General Issues
Social Theory and Social Science
Antunes, Ricardo. Farewell to Work? Essays on the World of Work's Metamorphoses and Centrality. Transl. [from Portuguese] by van der Laan, Murillo et al. [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 198.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022. xviii, 136 pp. € 125.00; $151.00. (E-book: € 125.00; $151.00.)
This book deals with the overall process of capital's productive restructuring since the 1970s, a process that has tended to intellectualize labour power and to increase working class precariousness globally. Dr Antunes hypothesizes that analysing the world of production as a whole – including countries in the North and South – reveals that, rather than work losing its pivotal role in contemporary capitalism, there has been a substantial growth in heterogeneity, complexity, and fragmentation. He posits that configuring a new morphology of the working class has created new mechanisms that generate surplus labour, while simultaneously incrementing casualization and unemployment, driven by corrosion of labour rights.
Chandler, Nahum Dimitri. “Beyond This Narrow Now”. Or, Delimitations, of W.E.B. Du Bois. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2022. xxii, 304 pp. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95.)
In this book, Professor Chandler shows that, at the turn of the twentieth century, W.E.B. Du Bois's premises stood as fundamental references for the trajectory of his ideas. Opening with a distinct approach to Du Bois's legacy, the author proceeds through a series of close readings of his early essays. Professor Chandler pays theoretical attention to Du Bois's belief that the African American exemplifies opportunity and renders problematic traditional ontological thought. He also suggests that Du Bois's best-known phrase – “the problem of the color line” – sustains more conceptual depth than hitherto understood and is pertinent to our accounts of modern systems of enslavement and imperial colonialism.
Eakin, Marshall C. What is Latin American History? [What is History? Series.] Polity Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. viii, 165 pp. Maps. £50.00; € 56.50. (Paper: £15.99; € 18.10; E-book: £11.99; € 14.99.)
This book surveys the development of this dynamic field of study in North America, Latin America, and Europe. After briefly sketching these advances up to the 1960s, Professor Eakin focuses on the past half-century, from the dominance of social history to the cultural turn, emphasizing Anglophone scholarship. He surveys innovative work on topics including slavery, indigenous peoples, race, the environment, science, medicine, and gender, concluding with a discussion of the emergence of the concepts of borderlands, the Atlantic world, and transnational history that both enriches and challenges the very idea of Latin America.
Eeckhout, Jan. The Profit Paradox. How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2021. viii, 327 pp. $27.95; £20.00.
In an era of stagnant wages and rising prices, a small number of companies are able to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Professor Eeckhout demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, describing how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies has reaped most of the rewards of technological advances, acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating unequal outcomes for workers instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices. The consequences are immense, from unnecessarily high prices to fewer start-ups able to compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility.
Rosenberg, Stephen D. Time for Things. Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2021. 346 pp. $49.95; £39.95; € 45.00.
Productivity has increased steadily since the mid-twentieth century, yet Americans today work roughly as much as they did then. During this same period, consumption has grown relentlessly. Why do we continue to trade our time for more stuff? In this book, Dr Rosenberg argues that workers construe consumer goods as stores of potential free time to rationalize the exchange of their labour for a wage. This understanding of commodities as repositories of hypothetical utility has been made possible by standardizing durable consumer goods, as well as warranties, brands, and product-testing, which assure wage earners that the goods are of consistent, measurable quality. See also Ken Roberts's review in this volume, pp. 343–345.
Spencer, Douglas. Critique of Architecture. Essays on Theory, Autonomy, and Political Economy. [Bauwelt Fundamente, 168.] Birkhäuser, Basel 2021. 227 pp. Ill. € 29.95. (E-book: € 29.95.)
This book offers a renewed theorization of relations between capital and architecture, based on the Marxian materialist practice of critique, examining architecture in relation to how it is financed, designed, and built in social, economic, and political projects. Professor Spencer addresses how architecture is employed to individuate or aggregate subjects within formations affirming the imaginary of capitalism, examining how circulation patterns accommodate subjects to certain modes of behaviour, and how architecture produces proximities instrumental to new forms of living and working. While the essays in the first section address the depoliticization of architecture, those in the second part contest the terms of its re-politicization, taking issue with current theories of architectural resistance and political and individual autonomy.
Yung, Kenneth Kai-Chung. Chinese Émigré Intellectuals and Their Quest for Liberal Values in the Cold War, 1949–1969. [Ideas, History, and Modern China, Vol. 25.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2021. xi, 242 pp. € 132.00; $159.00. (E-book: € 132.00; $159.00.)
Examining the lives and ideas of self-exiled Chinese intellectuals after 1949 by placing them in the context of the global Cold War, Dr Yung argues that Chinese intellectuals living in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities in the 1950s could not escape the global anti-utopian Cold War currents. Considering different models of nation-building advocated by the émigré intellectuals and arguing that these émigré intellectuals inherited the multifaceted Chinese liberal tradition developed in the Republican era (1911–1949), the author notes that moderate socialists were an important group of Chinese émigré intellectuals in the first two decades of the Cold War.
History
Anderson, Clare. Convicts. A Global History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xv, 476 pp. Ill. Maps. £74.99. (Paper: £26.99; E-book: $28.00.)
Exploring punitive mobility to islands, colonies, and remote inland and border regions over the course of five centuries, Professor Anderson suggests a close and enduring connection between punishment, governance, repression, and nation- and empire-building, and reveals how states, imperial powers, and trading companies used convicts toward various geo-political and social ambitions. Punitive mobility became intertwined with other forms of labour bondage, including enslavement, with convicts serving as a key source of unfree labour that could be used to occupy territories. Far from being passive subjects, however, convicts manifested their agency in various forms, including dissemination of political ideology and cultural transfer and vital contributions to contemporary knowledge production.
Balint, Ruth. Destination Elsewhere. Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2021. xiii, 190 pp. Ill. $44.95. (E-book: $29.99.)
This book chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the agencies tasked with caring for them after World War II. The experiences of displaced persons were not defined by passivity and speechlessness but inspired a dialogue that shaped modern conceptions of the refugee. Professor Balint shows what made stories convincing at the time, telling readers much about the circulation of ideas about the war, the Holocaust, and the Jews, and how stories depicted the emerging moral and legal distinctions between economic migrants and political refugees, while focusing especially on persons whose storytelling skills became a strategy for survival and escape from camps for displaced persons and Europe.
Brunnbauer, Ulf et al. In den Stürmen der Transformation. Zwei Werften zwischen Sozialismus und EU. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2022. 417 pp. Ill. Maps. € 20.00. (E-book: € 19.99.)
The gigantic cranes of the shipyards in Gdynia and Pula were once the pride of these cities. In Poland, 300-metre-long ocean liners were built; in Croatia, ships on which thousands of sheep could be transported alive from New Zealand to Europe, even including a seawater desalination plant. All the inventiveness and the talent for improvisation practised under socialism was in vain, however, as these shipyards went bankrupt shortly after Poland and Croatia acceded to the EU, in part because, in Brussels, competition law prevails over globally oriented industrial policy. The “shipyard collective” around Ulf Brunnbauer and Philipp Ther examines the daily operations of the two companies, reconstructing their decline and analysing the great transformation that has shaken Europe since the 1970s.
Dechesne, Guy. Un siècle d'antimilitarisme révolutionnaire. Socialistes, anarchistes, syndicalistes et féministes 1849–1939. Atelier de création libertaire, Lyon 2021. 206 pp. € 12.00.
In its history, antimilitarism has had several simultaneous or alternative meanings. It could be a condemnation of the military, a strikebreaker, or a critique of military service, imperialist wars between capitalist states, and colonial conquests. This book gives an overview of antimilitarism as a philosophy and a movement. Revealing that the international nature of antimilitarism represents both the movement's greatest strength and its vulnerability, the author shows that antimilitarists never agreed on the definition of antimilitarism or the policies they should pursue. After 1918, revolutionary antimilitarism gradually faded from militant vocabulary and practice but, nevertheless, remained anchored in the hope of those who abhorred wars and arms. See also Elizabeth Propes's review in this volume, pp. 346–348.
Dietze, Carola. The Invention of Terrorism in Europe, Russia, and the United States. Transl. [from German] by Antal, David, Bell, James, and King, Zachary Murphy. Verso, London [etc.] 2021 (2016). ix, 646 pp. Ill. Maps. £30.00. (E-book: £30.00.)
The invention of terrorism should be associated with the birth of modernity in Europe, Russia, and the United States rather than with Tsarist despotism in nineteenth-century Russia or Islamic sects in Medieval Persia. Combining a historical narrative with an analysis of broader issues in social and political history, Professor Dietze argues that dissemination of news about terrorist violence was at the core of a strategy aimed to politically impact rulers, as well as the general public. Using case studies from France, the United States, Germany, and Russia, Dietze shows that terrorism has existed as a tactic since the 1850s and has essentially been adapted only through the use of new technologies and methods.
Imlay, Talbot. The Practice of Socialist Internationalism. European Socialists and International Politics, 1914–1960. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018. xi, 480 pp. £100.00.
This book examines the efforts of the British, French, and German socialist parties to cooperate with one another on concrete international issues. Drawing on archival research from twelve countries and spanning the years from World War I to the early 1960s, the author highlights the two post-war periods, during which national and international politics were recast and offers novel perspectives on the history of internationalism and international politics. By practising internationalism, European socialists sought to forge a new practice of international relations, emerging from their collective efforts to devise “socialist” approaches to pressing issues of international politics, such as post-war reconstruction, European integration, and decolonization. See also Lucas Poy's review in this volume, pp. 348–351.
In a New Light. Histories of Women and Energy. Ed. by Moore, Abigail Harrison and Sandwell, R.W.. McGill–Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2021. viii, 238 pp. Ill. Can. $130.00. (Paper: Can. $37.95.)
