped in to perform the labour Chinese labourer, who physically built originally intended for Japanese settlers much of the infrastructure of Japanese and pay exorbitantly high rents to absen- imperialism, worked its fields and fac- tee Japanese landlords. tories, and made it a self-supporting As Japan entered the neuropolitical venture. He then considers the other stage, a more advanced level of consum- “resources” including Japanese prosti- erist capitalism was made possible by tutes, pimps, drugs, and Korean tenants. colonial profits. During this stage, we Working inward, he then shows how see the “real subsumption of living labor these strands are tightly wound together becoming dead, objectified labor” (17) as under the “new bureaucrats” (reform bu- a result of its commodification and con- reaucrats is the more accurate term) and sumption. Chapter 5 examines Japanese their partners in Manchukuo, first under sexologists and their creation of an Hoshino Naoki and Furumi Tadayuki

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and subsequently under Kishi, Ayukawa, These criticisms should not detract and Amakasu. The central figure operat- from the important contributions of this ing at the heart of Manchuria’s capitalist book. Driscoll squarely confronts the real factory of death is Kishi. Drawing heavily human costs of Japanese imperialism. upon Ōta Naoki’s study, he argues that He rightly demands that the problem of Kishi’s low opinion of the Chinese, au- colonial labour be placed at the centre thorization of the forced labour policy in of abstract discussions of “resources,” 1937, frequent trips to the brothels, and modernization, and late development. extensive money laundering made him He also skillfully exposes the “ideologi- the personification of necropolitics. cal fantasy” of Japan’s wartime leaders Kishi is undoubtedly one of the most and the ways in which “civilizer/looter” hated and controversial politicians in pre- represented two sides of the same impe- war and post-war Japan. His shady deal- rialist coin. ings with the underworld, however, do Janis Mimura not suffice to explain Japanese imperial- State University of New York, ism, Manchukuo, and ultimately, Japan’s Stony Brook road to Pearl Harbor. Kishi was hated not only for his brutal labour policies, sexual escapades, and drug money laundering, Jayeeta Sharma, Empire’s Garden: Assam but also for his socialistic ideas about and the Making of India (Durham and planned economy and his criticism of London: Duke University Press 2011) big business in the early 1940s. He was one member, albeit a very powerful and Colonial Assam was a product of the corrupt one, within a broader group of British Indian Government’s territo- middle-class professionals with inter- rial organization of its conquests in the ests and strategies that did not necessar- northeastern parts of the South Asian ily align with Japan’s ruling class of “rich subcontinent from 1826 onwards. As capitalists, powerful militarists, and the this new region came under its control, emperor’s family.” (229) Driscoll’s book the colonial government concentrated treats the state, for the most part, as a on extracting surpluses from the new faceless, monolithic entity. It represents province to finance its administrative an abstract concept of power that plays a expenses. The British inherited a prov- fixed role within the capitalist-bio/neuro/ ince in disarray where economic activi- necropolitical system. While I commend ties were disrupted owing to Burmese his efforts to examine the periphery, I do invasions. After much experimentation, not think that he has given sufficient con- the British introduced tea plantation in sideration to the metropolitan centre and order to defray its costs of conquests and its relations to the periphery. administration, as well as to generate fur- Although Driscoll occasionally refers ther wealth for British business houses in to “fascism” at times, I would have liked India. to see more systematic discussion about In the 19th century tea was an item the relationship between fascism and ne- of pleasure and social consumption and cropolitics. Why does Japan adopt the ne- thus was presumed to be a source of super cropolitical form of imperialism and not profit. The tea trade, however, depended other imperialist countries? How does on the permission of the Chinese govern- Japan’s necropolitics compare with other ment as the plant grew in the interior of forms of fascist/authoritarian regimes China. In Assam after the discovery of during the 1930s and early 1940s? local wild tea bushes, the colonial state

