SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Dardot, Pierre, and ChristianLaval. Marx, prénom: Karl. Gallimard, n.p. [Paris], 2012. 809 pp. € 34.90.

In this book Professors Dardot and Laval examine Marx's works, not to find answers to the questions raised by today's global crisis of capitalism but, by discussing the problems Marx faced, to learn from his work and to reaffirm his legacy “by transforming it as radically as necessary”. The authors concentrate in particular on two quite different perspectives they find in all Marx's works: the expansive logic of capital on the one hand and the emancipatory potentialities of class conflict on the other.

Discovering Imperialism. Social Democracy to World War I. Transl., ed. and introd. by Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 33.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2012. xi, 951 pp. € 149.00; $212.00.

This volume collects English versions of fifty-four articles and reviews on the theory of imperialism written before publication of Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917). The collection features texts originally published mainly in German periodicals between 1897 and 1916 by individuals including Max Beer, Paul Lévi (Paul Louis), Karl Kautsky, Heinrich Cunow, Eduard Bernstein, Julian Marchlewski (Karski), Otto Bauer, Alexander Helphand (Parvus), Rudolf Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Radek and Anton Pannekoek. The volume opens with a ninety-page introduction; all articles are introduced and extensively annotated.

Kapitalismus. Historische Annäherungen. Hrsg. von Gunilla Budde. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011. 191 pp. € 24.95.

This collection, largely based on a conference held on the occasion of Jürgen Kocka's retirement from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2009, comprises nine essays analysing social, cultural, and political dimensions of the concept of capitalism. One essay focuses on financial crisis in Balzac's novels; another discusses the role of the state in capitalism; two contributors emphasize the significance of emotions in capitalism; another discusses the relationship between Islam and capitalism; one essay highlights the role of the family in capitalism; two others consider the theme from a global historical perspective. In the concluding chapter Professor Kocka comments on the other contributions.

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty. Ed. by Philip N. Jefferson. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2012. xiii, 849 pp. $150.00; £95.00.

The twenty-five chapters in this handbook about developments in poverty and anti-poverty policies are arranged in six sections. The four chapters in the first section provide background and context. The second part deals with the relationship between the labour market and poverty, paying attention to ethnic and immigrant groups. The third part discusses various programmes (e.g. childcare, education, healthcare). Part 4 examines changes in poverty over time; part 5 focuses on phenomena associated with poverty (e.g. obesity and environmental degradation). The final section examines the effectiveness of policies, for example the limitations to a purely economic approach.

Perels, Joachim. Befreiung aus gesellschaftlicher Unmündigkeit. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Arbeiterbewegung. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2011. 182 pp. € 37.20.

Critique of capitalism, Stalinism, and neoliberalism is the common interpretative framework for the seventeen essays in this volume, which include discussions of the Prague Spring, the destruction of the German trade unions in 1933, and Perestroika in the Soviet Union; the ideas of Ernst Bloch, Theodor Lessing, Wolfgang Abendroth and other theoreticians; and an open letter to the social democratic politician Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul about the principles of the German Social democratic party (SPD). Sixteen essays were previously published elsewhere between 1971 and 2009. The one unpublished essay addresses Oskar Negt.

Radical and Marxist Theories of Crime. Ed. by Michael J. Lynch and Paul B. Stretesky. Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2011. Ill. £150.00.

Radical or Marxist criminology (RMC) focuses on the relationship between crime, class structure, and class formation. This volume brings together twenty-two facsimile reprints of journal essays on RMC, originally published between 1971 and 2007 and examining, for example, how social class shapes the definition of crime; the formation and content of law and criminal justice processes; and how class inequalities relate to the causes of various crimes, such as juvenile delinquency, corporate crime, and crime in general. The introduction provides a brief description of RMC theory and scholarship.

Scaff, LawrenceA. Max Weber in America. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.], 2011. xiv, 311 pp. Ill. $35.00; £24.95.

In this book Professor Scaff aims to provide new details about Max Weber's 1904 visit to the United States and to reveal how this experience influenced Weber's ideas about immigration, capitalism, science, race, Protestantism, and modernity. The author also traces Weber's impact on the development of the social sciences in the United States, examining how Weber's ideas, for example those in his work Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, were interpreted, translated, and disseminated by American scholars.