Women expended as many calories washing the work clothes of their coal-mining husbands as their husbands did working below ground, making the home as much a site of industrialized work as factories and mines. Exploring the vital place of women in the shift to fossil fuels that spurred the Industrial Revolution, the eight contributions in this book illuminate the variety of ways in which gender and energy intersected in women's lives in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and North America. From their labour in the home, where they managed the adoption of new energy sources, to their work as educators in electrical housecraft and their protests against the effects of industrialization, women took on active roles to influence energy decisions.
Kwass, Michael The Consumer Revolution, 1650–1800. [New Approaches to European History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xi, 261 pp. Ill. £59.99. (Paper: £19.99; E-book: $21.00.)
Production, acquisition, and use of consumer goods define our daily lives. This volume advances a new interpretation of the “consumer revolution” of the eighteenth century, when European elites, middle classes, and even certain labourers purchased unprecedented quantities of clothing, household goods, and colonial products. Adopting a global perspective that incorporates the expansion of European empires, the development of world trade and the rise of plantation slavery in the Americas, Professor Kwass analyses the emergence of Enlightenment material cultures and contentious philosophical debates on the morality of consumption, examining the role of consumer activism in the Atlantic Revolutions and in the movement to abolish slavery.
Lüdtke, Helga. Der Bubikopf. Männlicher Blick – weiblicher Eigen-Sinn. Wallstein, Göttingen, 2021. 301 pp. Ill. € 28.80.
The Coupe à la Garçonne was both an icon of modernity and a subject of bitter controversy about female self-determination. Women adopted the revolutionary bob hairstyle as a cipher of modernity and a token of self-determination and emancipation, despite resistance from patriarchal society. The focus of the controversy was the “masculinized” androgynous woman, who challenged the traditional image of femininity. Examining its pictorial and symbolic nature, Dr Lüdtke places the bob haircut in the contexts of consumer history, body history, and gender history, as well as entertainment and cultural history. The synthesis creates a panopticon of the Weimar years and also follows the methodology of “history as collage” in rich illustrations.
Sloane, Nan. Uncontrollable Women. Radicals, Reformers, and Revolutionaries. I.B. Tauris, London [etc.] 2022. xiv, 288 pp. Ill. $27.00. (E-book: $24.30.)
This book is a history of radical, reformist, and revolutionary women between the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the adoption of the Great Reform Act in 1832. Few of them are well known presently; some were unknown even in their own day. The eleven contributions demonstrate that women figured in revolutionary ideas and causes, speaking, writing, marching, organizing, asking questions, challenging power structures, and, in some cases, going to prison and even dying. In this book, they take centre stage, developing political ideas and freedoms as we know them today, and fighting battles that remain to be won or raising questions that are still unanswered.
Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History. Ed. by Jensen, Steven L.B. and Walton, Charles. [Human Rights in History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xi, 338 pp. £90.00. (E-book: $96.00.)
The sixteen essays in this volume explore the history of social rights, from the Middle Ages to the present in a three-pronged structure that weaves together chronological and thematic elements. Part One traces the evolution of social rights before the twentieth century, showing the diverse historical origins of social rights and how they became intertwined with other categories of rights. Part Two explores the relationship between social rights and social difference in the twentieth century. Part Three examines attempts to recast social rights in international terms in the mid- to late twentieth century, examining debates over the viability of this internationalization and the tensions that emerged over efforts to implement it.
Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation. Ed. by Mark, James and Betts, Paul. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2021. vi, 367 pp. Ill. £75.00.
This book provides a history of the relationship between Eastern Europe and the decolonizing world, examining the encounter between the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and a wider world casting off European empires or struggling against Western imperialism, on the other. The origins of these connections are traced back to new forms of internationalism enabled by the Russian Revolution; the interplay between the first “decolonization” of Eastern Europe and rising anti-colonial movements; and the global rise of fascism, which formed new connections between East and South. A common embrace of socialist modernization and anti-imperial culture gave rise to new opportunities for a new and meaningful exchange between the peripheries of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Stanziani, Alessandro. Les métamorphoses du travail contraint. Une histoire globale XVIIIe–XIXe siècles. [Domaine Histoire.] Presses de Sciences Po, Paris 2020. 328 pp. € 24.00.
This book was inspired by the travels of Joseph Conrad and describes the workers and enslaved that the writer encountered. Adopting a global approach, Dr Stanziani demonstrates that the histories of forced and free labour are always intertwined, despite the Enlightenment and evolution legislation concerning working conditions. Chapters address the serfs of Russia, the wage earners and sailors of the French and British empires, slaves and immigrants from the Indian Ocean, free and unfree work during the Industrial Revolution, and abolitionist movements, presenting the case of the Mascarenes and ending the story in the Congo, in the extreme violence perpetrated against the natives by colonial companies in pursuit of profits. See also Giulia Bonazza's review in this volume, pp. 351–355.
Svalastog, Julie Mo. Mastering the Worst of Trades. England's Early Africa Companies and Their Traders, 1618–1672. [The Atlantic World. Europe, Africa, and the Americas, 1500–1830, Vol. 39.] Brill, Leiden 2021. x, 271 pp. Ill. € 115.00; $139.00. (E-book: € 115.00; $139.00.)
Investigating the Guinea Company and its members, this book aims to understand the genealogy of several major changes taking place in the English Atlantic and in the Anglo-Africa trade in the seventeenth century and beyond. This Guinea company, preceding the Royal African Company, was the earliest of England's chartered Africa companies. An in-depth look at the early companies leads to a reconsidering of the interplay between the corporate and the private, as the early African companies proved both heavily reliant on and easy victims of private interests within their upper ranks, and raises questions regarding the inevitability of the Atlantic reality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Torell, Kurt. Rock and Roll, Social Protest, and Authenticity. Historical, Philosophical, and Cultural Explorations. [For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music.] Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2022. ix, 179 pp. $95.00; £73.00. (E-book: $45.00; £35.00.)
This book explores the relationships between rock and roll, social protest, and authenticity to consider how rock and roll could function as social protest music. Professor Torell discusses the nature and origins of rock and roll and the nature of social protest and social protest music in the broader context of the evolution of the commercial music industry and the social and technological infrastructure developed for mass dissemination of popular music. Examining the causes of the initial public disapproval of rock and roll and their illumination of social protest and subversive quality, the author investigates the nature of authenticity and its relationship to social protest and commercialization.
Wagner, Florian. Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982. [Global and International History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xii, 421 pp. £90.00. (E-book: $96.00.)
The International Colonial Institute (ICI) was established in 1893 and went on to become the world's most important colonial think tank. Professor Wagner demonstrates that the ICI strategy of using indigenous institutions and customary laws to encourage colonial development perpetuated colonial rule even beyond the official end of empires. Selecting loyalists among the colonized to participate in the ICI increased the autonomy of these bodies while delegitimizing more radical claims for independence. Presenting a detailed study of the ICI's origins, the transcolonial activities of its prominent members, and its interactions with the League of Nations and fascist governments, the author demonstrates how the ICI paved the way towards the structural and discursive dependence of the Global South after 1945.
Wolff, Frank. Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration. The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund. Transl. [from German] by Balhorn, Loren and Herrmann, Jan-Peter. [Historical Materialism, Vol. 226.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2021 (2014). xix, 512 pp. Ill. € 280.00; $336.00. (E-book: € 280.00; $336.00.)
This book investigates how the Jewish Labour Bund transformed from a revolutionary protagonist in early twentieth-century Russia to a socialist institution of secular Jews in North and South America. By following the paths of thousands of activists from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the working-class Yiddish neighbourhoods of New York and Buenos Aires, Dr Wolff traces the networks that connected these revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic. Identifying and contextualizing modes of Bundist activism in Eastern Europe and America and examining Bundist publications from a transnational and comparative perspective, the author demonstrates how assembling and organizing practices had transferred, and how a “secondary Bundism” emerged.
Women, Witchcraft, and the Inquisition in Spain and the New World. Ed. by Zamora Calvo, María Jesús. [New Hispanisms. Cultural and Literary Studies.] Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge (LA) 2021. vii, 214 pp. Ill. $50.00.
These ten essays present portraits of women subjected to a broad spectrum of accusations comprising witchcraft, bigamy, false beatitude, and heresy, and held accountable before the Spanish and New World Inquisitions. Each essay draws on the documentary record of trials, confessions, letters, diaries, and other primary sources. Focusing on individual cases of women brought before the Inquisition, the authors study the social status of their subjects, particularize their motivations, determine the characteristics of their prosecution, and extrapolate the reasons invoked to justify violence against them. Through the accounts of imprisonment, interrogation, and judgement of women in these cases a spectre of contempt, humiliation, silencing, and denial of feminine selfhood emerges.
Workers of the Empire, Unite. Radical and Popular Challenges to British Imperialism, 1910s–1960s. Ed. by Béliard, Yann and Kirk, Neville. [Studies in Labour History, Vol. 15.] Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2021. xviii, 331 pp. £95.00. (E-book: £95.00.)
This volume focuses on the role of working people in the dissolution of the British Empire and examines how central the intervention of the metropolitan Left was. Though convergences were fragile and temporary, the volume recaptures the uncertainty of the period, when radical minorities hoped that coordinated efforts across borders might lead to the destruction not only of the British Empire, but also to that of capitalism and imperialism in general. Part One, Contesting imperialism (1910s–1920s), focuses on individual activists who set out to destabilize the imperial status quo. Part Two, Labour, decolonization, and independence (1940s–1960s), presents a series of case studies tackling working-class interventions in the phase of transition from British rule to colonial emancipation.
Comparative History
Friedman, Jeremy. Ripe for Revolution. Building Socialism in the Third World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2021. v, 355 pp. Ill. Maps. $35.00; £28.95; € 31.50.
