General Issues
SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
Antonio Gramsci. Ed. by Mark McNally. [Critical Explorations in Contemporary Political Thought.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2015. xiii, 247 pp. £68.00. (E-book: £53.99.)
The ten chapters in this volume examine the historical context of Gramsci’s work (e.g. how his ideas related to the Comintern and its tactic of the United Front in the 1920s); key debates in the literature on Gramsci (e.g. the relationship between intellectuals and the masses in Gramsci’s political thought); major conceptual issues in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and other writings (e.g. the concept of subalternity and Marxism as a philosophy of praxis); and the contemporary relevance of Gramsci’s ideas, e.g. in contemporary debates on the value of spontaneity and political organization.
Atkinson, Will. Class. [Key Concepts series.] Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2015. 209 pp. £50.00. (Paper: £15.99.)
Offering an accessible guide to the concept of class, Dr Will Atkinson addresses the following questions: what is social class, and what are its defining features? How do sociologists study class? How does class relate to gender and ethnicity? How relevant is class today? What are the effects of social class on people’s lives? The author also examines the origins and development of the concept of class, e.g. in the work of Marx and Weber, as well as in that of present-day sociologists Erik Olin Wright and John Goldthorpe, and reviews the key themes of class inequality, conflict, and struggle.
Beck, Colin J. Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Terrorists. [Social Movements series.] Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2015. x, 203 pp. £50.00; € 62.50. (Paper: £15.99; € 20.00; E-book: £14.99; € 18.99.)
After presenting historical and conceptual contexts for thinking about radicalism, revolution, and terrorism and using examples ranging from nineteenth-century anarchists to Al-Qaeda, Professor Beck examines which groups and individuals may be described as radicals, how social movements become radical, and where radicalism is likely to occur. He explores how radical ideas emerge and influence action, details the common trajectories and dynamics of the beginnings and endings of movements, discusses the diffusion of radicalism, and considers the issue of predictability.
Burawoy, Michael. Public Sociology. Öffentliche Soziologie gegen Marktfundamentalismus und globale Ungleichheit. Hrsg. von Brigitte Aulenbacher und Klaus Dörre mit einem Nachw. von Hans-Jürgen Urban. Aus dem amerikanischen Englisch übersetzt von Regine Othmer. [Arbeitsgesellschaft im Wandel.] Beltz Juventa, Weinheim [etc.] 2015. 258 pp. € 19.95.
Aiming to introduce Michael Burawoy’s concept of “public sociology” to German-speaking readers, this volume brings together texts written by Burawoy between 2004 and 2014 about the relationship between science and society (including his 2005 appeal for a public sociology), essays connecting public sociology with sociological Marxism (e.g. on public sociology vs the market and on the work of Karl Polanyi) and with global sociology (e.g. an essay on forging sociology from below and another about sociology in the face of global inequality. The volume includes introductions to Burawoy’s work, both by the editors and by Burawoy.
Davidson, Neil. We Cannot Escape History. States and Revolutions. Haymarket Books, Chicago (IL) 2015. xxiii, 293 pp. $22.00; £18.99.
In this volume, Mr Davidson brings together twelve previously published essays and lectures, including a fifty-five-page text addressing the question of how revolutionary the Bourgeois Revolutions were; articles commenting on works by Chris Harman and Chris Wickham; four essays covering, respectively, the Scottish (1692–1746), French (1789–1815) and German (1918–1923) Revolutions and the American Civil War as a Bourgeois revolution. Five essays deal with themes of permanent revolution and uneven and combined development, e.g. in relation to Trotsky’s history of the Russian Revolution (in the case of China) and in Third World countries.
El-Ojeili, Chamsy. Beyond Post-Socialism. Dialogues with the Far-Left. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2015. £65.00; $100.00; € 93.59. (E-book: £61.75; $79.99; € 76.99.)
In this volume on “post-Marxism” and on the prospects of socialism, Dr El-Ojeili brings together edited versions of previously published articles reflecting on the work of thinkers such as Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Antonio Negri, and Jacques Camatte. He also discusses anarchism, Guy Debord and Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World System (1974).
Milner, Jr., Murray. Elites. A General Model. Polity, Cambridge [etc.] 2015. 203 pp. £55.00. (Paper: £16.99.)
After discussing the works of Marx, Weber, and Bourdieu as well as elite theorists such as Vilfredo Pareto, and identifying the merits and limitations of their ideas, Professor Milner expounds his own framework for the analysis of economic, political, and cultural elites, which also considers the role of non-elites. He then applies this model to three different societies: ancient India, Classical Athens, and the contemporary United States, aiming to reveal structural commonalities across these otherwise dissimilar societies.
Rehbein, Boike. Critical Theory After the Rise of the Global South. Kaleidoscopic Dialectic. [Routledge Studies in Emerging Societies, Vol. 5.] Routledge, London 2015. 163 pp. £90.00.