Scott, JoanWallach. The Fantasy of Feminist History. Duke University Press Books, Durham [etc.] 2011. 187 pp. £58.00. (Paper: £14.00.)

In this book Professor Scott argues that feminist perspectives on history are enriched by psychoanalytic concepts, particularly fantasy. The five essays collected in this volume reflect the author's engagement with psychoanalytic theory as a critical reading practice for history. In the introduction she traces changes in her ideas about gender over the course of her career; in the epilogue she reflects on Elizabeth Weed's Feminist Theory Papers, an archival collection at Brown University in which the legacies of prominent feminist thinkers are preserved.

L'URSS e la teoria del capitalismo di stato. Un dibattito dimenticato e rimosso (1932–1955). Antologia critica a cura di Arturo Peregalli e Riccardo Tacchinardi. Edizioni Pantarei, Milano 2011. 341 pp. € 20.00.

This anthology features texts about the Soviet Union and the theory of state capitalism, from the period between 1932 and 1955, by Arthur Rosenberg, Simone Weil, Ante Ciliga, Raya Dunayevskaya, Amadeo Bordiga, Cornelius Castoriadis, and other theoreticians. In the extensive introduction Riccardo Tacchinardi and the late Arturo Peregalli survey the contributions by orthodox and heterodox communists, socialists, anarchists, council communists, Trotskyists, and the Italian Bordigist left to the debate on the economic and social nature of the Soviet Union. The volume includes biographical and bibliographical notes referring to the featured contributors.

AFRICA

China

Chin, Angelina. Bound to Emancipate. Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-century China and Hong Kong. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham [etc.] 2012. xiii, 279 pp. Ill. £51.95.

The emancipation of lower-class working women was an important issue in China in the early decades of the twentieth century. In this study, Dr Chin explores the forms of debate between political and social elites in colonial Hong Kong and nationalist Guangzhou about the place of various categories of women service workers, in domestic service, in restaurants and tea houses, and in prostitution, and how they should be emancipated. She argues that these categories of working women were often sexualized and stigmatized and thus restricted, despite their emancipation. See also Helen Schneider's review in this volume, pp. 331–334.

Ngai, Pun. Avis au consommateur. Chine: des ouvrières migrantes parlent. Trad. du chinois par Hervé Denès et Claire Simon. L'Insomniaque, Montreuil 2011. 155 pp. Ill. € 15.00.

In this volume Professor Ngai, who also coordinates a mutual aid society among women workers in Hong Kong, brings together sixteen undated testimonies of Chinese migrant women and girls who left their home villages to work in the factories of China's Special Economic Zones. The women tell stories of low salaries, long working hours, and brutal discipline, but also indicate that living in the city offers them an escape from the strait-jacket of village life and forced marriages. They discover resistance, strikes, and labour solidarity as well.

XuGuoqi. Strangers on the Western Front. Chinese Workers in the Great War. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) [etc.] 2011, viii, 336 pp. Ill. £29.95; € 36.00.

During World War I Britain and France imported labourers from their colonies to work behind the front lines. The largest group of support labourers came from China. This book is about the 140,000 Chinese men, mostly illiterate peasants, who were recruited for the Allied war effort. Professor Xu explores both China's reasons for sending its citizens to help the Allied forces and the labourers’ personal experiences of the war, highlighting the Chinese contribution to World War I and the role of these labourers in modern China's quest for a new national identity in the world arena.

India

Kotiswaran, Prabha. Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor. Sex Work and the Law in India. Princeton University Press, Princeton [etc.] 2011. xi, 298 pp. £20.95.

Dr Kotiswaran has written this book based on fieldwork conducted among sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's largest red-light area, and Tirupati, a temple town in southern India, to present a sociology and legal ethnography of two different sex markets. In the introductory section of the book she discusses the abolitionist and sex work advocate positions in the feminist prostitution debates, arguing that both feminist camps increasingly focus on the political economy of sex markets. In the concluding section, she addresses the problems of prostitution law reform and proposes a theory of sex work from a postcolonial materialist feminist perspective.