In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. Professor Friedman traces the socialist experiment through the experiences of Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran, which sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc. All five countries became Cold War battlegrounds and regional models. Lessons from the collapse of democracy in Indonesia were later applied in Chile, and the challenge of political Islam in Indonesia informed the policies of the left in Iran. Efforts to build agrarian economies in West Africa influenced Tanzania's approach to socialism, which, in turn, defined the trajectory of the Angolan model.
Human Trafficking. Global History and Perspectives. Ed. by Dung, Elisha Jasper and Avwunudiogba, Augustine. Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2021. xxx, 471 pp. Maps. $145.00. (E-book: $50.00.)
Many organizations consider human trafficking to be modern slavery. Although estimates vary, it is believed that worldwide no fewer than twenty million people are being trafficked. Far from being a recent development, human trafficking is rooted in the history of the human condition and has only been amplified by globalization. Using a multidisciplinary approach that traces the historical roots of human trafficking in global history, the eighteen chapters feature case studies from different parts of the world to show that human trafficking is not only a global phenomenon, but also a localized enigma. The contributors contend that both the causes and the solutions are rooted in the local and regional social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances of victims.
Liu, Andrew B. Tea War. A History of Capitalism in China and India. [Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Colombia University.] Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) [etc.] 2020. xi, 344 pp. Ill. Maps. $50.00.
At the turn of the twentieth century, tea represented the largest export industry of both China and colonial India. Analysing the global competition between Chinese and Indian tea, Professor Liu argues that seemingly traditional technologies and practices were central to modern capital accumulation across Asia and shows how competitive pressure compelled Chinese merchants to adopt abstract industrial conceptions of time, while colonial planters in India pushed for labour indenture laws to support factory-style tea plantations. The author explains that characterizations of China and India as premodern backwaters were the historical result of new notions of political economy adopted by Chinese and Indian nationalists, who discovered that these abstract ideas corresponded to concrete social changes in their local surroundings. See also Aditi Dixit's review in this volume, pp. 354–358.
(Post-) Colonial Archipelagos. Comparing the Legacies of Spanish Colonialism in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Ed. by Burchardt, Hans-Jürgen and Leinius, Johanna. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (MI) 2022. xii, 369 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $44.95; Open Access.)
Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines were island territories colonized by the same two colonial powers: first by the Spanish Empire and, after 1898, by the United States. Featuring contributions by social scientists and historians from the United States, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines, this interdisciplinary volume focuses on the continuing legacies of Spanish colonialism, unearthing historical trajectories usually obscured by more recent interventions and the ongoing influence of the United States. By bringing together three places whose comparability is not self-evident, the eighteen contributors question narratives of statehood and development, tracing the interconnections and divergences of the paths these former colonies of the Spanish Empire took.
Skotnicki, Tad. The Sympathetic Consumer, Moral Critique in Capitalist Culture. [Culture and Economic Life.] Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2021. x, 267 pp. $90.00. (Paper: $28,00.)
When people encounter consumer goods – sugar, clothes, phones – they find little or no information about their origins. The goods remain anonymous, and the labour that went into making them, as well as the supply chain through which they travelled, are obscured. For centuries, consumers have struggled with these circumstances, in the form of activist movements. This book documents the similarities between such movements over the course of three centuries: the transatlantic abolitionist movement; US and English consumer movements around the turn of the twentieth century; and contemporary Fair-Trade activism. Offering a comparative historical study of consumer activism, the author reveals how activists have wrestled with the broader implications of commodity exchange. See also Peter van Dam's review in this volume, pp. 358–360.
Contemporary Issues
Besteman, Catherine. Militarized Global Apartheid. [Global Insecurities.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2020. 197 pp. $89.95. (Paper: $23.95.)
In this book, Professor Besteman examines the ways in which countries from the Global North are reproducing South Africa's apartheid system all over the world to control the mobility and labour of people from the Global South. The new apartheid apparatus takes the form of militarized border technologies and personnel, interdictions at sea, detention centres, holding facilities, and the criminalization of mobility. Exploring the different manifestations of global apartheid, the author traces how militarization and securitization reconfigure older forms of white supremacy, and deploy them in new contexts to maintain this racialized global order and a hierarchical labour market dependent upon differential access to mobility on the basis of origin. See also Jan Nederveen Pieterse's review in this volume, pp. 362–363.
Giles, David Boarder. A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People. Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2021. xvi, 300 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $28.95.)
Communities of marginalized people and discarded objects gather and cultivate political possibilities. Dr Giles documents the work of Food Not Bombs (FNB), a global movement of grassroots soup kitchens that recover surplus groceries and redistribute them to those in need. He explores the global cities in which late-capitalist economies and unsustainable consumption precipitate excess, inequality, food waste, and hunger. Beginning in urban dumpsters, the author traces the logic by which perfectly edible commodities are nonetheless thrown out. Describing the intertwinement of global capitalism with anti-capitalist transgression, the author captures those forms of generosity, solidarity, and resistance emerging from the global city's marginalized residents.
Migrant Organising. Community Unionism, Solidarity, and Bricolage. Ed. by Martín-Díaz, Emma and Martínez, Beltrán Roca. [International Comparative Social Studies, Vol. 54.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2021. ix, 222 pp. Ill. € 137.00; $165.00. (E-book: € 137.00; $165.00.)
The decline of the Fordist model manifested in the rise of irregular immigration after the end of the 1970s. In this volume, the authors explore developments in community unionism and solidarity networks among migrant workers in a post-Fordist context characterized by transnationalism and global chains. In eight contributions, they describe different types of trade union strategies towards migrant workers and the rise of solidarity and bricolage initiatives in situations where conventional union organizing cannot succeed. Cases from Germany, Spain, Italy, and Argentina reveal that the transformation of work, the rise of global chains, and the intensification of international migration drive new forms of union and extra-union intervention.
Solidarisch in die Offensive. Beiträge für eine starke IG Metall in Betrieb, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Hrsg. von Jörg Köhlinger. VSA, Hamburg 2022. 294 pp. € 19.80.
This volume of twenty-eight debates divided into four parts is about a strategic movement involving works councils, as well as trade union secretaries and critical scholars. Part One presents social findings and political objectives of unions and governments. Part Two reflects the current status of employee corporate participation and considerations for its future development, including a democratic structure and management of the economy. Part Three addresses collective bargaining and considers current issues in the metal and electronics industries, in addition to summarizing significant conflicts of the recent past. Part Four offers suggestions on solidarity on the offensive and on how to broaden the membership base of trade unions.
Continents and Countries
Africa
Socialismes en Afrique. Socialisms in Africa. Dir. par Blum, Francoise et al. [Collection histoire, sociologie, anthropologie, 54.] Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris 2021. xviii, 716 pp. Ill. € 39.00.
This volume gives an overview of international research on socialism in Africa, bringing together theoretical debates about forms of socialism in Africa and their intellectual roots, as well as concrete experiences of socialism in cities and in the countryside. The twenty-eight contributions elaborate on cooperatives, neighbourhood committees, re-education camps, Portuguese-speaking Africa, and the deplorable state of African studies in France, as well as on Africa's relations with the USSR, people's democracies, Cuba, China, and Israel in part of this volume. The authors aim to position studies about forms of African socialisms in the more general field of the history of socialism, as well as in that of the Cold War.
Congo
Hendriks, Thomas. Rainforest Capitalism. Power and Masculinity in a Congolese Timber Concession. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2022. xxiv, 294 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95.)
In this book, Dr Hendriks examines the rowdy world of industrial timber production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to theorize racialized and gendered power dynamics in capitalist extraction. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Congolese workers and European company managers, as well as among traders, farmers, smugglers, and barkeepers, the author shows how logging is closely linked with feelings of existential vulnerability in the face of larger forces, structures, and histories. Revealing a precarious side of power in an environment where companies, workers, and local residents frequently find themselves out of control, the author queries assumptions of corporate strength and offers new ways to understand the complexities and contradictions of capitalist extraction.
Egypt
El Bernoussi, Zayneb. Dignity in the Egyptian Revolution. Protest and Demand during the Arab Uprisings. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xxi, 168 pp. Ill. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)
During the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, Egyptians participating in these uprisings frequently invoked the concept of dignity (karama) to underscore their opposition to the Mubarak regime. Protesting the indignity of poverty, lack of freedom, and social justice, the idea of karama gained salience in Egyptian cinema, popular literature, street art, music, social media and protest banners, slogans and literature. Based on interviews with participants and analysis of art forms that emerged during protests, Professor El Bernoussi explores understandings of the concept of dignity, showing how protestors used this concept in organizing protest and uprising and in their memories in the aftermath of the protests.
South Africa
Boersema, Jacob R. Can We Unlearn Racism? What South Africa Teaches Us about Whiteness. Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2022. xviii, 299 pp. $90.00. (Paper: $28.00.)
In contemporary South Africa, while white South Africans continue to enjoy considerable power in the upper echelons of industry, they have become a demographic minority, politically subordinate to the Black South African population. In this book, Dr Boersema argues that this adaptation requires unlearning racism: confronting the shame of a racist past; acknowledging privilege; and rethinking notions of nationalism. Drawing on more than 150 interviews with white South Africans, the author details how they understand their whiteness and depicts the limits and possibilities of individual and collective transformation. He reveals that unlearning racism entails dismantling psychological and institutional structures, all of which are inflected by emotion and shaped by ideas of culture and power.
Tanzania
Barre, Harald. Traditions Can Be Changed. Tanzanian Nationalist Debates around Decolonizing “Race” and Gender, 1960s–1970s. [Global and Colonial History, Vol. 7.] Transcript, Bielefeld 2022. 272 pp. € 45.00. (E-book: € 44.99.)
During the struggle for liberation in the 1960s, Tanzania's first president, Nyerere, gained widespread support by promising equality, irrespective of race and gender. Whether and to what extent African states and societies have been able to break away from colonial impact remains a contentious issue. Dr Barre considers newspapers and academic activism in Tanzania as forums that shaped the independent African nation through heated debates. Examining changing discourses on race and gender in the 1960s and 70s, he reveals that equating difference with inequality was fiercely contested. Images rooted in colonialism were challenged and, in some cases, fundamentally transformed by journalists, students, and scholars, and by the promise of an egalitarian socialist state.