Although eurocentrism in philosophy and the social sciences has come under attack by postcolonial critics, no real alternative has been suggested, according to Professor Rehbein. In this book, a translation of Kaleidoskopische Dialektik. Kritische Theorie nach dem Aufstieg des globalen Südens (Konstanz, 2013), he proposes “kaleidoscopic dialectic”, an approach that, he argues, should be able to overcome the conflict between universalism and relativism in both epistemology and ethics. In the first part of the book he reviews Eurocentric theory; in the second, he introduces the methodology of kaleidoscopic dialectic.
Royce, Edward. Classical Social Theory and Modern Society. Marx, Durkheim, Weber. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2015. xiii, 339 pp. £57.95. (Paper: £21.95.)
In the first part of this introduction to the writings of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, Professor Royce provides an overview of the ideas of these “sociologically minded theorists of modernity”, situating their work in the context of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution of 1789, and the Industrial Revolution. In the second part, he discusses the ideas of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber on four topics, which he considers central to their analyses of modernity: the pathologies of modern society; the predicament of the modern individual; the state and democracy; and socialism versus capitalism.
HISTORY
Allen, Richard B. European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850. [Indian Ocean Studies Series.] Ohio University Press, Athens (OH) 2015. xviii, 378 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $34.95.)
Based in part on previously published articles, this book examines the volume of European slave trading in the Indian Ocean area between 1500 and 1850, the roles and significance of British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese slave traders and the impact of their activities on local and regional polities, societies, and economies as well as the relationship with other forms of free and unfree labour in the region, especially during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Professor Allen concludes that European slave trading was not generally confined to the Atlantic, but must be viewed as a global phenomenon.
Baghdiantz McCabe, Ina. A History of Global Consumption: 1500–1800. Routledge, London [etc.] 2015. x, 301 pp. Ill. £95.00. (Paper: £26.99.)
After reviewing the works of Bourdieu, Elias, Barthes, and other theorists as well as briefly discussing collecting luxury items and gift giving in Renaissance Europe, Professor Baghdiantz McCabe, in this textbook about early modern global consumption, analyses the success of American and East Asian commodities such as tobacco, sugar, chocolate, tea, and porcelain in Europe and Asia, explaining, for example, how the plantation system and African slavery facilitated consumption of “drug foods” in Europe and the New World. She also considers the Dutch tulip mania as well as anti-luxury movements and boycotting commodities such as sugar and tea.
The History of Labour Intermediation. Institutions and Finding Employment in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Ed. by Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner and Alexander Mejstrik. [International Studies in Social History, vol.26.] Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2015. ix, 434 pp. $120.00; £75.00.
Focusing on countries in Europe and on Australia and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this volume about how people search for and find jobs explores the interests, perspectives, and agendas of individuals as well as those of institutions and organizations (placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, state authorities, and schools). The thirteen case studies include organizational and regulatory histories as well as analyses of practices and autobiographical accounts, illustrating, for example, how different livelihoods entailed different ways of finding work, and how work came to be historically redefined by the emergence of new forms of labour intermediation. See also Sabine Rudischhauser’s review in this volume, pp. 505–507.
Mundos posibles. El primer socialismo en Europa y América Latina. Coord. Carlos Illades [y] Andrey Schelchkov. [Ambas orillas.] Colegio de México [etc.], Mexico, 2014. 365 pp. [?]
Based on a conference held in Mexico City in April 2012, this volume aims to provide a history of early socialism in Europe and Latin America. It comprises two essays on early nineteenth-century French and Spanish socialism and six about Latin America, focusing on, respectively, socialism and agrarian rebellion in Mexico; a political movement in Bolivia inspired by European ideas about equality; the rise of a popular political culture in what is now Colombia; egalitarians, liberals, and revolutionaries in Chile; romanticism and socialism in the Rio de la Plata area; and Fourierism in Brazil.
No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries. Global Anarchisms. Ed. by Barry Maxwell and Raymond Craib. PM Press, Oakland (CA) 2015. x, 384 pp. $27.95.
Aiming to examine the historical and contemporary relationships between anarchism and other currents of the Left and to counter Eurocentric perspectives on ideas and movements, shifting geographically between North Africa and Latin America, Japan and Québec, and India and Paris, the seventeen contributions to this volume (based on a conference held at Cornell University in September 2012) discuss themes such as anarchism and indigeneity (e.g. the Zapatista movement); transnational connections; anarchism, surrealism and the situationists; and anarchism, communism, and political theory.
Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change. The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors. Ed. by Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran. [Perspectives on the Global Past.] University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu (HI) 2015. ix, 345 pp. Ill. Maps. $54.00.
Aiming to show that the Mongols and their Eurasian predecessors were more than raiding and pillaging “barbarians”, this volume explores how nomads of the Eurasian steppe from prehistoric times onwards have facilitated and promoted social, demographic, economic, and cultural change. The collection includes three articles about the ancient world and five others focusing on the Mongolian empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The remaining chapters examine the Mongol impact on Mamluk Syria, Tatar influence on Muscovite Russian political culture, and the historiography of the Mongols since 1985.
Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World. Ed. by Paul Erdkamp, Koenraad Verboven, and Arjan Zuiderhoek. [Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy.] Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2015. xii, 407 pp. £90.00.
Part of a project to examine whether preconditions for economic growth were present in the ancient Roman economy, and whether land, natural resources, labour, and capital were exploited in ways conducive to economic growth, this volume focuses on land and natural resources. Covering a geographic scope from Europe to North Africa and Asia Minor, the eighteen chapters include two introductory articles; five chapters on property rights and ownership; two on water use and management; five on the nature of the villa economy and other modes of exploitation; and three on mining (salt, marble, gold).
The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History. Ed. by Joseph C. Miller. Assoc. eds Vincent Brown, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Laurent Dubois, Karen Ordahl Kupperman. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2015. xxxv, 532 pp. Ill. Maps. $65.00; £44.95.
Part One of this encyclopaedic work features four essays focusing on the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, respectively, while the second part comprises c.125 alphabetical entries, each with a bibliography, on topics such as cultures and communities (including creolization, maroons, family networks, and utopian communities); slaving (e.g. United States slavery and slave revolts); economic strategies (agricultural production and contraband); movements of people (diasporas, Native American removals and emigrants); and labour recruitment (indentured contracts and the enslavement of Africans by Europeans). The volume also includes five maps.
Zeuske, Michael. Sklavenhändler, Negreros und Atlantikkreolen. Eine Weltgeschichte des Sklavenhandels im atlantischen Raum. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015. x, 481 pp. Ill. Maps. € 119.95; $168.00; £89.99.
Based on archival sources from Cuba, Lisbon, Spain, and Cape Verde, this book focuses on the individuals who made money from the Atlantic slave trade between c.1400 and 1900: merchants, ship owners, insurers, sea captains, and mercantile agents in Africa, as well as slave trading states in Europe, the Americas and Africa. Professor Zeuske also highlights the roles of “Atlantic creoles” – descendants of Iberian men and African women in many cases – who lived on the coasts of the Atlantic world and acted as interpreters and mediators in transactions between the coasts and the inland areas of the Atlantic world.
COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Stone, Bailey. The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited. A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014. xiii, 529 pp. $99.00; £65.00. (Paper: $34.99; £21.99.)
In this critique of general revolutionary theory and European revolutionary historiography, and in particular Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of Revolution (1938), Professor Stone compares the English Revolution of 1640–1660, the French Revolution of 1789–1799 and the Russian Revolution of 1917–1929. After recapitulating Brinton’s comparison of the English, American, French, and Russian revolutions and discussing the literature on Brinton’s conceptual scheme, he introduces his own comparative explanation of the causes, trajectories, and implications of the European revolutions, aiming to reconcile state-centred structuralist accounts with postmodernist explanations.
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
Atkinson, Anthony B. Inequality. What Can Be Done? Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2015. xi, 384 pp. $29.95; £19.95; € 25.00.
Part one of this book highlights the importance of learning from the past and examines what inequality is and whether it has declined in some periods, and, if so, what may be learned from these episodes. The author also considers the economics of inequality today. In Part two, Professor Atkinson proposes ways to reduce inequality, considering, e.g., the labour market and the changing nature of employment as well as the issues of progressive taxation and the welfare state. Part three is devoted to assessing the feasibility of the measures the author proposes.
Barassi, Veronica. Activism on the Web. Everyday Struggles against Digital Capitalism. [Routledge New Developments in Communication and Society Research, Vol. 4.] Routledge, New York [etc.] 2015. 180 pp. $145.00; £90.00.
In this ethnographic study, Dr Barassi explores how three political groups – the British campaigning group Cuba Solidarity Campaign (founded in 1978), the Spanish organization Ecologistas en Acción (established in 1998), and the Italian Corsari collective (founded in 2008) – have reacted to recent web developments and the growing commercialization of the internet. She examines how technological transformations brought about by digital capitalism impact internal group politics, everyday practices, and understandings of collective action.
Campbell, John L. and John A. Hall. The World of States. Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2015. vi, 138 pp. £60.00; $110.00. (Paper: £16.00; $26.99; E-book: $26.99.)
Setting out to explain why some states are successful, while others fail, Professors Hall and Campbell examine: states in the past; the character of the modern world political economy; the different state forms in the present day; the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which present a challenge to the advanced capitalist countries; the weak states of the global South; the interdependent states of the North (Europe, North America and Japan); and the future of the hegemony of the United States. The central premise of this book is that today’s world is one of states, despite the intensifying economic globalization.
Castillo, Juan José. La invasión del trabajo en la vida. Del ‘trabajador ideal’ a la vida real. Catarata, Madrid 2015. 126 pp. € 14.00.
The seven chapters in this collection (updated versions of previously published articles) include essays about certain types of work encroaching on home and family life in certain types of jobs; relatively well-paid workers in high tech environments; the significance of social science research in debates about work; and labour unions in times of globalization and precarization. Professor Castillo also aims to highlight the value to society of the work of sociologists, arguing that the social debate on employment policies and economic development should be based on insights from the social sciences, rather than on ideological views.