Rawat, Ramnarayan S. Reconsidering Untouchability. Chamars and Dalit History in North India. Indiana University Press, Bloomington [etc.] 2011. xix, 272 pp. Ill. $70.00; £54.00. (Paper: $24.95; £16.99.)

This study focuses on the history, identity and politics of the Chamars of the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a Dalit group often identified as leatherworkers, characterized as a criminal caste and stigmatized as untouchables. Using Dalit vernacular literature, local-level archival sources, and interviews in Dalit neighbourhoods, Professor Rawat sets out to show that, in fact, the majority of Chamars have always been agriculturalists, arguing that their association with the ritually impure occupation of leatherworking has largely been constructed through Hindu, colonial, and postcolonial representations of untouchability.

Australia

Murphy, John. A Decent Provision. Australian Welfare Policy, 1870 to 1949. [Modern Economic and Social History Series.] Ashgate, Farnham [etc.] 2011. 270 pp. £65.00.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a combination of extended suffrage, basic wage regulation, and the old-age pension gave the Australian colonies a reputation as a “social laboratory”. Half a century later, however, Australia's welfare state was relatively modest and parsimonious. In this book, Professor Murphy aims to explain the distinct development and implementation of Australian welfare policy from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

Fiji

Nicole, Robert. Disturbing History. Resistance in Early Colonial Fiji. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 2011. ix, 298 pp. Ill. $52.00.

This book is about Fiji's people and their response to British colonial authority and power from 1874 to 1914. Using British sources, the author examines various movements and protests, including several organized labour protests. One chapter provides an account of migration by indentured labourers from India between 1879 and 1916 and a survey of strikes and protest marches organized by these migrants. Other chapters explore everyday resistance in the villages and on the plantations, as well as women's resistance.

New Zealand

Olssen, Erik and ClydeGriffen with FrankJones. An Accidental Utopia? Social mobility and the foundations of an egalitarian society, 1880–1940. Otago, Dunedin 2011. Maps. 332 pp. £24.50; $49.95.

From the 1890s until World War II New Zealand was one of the world's most egalitarian societies. In this microhistory of southern Dunedin, one of New Zealand's most densely settled urban areas, the authors analyse urban social structure and marital, labour, and intergenerational mobility, seeking to demonstrate how colonists and their descendants not only made class less central to social organization in New Zealand than it had been in Britain, but also how religious and ethnic divisions were rendered more marginal in New Zealand than in urban Britain or the United States.

Eire – Ireland

Nally, DavidP. Human Encumbrances. Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame (Ind.) 2011. xviii, 348 pp. Ill. Maps. $38.00.

This book incorporates postcolonial and modern famine theories to illustrate the causes and history of the Great Irish Famine, which began with the outbreak of the potato blight in 1845. Dr Nally aims to demonstrate that British colonial policies, such as land confiscations and plantation schemes, undermined rural livelihoods and made Irish society more vulnerable to catastrophic food crises. He argues that the British government attempted to use the Great Famine as a lever to accelerate socio-economic change and suggests that the Famine was the consequence of colonial oppression and social engineering, rather than a natural disaster.

O'Connor, Emmet. A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000. University College Dublin Press, Dublin [etc.] 2011. xviii, 329 pp. Ill. €28.00. £24.00.

This new, revised, edition of Dr O'Connor's comprehensive survey of Irish labour history is intended as an introduction for the general reader and as a synopsis for the specialist. Three new chapters covering the final three decades of the twentieth century have been added to the 1992 edition, which covered the period from 1824 to the 1960s. The impact of colonization remained an important theme: from the 1830s onwards, the trajectory and mentality of trade unions were dictated by economic and political colonization. During the 1890s, Dr O'Connor argues, trade unionism itself was colonized.

France

From Deficit to Deluge. The Origins of the French Revolution. Ed. by Thomas E. Kaiser and Dale K. Van Kley. Stanford University Press, Stanford (Cal.) 2011. xi, 345 pp. $65.00. (Paper: $25.95; E-book: $25.95.)