Grace, Joshua. African Motors. Technology, Gender, and the History of Development. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2021. xiii, 416 pp. Ill. $114.95. (Paper: $30.95.)
Between the late 1800s and the early 2000s, Tanzanian drivers, mechanics, and passengers have reconstituted the automobile into a uniquely African form. Drawing on oral histories, extensive archival research, and ethnographic fieldwork as an apprentice in Dar es Salaam's network of garages, Professor Grace counters the narratives that Africa is incompatible with technology, and that African car use is merely an appropriation of technology created elsewhere, showing that, although automobiles were invented in Europe and introduced as part of colonial rule, Tanzanians transformed them, increasingly associating their own car use with maendeleo, the Kiswahili word for progress or development.
Roberts, George. Revolutionary State-Making in Dar Es Salaam. African Liberation and the Global Cold War, 1961–1974. [African Studies Series, Vol. 156.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xv, 329 pp. Maps. £90.00. (E-book: $96.00.)
Tracing Dar es Salaam's rise and fall as an epicentre of Third World revolution, Dr Roberts explores the connections between the global Cold War, African liberation struggles, and Tanzanian efforts to build a socialist state. Rather than perceiving decolonization through a national lens, his stories follow the genesis of Tanzania's revolutionary state-making project from multiple angles, involving not merely the construction of a socialist society, but also the liberation of Africa and including the perspectives of Tanzanian politicians, liberation movement cadres, Cold War diplomats, radical journalists, and youth activists. The author explains how Tanzania's strident anti-imperialism ultimately drove an authoritarian turn in its socialist project and tighter control over the city's public sphere.
Uganda
Doherty, Jacob. Waste Worlds. Inhabiting Kampala's Infrastructures of Disposability. [Atelier: Ethnographic Inquiry in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 6.] University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2022. xix, 267 pp. Ill. $85.00; £66.00. (Paper, E-book: $29.95; £24.00.)
Uganda's capital is undergoing dramatic urban transformations, as its new technocratic government seeks to clean and green the city. Dr Doherty tracks the dynamics of development and disposability unfolding amid struggles over who and what belong in the new Kampala. The book is divided into three parts. Waste is explored in Part One as an object of governance, demonstrating how waste management politics have been implicated in the constitution of political authority, in Part Two as one of labour, illustrating the quantity and heterogeneity of work that goes into producing waste infrastructures, and in Part Three as one of affective investment to understand the entanglement of care and abandonment in waste worlds.
America
Against Racism. Organizing for Social Change in Latin America. Ed. by Moreno Figueroa, Monica G. and Wade, Peter. [Pitt Latin American Series.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2022. xi, 273 pp. Ill. $55.00.
While narratives describing Latin American nations as fundamentally mestizo have hampered acknowledgement of racism in the region, recent multiculturalist reforms have increased recognition of Black and Indigenous identities and cultures. Multiculturalism may highlight identity and visibility and address more casual and social forms of racism, but can also divert attention from structural racism and racialized inequality and constrain larger anti-racist initiatives. The seven essays in this book examine actors in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico that transcend recognition politics to address structural inequalities and material conflicts and build common ground with other marginalized groups, featuring organizations that advocate an inclusive approach to deep social structural transformation conducive to alliances.
Bigelow, Allison Margaret. Mining Language. Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg (VA) 2020. xix, 354 pp. Ill. Maps. $39.95. (E-book: $29.99.)
Mineral wealth from the Americas underwrote and undergirded European colonization of the New World; American gold and silver enriched Spain, funded the slave trade, and spurred Spain's northern European competitors to become Atlantic powers. In this study of the technical and scientific vocabularies that miners developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as they engaged with metallic materials, Professor Bigalow documents the intellectual contributions by Indigenous and African miners to the very engine of European colonialism. Carefully parsing writings of well-known and lesser-known writers, she uncovers the ways in which Indigenous and African metallurgists aided or resisted imperial mining endeavours, shaped critical scientific practices, and offered imaginative visions of metalwork. See also Jeannette Graulau's review in this volume, pp. 363–367.
Worlds of Labour in Latin America. Ed. by Orías, Paola Revilla, Terra, Paulo Cruz, and De Vito, Christian G.. [Work in Global and Historical Perspective, Vol. 13.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2022. viii, 267 pp. Ill. € 89.95. (E-book: € 89.95.)
This edited volume demonstrates the significant studies on the world of labour and workers conducted throughout Latin America, reflecting the development of Latin American labour history across broad geographical, chronological, and thematic perspectives. Authors from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Spain analyse a series of problems relating to labour relations from a historical and sociological perspective and, in eleven contributions, examine the combinations and coexistence of multiple labour relationships at the workplace as a continuum of coercion. They also provide insightful interpretations of the factors (economic, cultural, and political) conducive to a diversity of labour relations. Another over-arching theme in the essays is the ambiguity in paid contractual labour in different situations.
Argentine
Kasparian, Denise. Co-operative Struggles. Work Conflicts in Argentina's New Worker Co-operatives. Transl. [from Spanish] by Ian Barnett. [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 203; New Scholarship in Political Economy, Vol. 13.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022 (2017). xii, 248 pp. Ill. € 172.00; $207.00. (E-book: € 172.00; $207.00.)
After the depletion of neoliberal reforms at the dawn of the twenty-first century in Argentina, cooperativism gained momentum, mainly due to the recuperation of enterprises by their workers and state promotion of cooperatives through social policies. These new cooperatives came to figure not merely in production, but also in social struggle; they are distinctive, in that they shape a socio-productive system not structured by wage relations, as workers are, at the same time, members of the organizations. In this book, Dr Kasparian expands theoretical horizons regarding labour unrest by presenting new categories to make visible and conceptualize conflicts in the new worker cooperativism of the twenty-first century.
Brazil
Boito, Armando. Reform and Political Crisis in Brazil. Class Conflicts in Workers’ Party Governments and the Rise of Bolsonaro Neo-fascism. Transl. [from Portuguese] by Tesheiner, Angela and Pisetta, Lenita M. R.. [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 200.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022. xxii, 223 pp. € 145.00; $174.00. (E-book: € 145.00; $174.00.)
This book examines the Brazilian political process in the period 2003–2020: the governments led by the Workers’ Party and their reformist policies; the deep political crisis that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff; and the rise of Bolsonaro neofascism. Professor Boito argues that the party and ideological conflicts present in Brazilian politics are linked to class distributive conflicts within Brazilian society. Defeated for the fourth consecutive time in the presidential election, the political parties representing international capital and segments of the bourgeoisie and the middle class abandoned the rules of democratic procedure to end the Workers’ Party government cycle, paving the way for the rise of neofascism.
Corrêa, Larissa Rosa. Anti-Communist Solidarity. US–Brazilian Labor Relations during the Dictatorship in Cold-War Brazil (1964–1985). Transl. [from Portuguese] by Gledhill, H. Sabrina. [Work in Global and Historical Perspective, Vol. 12.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2022 (2017). xvii, 238 pp. € 84.95. (E-book: € 84.95.)
Since the 1960s, many leaders of student movements and unions and political authorities, participated in exchange programmes with the United States to learn about the American way of life. In Brazil, during the international context of the Cold War, under the yoke of a military dictatorship, hundreds of union members were sent to the United States to take union education courses. Dr Correa examines their influence on national union politics and movements, when they returned and discovered that, despite the investment by the US in the advertising, courses, films, and trips offered to Brazilian union members, few had embraced American ideas on how to organize an “authentic” union movement.
Lara, Fernando Luiz, and Koury, Ana Paula. Street Matters. A Critical History of Twentieth-Century Urban Policy in Brazil. [Pitt Latin American Series.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2022. x, 182 pp. Ill. $45.00.
In June 2013, millions of Brazilians took to the streets to protest. The demonstrations began over public transportation fare increases but quickly extended to broader questions of inequality. Linking urban policy and planning with street protests in Brazil, the authors propose understanding the social and spatial dynamics based on property, labour, and security. Intertwining the history of plans for urban space with popular protests that Brazilians organized to fight for property and land, they embed the history of civil society within that of urban planning and its institutionalization to show how urban and regional planning had a key role in managing the social conflicts surrounding land ownership.
Canada
Bucking Conservatism. Alternative Stories of Alberta from the 1960s and 1970s. Ed. By Bear, Leon Crane, Hannant, Larry, and Patton, Karissa Robyn. AU Press, Edmonton 2021. xxx, 333 pp. Ill. Can. $34.99. (Open Access.)
Bucking means to resist, to shake off, to kick. As these contributions by both scholars and activists show, this edited volume highlights the individuals and groups who challenged Alberta's conservative status quo in the 1960s and 1970s. Though they may appear marginal, the acts of resistance were not insignificant. Drawing on archival records, newspaper articles, police reports, and interviews, the seventeen contributors examine Alberta's history through the eyes of Indigenous activists protesting discriminatory legislation and unfulfilled treaty obligations, women and lesbian and gay persons standing up to the heteropatriarchy, student activists seeking to forge a new democracy, and anti-capitalist environmentalists demanding social change.
Das Gupta, Tania. Twice Migrated, Twice Displaced. Indian and Pakistani Transnational Households in Canada. UBC Press, Vancouver 2021. ix, 220 pp. Can. $89.95. (Paper, E-book: Can. $32.95.)