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acquired land and encouraged invest- state’s massive land-grab and building up ment by Calcutta-based British business of plantation complexes, which in turn houses in the province. The colonial state unleashed a demographic upheaval in the also granted British planters extra-judi- province. In depicting this transforma- cial control over their workers who were tion, the author develops an original ap- recruited through an indentured system. proach, demonstrating that colonial race Ironically tea, an integral item of global theories were neither static nor given. commodity circulation under conditions According to Sharma these theories also of imperial capitalism, also signified pre- changed in dialogue with capital’s search capitalist forms of extra-economic co- for labour, and in response to resistance ercion and inhuman labour regime. For from the subaltern social classes. local élites in the Bramhaputra Valley in For instance, Sharma shows how the Assam, tea came to represent economic resistance of Kachari workers against progress and social improvement, but as their forcible incorporation into the time passed it also signified political op- harsh labour regimes of tea gardens led pression, demographic upheaval, and co- to their demotion from “industrious” lonial exploitation. race to “savages” in the worldview of co- Jayeeta Sharma’s recent monograph lonial racial theories. Indeed, it was the brilliantly explores how the contradic- resistance of local subaltern classes that tion inherent in the integration of Assam led to the introduction of the inden- with global capitalist modernity through tured system in Assam, which recruited the quasi-feudal agency of colonial capi- workers from the Chotanagpur Plateau. talism transformed social and economic In colonial racial theories the people of life in Bramhaputra Valley, one of the this region were presumed to be the non- core regions of colonial Assam’s territo- Aryan, autochthonous inhabitants of ries. Though she scrupulously eschews the Indian subcontinent. Colonial élites any reference to Surma Valley, where the premised their ethnographic theories on majority of colonial Assam’s population discrepancies between the so-called in- resided after the formation of the prov- dustrious tribes and the indolent Hindu ince of Assam in 1874, she has produced castes, claiming that the former were bet- a superb analysis of the impact of colo- ter suited for the hard work required in nial capitalism and modernity on the so- tea plantations. Sharma thus traces the cial and intellectual life of Bramhaputra relationship between the making of the Valley and the adjacent hill regions. labour regime of tea plantations – notori- The strength of Sharma’s analysis lies ous for inhuman treatment of labourers in explaining how the encounter with – and shifts within colonial racial theo- colonial capitalist modernity, and the ries. She presents it as a dialogue between associated rhetoric of progress, trans- diverse and shifting intellectual strands formed material and intellectual life in in colonial ethnography and the logic Bramhaputra Valley and changed the of political-economic transformations emergent Asomiya-speaking literati’s self- within the industry. This is a significant perception, as well as their relationship and refreshing break from the monotony with India and the local subaltern classes. of discourse fetishism among a segment Sharma explores the thread of this argu- of scholars who readily exclude political- ment through Empire’s Garden in a sys- economic factors in their analyses of the tematic fashion. In the first part of her colonialism in South Asia and elsewhere. book, Sharma demonstrates how the dis- Sharma does not stop at explain- covery of tea in Assam led to the colonial ing the making of labour regimes in tea

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plantations in the Bramhaputra Valley. locals from the “medieval primitivism” of She also shows how colonial attempts to the previous Ahom regime dependent on transform Assam into a surplus-gener- “slave labour.” This rhetoric deeply influ- ating and economically viable province enced the perception of Indigenous élites attracted peasants from the adjacent and in Bramhaputra Valley. As colonial rule densely populated East Bengal country- transformed the valley into an economy side. Economic opportunities offered by that absorbed migrant labour, British tea plantations also attracted merchants rule also changed the composition of from northwestern India and grazers dominant élites. The British had little use from Nepal. These immigrants, particu- for the earlier non-literate military élites larly merchants from northwestern India, of the Ahoms, and the revenue clerks and adopted the local language with some of accountants of previous regimes now as- them becoming cultural pioneers of the sumed the position of subordinate élites. Bramhaputra Valley-based Asomiya so- Following the trend of Calcutta-based ciety. The Bengali Muslims who settled British colonial authorities and their al- in colonial Assam were dubbed the new lies absorbing the surplus from Assam, Asomiya, their sophisticated farming new élites from Bramhaputra Valley also techniques appreciated by the British came to Calcutta and entered British- as well as the local landholding élites. style educational institutions of the Nepali grazers introduced new varieties city. This new élite engaged into a proj- in local dietary habits, and travelled all ect of “modernizing” and standardizing over Assam in search of pastures. Such Assam’s language and fought against processes of assimilation were, however, the marginality ascribed to them by the not free from conflicts. As new immi- Bengali comprador élites. In Assam, too, grants became involved in various levels the earlier erroneous assumption among of economic activities their material in- colonial élites that Asomiya was a dialect terests occasionally clashed with differ- of Bengali was now corrected due to the ent local interest groups and the colonial vigorous efforts of the Asomiya literati. state. Sharma demonstrates that despite However, even as the educated high shared cultural ties neither new settlers caste Hindu male population engaged in nor earlier inhabitants were homoge- creating and standardizing a new liter- nous in terms of their material interests. ary language – Asomyia – from among Rather, as Sharma shows, the process of diverse languages spoken by locals, they community formation was fluid and con- unleashed a new process of marginaliza- ditioned by colonial intervention both tion based on class, gender and ethnicity. at ideological and economic levels. This Educated élites from Bramhaputra Valley obviously stands in contradistinction to thus entered into a process that was a strand in the extant critical corpus on similar to the making of Bengali, Telugu South Asia that posits, and privileges, the or Tamil élites and their investment in existence of a mysterious pristine pure cultural identities as markers of social pre-capitalist notion of “community” in superiority. While Asomiya élites em- South Asia during pre-colonial times. barked on a journey of establishing a new The second part of book deals with no- language and literature in standardized tions of “progress” and “improvement,” Asomiya prose, they also drew upon the two key locutions that dominated the colonial racial- linguistic notion of Aryan rhetoric of colonial policy. Colonial rul- origins of Indo–European languages and ers claimed for themselves the role of claimed their status as Aryans as distinct “social emancipator” who released the from the “mongoloid” tribes residing in