In this volume about the origins of the French Revolution the seven contributors examine conflicts in the realms of finance, social relations, religion, diplomacy, the Enlightenment, and colonial policy to explain how the structural problems of the Ancien Regime caused a fiscal crisis to escalate into a revolution. One chapter focuses on gender in pre-revolutionary political culture. In the introduction the editors discuss Marxist, revisionist, and post-revisionist interpretations of the French Revolution.

Gautier, Robert. Les coopératives ouvrières de consommation dans la Basse-Loire. Cent ans de solidarité économique et sociale, 1880–1980. Éditions du CHT, s.l. 2012. 215 pp. Ill. € 20.00.

“La Prolétarienne”, “L'Union”, and “La Ménagère”, were some of the names of consumer cooperatives organized by metalworkers and dock workers from Nantes and Saint-Nazaire in the Basse-Loire region of France. In this book, which is intended for a general readership, the author traces the history of these cooperatives from the early 1880s through the 1970s, seeking to demonstrate how they helped to supply the population with food during the two world wars, and supported striker families in times of social conflict but collapsed after the rise of supermarkets in the 1970s.

Paulet-Grandguillot, Emmanuelle. Libéralisme et démocratie. De Sismondi à Constant, à partir du Contrat social (1801–1806). Préf. de Bertrand Binoche. [Travaux et recherches de l'institut Benjamin Constant, vol. 12.] Éditions Slatkine, Genève 2010. 504 pp. € 85.00; S.fr. 100.00.

In this edited version of a doctoral dissertation (Nantes 2009), Dr Paulet-Grandguillot analyses the ideas of Benjamin Constant and J.C.L. Sismondi about the relationship between individual rights and popular sovereignty, particularly in their critique of Rousseau's Du Contrat social. Dr Paulet-Grandguillot studies Constant's Principes de politique and Sismondi's Recherches sur les constitutions des peuples libres in the context of the reception of the Contrat social during the French Revolution and in relation to other works, including those of Madame de Staël and William Godwin.

Perry, Matt. Memory of War in France, 1914–45. César Fauxbras, the Voice of the Lowly. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke 2011. xi, 259 pp. £55.00.

César Fauxbras was the literary pseudonym of the relatively unknown novelist, war veteran, and activist Kléber Gaston Gabriel Alcide Sterckeman (1899–1968), who wrote about the rank-and-file sailors’ experiences in World War I, the naval mutinies in the Black Sea in 1919, unemployment in the 1930s, the Popular Front, and the German occupation of Paris. In this book, which is neither a conventional biography nor a literary study, Dr Perry treats Fauxbras's writings as historical documents, using them to illustrate key episodes in French social history.

Roche, Jean-Louis. Nous tous les Lycéens… Le comité d'action en mai 68 à Buffon et les députés. Les Editions du Pavé, s.l. 2011. Ill. € 15.00.

This book about May 1968 focuses on political activism at French secondary schools, in particular at the Paris Lycée Buffon. The author, a former pupil of Buffon, aims to reconstruct the mood and the activism at the Lycée by describing the school and his own experiences. A large part of the book consists of transcripts of pamphlets produced at the Lycée, trade-union pamphlets, Gaullist pamphlets, transcripts of parliamentary debates held during May ’68, an account by an anonymous eyewitness “found” on the web (at http://archives-maximalistes.over-blog.com/article-un-texte-rare-sur-mai-68-57942385.html) and an anthology of graffiti.

Shaw, Matthew. Time and the French Revolution. The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge [etc.] 2011. xiii, 189 pp. Ill. £50.00; $90.00.

In this book Dr Shaw presents a history of the French republican calendar, placing it in the context of republican cultural reforms. He examines early modern awareness of time, the effects the new calendar and timekeeping had on French society and the clash with religion. One chapter is devoted to the organization of work and the regulation of markets. The appendices provide a timeline of key events, a glossary of the republican calendar, names of the days of the republican year, and a concordance for the Gregorian and republican calendars.