The Changing Worlds and Workplaces of Capitalism. Ed. by Seán Ó Riain, Felix Behling, Rossella Ciccia, Eoin Flaherty. [International Political Economy Series.] Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2015. xv, 273 pp. £65.00.
Advocating the integration of political economy and the sociology of work and employment, and focusing empirically on European countries, this volume brings together macro studies about changes in the organization of capitalism and micro studies of the organization of work and the workplace. Two chapters analyse various forms of capitalism; two others examine changes in labour regimes and retirement regimes, respectively; six chapters are studies of labour market precarity, trade union activity, employers as welfare providers, organizational experimentations in multinationals, work organization in a knowledge-based economy and work-life balance.
How Global Migration Changes the Workforce Diversity Equation. Ed. by Massimo Pilati, Hina Sheikh, Francesca Sperotti, and Chris Tilly. [Adapt Labour Studies Book Series.] Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2015. xv, 484 pp. £62.99.
Combining migration studies and diversity research, this interdisciplinary volume features seventeen articles, including a contribution about the African diaspora in Britain and its implication for development in Africa, a case study about digital start-ups in Germany as employers of people with immigrant backgrounds, another about diversity management in Italian catering companies, a study about Black and Latino leadership in American public and non-profit organizations, a study on trade unions and migrant workers’ interests in six European countries and a contribution about precarious migration and precarious work in Australia.
Jürgens, Ulrich [und] Martin Krzywdzinski. Neue Arbeitswelten. Wie sich die Arbeitsrealität in den Automobilwerken der BRIC-Länder verändert. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main [etc.] 2016. 480 pp. € 39.95.
Focusing on car factories, Professors Jürgens and Krzywdzinski compare working conditions and employment relations in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) within the context of globalization. Contributing to the debate on convergence and divergence in production and human resource management, they investigate in what measure lean production is practised, how corporate operating standards are implemented in local contexts, and the extent to which companies pursue a competitive edge through low labour costs and a deregulated labour market. This book also appeared as New Worlds of Work: Varieties of Work in Car Factories in the BRIC Countries (Oxford 2016).
Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. Servants of Globalization. Migration and Domestic Work. Second edition. Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2015. xi, 239 pp. $22.95.
Drawing on interviews with migrant Filipina domestic workers and focusing mainly on Rome and Los Angeles, in this book Professor Parreñas examines the lives of migrant Filipina domestic workers, also considering the notions of the international division of reproductive labour, partial citizenship, and contradictory class mobility. This updated version of a study originally published in 2001 (see IRSH, 48 (2003), p. 129) has been expanded to include a discussion about the lack of freedom that Filipina domestic workers experience in Canada, Asia, and the Middle East.
Talani, Leila Simona. The Arab Spring in the Global Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2014. xiv, 251 pp. € 93.95; $100.00. (Paper: € 93.59; $95.00; E-Book: € 76.99; $69.99.)
In this study Professor Talani explores the Arab uprisings of 2010/2011 in the broader context of recent changes in global political economy and globalization. Focusing on the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA area), with particular attention to Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, the author aims to understand the problem of political and economic regionalization in the context of globalization, and to assess the relation between globalization, marginalization and the local, often violent responses to the loss of power by the states and the resulting vulnerabilities and threats of economic exclusion. See also Roel Meijer’s review in this essay, pp. 487–503.
Young Workers and Trade Unions. A Global View. Ed. by Andy Hodder and Lefteris Kretsos. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2015. xvi, 206 pp. £75.00; $105.00; € 93.59.
While young workers need collective organization, especially in the context of the global economic crisis, according to this volume, they hold mainly non-union jobs, because they find employment in occupations, businesses, and sectors where unions are rare. Presenting evidence from Europe, the United States, Australia, and Argentina, the twelve essays in this collection (based on a conference held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in June 2012) aim to demonstrate that unions fail to represent young people and reveal the implications for young workers and labour unions alike.
Continents and Countries
AFRICA
Beinin, Joel. Workers and Thieves. Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2016. 164 pp. $12.99.
According to Professor Benin, the Arab uprisings of 2011 were the outcome of many determinants and historical factors. In this concise study, he reviews the efforts and impacts of the workers’ movements in Egypt and Tunisia since the 1970s and argues that the 2011 uprisings and the differing outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt in subsequent years are best understood within the context of the repeated mobilizations of workers and the unemployed in recent decades. The evolution of the working class in both countries and its possibilities and limitations in terms of organization and relationships with other agents was key in the Arab uprising and the different outcomes in the two countries. See also Roel Meijer’s review essay in this volume, pp. 487–503.
Egypt
Abdelrahman, Maha. Egypt’s Long Revolution. Protest Movements and Uprisings. [Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Democratization and Government, Vol. 4.]. Routledge, London [etc.] 2015. viii, 162 pp. £90.00. (Paper: £34.99.)