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Bramhaputra Valley and adjacent hill became the source of discontent, and regions and posited them as socially and Assam was repartitioned several times culturally inferior. This sowed the seeds after Independence. for future discontent among the various There is no doubt that Sharma offers non-Asomiya speakers and new settler us a brilliant kaleidoscope of transfor- migrants to the Bramhaputra Valley. mations of Assam under colonial rule. Sharma locates this search for a stan- She offers readers a critical insight into dardized prose and a hegemonic “mother the relationship between colonial capi- tongue” in relation to the colonial élite’s talism’s rhetoric of improvement and its penchant for linguistic ethnography. multifaceted impact on people of Assam. Moreover, she correctly traces the appro- However it is somewhat surprising that priation of British racial theories by dif- while the author painstakingly analyzes ferent Indian élites. Jayeeta Sharma thus the social transformation of the Naga, offers us a picture of how the pattern of Garo and Mizo hills, she pays scant at- class formation in Assam, and the con- tention to the Barak Valley, a region that comitant notion of cultural superiority, constitutes a critical part of Assam today. created conditions for exclusions along Moreover, Sharma’s book also gives the ethnic, gender and class lines. impression of very sharp disjuncture be- Sharma also traces the social transfor- tween pre-colonial and colonial Assam. mations from below. In a brilliant exposi- Was there no notion of “patria” in pre- tion of what otherwise would have been colonial Assam? If such a notion of home- called the process of Sanskritization, she land did exist, then the author could have traces the societal rise of doms, a low sta- investigated in some detail the relation- tus group, as a segment of them acquired ship between it and the new colonial ter- wealth from the fish trade. They adopted ritorial entity of Assam that included the the name Nadiyal and demanded their Barak Valley, the Brahamputra Valley, inclusion as such in the British census. and the adjoining hill regions. This, un- In a similar attempt, the former Kachari fortunately, remains a minor point in hill people claimed the status of Bodo the book. Sharma could have provided and adopted the title Bramha following a sustained historical investigation into a particular religious reform movement. the relationship between space, territo- The Ahoms, former ruling élites, also ry, and ethno-demographic identities of used history to claim a new social sta- the people in India’s northeast, an effort tus. Nagas, Khasis and Garos underwent that could have shed light on the struc- a different transformation, as the British tures behind some of the oldest struggles excluded them from the socioeconomic and conflicts in South Asia. Despite this processes of the Bramhaputra Valley, and missed opportunity, Empire’s Garden missionaries converted them to various remains a truly great contribution to Christian denominations. These newly recent historiography on South Asia, empowered social reform movements both theoretically and empirically. After distanced themselves from resurgent Yasmin Saikia’s book on the Ahoms, this Asomiya traditions. On the eve of inde- monograph is a major contribution to- pendence, the hill people held their own wards understanding the history of the conventions and demanded autonomy region. Moreover, the book demonstrates but were dismissed by Indian authorities how the interaction between material as well as by the local Asomiya nation- transformations in production, organi- alist leadership. This neglect of the di- zation of society, and shifting strands of verse aspirations of the local population diverse colonial racial theories created

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the conditions for radical social and cul- The introduction of a “child endowment” tural transformations of a major region of in 1941, much like the family allowance India. It therefore speaks to diverse pro- system introduced in Canada three years cesses of producing India in the late 19th later, was meant as much to reduce in- century. flationary demands for across-the-board Subho Basu wage increases as to help families. It also Syracuse University took for granted the morality and perma- nence of a family wage model. Apart from its patriarchal assump- John Murphy, A Decent Provision: tions, which it shared with all models of Australian Welfare Policy, 1870 to 1949 social provision in operation before the (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing 2011) 1960s, Australia’s social model was an improvement upon the standard residual Australia’s social welfare provi- model of provision in that it gave a near- sion is often categorized as occupying guarantee of an above-poverty income to a special stratum outside the usual cat- households with a male income-earner egorization of welfare states as either with a continuous full-time job. But like social-democratic, corporatist, or re- all residual models, Australia’s did not sidual. The country’s social insurance work for individuals and households programs lack sufficient universality or when physical or mental health issues breadth for Australia to be grouped with for the working members of the house- the Scandinavian welfare states, and hold resulted in inability to work, at least they are not based on corporatist social full-time and continuously. Similarly if stratification as in Germany. But, while working members of the household had the modest social insurance provisions of to care for non-working members, the Australia resemble North American pro- model did not work for them. When the grams in their reliance on means-tested workings of the capitalist economy made help for those whom the state consider it difficult for workers in a household the deserving poor, social provision in to find or maintain full-time employ- Australia differs in important ways from ment, poverty loomed. Comparisons of American and Canadian provision. Australia’s “Gini coefficient” – drawn In the early 20th century, in response from the cia Factbook of 2011 – with to a labour movement with growing so- countries with residual and social-demo- cial and political influence, Australia cratic social provision tell the story. The set up a system of wage arbitration that Gini is a measure of the distribution of encouraged unionism while dampening wealth in countries. The higher the Gini, strikes and other forms of militancy. By the greater the deviation of the incomes the 1920s, wage tribunals were tasked of the richest and the poorest from the with insuring that most full-time, con- median income (the scores are from 0 to tinuously working semi-skilled and 100, with 0 meaning perfect equality and unskilled male wage workers received in- 100 meaning that one individual holds comes sufficient to support a family with- all the income). In the United States, the out falling into poverty. This patriarchal Gini was 40.8 in 1997 when the economy model not only ignored women workers performed sluggishly but actually fell to but also made no distinctions between 45 in 2007 when the economy was, in single males, married males without chil- macroeconomic terms, booming. Sweden dren, and married males with children, had a Gini of 25 in 1992 during a period and inherently privileged the childless. of economic recession and conservative