This book explores the lives of Gulf South Asians who arrived in the Greater Toronto Area from India and Pakistan via Persian Gulf countries. Their journey was not from point A to point B but took place in two or three steps. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Professor Das Gupta reveals the multiple migration patterns of this group and the class, gender, racial, and religious discrimination they have encountered both during their journey and upon arrival in Canada. She analyses themes such as class mobility, the formation of transnational families, and identities in a post-9/11 context. The resulting ambivalent hybrid identities have implications for Canada in terms of community-building, diaspora, citizenship, and migrant sense of belonging.
Kuyek, Joan. Unearthing Justice. How to Protect Your Community from the Mining Industry. Between the Lines, Toronto 2019. xv, 391 pp. Ill. Maps. Can. $26.965. (E-book: Can. $13.99.)
The mining industry is located at the forefront of colonial dispossession around the world, controlling information about its costs and benefits, propagating stories about its contribution to the economy, shaping government policy and regulation, and dealing ruthlessly with its opponents. Based on dozens of case studies, this book provides a detailed understanding of different mineral extraction methods and shares strategies for opposing them. The author exposes the mining process and its externalized impacts on the environment, Indigenous Peoples, communities, workers, and governments, and shows how people fight back, whether to stop a mine before it opens, get an abandoned mine cleaned up, amend laws and policy, or mount a campaign to influence investors.
Colombia
Hough, Phillip A. At the Margins of the Global Market. Making Commodities, Workers, and Crisis in Rural Colombia. [Development Trajectories in Global Value Chains.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xiv, 359 pp. £85.00. (E-book: $88.00.)
Contemporary scholars debate the factors driving despotic labour conditions across the world economy. This book engages in this debate through a comparative analysis of the labour regimes of three global commodity-producing subregions of rural Colombia: the coffee region of Viejo Caldas; the banana region of Urabá; and the coca/cocaine region of the Caguán. By drawing upon insights from labour regimes, global commodity chains and historical sociology, Dr Hough offers a novel understanding of the range of local, national, interregional, and global factors that shape labour conditions on the ground in Colombia. Developing an innovative perspective on the causes of rural Colombia's endemic violence and social crises, he connects labour and development dynamics to the arc of US world hegemony.
Cuba
Chira, Adriana. Patchwork Freedoms. Law, Slavery, and Race Beyond Cuba's Plantations. [Afro-Latin America.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xxvii, 305 pp. Ill. Maps. £69.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book: $24.00.)
In nineteenth-century Santiago de Cuba, Afro-descendant peasants forged freedom and devised their own formative path to emancipation. Drawing on understudied archives, Professor Chira unearths the history of Black rural geography and popular legalism, and offers a new conceptual framework for nineteenth-century Black freedom. Santiago de Cuba's Afro-descendant peasantries did not rely on liberal-abolitionist ideologies as a primary reference point in their struggle for rights. Instead, they negotiated their freedom and land piecemeal, through colonial legal frameworks that allowed for local custom and manumission. Long before inhabitants of Cuba demanded national independence and island-wide emancipation, Afro-descendant peasants gradually and invisibly laid the groundwork for emancipation.
Hynson, Rachel. Laboring for the State. Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959–1971. [Cambridge Latin American Studies, Vol. 117.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2019. xvii, 314 pp. Ill. £29.99. (E-book: $32.00.)
The authoritarian government that replaced the democratic one in Cuba attempted to monopolize definitions of morality by redefining the nuclear family and organizing citizens to serve the state. Drawing on Cuban newspapers and periodicals, government documents and speeches, as well as on oral histories, Dr Hynson reveals that, by 1961, and increasingly throughout this decade, revolutionary citizenship was earned through labour. The author examines four campaigns (projects to control women's reproduction, promote marriage, end prostitution, and compel men to enter state-sanctioned employment) and shows both the state's progression towards authoritarianism and its attendant monopolizing of morality and the resistance and counter-narratives by citizens who opposed the mandates of these campaigns. See also Vicent Sanz Rozalén's review in this volume, pp. 367–370.
Ecuador
Masi de Casanova, Erynn. Domestic Employment in Contemporary Ecuador. IRL Press/ Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2019. 174 pp. $125.00. (Paper: $27.95; E-book: $18.99.)
What makes domestic work undesirable, even after efforts to formalize and improve working conditions? Professor Masi de Casanova's case study, based, in part, on collaborative research conducted with Ecuador's pioneer domestic workers’ organization, examines three reasons for persistent exploitation. The tasks of social reproduction are devalued, informal work arrangements escape regulation, and unequal class relations are embedded in this type of employment. From the intimate experience of being a body out of place in an employer's home, through the common work histories of Ecuadorian women, to opportunities for radical collective action, the author shows how and why women do this precarious work, and how they resist exploitation in their quest for dignified employment.
Jamaica
Lynn Bolles, A. Women and Tourist Work in Jamaica. Seven Miles of Sandy Beach. [Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility, and Society.] Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2021. xii, 157 pp. Ill. $95.00; £73.00. (E-book: $45.00; £35.00.)
In this book, Professor Lynn Bolles examines Jamaican women tourist workers and their workplaces in Negril, Jamaica. The labour of women tourist workers, ranging from housekeepers to hotel and business owners is a major factor in Negril's thriving tourism. Conducting ethnographic research, the author examines key aspects of women's labour in the tourist industry through the lenses of class, colour, education, and training. Through the narratives of thirty interlocutors, she focuses on the prescience of emotional labour and face-to-face encounters, investigating these women's ideas about tourism at the local level and their wariness of the changing physical environment as a result of tourism expansion.
Mexico
Hernández, Sonia. For a Just and Better World. Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900–1938. University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2021. xv, 222 pp. Ill, Maps, $110.00. (Paper: $28.00; E-book: $19.95.)
Caritina Piña Montalvo personified the vital role of Mexican women in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. Professor Hernández tells the story of how Piña and other Mexicanas in the Gulf of Mexico region fought for labour rights both locally and abroad to serve the anarchist ideal of a worldwide community of workers. An international labour broker, Piña never left her native Tamaulipas, yet she excelled in connecting groups in the United States and Mexico. Her story explains the conditions that led to anarcho-syndicalism's rise as a tool to achieve labour and gender equity and reveals how women's ideas and expressions of feminist beliefs informed their experiences as leaders in and members of the labour movement.
Padilla, Tanalís. Unintended Lessons of Revolution. Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2021. 355 pp. Ill. Maps. $104.95. (Paper: $28.95.)
In the 1920s, Mexico established rural normales, boarding schools that trained teachers in a new nation-building project. Drawn from campesino ranks, their graduates went on to facilitate land distribution, organize civic festivals, and promote hygiene campaigns. Professor Padilla traces the history of the rural normales, showing how they became sites of radical politics. By the 1930s, ideas about land reform, education for the poor, community leadership, and socialism shaped their institutional logic. Over the decades that followed, tensions between state consolidation and revolutionary justice produced a telling contradiction: the very schools meant to constitute a loyal citizenry became hubs of radicalization against a government that increasingly abandoned its commitment to social justice.
Peru
Wilson Becerril, Michael. Resisting Extractivism. Peruvian Gold, Everyday Violence, and the Politics of Attention. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville (TN) 2021. xiv, 278 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.95. (Paper: $34.95; E-book: $34.99.)
Peru is classified as one of the deadliest countries in the world for environmental defenders, where activists face many forms of violence. Through an ethnographic and systematic comparison of four gold-mining conflicts in Peru, Professor Wilson Becerril presents a vivid account of subtle and routine forms of violence, analysing how attribution of meaning renders certain types of damage and suffering noticeable while occluding others, drawing on a controlled, qualitative comparison of four case studies, extensive ethnographic research, analysis of hundreds of archives and documents, and interviews with key actors across industry, state, civil society, and the media. Identifying, tracing, and comparing these dynamics, the author explains how similar cases may yield contrasting outcomes.
United States of America
Auerhahn, Kathleen. Collision Course. Economic Change, Criminal Justice Reform, and Work in America. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) [etc.] 2022. 159 pp. $27.95.
This book is about the trajectories of the economy and the criminal justice system, two societal institutions now converging in a way that renders collision almost unavoidable. The American economy has radically transformed in the past half-century, led by advances in automation technology that have permanently altered labour market dynamics. Over the same period, the US criminal justice system expanded at an unprecedented scale and cost. In addition to $80 billion in annual direct expenditures, the impacts experienced by justice-involved individuals, families, and communities are devastating. Examining potential consequences, the author suggests alternative redistributive and policy solutions to halt the collision course of these economic and criminal justice policy trends.
Blue, Ethan. The Deportation Express. A History of America through Forced Removal. [American Crossroads, Vol. 61.] University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2021. xiii, 422 pp. Ill. Maps. $39.95; £31.00. (E-book: $39.95; £31.00.)
A century ago, deportation trains made constant circuits around the nation, gathering “undesirable aliens” – migrants disdained for their poverty, political radicalism, criminal conviction, or mental illness – and conveyed them to ports for exile overseas. This book examines the history of American deportation trains: a network of prison railroad cars repurposed by the Immigration Bureau to link jails, hospitals, asylums, and workhouses across the country and enable efficient forced removal. Dr Blue uncovers the origins of the deportation train and traces the roots of the current moment, following the lives of selected individuals caught within the deportation regime and dramatically revealing how the forces of state exclusion accompanied epic immigration in early twentieth-century America.
Cook Bell, Karen. Running from Bondage. Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. viii, 248 pp. Ill. £18.99. (E-book: $20.00.)
This book relates the compelling stories of enslaved women and the ways in which they attempted to flee bondage during and after the Revolutionary War. Based on newspaper advertisements, first-person accounts in trial records, antebellum memories, and interviews with former slaves, Professor Cook Bell sheds light on slave resistance in eighteenth-century America and explores the individual and collective lives of these women and girls of diverse circumstances while detailing what led them to escape. She demonstrates that, in fact, two wars were waged during the Revolutionary Era, one a political revolution for independence from Great Britain, the other a social revolution for emancipation and equality in which Black women had an active role.