In this history of the Egyptian protest movement, which culminated in the Tahrir Square uprising in Cairo in 2011 and led to the downfall of President Mubarak, Dr Abdelrahman argues that this uprising was only one episode in a series of protests that began in 2000 in support of the Palestinian Intifada. He argues that these protests constituted new forms of political mobilization, involving workers and farmers alongside pro-democracy activists, and that they arose in response to authoritarian politics and deteriorating living conditions as a consequence of neo-liberal policies. See also Roel Meijer’s review essay in this volume, pp. 487–503.
AMERICA
Bolivia
La economía popular en Bolivia. Tres miradas. [Coord.] Nico Tassi, Alfonso Hinojosa Gordonava [y] Richard Canaviri Paco. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, La Paz 2015. 296 pp. Ill. No price.
Ninety-nine percent of the Bolivian population is involved in the popular economy of the country, according to this publication, which consists of three separate anthropological studies. The first offers an overview of the Bolivian popular economy; the second analyses two religious festivals held among communities of transnational Aymara merchants and migrant textile workers to describe their economic and social networks; and the final one is about social relations in miners’ cooperatives. The contributors also consider categories such as informal vs formal and traditional vs modern.
Rodríguez Ostria, Gustavo. Capitalismo, Modernización y Resistencia Popular, 1825–1952. [Teoría e Historia]. Fondo Editorial de la Vicepresidencia, La Paz 2014. 547 pp. Ill. No price.
In this volume, Dr Rodríguez Ostria, Bolivia’s deputy minister of higher education from 2003 to 2005, brings together previously published essays about the economic and social history of his country from 1825 to 1952. Drawing mainly on secondary sources and newspaper articles, he discusses themes such as workers’ culture and instances of pre-industrial resistance (e.g. kajcheo); labour and labour organizations in the Bolivian mining industry; peasant movements and indigenous politics and rebellions; and various aspects of the Bolivian rubber economy.
Canada
Dewar, Kenneth C. Frank Underhill and the Politics of Ideas. [Biography, Canadian history.] McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2015. xiii, 215 pp. $85.00 (Paper: $22.95.)
Frank Underhill (1889–1971) was a Canadian historian, writer, and critic, who co-founded the League for Reconstruction and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Canada’s social-democratic party). Later in life he turned to liberalism. In this biography, Professor Dewar describes Underhill’s ideas and assesses his historical work, also shedding light on the origins and development of the social-democratic age in Canada, which began during the Great Depression of the 1930s and ended in the early 1990s.
Sweeny, Robert C.H. Why Did We Choose to Industrialize? Montreal, 1819–1849. [Études d’histoire du Québec / Studies on the history of Quebec, Vol. 28.] McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2015. xvii, 436 pp. Ill. Maps. C$39.95; £28.99.
Focusing on Montreal, this book is about why people chose to industrialize. Contending that the prevailing technical, Marxist, and neo-liberal explanations are inadequate, Professor Sweeny aims to demonstrate how in Montreal, as in other early industrializing societies, the decision to industrialize derived from new ways of thinking about the world at three levels: how people should relate to each other, to property, and to nature. He argues that the early modern world’s massive shift to the systematic use of unfree labour is key to understanding the later emergence of the new relationships that characterize industrial society.
Chile
Tinsman, Heidi. Buying into the Regime. Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2014. xi, 363 pp. Maps. $78.29; £71.00. (Paper: $26.95; £17.00.)
Combining ethnography and archival research, Professor Tinsman traces how the Chilean grape industry influenced labour politics and created new forms of consumption in the United States and Chile. She describes how Pinochet’s Chile became the world’s leading grape exporter, how income from grape production enabled fruit workers, especially women, to buy imported consumer goods, and how this new consumerism influenced gender relations and anti-dictatorship movements. She also relates how the United Farm Workers in California and Chilean solidarity activists led to boycotts in the United States condemning the use of pesticides and exploitation of labour in grape production.
Mexico
Vaughan, Mary Kay. Portrait of a Young Painter. Pepe Zúñiga and Mexico City’s Rebel Generation. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2015. xiii, 289 pp. Ill. $62.00. (Paper: $16.99; E-book: $16.99.)
In this biography of the painter Pepe Zúñiga (b. 1937), Professor Vaughan illustrates the culture surrounding the Mexico City youth rebellion of the 1960s. Drawing on conversations with the painter and interviews with others as well as on visual and textual sources, she depicts mid-twentieth-century Mexico City as a culture of political stability, economic growth, and state investment; thriving entertainment; the softening of violent masculinity; and the formation of a critical public of young people in the 1960s. This gave rise to a more democratic public sphere of political discussion, artistic expression, and entertainment after 1970.
United States of America
Age in America. The Colonial Era to the Present. Ed. by Corinne T. Field and Nicholas L. Syrett. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. vii, 338 pp. Ill. $89.00. (Paper: $28.00.)
Exploring how and why particular ages have come to define the rights and obligations of American citizens and to determine, e.g., who can marry, work, be enslaved, or qualify for a pension, this interdisciplinary volume includes articles about the significance of age in debates about slavery and freedom in the early republic; statutory marriage ages and the gendered construction of adulthood in the nineteenth century; the relationship between age, immigration quotas and racial exclusion; labour legislation and regulation and mandatory schooling; and the way age became the dominant factor in retirement in the 1930s.