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government, and 23 in 2005 when the national Labor government considered economy performed well and the Social an expansionist policy based on public Democrats governed. Australia was in works since, as Murphy argues, notions the middle, with an unimpressive Gini of “the dole” remained taboo within the of 35.2 when unemployment was high in Labor movement. But in fact it quickly 1994 but distributing wealth somewhat abandoned any notion of an ambitious better in 2006, when employment oppor- program of public works, taking advice tunities were greater. The Gini improved from the Bank of England to stick with to 30.5 because of a continuing model of economic orthodoxy and make deep provision that assumed an always elusive cuts in spending and services, placing full employment. the burden of state fiscal policy on the Murphy does an able job of tracing the working class. While this caused huge introduction of various social programs. dissension within both the Labor Party His analysis of resistance to universal and the trade unions, the latter were un- programs focuses heavily on claims re- willing to force ideas of spending or state garding popular opposition to the Poor ownership and control of the economy Law, with its forced institutionalization on the former. They stood idly by when of paupers. Workers and trade unions Jack Lang, the Labor premier of New argued that decent wages were the best South Wales, was dismissed by the state’s antidote to pauperization and pushed lieutenant-governor for running up debts for mechanisms that would produce to invest in public infrastructure and such wages. A frontier society mentality maintain wages. The Labor Party ex- prevented them from examining more pelled Lang from party membership for closely the many reasons why people his heresy, while a section of the Labor might become jobless and destitute, and Party leadership actually joined with the from proposing a socialist or social-dem- country’s conservatives to create a party ocratic framework for social policy that called United Australia, led by the former would deal with all of them. Nonetheless, Labor treasurer Hugh Scullin. United Australia introduced old-age pensions Australia won the Commonwealth elec- before Britain as well as introducing tion in December 1931 with promises to mothers’ pensions (but just for white go even further than Labor had already widows) before World War I. Afterwards, done to decimate government programs, though, the country was a laggard in the including social spending. area of social programs, particularly uni- Murphy ignores all this, not really versal programs. dealing much with the Labor Party until While Murphy does a reasonable job its more reformist period, which began of presenting the abstract debates on during World War II. But he is clear that various social policies, his book does while Labor in the 1940s had adopted not adequately explain Labor’s and la- Keynsian notions of fiscal policy, this bour’s cave-in to pre-Keynesian ideas conversion away from sound finance during the Depression, its opposition to had little impact on that party’s many a social democratic model in the 1940s, pieces of social legislation. “None of it or its embrace of neo-liberalism dur- was contributory, and all but maternity ing its periods in government from the allowances and child endowment were 1980s onwards. His materials on the means-tested.… It had the male bread- Depression period are especially slight. winner at its centre, both in the pre- In 1930, with Australian workers reel- sumption it made about the adequacy of ing from Depression unemployment, the the arbitrated family wage, which made

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income support for those in work barely Linden’s Workers of the World: Essays to- necessary, as well as the ways in which ward a Global Labor History. A ground- support for the cost of ‘dependants’ also breaking work, it illustrates just how positioned the recipients of pensions and fruitful the cross-national approach can benefits as themselves ‘breadwinners.’” be for the renewal of labour history. (226) As stated by the editors in their stimu- All of this seems puzzling in the light of lating introduction (“Rethinking anar- the degree of suffering Australian work- chism and syndicalism: the colonial and ers experienced during the Depression postcolonial experience, 1870–1940”), as the “arbitrated family wage” proved the book asks a number of questions that almost useless in providing income for had been left aside by previous historians those made redundant by the break- of the international anarchist movement, down in capitalism as well as those who such as George Woodcock or Daniel suffered from no or insufficient employ- Guérin: “Which social groups formed the ment even at the best of times. Murphy’s base of support for anarchist and syn- explanation of Labor’s conservatism with dicalist movements in the colonial and reference to lingering effects of the old postcolonial world between 1870 and frontierism and antipathy to Poor Law 1940? What were the doctrinal tenets, notions is not unhelpful, and he follows programmatic goals, and organisational many other social policy scholars in mak- structures of these movements? What ing something of a fetish regarding “path methods of struggle did they employ? dependencies” that privilege certain ways How did these movements grapple with of looking at policy issues in a particular colonialism, national liberation, imperi- polity based on past decisions that alleg- alism, state formation, and social revolu- edly blinker participants’ understanding tion?” (lxviii) Not only is the object under of possible frameworks for solving prob- study – the libertarian movement in the lems. But “path dependency” requires hu- countries dominated by imperialism from mans to determine the path. How various the beginning of the first globalisation to social groups in Australia, and particu- the start of World War II – an original larly the labour movement and working one per se, but it is studied through an people more broadly, viewed their op- equally original lens, focusing on “how tions in various periods is unfortunately anarchism and syndicalism developed not very evident in Murphy’s otherwise as transnational movements” and paying careful and incisive narrative. unprecedented attention to the “suprana- Alvin Finkel tional connections and multidirectional Athabasca University flows” (across the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Sea of Japan, and the East China Sea) that were so essential in Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, their growth. (xxxii) eds., Anarchism and Syndicalism in the The starting-point for Steven Hirsch, Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870– associate professor of history at the 1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg Internationalism, and Social Revolution (USA), and Lucien van der Walt, as- (Boston and Leiden: Brill 2010) sociate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand (South This collection is the sixth volume Africa), is the conviction that the study in Brill’s “Global Social History Series,” of anarchism in the late 19th and early inaugurated in 2008 by Marcel van der 20th century has long suffered from what