Germany

Gaida, Ulrike. Bildungskonzepte der Krankenpflege in der Weimarer Republik. Die Schwesternschaft des Evangelischen Diakonievereins e.V. Berlin-Zehlendorf. [Medizin, Gesellschaft und Geschichte. Jahrbuch des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung, Beiheft 38.] Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2011. 345 pp. Ill. € 51.00

This is a collective biography of c.2,000 women who between 1918 and 1933 joined the Evangelische Diakonieverein, a Protestant association dedicated to supporting women who hoped to train as nurses. After discussing nineteenth- and early twentieth-century attitudes to gender, women's work, and education, as well as Protestant views on these issues, Professor Gaida closely examines the nurses’ social backgrounds, educational ideas, and professional careers, concluding that the Deacon Sisters (who were mainly conservative and middle-class) valued the idealistic aspects of their profession over the formal ones.

Heberer, Patricia. Children During the Holocaust. Intr. by Nechama Tec. [Documenting Life and Destruction. Holocaust Sources in Context, Vol. 2.] AltaMira Press, Lanham 2011. xli, 513 pp. Ill. £31.95.

In this volume Dr Heberer brings together personal letters, diaries, court testimonies, government documents, photographs, and other documents to tell the story of the Nazi persecution of the Jews through the eyes and fates of children and adolescents. The collection documents the reactions of children to discrimination, the loss of livelihood, and the public humiliation at the hands of fellow citizens, and explores how children's experiences paralleled and diverged from those of adults. The documents are accompanied by explanatory texts.

Klöcker, Michael. Religionen und Katholizismus, Bildung und Geschichtsdidaktik, Arbeiterbewegung. Ausgewählte Aufsätze. Mit einer Einl. von Christoph Weber. [Beiträge zur Kirchen und Kulturgeschichte, Band 21.] Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011. 629 pp. Ill. € 88.80.

In this volume Professor Klöcker brings together twenty-five essays, originally published between 1971 and 2011, mainly about the history of religion, Catholicism, education, and the teaching of history. The collection also includes two articles, from 1978 and 2007, on labour history in the Rhineland.

Milert, Werner [und] RudolfTschirbs. Die andere Demokratie. Betriebliche Interessenvertretung in Deutschland, 1848 bis 2008. [Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen. Schriftenreihe A: Darstellungen, Band 52.] Klartext Verlag, Essen 2012. 712 pp. € 49.95.

In this comprehensive history of employee representation in industrial Germany from 1948 to the present, the authors examine early instances of worker representation during the 1848 Revolution, legislation on industrial relations during the early industrialization period, the momentous 1889 Ruhr miners’ strike, the 1920 works councils act, which resulted from a coalition between trade unions and the military in World War I, the abolition under the Nazi regime of worker representation, which had come about in the Weimar Republic, the development of employee representation after World War II in West and in East Germany, and the changes introduced after the Reunification.

Ritter, GerhardA. The Price of German Unity. Reunification and the Crisis of the Welfare State. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. xviii, 481 pp. £75.00.

This book is a translation of Der Preis der deutschen Einheit. Die Wiedervereinigung und die Krise des Sozialstaats, published in 2006, and annotated in IRSH, 54 (2009), p. 148. This translation based on the second, slightly revised edition of 2007 includes some further amendments, taking note of more recent research.

Scheidt, Petra. Karriere Im Stillstand? Der Demokratische Frauenbund Deutschlands im Spiegel seiner Kaderarbeit und der Kaderstrukturen seines hauptamtlichen Funktionärskorps. [Historische Forschungen, Band 28.] Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2011. 435 pp. (Incl. CD-rom.) € 58.00.

This dissertation (Duisburg-Essen, 2008) is about the Democratic Women's Federation of Germany (DFD), one of the GDR's largest mass organizations. Dr Scheidt examines the DFD's cadre policy, charting the staffing structure of the administrative machinery and the officials’ social, political, and vocational backgrounds, ages, ideological qualifications, and career opportunities, and tracing the increasing dominance of the SED. She argues that the rigid structures in organizations such as the DFD contributed significantly to the ultimate demise of the GDR. The CD-rom included contains statistical data covering the period 1947–1990.

Great Britain

Classes, Cultures, and Politics. Essays on British History for Ross McKibbin. Ed. by Clare V. J. Griffiths, James J. Nott, and William Whyte. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. x, 320 pp. £65.00.