Bertram, Eva. The Workfare State. Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the New Democrats. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2015. 328 pp. $75.00; £49.00. (E-book: $75.00; £49.00.)
This book traces the origins of “workfare”: public assistance programmes that promote employment among welfare recipients in the United States. Challenging the conventional view that the Republicans were responsible for dismantling the core New Deal welfare programme for poor families after 1980, Professor Bertram argues that workfare was fundamentally a Democratic project, and that a formal link between work and public assistance was forged in the 1960s and 1970s, when Southern Democrats sought to redefine the purposes of public assistance in ways that would preserve their region’s political, economic and racial order.
Childs, Dennis. Slaves of the State. Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (MN) 2015. 259 pp. Ill. $79.00. (Paper: $22.50.)
Drawing on the work of Angela Davis, Michel Foucault, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Toni Morrison, and Chester Himes as well as on legal documents and newspapers, Professor Childs sets out to demonstrate that the American post-Civil War incarceration of black people in chain gangs, peon camps, prison plantations, and penitentiaries perpetuates chattel slavery. The author highlights, e.g., the re-enslavement of nominally free black people, explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for criminal offences.
Chung, Sue Fawn. Chinese in the Woods. Logging and Lumbering in the American West. [The Asian American Experience.] University of Illinois Press, Illinois (IL) 2015. xii, 246 pp. Ill. $55.00; £39.00.
From the 1870s to the 1900s, Chinese workers often constituted ninety per cent of the labour force in the lumber industry of the American West. Focusing on the Sierra Nevada and using archaeological evidence in addition to written sources, Professor Chung tells the story of the Chinese forest labourers, describing early contacts between Chinese and Americans, Chinese immigration to the West, “chain migration” and the importance of early Chinese organizations, the jobs they performed and their lived experiences, their work in connection with mining and railway construction, discrimination against the Chinese and their disappearance from lumbering around 1920.
Eichar, Douglas M. The Rise and Fall of Corporate Social Responsibility. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick (NJ) [etc.] 2015. 392 pp. $69.95.
Corporate social responsibility in the twentieth century involved corporate business practices benefiting both the employees (job security and health insurance) and the locals in the communities where the companies were based (philanthropy). In this history of corporate social responsibility in the United States, Professor Eichar aims to demonstrate that the benevolence of large corporations until the mid-1970s served mainly to ward off government regulations and labour unions. In the 1980s and 1990s, when governmental and union threats to corporate power diminished, corporate social responsibility declined as well.
Gould-Wartofsky, Michael A. The Occupiers. The Making of the 99 Percent Movement. Oxford University Press, New York (NY) [etc.] 2015. x, 316 pp. Ill. Maps $29.95; £19.99.
This book is an exploratory study of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which used the slogan “We are the 99 Percent” to invoke the unequal distribution of wealth, especially in the United States. Drawing on his own experiences in the movement, online, and paper media as well as on interviews with activists in New York City and other cities in the United States and Europe, Gould-Wartofsky portrays the New York Occupy movement, discusses other “movements of the squares” in Spain, Greece, and Egypt, and considers possible futures of the 99 Percent movement.
Haverty-Stacke, Donna T. Trotskyists on Trial. Free Speech and Political Persecution since the Age of FDR. [Culture, Labor, History Series.] New York University Press, New York 2015. ix, 291 pp. Ill. $55.00; £39.00.
The 1940 Smith Act criminalized printing, publishing, or distributing anything advocating disloyalty to the United States government and prohibited membership of any association engaging in such actions. The first prosecutions under this act took place in July 1941, when Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members, some of whom also belonged to the Teamsters Local 544, were convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government. In this book, Professor Haverty-Stacke explores the implications of this case for organized labour and civil liberties in wartime and postwar America. She also considers the Trotskyists’ 1981 lawsuit against the FBI.
Hobbs, Tameka Bradley. Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home. Racial Violence in Florida. University Press of Florida, Gainesville (FL) [etc.] 2015. xiv, 273 pp. Ill. $74.95.
This book focuses on four lynchings that took place in Florida during the 1940s. Professor Hobbs examines the responses of local and federal officials and the American public, concluding that with the onset of World War II and its depiction by the Roosevelt administration as a war to preserve democracy in the world, more Americans became aware of the injustice that lynching represented and its inconsistency with US war aims. This, she argues, increased the pressure on state officials and the federal government to protect the rights of African Americans and to prosecute racial violence.
Hoffman, Brian. Naked. A Cultural History of American Nudism. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. xii, 331 pp. Ill. $35.00.
After tracing the origins of the American nudist movement among German immigrants in New York, in this social and legal history, Dr Hoffman describes pioneering nudist activities in urban gymnasiums and public parks in Chicago and New York in the late 1920s, the spread of the movement through networks of rural nudist camps and parks, the hostile reception by anti-obscenity activists, nudism in magazines and books and the censorship it instigated, the roles of race and gender, the significance of white middle-class families in defeating postwar anti-pornography campaigns, the commercialization of sex and pornography vs nudism debates.