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one might call “the Spanish fixation”, i.e. geographical spaces that Western read- the vision of anarchism as a movement ers would not naturally classify as hot- that attracted mass support in Spain and beds of anarchism alongside the Black Spain only. Hence their attempt at “pro- and red capitals of Chicago or Barcelona vincialising Spanish anarchism” (xlvi) by – Dongyoun Hwang’s and Arkif Dirlik’s demonstrating that anarchism and syn- Tokyo, Edilene Toldeo and Luigi Biondi’s dicalism did achieve some impact outside Sao Paulo are cases in point. Another rea- of the Iberian Peninsula, notably in what son for praise is the way the contributors came to be known after the period cov- undermine the cliché of a unanimously ered by the volume as the Third World or, imperialist and racist labour movement. later still, as the Global South. The col- The efforts made in colonial Egypt by lection can be read as a welcome sequel Italian activists to reach out to Greek, to Dave Berry and Constance Bantman’s Arab and Jewish workers are unforgetta- New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour ble (Anthony Gorman), as are those made and Syndicalism: The Individual, the by Spanish-speaking militants in Peru National and the Transnational (2010), (Steven Hirsch) or English-speaking ones which had already broadened the view by in South Africa (Lucien van der Walt) to- embracing the whole of Europe from an wards the organisation of Native toilers. interconnected perspective. Finally, the authors do not shy away from The volume is twofold, with Part I fo- confronting the inner contradictions of cusing on “Anarchism and Syndicalism in the movement, underlining for example the Colonial World” while Part II exam- the occasional conflicts between anar- ines their fate “in the Postcolonial World.” chist and syndicalist groupings, or the The “colonial/postcolonial” partition compromises made here or there with chosen here is somewhat misleading. The bourgeois nationalism. “postcolonial” part is solely about Latin Two twin aspects of the book that call America (the book was indeed born from for qualification are its sometimes sim- a panel on “Anarchism and Anarcho- plistic rejection of Marxism (equated syndicalism in the Global South: Latin in Benedict Anderson’s preface with its America in Comparative Perspective” Stalinist caricatures) and its possible at the European Social Science History overestimation of anarchist influence Conference in Amsterdam in 2006). As past and present (as in the co-editors’ for the “colonial” half, it brings together “Final Reflections”). The papers in this six countries from three different con- volume certainly demonstrate that “an- tinents (Africa, Asia and Europe) which archism and syndicalism were important were “colonial” in senses so different that currents in anti-imperial … struggles in their juxtaposition under a single head- the late 19th and early to mid-20th centu- ing – in particular the inclusion of the ries.” (xxxii) But whether they really were cases of Ireland and the Ukraine – may “more important” and “more seriously in- seem a little artificial. ternationalist” than their “Marxist rivals” That said, the chapters taken indi- (xv), or indeed than other currents inside vidually are compelling and united by the labour movement, remains a conten- several fundamental qualities. First one tious point. Neville Kirk has argued quite might mention the sheer sense of dis- convincingly that, in the age of empire, covery with which they overwhelm the revolutionary socialists throughout the reader as he or she moves from chapter British world were more often than not to chapter. The authors should all be con- internationalists at heart, committed gratulated for bringing to life neglected both to antiracism and anti-imperialism

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in the name of class solidarity – and that “simultaneous process of the changing many socialists of the reformist kind, of circumstances and self-change creates the builders of trade-unions and Labour rich human beings as the joint product of Parties, followed roughly the same creed productive activity.” (81) It is important to (Comrades and Cousins: Globalization, note that Lebowitz doesn’t equate “rich” Workers and Labour Movements in with individuals amassing plenty of stuff Britain, the USA and Australia from the or money but with a society in which, in 1880s to 1914, Merlin, 2003). Marxism the words of the Communist Manifesto, from the methodological point of view the “free development of each is the con- might also have deserved a fairer treat- dition for the free development of all.” In ment: could an exciting work like Hirsch the second part of the book, “Building and van der Walt’s have existed if E. the Socialist Triangle,” Lebowitz makes J. Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson had not it clear that the “Socialist Alternative” paved the way? he suggests is not only an alternative to All in all, the collection is remarkable. capitalism but also to the actually exist- “Taking a global view of anarchist and ing socialisms of the 20th century. syndicalist history,” Hirsch and van der Drawing on Marx’s early work in the Walt’s volume is a thrilling invitation Grundrisse on alienation and the cri- to follow a similar path in the explora- tique of the capitalist division of labour, tion of social history at large. The essays Lebowitz explains that human develop- they have gathered and carefully knitted ment is not about individuals pursuing together fill a major gap in the historiog- their self-interest but about the devel- raphy and form an impressive and chal- opment of human capacities, in which lenging scholarly achievement. individuals self-organize the collective Yann Béliard production of their lives. He distin- Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – guishes this concept of human develop- Paris 3 ment from the well-known concepts of Amartya Sen. For Sen, human develop- ment is all about creating a level play- Michael A Lebowitz, The Socialist ing field without transcending the focus Alternative: Real Human Development on individual self-interest. Self-interest, (New York: Monthly Review Press 2010) together with the division of labour be- tween “thinking and doing,” or, for that Inspired by Venezuela’s Bolivarian revo- matter, “manual and mental labour,” lies lution, Lebowitz advocates a kind of so- at the core of alienation and passivity cialism less focused on the development of the vast majority of workers who are of the material forces of production than subjected to the rule of a small group of on real human development. His start- owners of the means of production who, ing point is the “socialist triangle” that as owners, also decide what workers have Venezuela’s president Chavez began pro- to do and how they must do it. Following moting after his re-election in 2006. This Marx, Lebowitz succinctly shows how triangle represents “the combination of capitalist relations of production lead to social property, social production, and a degradation of labour and alienation (the) satisfaction of social needs.” (24) among workers, which ultimately pro- Lebowitz discusses the three sides of duce a sense of powerlessness, passivity, this triangle in the first part of his book and cynicism. and concludes that their implementa- He extends this critique to the Soviet tion would lead to conditions where the Union where private ownership was