This collection, based on a workshop held in Oxford (2006), is intended as a tribute to Ross McKibbin, the author of seminal works on the social, cultural and political history of Britain. The twenty-one contributions include three chapters introducing McKibbin and his work; studies focusing on various topics such as London taxi drivers, working-class women, working-class finance, a campaign against London's nightclubs, and international football; as well as four reflections on the historian McKibbin, who, according to the editors, succeeded in breaking down the artificial barriers that existed between “social” and “political” history.

Liverpool ’81. Remembering the Riots. Ed. by Diane Frost and Richard Phillips. With new photographs by Goff Tinsley, Donnamarie Barnes and Mike Boyle. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2011. ix, 150 pp. Ill. £14.95.

In the summer of 1981 street disturbances took place in many of Britain's major cities. The riots in the Toxteth area of Liverpool were particularly intense and sustained. Drawing on reports by government bodies and community groups, newspapers, and interviews with rioters, police, and community leaders, this thematically organized book explores why the riots happened, and what their consequences and legacies have been for Liverpool.

Long, Vicky. The Rise and Fall of the Healthy Factory. The Politics of Industrial Health in Britain, 1914–60. Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2011. x, 290 pp. £55.00.

This book explores the political history of industrial health focusing on the roles of the trade unions, employers, the medical profession, and the British state. Dr Long investigates how the interwar health movement, modernist architecture, and new forms of advertising were attempts to refashion factories into health improvement sites, and why these plans ultimately failed. She concludes that the decline of industrial healthcare was closely related to the relative economic decline of Britain: providing a comprehensive healthcare service was not seen as a priority within a decaying industrial sector that sought to remain competitive in a global market.

Nixon, CherylL. The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature. Estate, Blood and Body. Ashgate, Farnham 2011. x, 290 pp. Ill. £60.00.

In this book Professor Nixon reconstructs the narratives of real orphans in the British parliamentary, equity, and common law courts, and compares them to the narratives of fictional orphans, examining novels by Eliza Haywood, Tobias Smollett, and Elizabeth Inchbald, along with contemporary court case accounts, reports and stories about orphans, orphanages, workhouses, and similar institutions. Whereas studies of orphans often focus on poor urban foundlings, this study focuses on the wealthy orphan.

Shpayer-Makov, Haia. The Ascent of the Detective. Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2011. 429 pp. Ill. £30.00.

This book explores the occupational life of detectives – as opposed to the uniformed police – who served in English police forces from 1842 to World War I. The first part examines the evolution of the occupation of police detection and the detective as wage-earner and official crime fighter, while the second focuses on the relationship between detectives and the print media. By relating the lives of police detectives to social and cultural practices, Professor Shpayer-Makov aims to shed light not only on the world of the police but also on the rise of the mass media.

Tabili, Laura. Global Migrants, Local Culture. Natives and Newcomers in Provincial England, 1841–1939. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2011. x, 329 pp. Maps. £60.00.

Between 1850 and the 1930s the industrializing port of South Shields near Newcastle-upon-Tyne attracted migrants from England, Europe, the Americas and the colonized world. In this book Professor Tabili, using censuses, offers a reconstruction of the overseas migrant population of South Shields, which included one of Britain's largest “Arab” or Muslim communities, and examines how overseas migration affected social relations and culture, challenging the view of Britain as a culturally and racially homogenous society disrupted only recently by exotic intruders.

Wright, Maureen. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and the Victorian Feminist Movement. The Biography of an Insurgent woman. [Gender in History.] Manchester University Press, Manchester [etc.] 2011. xv, 280 pp. £65.00.

This is a biography of Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy (1833–1918), a prolific journalist, essayist, and public speaker, a pioneer in the British women's emancipation movement and, according to her biographer, the most significant British feminist theorist of her generation. She was also a human rights advocate and a pacifist and the first woman to speak from a public platform on the topic of conjugal rape.

Italy

Berta, Giuseppe. Fiat-Chrysler e la deriva dell'Italia industriale. [Contemporanea.] Il Mulino, Bologna, 2011. 142 pp. € 14.00.