Harris, John. The Last Slave Ships. New York and the End of the Middle Passage. Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) [etc.] 2020. ix, 300 pp. Ill. Maps. € 30.00.
Long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially prohibited in the early nineteenth century, merchants based in the United States continued to send hundreds of illegal slave ships from American ports to the African coast. The key instigators were slave traders who moved to New York City, determined to make Lower Manhattan a key hub in the illegal slave trade with Cuba. In conjunction with allies in Africa and Cuba, they ensnared around 200,000 African men, women, and children during the 1850s and 1860s. Professor Harris explores how the US government went from ignoring and even abetting this illegal trade to helping shut it down completely in 1867. See also Anita Rupprecht's review in this volume, pp. 370–373.
Mosterman, Andrea C. Spaces of Enslavement. A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2021. xiii, 230 pp. Ill. $39.95. (E-book: $25.99.)
In the 1620s, Dutch colonial settlers brought slavery to the banks of the Hudson River and founded communities. When the power of the Dutch declined, their descendants continued to rely on enslaved labour. Until slavery was abolished in New York state in 1827, slavery expanded in the region, with all free New Yorkers benefitting from that servitude. In this book, Professor Mosterman addresses the myth that the colonial Dutch system of slavery was more humane. Describing how the movements of enslaved persons were controlled in homes and in public spaces such as workshops, courts, and churches, she explains that enslaved people responded to regimes of control by escaping from or modifying these spaces, so as to expand their activities within them.
Winant, Gabriel. The Next Shift. The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2021. 350 pp. Ill. Maps. $35.00; £28.95; € 31.50.
Pittsburgh was once synonymous with steel. Like so many places across the United States, a city that was once a centre of blue-collar manufacturing is now dominated by the service economy, particularly healthcare. Professor Winant finds that a new working class has emerged in Pittsburgh's neighbourhoods, in the wake of deindustrialization. As steelworkers and their families grew older, they required more healthcare. Even as the industrial economy contracted sharply, the care economy thrived. Many care jobs bear little resemblance to the manufacturing work the city lost. Unlike their blue-collar predecessors, home health aides and hospital staff work unpredictable hours for low pay, and this new working class disproportionately comprises women and people of colour.
Writing Revolution. Hispanic Anarchism in the United States. Ed. by Castañeda, Christopher J. and Feu, Montse (M. Montserrat Feu López). University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2019. xiv, 305 pp. Ill. $110.00. (Paper: $30.00; E-book: $19.95).
In the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, the anarchist effort to promote free thought, individual liberty, and social equality relied upon an international Spanish-language print network. These channels for journalism and literature promoted anarchist ideas and practices while fostering transnational solidarity and activism, from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles to Barcelona. This collection examines many facets of Spanish-language anarchist history. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the essays investigate anarchist print culture's transatlantic origins; Latino labour-oriented anarchism in the United States; the anarchist print presence in locales, such as Mexico's borderlands and Steubenville, Ohio; the history of essential publications and the individuals behind them; and the circulation of anarchist writing from the Spanish–American War to the twenty-first century.
Zegart, Amy B. Spies, Lies, and Algorithms. The History and Future of American Intelligence. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2022. xv, 405 pp. $29.95; £25.00.
Drawing on archival research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Dr Zegart provides a history of US espionage, from George Washington's Revolutionary War spies to spy satellites today. Examining how fictional spies influence real officials, she gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America's intelligence agencies, describing how technology empowers new enemies and opportunities and creates powerful new players, such as private citizens who successfully track nuclear threats using little more than Google Earth, and showing why cyberspace is, in many ways, the ultimate cloak-and-dagger battleground, where nefarious actors employ advanced technology for theft, espionage, and information warfare.
ASIA
China
Zhang, Meng. Timber and Forestry in Qing China. Sustaining the Market. [Culture, Place, and Nature.] University of Washington Press, Seattle (WA) 2021. xxi, 255 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.00. (Paper: $30.00.)
In the Qing period (1644–1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. This study shows that as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources. Tracing the trade routes that connected population centres of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier, Professor Zhang documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. She delves into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, considering both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. See also Başak Akgül's review in this volume, pp. 373–375.
India
Sur, Malini. Jungle Passports. Fences, Mobility, and Citizenship at the Northeast India-Bangladesh Border. [The Ethnography of Political Violence.] University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2021. x, 215 pp. Ill. Maps. $75.00. (Paper: $29.95.)
Since the nineteenth century, a succession of states has classified the inhabitants of what are now the borderlands of Northeast India and Bangladesh as disloyal subjects, spies, and traitors. In this book, Dr Sur follows the struggles of these people to secure shifting land, gain access to rice harvests, and smuggle the cattle and garments upon which their livelihoods depend against a background of violence, scarcity, and India's construction of one of the world's longest and most highly militarized border fences. Recasting notions of citizenship and mobility along violent borders, the author shows how the division of sovereignties and distinct regimes of mobility and citizenship push undocumented people to undertake perilous journeys across previously unrecognized borders every day.
Indonesia
Globalization, Poverty, and Income Inequality. Insights from Indonesia. Ed. by Barichello, Richard, Patunru, Arianto A., and Schwindt, Richard. [The Asia Pacific Legal Culture and Globalization Series.] UBC Press, Vancouver 2021. xii, 266 pp. Can. $88.95. (Paper, E-book: Can. $34.95.)
This book examines the relationship between globalization and trade liberalization and between poverty and income inequality, using Indonesia as a case study. Examining both aggregate data and local evidence, the authors of the eleven contributions find that, although increased trade tends to reduce poverty, there are exceptions. Globalization via trade in certified organic coffee has not helped low-income farmers, and although globalized standards of well-defined property rights are normally a precondition for urbanization, economic growth, and poverty alleviation, they can clash with the traditional or informal property rights of an urban underclass. Describing an ambiguous relationship between trade liberalization and inequality, this volume contributes to policy debates held across international forums, as globalization continues its advance.
Iran
Cronin, Stephanie. Social Histories of Iran. Modernism and Marginality in the Middle East. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. vi, 309 pp. £74.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book: $24.00.)
Histories of Iran have been dominated by the twin narratives of top-down modernization and methodological nationalism. In this book, Dr Cronin problematizes both by focusing on subaltern social groups: the “dangerous classes” and their constructed contrast with the new and avowedly modern bourgeois elite formed by the fledgling Pahlavi state; the hungry poor pitted against the deregulation and globalization of the late-nineteenth-century Iranian economy; rural criminals of every variety, bandits, smugglers, and pirates and the profoundly ambiguous attitudes towards them. Foregrounding these groups, the author moves beyond a narrow national context, demonstrating the explanatory power of global, transnational, and comparative approaches to the social history of the Middle East.
Global 1979. Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution. Ed. by Mirsepassi, Ali and Keshavarzian, A.. [The Global Middle East, Vol. 18.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xix, 456 pp. Ill. Maps. £64.99. (Paper: £22.00; E-book: $24.00.)
The Iranian revolution of 1979 not only had an impact on regional and international affairs, but was also made possible by the world and time in which it unfolded. This multi-disciplinary volume presents the revolution within its transnational and global contexts. Moving from the personal to the global, and from the provincial to the national, the twelve contributions draw attention to the multiplicity of spaces of the revolution, such as streets, schools, prisons, personal lives, and histories such as the Cold War and Global 1960s and 1970s. Through the broad range of approaches in this volume, the Iranian Revolution is perceived not as exceptional or anachronistic but as an uprising constituted by multiple interwoven geographies and histories.
Israel
Willen, Sarah S. Fighting for Dignity. Migrant Lives at Israel's Margins. [Contemporary Ethnography.] University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2019. ix, 302 pp. Ill. Maps. $89.95. (Paper: $32.50.)
In this book, Professor Willen explores the impact of the aggressive mass deportation campaign that the Israeli government launched, targeting migrants from countries such as Ghana, the Philippines, Nigeria, Colombia, and Ukraine. Drawing on nearly two decades of ethnographic research in homes and in churches, medical offices, advocacy organizations, and public spaces, the author shows how migrants struggle to craft meaningful, flourishing lives, despite the exclusions and vulnerabilities they endure. To complement their perspectives, she introduces Israeli activists who reject their government's exclusionary agenda and strive to build bridges across difference, repair violations of migrant dignity, and resist policies that violate their own moral convictions.
Middle East
Iskander, Natasha. Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st-Century Qatar and Beyond. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2021. vii, 348 pp. $95.00; £74.00. (Paper: $27.95; £22.00.)
In the run-up to the 2022 World Cup Soccer, Professor Iskander introduces readers to Qatar's booming construction industry. Through access to construction sites in Doha, in-depth research and interviews, the author explores how migrants are recruited, trained, and used. Despite their acquisition of advanced technical skills, workers are commonly described as unskilled and disparaged as “poor quality” or simply as “bodies”. She demonstrates that skill categories adjudicate personhood, creating hierarchies that shape working conditions, labour recruitment, migration policy, and the reach of global industries. The author also discusses how skill distinctions define industry responses to global warming, with employers recruiting migrants from climate-damaged places at lower wages and exposing these workers to Qatar's extreme heat.
Samoa
Droessler, Holger. Coconut Colonialism. Workers and the Globalization of Samoa. [Harvard Historical Studies, Vol. 193.] Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2022. 288 pp. Ill. Maps. $39.95; £31.95; € 36.00.
Located halfway between Hawaii and Australia, the islands of Samoa were divided in the mid-nineteenth century by Germany and the United States for their burgeoning colonial holdings. In this book, Professor Droessler examines the Samoan response through the lives of its workers, picking and processing coconuts and cocoa, tapping rubber trees, and building roads and ports that brought cash crops to Europe and North America. At the same time, Samoans contested the exploitative wage-labour system introduced by colonial powers through cooperative farming. Participating in ethnographic shows around the world, Samoans found ways to impose their own agendas and regain a degree of independence.