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replaced by state ownership without giv- needed for an expansion of the commons, ing workers a say in planning and manag- Lebowitz suggests the taxation of prop- ing the production processes, so that the erty and profits. This, to be sure, is an old capitalist division between thinking and social democratic policy tool different doing, with all its detrimental effects on from revolutionaries conquering state workers’ engagement, was reproduced in power, as happened in the Soviet Union the name of socialism and workers’ pow- and Yugoslavia. Lebowitz’ critique of the er. Under these conditions, Soviet lead- actually existing socialisms in these two ers used material incentives to increase countries has shown that state power productivity. Yet, as Lebowitz argues, held by revolutionaries, if not comple- “material self-interest points backwards! mented by substantive changes in the It points back toward capitalism.” (109) way economic planning and manage- From this angle, it is quite understand- ment are carried out, will eventually lead able why Soviet communism eventually back to capitalism. collapsed and why workers did nothing Yet, is a return to social democratic to defend a system claiming to repre- strategies of a gradual transition from sent their interests. He extends this line capitalism to socialism more promising? of critique to Yugoslavia, whose worker- Lebowitz doesn’t discuss this question in managed firms were sometimes seen as any detail but mentions in passing that an alternative to the Soviet dictatorship any serious step towards socialist reform of the politburo. And while it is undeni- would meet fierce resistance from capi- ably true that socialism in Yugoslavia was talists. Social democracy, Lebowitz re- less heavy-handed than its Soviet coun- minds his readers, never confronted such terpart, it also suffered from a focus on resistance, but he also suggests “there is self-interest because capitalism’s private a socialist alternative to a capital strike property was replaced by some kind of … and that is to move in.” (136) In other group property, in which the workers words, when capitalists go on strike, the owning one firm would compete against means of production they withdraw from those owning another firm. Individual the collective production process have competition in the marketplace was thus to be taken over by the workers, who replaced by competition among groups of then have to learn to work not only col- workers. In the face of these competitive lectively under capitalist management struggles, the state proved increasingly but also on their own terms. This is the unable to articulate and pursue any inter- point where learning and the transfor- ests going beyond income maximization mation of alienated workers into “self- of individual firms, for example redis- managing citizens” and “self-governing tributing resources from richer to poorer producers” (109) become crucial. In this regions. respect, Lebowitz refers to Paulo Freire’s Lebowitz uses the Soviet and pedagogy of the oppressed in his intro- Yugoslavian experiences to support his duction and picks these ideas up in his theoretical argument that socialism re- last chapter on “developing a socialist quires a complete overhaul of the divi- mode of regulation.” Theoretically, this sion of labour inherited from capitalism. is a compelling argument. Historically, In order to do this, it is key to connect though, readers may wonder why the workplaces and communities, and to socialist alternative to actually existing expand the commons that include pub- socialism and social democracy Lebowitz lic health care, education, and utili- advocates will be more successful in the ties. To acquire the economic resources future than it was in the past. After all,

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his theoretical arguments, convincing Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, and Vivek as they are, were powerfully articulated Chibber, eds., Socialist Register 2011: by the New Left of the 1960s, of which The Crisis This Time (London: Merlin Press Lebowitz was a part, and can be traced 2010) back even further to dissident Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, Since 1964, the Socialist Register has Karl Korsch, council communists like published incisive analyses of global cap- Anton Pannekoek, and the “Workers italism from the world’s leading radical Opposition” in the Bolshevik Party. In intellectuals. The 2011 edition lives up to other words, Lebowitz’ socialist alterna- this reputation. Its opening line,“Crises tive reiterates arguments developed on have a way of clarifying things,” encapsu- the fringes of 20th-century communism lates both the goal and the main achieve- for a very long time. That doesn’t mean ment of this excellent volume. Because this alternative isn’t worth pursuing, economic crises are destabilizing events but it does mean that anyone who does of enormous magnitude they inevitably so has to explain why it never garnered prompt a search for causes. Such causes much support in the past. The answer to are always to be found in the dynamics that question may hint at how chances to of the previous period of capital accu- build a socialist alternative today can be mulation. Yet how far back does one go improved. The New Left actually raised in search of causes, and how does one exactly these kind of issues and aimed sort out the drivers of the economic crisis to build an alternative to Eastern com- from its symptoms? Moreover, how does munism and Western welfare states in one cut through the myths that arise as the 1960s and 1970s. However, New Left different groups compete to impose their enthusiasm for theoretical debate and narrative of the nature and origins of the political mobilization was short-lived crisis? and ushered in a period of neo-liberal This volume aims to clear the decks globalization during which communism of the dominant narratives – of both and social democracy ceased to exist mainstream and progressive commenta- and any kind of alternative seemed un- tors – of the neo-liberal era and provide thinkable. From this angle, Lebowitz’ a clearer understanding of the global fi- book indicates a return of the search for nancial crisis from a Marxist perspective. alternatives. The theoretical arguments Rather than focusing on the sub-prime he advances can serve as a framework to implosion, the immediate trigger for the make sense of the history of communism, global financial crisis, the contributions social democracy, and the New Left. to this edited collection recognize that Understanding these histories, then, can probing the deeper, underlying processes help to further develop the strategies and of class conflict and capital accumulation goals of socialist transformations in the offers more satisfying explanations for 21st century. the causes of the current economic mal- Ingo Schmidt aise. Yet, this year’s title, The Crisis This Athabasca University Time, also reflects the view that, while capitalism is an inherently crisis-prone system, each particular crisis is born of unique circumstances, and is character- ized by distinct features. When delving into an edited collec- tion one expects a degree of unevenness