Intondi, Vincent J. African Americans Against the Bomb. Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement. [Stanford Nuclear Age Series.] Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2015. xi, 207 pp. $24.95; £15.99.
African Americans were among the first citizens to condemn the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to Professor Intondi. He examines the responses of black leaders and organizations to the post-World War II nuclear arms race during the McCarthy era, in the Korean War, at the time of French nuclear testing, the Vietnam War, and increased spending on nuclear weapons in the post-Vietnam era, demonstrating how blacks in America associated the nuclear issue with colonialism and the fight for racial equality and highlighting the roles of W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Dr Martin Luther King, and others.
Johnston, James H. From Slave Ship to Harvard. Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family. Fordham University Press, New York 2015 (Paper). viii, 302 pp. Ill. Maps. $90.00. (Paper: $24.95.)
Yarrow Mamout, a Fulani Muslim born in West Africa in 1736, was brought to America as a slave in 1752. He was freed in 1796, earned enough to purchase a house in Georgetown, invested in bank stock, and became a small-time financier. In 1923, Robert Turner Ford, the grandson of slaves and a descendant of Yarrow, enrolled in Harvard University. In this paperback edition of a book originally published in 2012, James Johnston, an attorney and journalist, relates the Yarrow family history within the context of the history of slavery in America and provides a guide to locations connected to the history of Yarrow and Turner.
Leon, Cedric de. The Origins of Right to Work. Anti-labor Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Chicago. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2015. xi, 172 pp. Ill. $79.95; £49.50 (Paper: $24.95; £15.50.)
“Right to work” laws are increasingly prevalent in the United States to prohibit closed shop arrangements and to weaken organized labour, according to Professor de Leon. Focusing on Chicago from 1828 to the Haymarket Affair of 1886–1887, he examines the changing relations between political parties and workers, concluding that the origins of “right to work” date back to the end of the Civil War, when employment relations were redefined in the context of slave emancipation.
Quigley, Fran. If We Can Win Here. The New Front Lines of the Labor Movement. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2015. x, 209 pp. Ill. $79.95; £49.50. (Paper: $18.95; £15.50.)
The service sector workers in present-day Indianapolis mirror the city’s demographics, according to this book: they are white, African American, and Latino, while the union organizers are mostly white and younger than the workers they support. In this book, Professor Quigley, who works in a law school clinic in Indianapolis training low-income workers, describes the struggles for better wages and benefits by hotel housekeepers, health care aides, and other service sector workers as well as the union organizers with whom the workers operate, chronicling, e.g., efforts focused on migrant workers and non-unionized low-wage workers.
Richter, Amy G. At Home in Nineteenth-Century America. A Documentary History. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. xvi, 250 pp. Ill. $26.00; £16.99.
Drawing on sources such as advice manuals, architectural designs, personal accounts, popular fiction, advertising images, and reform literature, Professor Richter aims to document the history of housing in America in the nineteenth century, ranging from the houses of Southern planters to slave cabins and from middle-class suburban homes to working-class tenements. Her choice of documents highlights the use of domestic goods and the significance of domestic labour and illustrates the emergence of the nineteenth-century domestic ideal as well as its decline. The volume also includes a list of secondary sources for further reading.
Stefani, Anne. Unlikely Dissenters. White Southern Women in the Fight for Racial Justice, 1920–1970. University Press of Florida, Gainesville (FL) [etc.] 2015. xiv, 334 pp. Ill. $74.95.
In the Brown v. Board of Education case the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that school segregation was unconstitutional. Focusing especially on the Brown decision, Professor Stefani in this book examines how two generations of Southern white women, for whom the struggle for African American civil rights resembled their own emancipation from gender norms, confronted the segregationist system in the American South between 1920 and 1970, aiming to demonstrate how their community-oriented activism functioned within Southern standards of respectability.
What Comes after Occupy? The Regional Politics of Resistance. Ed. by Todd A. Comer. [Adapt Labour Studies Book-Series.] Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2015. xxvii, 265 pp. £47.99.
Rather than focusing on Occupy Wall Street in New York City, the twelve chapters in this multidisciplinary volume examine Occupy groups in “marginal locations” in the United States, such as Indiana, Oregon, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Montana, and California, discussing themes such as leaderlessness, influences of pre-existing radical communities, gender, whiteness, space (e.g. Occupy in the border city El Paso, Texas), the role of the internet, and how the authorities in the US responded to Occupy.
Woloch, Nancy. A Class by Herself. Protective Laws for Women Workers, 1890s–1990s. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2015. Ill. $39.50; £29.95.
Protective laws especially for women workers (such as maximum hours and night work laws) help improve their working conditions, but also constitute a barrier to equal rights. Combining legal history and women’s history, in this book, Professor Woloch describes the development and impact of protective state legislation for American women workers from the late nineteenth century to the 1990s, tracing the origins of the campaigns for protective laws, the roles of institutions such as the National Consumers’ League and the Federal Women’s Bureau, and analysing the debates in both courts of law and the women’s movement.