This is a study of the most recent developments in Italian industrialism through an exploration of the fate of the Fiat motor company in the decades around the transition from the past century to the present one and including the recent merger with Chrysler (in 2008). Professor Berta argues that although the merger was the only way for Fiat to survive, it also meant the end of the Italian system of industrialism, turning Fiat into a truly globalized multinational. This has also had grave consequences for the position of labour and the trade unions in the car industry. See also Antonio Negro's review in this volume, pp. 349–351.

D'Errico, Stefano. Anarquismo y política. El “programa mínimo” de los libertarios del Tercer Milenio. Relectura antológica y biográfica de Camillo Berneri. Prólogo por Antonio Rivera, rev. del texto a cargo de Emili Cortavitarte, trad. por Pilar García Comenarejo. Fed. Prov. de Sindicatos de Alava de CGT, Vitoria 2012. 758 pp. € 20.00.

In this book about Camillo Berneri (Lodi, 1897–Barcelona, 1937) the author aims to highlight the pragmatic and non-dogmatic views of this Italian anarchist journalist who was murdered during the Spanish Civil War. The volume is organized in three parts: Berneri's critique of the state, anarchism and politics, and Berneri's life. Quoting extensively from Berneri's many writings, the author examines Berneri's ideas, particularly his views on the necessity of a “minimum programme” for solving practical questions. This book was originally published in Italian as Anarchismo e politica. Nel problemismo e nella critica dell'anarchismo del ventesimo secolo, il “programma minimo” dei libertari del terzo millennio. Rilettura antologica e biografica di Camillo Berneri (Milan 2007).

Matteotti, Giacomo. L'avvento del Fascismo. A cura di Stefano Caretti. Edizioni Plus, Pisa 2011. 427 pp. € 40.00.

Matteotti, Giacomo. Epistolario 1904–1924. A cura di Stefano Caretti. Edizioni Plus, Pisa 2012. 282 pp. € 30.00.

These are the latest volumes in a collection of the writings and correspondence of the socialist politician and anti-fascist Giacomo Matteotti (1880–1924), edited by Professor Caretti. The volume about the rise of fascism brings together various writings, speeches delivered at conferences, and parliamentary questions and interventions, in which Matteotti addresses the rise of fascism and analyses the economic and financial politics of the Mussolini regime. The volume containing Matteotti's correspondence between 1904 and 1924 includes letters to and from various correspondents (e.g. Filippo Turati and Friedrich Adler), as well as letters to several newspapers.

Russia/Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Adler, Nanci. Keeping Faith with the Party. Communist Believers Return from the Gulag. Indiana University Press, 2012. Ill. 237 pp. $70.00. (Paper: $25.00; E-book: $22.00.)

Focusing on the experiences and stories of returnees from the Soviet Gulag and their surviving families, Dr Adler aims to explain in this study how it is possible that some of these prisoners and family members maintained their loyalty to and belief in the Party that was responsible for their punishment and internment. Based on sources including oral history, she chronicles the stories of the returnees’ experiences in their struggle to reintegrate with society and sometimes with the Communist Party to gain a better grasp of the essence of the Soviet belief system. See also Brigitte Studer's review in this volume, pp. 334–336.

Dennison, Tracy. The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom. [Cambridge Studies in Economic History.] Cambridge University Press, New York [etc.] 2011. xix, 254 pp. $99.00; £60.00.

Russian rural history has long been based on a “Peasant Myth”: the assumption that Russian peasant society before the 1861 abolition of serfdom had been organized around the commune. Using an institutional approach and focusing on the Voshchazhnikovo estate in Yaroslavl’ province, the central industrial region of European Russia, Professor Dennison in this book about pre-emancipation rural Russia challenges conventional perceptions of peasant behaviour as collective and market-averse by arguing that the Russian rural population was as integrated in regional and even national markets as many of its west European counterparts were.

Goldman, WendyZ. Inventing the Enemy. Denunciation and Terror in Stalin's Russia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2011. x, 320 pp. £50.00; $85.00. (Paper: £18.99; $29.99.)

During the Great Terror of the 1930s ordinary Russian citizens and party members, encouraged by Party leaders, actively hunted for “internal enemies” among their colleagues and comrades. The result was a flood of denunciations, imprisonments, and executions. Professor Goldman in this book uses factory newspapers and the stenographic reports of Communist Party meetings held in five Moscow factories between 1934 and 1939 to reconstruct the course of events there and to trace the spread of terror through the actions of specific individuals, exploring how people, forced to lie to protect loved ones, struggled to reconcile political imperatives and personal loyalties.