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in the quality and relevance of its vari- effectively frames the volume, takes is- ous chapters. While such unevenness is sue with mechanistic Marxist approach- certainly present in The Crisis This Time, es that seek evidence of a falling rate of what stands out even more strongly is profit as the perennial cause of capitalist the degree of thematic coherence across economic crises. In contrast, Panitch and the chapters. Most chapters, for example, Gindin view the crisis through the lens produce varied empirical evidence to of historically specific class struggle and show that the institutions and economic institutional change. The key to under- relationships underpinning the neo- standing the current crisis, they argue, liberal era also contributed to the crisis. is the weakness of the working class, a On the one hand, the weakening of or- recognition that offers a window into ganized labour and the flexibilization of both the dominance and transformation work led to a stagnation of real wages, of the finance sector during the last four particularly in the US. Effective demand decades, and why the costs of the crisis was sustained by the extension of credit are being forced disproportionately onto to working-class households, fuelling the workers. asset-price bubble. This in turn fed the Dick Bryan and Mike Rafferty also growth of finance capital, partly through have a compelling and original contri- the ability to sell more products, partly bution. The chapter focuses on deriva- through the ability to securitize the debt tives, most particularly on how their repayments being made by workers. At growth has integrated the every-day lives the global level, an entrenched pattern of of working-class households more fully external balances, such as that between with finance capital. As workers take on the US and many Asian economies, fa- credit and the income streams thereby cilitated this financial expansion. created are securitized, so do they be- States, many contributors point out, come caught up, in ways they might only played a vital role in these processes. They be vaguely aware of, in financial circuits. were active in suppressing organized For Bryan and Rafferty, this integration labour and enabled the expansion and makes problematic the commonplace transformation of finance capital through distinction between the “real” and “spec- both regulatory change and monetary ulative” economies, with the implication policy. Such a recognition helps to de- being not that finance needs to be more mythologize the neo-liberal era. As Hugo heavily regulated, but that working-class Radice points out in his cogent chapter, living standards should be quarantined to view the central economic variable as from market dependence. being “the balance between the public The penultimate chapter by Greg Albo and private … between the market and and Bryan Evans also stands out for its state as regulating mechanisms” is out clarity and penetrating insights. It of- of step with the reality of neo-liberalism fers a political economy of public sector and, indeed, of capitalist economies more spending during the crisis, and details generally. the responses to this, from above and be- There are many fine contributions to low, across four countries, as well as the this volume, the best of which clearly and prospects for progressive “exit strategies.” precisely link theoretical concepts to con- Johanna Brenner details the varie- crete economic processes and data to il- gated patterns of inequality resulting luminate the key dynamics of the current from the intersections of class, race and crisis. The opening chapter, for example, gender within working-class households, by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, which before and since the onset of the crisis.

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The title of this chapter, “Caught in the utopian. Perhaps more concrete alter- Whirlwind,” captures the sense of violent natives will be better represented in the external forces that buffet working-class 2012 Register, which is a companion vol- families from one crisis to another. ume to its predecessor. Such criticisms Alfredo Saad-Filho argues in his chap- notwithstanding, The Crisis This Time ter that we are experiencing a “crisis in is a fine volume and continues a proud neoliberalism” rather than a “crisis of tradition of radical scholarship by the neoliberalism.” (249) The former refers Socialist Register. to a crisis brought about by the contra- Damien Cahill dictions of the neo-liberal era but where University of Sydney neo-liberal strategies of crisis manage- ment continue to be used to impose the costs of capitalist crisis onto the work- John Marsh, Class Dismissed: Why We ing class. A crisis of neo-liberalism, on Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of the other hand, can only occur if workers Inequality (New York: Monthly Review mobilize to force the costs of the crisis Press 2011) into capital, decommodifying social re- lations in the process through measures The nexus of education, (un)employ- such as the socialization of finance, a ment, poverty and inequality is well-ex- strategy Saad-Filho advocates. plored in studies emanating from many There is also an excellent chapter by fields. Activists and scholars alike have Anwar Shaikh fusing Marxist and Post- argued for at least a century that the best Keynesian analysis to situate the current cure for unemployment is employment, crisis within broader, long-term patterns not more education. Unions commonly of capitalist economic expansion and demand good, well-paying, stable jobs contraction. He argues that the only just with benefits precisely because they are a way out of the crisis is through a social bulwark against poverty and mitigate so- mobilization to force states to employ cial inequality. In this regard, John Marsh directly those left without work or un- is simply reiterating what is already deremployed by the crisis. He also recog- known, namely that poverty and unem- nizes, however, that this strategy is likely ployment are a policy and jobs problem to be resisted by the owning class which and not issues of education or training. would view such moves as encroaching But he does it well and with welcome wit. on the prerogatives of capital. In the process he demonstrates how po- While the volume’s strength is its di- litically helpful academic labour can be agnosis of the crisis, and an identification when it produces an empirically ground- that the balance of class forces will signif- ed and accessibly written study that ad- icantly determine whether or not the exit dresses the flaws of dominant discourses strategies from the crisis inflict further and offers credible alternatives. Indeed, pain on workers, its shortcoming is the Class Dismissed models good argumen- paucity of detailed consideration of pro- tation both by giving fair coverage to a gressive ways out of the crisis. Perhaps range of perspectives and by demonstrat- this simply reflects the editors’ assess- ing how to adequately critique positions ment that “the Left today is the weakest that are not supported by the evidence. it has been since the defeat of the Paris For this reason, among others, it would Commune” and therefore that until left- make an excellent text for students in so- wing forces gather strength, speculation ciology of work, sociology of education, on progressive futures remains somewhat labour studies and related courses.