Turkey
O'Connor, Francis. Understanding Insurgency. Popular Support for the PKK in Turkey. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xv, 280 pp. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)
No insurgent movement can survive without some degree of popular support, but what does it mean to support an armed group? Focusing on the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), Dr O'Connor explores the first three decades of the PKK insurgency in Turkey. Conceptualizing the relationship between armed groups and their supporters, its spatial variations, and the role of violence in their interactions, he draws on Civil War, Social Movements, and Rebel Governance literatures to outline how the PKK survived a military coup in 1980 and slowly won popular support through incipient forms of rebel governance, targeted use of violence, and a nuanced projection of its ideology and objectives.
Europe
Left Diversity zwischen Tradition und Zukunft. Linke Parteienprojekte in Europa und ihre Potenziale. Hrsg. von Cornelia Hildebrandt, Danai Koltsida und Amieke Bouma. VSA Verlag, Hamburg 2021. 405 pp. € 19.00.
The European left fights cuts in social spending and the destruction of democracy and environment and struggles for a society based on solidarity. Still on the defensive, left-wing parties in EU member countries account for only 5.5 per cent of the votes in the European Parliament. In the twenty-six country analysed in this volume, the authors examine various questions. How are the parties anchored in society? What difficulties do they face, what are their potential strengths? How do they relate national to European politics? Presenting the diversity of the left, their traditional and new political programmes, strategic orientations, and forms of organization, future projects of European left-wing parties will be a special focus.
Stinsky, Daniel. International Cooperation in Cold War Europe. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 1947–64. [Histories of Internationalism.] Bloomsbury Academic, London [etc.] 2021. xi, 343 pp. Ill. $108.00. (Paper: $35.95; E-book: $86.40.)
Formed in 1947, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) was the first post-war international organization dedicated to cooperation in Europe along the boundaries set by the Cold War. Dr Stinsky provides a study of this international organization, incorporating research on the Cold War, the history of internationalism, and European integration. Building on the difficult heritage of the League of Nations and in an increasingly challenging political environment, the UNECE was tasked with facilitating European cooperation across the Iron Curtain. Working against an overwhelming geopolitical trend, the UNECE succeeded in bridging the Cold War divide on several occasions and maintained a broad network of contacts across the Iron Curtain.
Le travail en Europe occidentale des années 1830 aux années 1930. Spécial concours – commentaires de documents. Dossier coord. par Laure Machu. [Parlement[s], Revue d'Histoire Politique, No. 33.] Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2021. 304 pp. Ill. € 25.00.
This edited volume examines the economic, social, political, cultural, and environmental changes driven by the industrialization of Western Europe from the 1830s to the 1930s. The twenty contributions present and comment on sources including correspondence, photographs, legislative texts, petitions, caricatures, etc. produced in France, as well as in Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The book is divided into three parts. Part One is about changes in the organization of work, Part Two covers the impact on the living and working conditions of artisanal and industrial workers, and Part Three addresses the social question in the constitution of the workers’ movement.
Austria
Helfert, Veronika. Frauen, wacht auf! Eine Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte von Revolution und Rätebewegung in Österreich, 1916–1924. [L'Homme Schriften. Reihe zur Feministischen Geschichtswissenschaft, Bd. 28.] V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2021. 399 pp. Ill. € 50.00. (E-book: € 50.00.)
This study on women's and gender history examines the period of transformation from the Habsburg Monarchy to the First Republic from a new perspective. On the one hand, Dr Helfert explores how gender affected the way women participated in the Austrian Revolution. On the other hand, she visualizes women as actors who used the new beginning through the proclamation of the Republic to fight for a better world. The hypothesis of the study is that our understanding of revolutionary processes and the council movement in Austria changes significantly when women are considered as actors, thereby challenging the ideas of revolution as a whole.
Belgium
Naegels, Tom. Nieuw België. Een migratiegeschiedenis 1944–1978. Lannoo, Tielt 2021. 413 pp. Ill. € 34.99.
The period of reconstruction and economic boom in the thirty years following World War II were decisive for Belgium. Hundreds of thousands of guest labourers moved from countries around the Mediterranean to Belgium, having an immense impact in the economy, demographics, culture, and politics. In this book, Tom Naegels covers all aspects of this migration, starting with the liberation in 1944 and ending with the election in 1978 of the first representative of Vlaams Blok, alternating the perspective of the Belgian people with that of the Italians, Moroccans, and Turks. The author also elaborates on the tensions in the Flemish nationalist movement, the Walloon fear of becoming marginalized, and the challenges that schools faced.
Soly, Hugo. Capital at Work in Antwerp's Golden Age. Transl. [from Dutch] by Lee Mitzman. [Studies in European Urban History, Vol. 55.] Brepols, Turnhout 2022. 303 pp. Ill. Maps. € 91.00; $118.00.
Antwerp in the first half of the sixteenth century provides the vantage point for observing “capital at work”. Professor Soly elaborates on the goals of capitalists and their achievement of their objectives. The careers of three moneymakers, Erasmus Schetz, Gaspar Ducci, and Gilbert van Schoonbeke, who were exceptional for different reasons, shed light on the potential of Antwerp, the most dynamic economic centre of Europe during early globalization. By examining contemporaries to make clear how commercial capitalism changed, and in what measure the three protagonists extended the frontiers of capitalism, the author concludes that their economic initiatives were far more ambitious than what other businessmen in Antwerp could achieve.
France
Brucker, Jérémie. Avoir l’étoffe. Une histoire du vêtement professionnel en France des années 1880 à nos jours. Préf. d'Isabelle Lespinet-Moret. [Histoire des mondes du travail.] Arbre bleu, Nancy 2021. 406 pp. Ill. € 32.00.
Clothing worn on the job is often a combination of a uniform required by the employer and attire left to the choice of the worker. Simplified, standardized, or even eliminated, work clothing results from intervention, manipulation, and observation by a multitude of actors, such as company directors, clothing manufacturers, workers, or users and clients. Considering clothing from all perspectives, Professor Brucker analyses changes in occupational attire since the nineteenth century, particularly at La Poste and at the SNCF. He also examines the role of work clothing in constructing personal and professional gender identities to assess the power of appearance in French professional circles, from the 1880s to the present day.
Castagnez, Noëlline. Quand les socialistes français se souviennent de leurs guerres. Mémoire et identité (1944–1995). Préf. de Jean-Francois Sirinelli. [Collection Histoire.] Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2021. 477 pp. Ill. € 32.00.
This book compares the collective memory of the leaders of the Socialist Party in the second half of the twentieth century with that of the lower echelons: the federations; municipalities; and territories. While memories of some wars, such as the French Revolution, the Commune, the popular front, and the Resistance, are cherished, other wars, such as those in Spain and Algeria, leave a bitter taste and lingering shame. Capturing the main processes of acculturation of militants, Professor Castagnez examines socialist commemorations, their symbols, and their monuments, and compares them with those of their communist and Gaullist adversaries.
Un engagement en vers et contre tous. Servir les révolutions, rejouer leurs mémoires (1789–1848). [Collection Révolutions et Romantismes, 29.] Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand 2022. 282 pp. € 20.00. (E-book: € 14.91.)
The aftershocks of the French Revolution have been felt since its origins and have been studied extensively. This volume examines the effects in literary endeavours, in particular for poetic verse, and its role in the dissemination and commemoration of the Great Revolution. Verses were almost ubiquitous during the period covered by this study, whether through highly dedicated poets who published their work in newspapers or through hymns and odes composed to commemorate great events or characters or among revolutionary songs heard in the streets. The ten chapters in this volume study how verses have been conducive to forging memories of the Revolution throughout the period from 1789 to 1848, in France as well as abroad.
Germany
Bebnowski, David. Kämpfe mit Marx. Neue Linke und akademischer Marxismus in den Zeitschriften Das Argument und PROKLA 1959–1976. [Geschichte der Gegenwart, Bd. 25.] Wallstein, Göttingen 2021. 534 pp. € 47.30. (E-book: € 36.99.)
In the 1950s, a New Left emerged in Germany. Young intellectuals looked beyond the polarized traditional labour movement for new left-wing perspectives and expressed their ideas in two newly launched theoretical journals. Dr Bebnowski illuminates the contents of the West Berlin journals Das Argument and PROKLA in their historical context. In Part One, he addresses the concepts of the New Left and academic Marxism and sheds light on the preconditions for their emergence in West Berlin up to 1959. In Part Two, he analyses the journals, demonstrating that the New Left not only marked new beginnings, but also led to divisions that characterize the left to this day.
Beyond Exceptionalism. Traces of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Early Modern Germany, 1650–1850. Ed. by von Mallinckrodt, Rebekka, Köstlbauer, Josef and Lentz, Sarah. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2021. xiii, 311 pp. Ill. € 89.95. (Open Access.)
Focusing on practices of enslavement taking place within German territories in the early modern period, as well as on the people of African, Asian, and Native American descent caught up in them, the eleven essays in this volume concentrate on direct involvement in the slave trade and slavery, making clear that the Holy Roman Empire and its successor states were similar to other Western European colonial powers. Common aspects include the experience of slavery, the abduction of people, as well as the mobility of freedmen and freedwomen between colonies and the European mainland, the fight against slavery by the abolitionist movement, financial and economic entanglements with plantation economies, and the rise of racist stereotypes.
Ehmann, Christoph. Das Glück bauen – die Welt verändern. Die Stadtplaner und Architekten Bruno Taut und Martin Wagner. Dietz, Bonn 2022. 134 pp. Ill. € 14.90.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner created large modernist housing estates that became a model for social housing and are now part of global cultural heritage. Professor Ehmann describes the close connection between the two architects, their fruitful collaboration of almost a decade and a half, and the realization of their political visions. Martin Wagner gave the impetus for trade unions to found charitable institutions and thus provide their members with decent, attractive, and affordable housing. Branded as socialists, Taut and Wagner had to leave Germany in 1933 and were long forgotten, until now, as the author pays tribute to the two pioneers.