Messana, Paola. Soviet Communal Living. An Oral History of the Kommunalka. [Palgrave Studies in Oral History.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2011. xvi, 168 pp. Ill. £54.00.

Based on interviews largely conducted between 1992 and 1995, this book contains testimonies from thirty inhabitants of the “Kommunalka”, the communal apartments that were a common feature of Russian cities in the Soviet era. Beginning in 1920, multiple families, unknown to each other, deliberately selected from different social classes, were relocated and crammed together into single apartments. The intent was not just to level out class differences but also to create spy systems within homes and extend the government's surveillance and control over citizens. The author is a former Moscow Bureau Chief of Agence France-Presse.

Spain

Cinco Miradas Al Interior De La Emigración. Ugetistas En La Historia De La Emigración Española. Dirs. Felix Santos y Manuela Aroca. Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero, Madrid 2011. Ill. 347 pp. No price.

Part of a project of the Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero to build an oral history archive documenting socialist trade unionism, this volume features five interviews conducted between 2008 and 2010 with two women and three men who in the 1950s and 1960s emigrated to Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and France respectively, and participated in the (socialist) labour movement in those countries. The interviews document the social circumstances of Spanish emigration: Spain's poverty, the emigrants’ reasons for leaving, their hopes and experiences, their militancy, and problems of returning or not returning.

IbañezOrtega, Norberto. Gigantismo industrial. Racionalización y productivismo de entreguerras en la ría de Bilbao. Catarata, Madrid 2011. 183 pp. € 16.00.

This book is about changing labour conditions in industrial Biscay, particularly the Bilbao estuary, from 1917 to the Spanish Civil War, a period of industrial modernization, technological innovation, and rationalization of production processes. Labour historian Ibáñez Ortega examines the rationalization of labour discourses and practices within national and international contexts and studies the debates between trade unions and employer organizations, highlighting the deteriorating labour conditions, rising accident rates, recurring violations of labour legislation, and strengthening of the labour movement.

La migración de la memoria histórica. Ed. Antonio Izquierdo Escribano. [Serie General Universitaria, vol. 125.] Edicions bellaterra, Barcelona, 2011. 319 pp. € 18.00.

Granting the right to return and to citizenship to those who left Spain under Franco for political or economic reasons and their descendants is one of the provisions in the 2007 Spanish Ley de la Memoria Histórica [Law of Public Memory]. This volume contains six sociological articles studying the impact of this nationality provision, in general and in relation to exiles and potential Spanish citizens in Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela. The volume concludes with an essay discussing the legal aspects of the nationality provision in the Law.

MuñozAbeledo, Luisa. Género, trabajo y niveles de vida en la industria conservera de Galicia, 1870–1970. Icaria editorial [etc.], Barcelona 2010. 340, xii pp. Ill. € 20.00.

In the first two parts of this book Professor Muñoz Abeledo examines the development of the labour market during the industrialization of fish processing in Galicia, Spain, from the 1880s until the Civil War and during the Franco era. She analyses the role of gender in the organizational and technological transformations, as well as in the changing labour relations and conditions. The third part is a case study, in which the author examines the impact of these changes on standards of living in the coastal village of Bueu. See also Vicent Sanz Rosalén's review in this volume, pp. 328–331.

Renshaw, Layla. Exhuming Loss. Memory, Materiality, and Mass Graves of the Spanish Civil War. [Publications of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.] Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek (Cal.) 2011. 259 pp. Ill. $94.00. (Paper: $36.95; E-book $36.95.)

Drawing on interviews with relatives of those murdered during the Spanish Civil War, community members, and forensic archaeologists, Dr Renshaw, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist, examines in this book the contested representations of the dead in two small rural communities during the processes of exhumation, identification, and reburial from nearby mass graves. The fieldwork for this study relates primarily to the exhumations organized by the Asociación de la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (founded in 2000), but Dr Renshaw also considers the model offered by the communist republican memory campaign group, Foro por la Memoria.