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After beginning with the story of his substantive chapters, Marsh traces the own personal disillusionment around a development of the education and em- community-based university education ployment discourse in the United States, program for low-income earners and the showing how key documents shaped po- questions his work in that project raised litical consciousness and policy over time. for him about employment and educa- Noting that educational purpose shifted tion, Marsh launches into an examina- from the religious to citizenship prepa- tion of the costs of poverty and social ration and then quickly to job readiness inequality in the United States. In nar- and employment, Marsh adopts the posi- rative and graph formats, he explores tion that powerful interests encouraged the statistical and quantitative data on and supported the educational solution poverty and unpacks most of the usual, because it did not challenge existing so- mainstream explanations offered for the cial and economic structures. Indeed, the existence of social inequality. Because he emphasis on education shifted the blame often references the Gini coefficient in for poverty and social problems onto in- this discussion, a short explanatory ap- dividual failings, and reinforced the view pendix on that topic is included. In this that the United States was a meritocratic first chapter, Marsh also addresses the nation that offered equality of opportuni- costs of poverty and draws on research ty, primarily through schooling. Through from health, neuroscience and social sci- this line of reasoning, unemployment, ence to explain why social inequality is low wages, and poverty all became attrib- damaging to any society. utable to a lack of the right kind of educa- Marsh then turns to exploring why tion or to insufficient education. and how education came to be seen as In his final chapter, Marsh argues that the way to alleviate poverty and hence policy levers and approaches other than social inequality. He is frank in his dis- education should be used to combat pov- cussion of the personal benefits that can erty. His recommendations include one be found in the education solution, not- for a more progressive taxation regime ing that increased education does offer and another for a legislative and regula- some people a route out of poverty and tory environment more supportive of that increased levels of schooling do tend unionization. The former would provide to pay a dividend to individuals taking revenues for stronger social programs that route. Ultimately, however, he il- which work to alleviate poverty through lustrates how education is a supply-side income and social service supports, and solution that does little to attack pov- the latter would enable stronger negoti- erty or social inequality. He argues that ating positions and force wage levels up the real issue is the failure of political to ensure a better standard of living for will and suggests that “redistributive tax working people. Through such strate- rates, massive public works projects, a gies social inequalities would be reduced living wage law, or a renaissance of labor and, in fact, through the reduction of so- unions” (91) would do more to alleviate cial disadvantage, educational outcomes poverty and hence inequality than any would almost certainly be improved scheme to provide even more educational since social class and family income are opportunities. strong predictors of educational attain- How then did education come to as- ment. Ultimately, however, March is not sume the prominent place it has as the optimistic about the possibilities for the prime answer to questions of economic implementation of his recommendations inequality and unemployment? In two and he appears resigned to a further long

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history where education serves as a proxy not be the whole solution, but it can be a for the economy. practice with revolutionary potential. While Marsh recognizes that edu- This book also would have been cation is not the answer to the social strengthened through a more open per- inequalities created by a capitalist econ- spective on political agency. Here and omy, he is not anti-education or even there one gets the sense that blame for anti-schooling. He earns his living as the sorry state of the economy must be a professor of English, a fact that likely shared across the population because it contributes to the readability of this too easily accepted an education solu- book, and he understands the pleasures tion for economic woes. However, for at of learning. Nonetheless, by focusing his least a century, key social movements, work on the education-employment nex- youth and student organizations, and us, however critically that is done, Marsh unions have provided good examples of does rather narrow the discussion to resistance to glib job training and edu- terms set elsewhere and he closes debate cation-based answers to unemployment on the ways in which critical, transfor- questions and have challenged corporate mative pedagogies might produce activ- leaders and politicians who engaged in ist-citizens who would contribute to a victim-blaming. Workers are not cul- more just and equal world. In this regard, tural dopes. There was, and is, a counter- a deeper consideration of the extensive discourse that challenges the dominant literature on education, politics and class narrative line and some attention to the consciousness would have offered Marsh, fight back on the abuse of education and and therefore his readers, some other its purposes would have strengthened possibilities to contemplate with at least this book and demonstrated that class is a modicum of optimism. Education may never wholly dismissed. Rebecca Priegert Coulter University of Western Ontario

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