Green, John. Willi Münzenberg. Fighter against Fascism and Stalinism. [Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics.] Routledge, London [etc.] 2019. xiii, 288 pp. Ill. £120.00. (Paper, E-book: £34.99.)
Willi Münzenberg was a towering figure in the anti-fascist movement during the first half of the twentieth century. He co-founded the Socialist Youth International and the International Workers’ Relief organization and was a long-time member of the Reichstag. This detailed biography covers the full range of Münzenberg's activism. As a film distributor, he brought Soviet films to Western Europe. A pioneer in the use of media and supported by progressive politicians, artists, and intellectuals, he became the leading opponent of the propaganda machine of Hitler and Goebbels, as he exposed the venality and brutality of the Nazis. Late in life, his turn against Stalinism almost certainly led to his mysterious death. See also Ursula Langkau-Alex's review in this volume, pp. 375–378.
Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Ed. by Föllmer, Moritz and Swett, Pamela E.. [Publications of the German Historical Institute.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. x, 316 pp. Ill. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)
In Weimar and Nazi Germany, capitalism was hotly contested, discreetly practised, and politically regulated. The eleven contributions in this volume show how it adapted to fit a nation undergoing drastic changes following World War I, probing the ways in which contemporaries debated, concealed, promoted, and racialized capitalism, and demonstrating how bankers and industrialists, storeowners and commercial designers, intellectuals and politicians, reshaped a controversial economic order in a time of fundamental uncertainty and drastic rupture. Shedding light on the strategies used by Hitler and his followers to gain widespread support, the authors conclude that National Socialism succeeded in mobilizing the energies of capitalism while, at the same time, claiming to have overcome a system they associated with pernicious Jewish influences.
Great Britain
Berry, Charlotte. The Margins of Late Medieval London, 1430–1540. [New Historical Perspectives.] Institute of Historical Research, University of London Press, London 2022. xl, 244 pp. Maps. £40.00; $50.00. (Paper: £25.00; $35.00; Open Access.)
Describing the complexity of urban life in the medieval era, this book offers a detailed approach to understanding London beyond its grand institutions and social bodies. Combining digital, quantitative, and qualitative methodologies, Dr Berry sheds new light on urban life at the level of the neighbourhood, considering differences in economy, society, and sociability in different areas of this premodern city. Focusing on the dynamism and mobility that shaped city life and integrating the experiences of London's poor and migrant communities and how the positions they adopted within urban life, the author describes how people found themselves marginalized in the city and their strategies to mitigate that precarious position.
French, Katherine L. Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London. Consumption and Domesticity after the Plague. [The Middle Ages Series.] University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2021. xvii, 314 pp. Ill. Maps. $65.00; £52.00.
The Black Death that arrived in 1348 eventually caused the death of nearly half of England's population. In its long aftermath, wages in London rose in response to labour shortages, and, in general, people paid more for food, clothing, and household furnishings than they had before. Professor French examines how this increased consumption reconfigured gender roles and changed the domestic lives of London's merchants and artisans. Grounding her analysis in both the study of surviving household artifacts and extensive archival research, the author examines how Londoners accommodated their bigger houses and the increase in possessions, and how changes in material circumstance reshaped domestic hierarchies and gave rise to new routines and expectations.
Suranyi, Anna. Indentured Servitude. Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies. [States, People, and the History of Social Change, Vol. 4.] McGill–Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2021. xiv, 278 pp. Ill. Can. $130.00. (Paper: Can. $37.95.)
Hundreds of thousands of British and Irish men, women, and children crossed the Atlantic as indentured servants during the seventeenth century. In this book, Professor Suranyi argues that the British government profited by supplying labour for the colonies, removing unwanted populations, and reducing incarceration costs. Capitalist entrepreneurs made their fortunes from Atlantic trade in goods, indentured servants and slaves, and their participation in the servant trade was conducive to commercializing criminal justice. Once in the colonies, indentured servants adapted resourcefully to their circumstances and rebelled against unfair conditions and abuse. Emerging ideas about race and citizenship led to vehement public debate, prompting legislation that aimed to curb the excesses, while slavery continued to expand unchecked.
Italy
Cohn, Samuel K. jr. Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press, 2022. xx, 260 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00.
This study analyses popular protest across the Italian peninsula and the Venetian colonies during the early modern period, from 1494 to 1559. Drawing on archival material including over 100 contemporary chronicles and diaries, Professor Cohn notes new developments, such as an increase in women rebels, mutinies of soldiers, new tactics of revolts (e.g. shop closures, peaceful demonstrations of strength, and use of religious processions for discussions of tactics and strategies to obtain logistic leverage). At the same time, these protests reflect convergences with the medieval Italian past, with leaders coming almost exclusively from the ranks of nonelites, religious ideology playing a surprisingly minor role, and the majority of revolts centred in towns and cities.
Russia & Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Kalinovsky, Artemy M. Laboratory of Socialist Development. Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2021. xiii, 316 pp. Ill. Maps. $46.95. (Paper: $27.95; E-book: $18.99.)
Connecting high-level politics and intellectual debates with the life histories and experiences of peasants, workers, scholars, and engineers, Professor Kalinovsky shows how Soviet economic and cultural projects were negotiated in the decades following Stalin's death. Focusing on the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, he investigates how people experienced new cities, transformation of rural life, and the construction of the world's tallest dam, connecting these local and individual moments to the broader context of the Cold War. Comparing these experiences with countries such as India, Iran, and Afghanistan, the author examines the role of intermediaries who went to those countries as part of the Soviet effort to disseminate its vision of modernity to the postcolonial world.
Kellogg, Paul. “Truth Behind Bars”. Reflections on the Fate of the Russian Revolution. AU Press, Edmonton 2021. xxxi, 408 pp. Ill. Can. $37.95.
Just north of the Arctic Circle is the settlement of Vorkuta, a notorious camp in the Gulag internment system that experienced three pivotal moments in Russian history. These were a desperate hunger strike by socialist prisoners in the 1930s, a strike by forced labourers preluding the Stalinist forced labour system in 1953, and a series of strikes by new independent miners’ unions that were central to overturning the Stalinist system and in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Using the story of Vorkuta as a frame to re-assess the Russian Revolution, Professor Kellogg turns to the contributions of Iulii Martov, a contemporary of Lenin, and his analysis of the central role played in the revolution by a temporary class of peasants-in-uniform.
Spain
Familias y redes sociales. Cotidianidad y realidad del mundo iberoamericano y mediterráneo. [Coord. por] Guidobono, Sandra Olivero, Bravo Caro, Juan Jesús y López, Rosalva Loreto. Iberoamericana [etc.], Madrid [etc.] 2021. 350 pp. Maps. € 30.00.
Individuals, families, and relational networks deploy a diversity of strategies and mechanisms to construct and re-signify their identities. The diverse and heterogeneous human landscape in colonial societies reveals biological as well as cultural and social miscegenation, where the mestizo constitutes a new social order, and identities are, above all, social constructs made from family and relational strategies. The twelve case studies in this book reflect on colonial Ibero-American social realities of various social and economic sectors. Generating a space for debate and criticism around the role of the individual, the family, and the networks comprising those still in the motherland and in the colonies, the authors consider especially the conformation of the Ibero-American on both sides of the Atlantic.
Toll, Gil. El Diluvio, la prensa y la Segunda República. Gil Toll. [Antrazyt.] Icaria, Barcelona 2021. 358 pp. Ill. € 23.00.
For more than eighty years, El Diluvio (the Flood) was a popular republican and federalist newspaper of the city of Barcelona, until its abrupt closure in 1939. Framing the history of the newspaper in the context of the press in Barcelona and Madrid, in this commercial edition of his PhD thesis, Dr Toll focuses on the Second Republic as the most important episode in its existence. El Diluvio was the media support of Francesc Macià and the newly founded Esquerra Republicana in the municipal elections of 1931. Encouraging a peaceful revolt on 14 April, the paper identified Lluís Companys as the ideal candidate to succeed Macià to overcome the republican division in 1933.
Sweden
Van Nieuwenhuize, Hielke. Niederländische Seefahrer in schwedischen Diensten. Seeschifffahrt und Technologietransfer im 17. Jahrhundert. Böhlau, Vienna 2022. 473 pp. € 60.00.
The expansion of Swedish shipping around 1650 was possible thanks to the migration of Dutch seafarers, who brought seafaring skills and knowledge to Sweden. From 1630 to 1660, the Swedish Admiralty recruited around 200 Dutch officers and mates, who navigated the naval ships of the navy and trading company vessels through uncharted waters outside the Baltic. Despite huge diplomatic efforts, the fleet remained poorly equipped, and the ships were expensive and their armaments inadequate. Financing the fleet and guaranteeing the loyalty of sailors required concentrating on privateering, while the war entrepreneurs and the Swedish states had conflicting interests, and mutinies were a serious risk.
Switzerland
Suter, Mischa. Bankruptcy and Debt Collection in Liberal Capitalism. Switzerland, 1800–1900. Transl. [from German] by Bresnahan, Adam. [Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany.] University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (MI) 2021 (2016). x, 325 pp. $85.00.
Drawing on perspectives from anthropology and social theory, Professor Suter explores the quotidian routines of debt collection in nineteenth-century capitalism, focusing on Switzerland, where debt collection and bankruptcy relied on practices contained in the Swiss legal term Rechtstrieb (“law drive”), until they were standardized in a federal law in 1889. By the late nineteenth century, a stabilized set of procedures concerning debt synchronized capitalism's temporalities, albeit without homogenizing them. Analysing these forms of justice discloses the makeshift economies and the contested political imaginaries of nineteenth-century everyday life. Given that debt was a profoundly relational fact, the legal practices of debt collection epitomized and negotiated the contradictions of liberal capitalism in everyday life.