Women in Early America. Ed. Thomas A. Foster. Foreword by Carol Berkin. Afterword by Jennifer L. Morgan. New York University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. xi, 294 pp. $89.00. (Paper: $28.00.)
This volume about women in North America from the colonial era through the early years of the Republic includes articles about: female indentured servants in seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland; Dutch women in Early America; the involvement of French, native and mixed-blood women in the French-native trade in Early French America and Detroit; and Indian women’s agrarian work in the Ohio River valley. The collection also comprises an article about women slave owners in Jamaica and another on the fugitive slave Ona Judge Staines.
India
Behal, Rana P. One Hundred Years of Servitude. Political Economy of Tea Plantations in Colonial Assam. Tulika Books, New Delhi 2014. xiii, 387 pp. Ill. Maps. Rs 900.00.
To meet the demand for cheap labour on the British tea plantations in Assam, migrants from elsewhere in India were put to work there as indentured labourers. In this book, Professor Behal, after outlining the early history of the tea industry, describes the recruitment, transportation and employment of migrant labourers until 1926 (when the indenture system was formally dismantled), labour relations within the plantations, the role of the colonial state, economic aspects of the tea industry until 1947, everyday life in the tea gardens and instances of resistance by “coolie” labourers. See also Erika Rappaport’s review in this volume, pp. 508–510.
Cederlöf, Gunnel. Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers 1790–1840. Climate, Commerce, Polity. Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2014. xiii, 272 pp. £23.99.
Combining ecological and socio-political history, in this book Professor Cederlöf examines how the British East India Company between 1790 and 1840 strove to control commercial trade routes connecting India, Burma, and China by establishing a large-scale colonial administration in north-east Bengal and north-east India (Sylhet district, Cachar, Manipur, Khasi Hills, and Jaintia), a region with a monsoon climate, where seasonal changes required flexible and varied livelihood strategies. See also Erika Rappaport’s review in this volume, pp. 508–510.
Frenz, Margaret. Community, Memory, and Migration in a Globalizing World. The Goan Experience, c.1890–1980. Oxford University Press, New Delhi [etc.] 2014. xxxiii, 344 pp. Maps. £47.99.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Goa was a state of the Portuguese overseas empire, Goans went to East Africa and from there to Canada, the United Kingdom, or India, where they prospered as traders, clerks, small businessmen, and entrepreneurs, according to this book. Using archives and interviews with people of Goan origin and examining social, economic, and political structures in national, imperial, and global contexts as well as the lived experiences and agency of individuals, in this book, Dr Frenz tells the story of the multiple migration movements of Goans across the Indian Ocean and beyond.
Iran
Vejdani, Farzin. Making History in Iran. Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture. Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2015. ix, 269 pp. $60.00.
Drawing on published histories, textbooks, school curricula, pedagogical manuals, poetry, periodicals, memoirs, unpublished letters, and speeches, Professor Vejdani examines how the formation of a public sphere through the proliferation of voluntary associations, newspapers, and independent publishers as well as the proliferation of modern schools from the late nineteenth-century onwards, transformed history-writing in Iran from dynastic, tribal, or religious historiography into modern historiography, arguing that history-writing became central to debates on social and political reform, the role of women in society and criteria for citizenship and nationality.
Europe
Dauverd, Céline. Imperial Ambition in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Genovese Merchants and the Spanish Crown. Cambridge University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. xii, 299 pp. £72.00; $113.00.
Drawing on manuscripts as well as printed sources, and using the concept of “trade diaspora”, in this book, Professor Dauverd explores the alliance between the Spanish Crown and Genoese merchant bankers in southern Italy during the early modern era. She aims to show that the “symbiotic” economic relationship between the two nations was prompted mainly by the Turkish threat in the Mediterranean. In one chapter she describes Genoese trading activities in the Levant and North Africa, while in another she focuses on silk production as a form of investment in the pre-capitalist economy.
De Moor, Tine. The Dilemma of the Commoners. Understanding the Use of Common-Pool Resources in Long-Term Perspective. [Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions.] Cambridge University Press, New York 2015. xvii, 204 pp. Ill. £65.00; $99.00.
Common property rights in Western Europe were increasingly abolished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on an area near the Flemish city of Bruges and comparing this case with other places in Northwest Europe, Professor De Moor, after describing the emergence of commons and other institutions for collective action from the late Middle Ages onwards, examines the debates on commons and commoners and the disappearance of both throughout early modern and modern Northwest Europe. She also relates the historical debate about the evolution of commons to present-day debates on common property resources.
Testa, M. Militant Anti-Fascism. A Hundred Years of Resistance. AK Press, Edinburgh [etc.] 2015. 347 pp. £14.95.
In the first part of this book about anti-fascist activity in Europe, the “undercover anti-fascist blogger” M. Testa gives an overview of the rise of fascism, ultra-nationalism, and “proto-fascism” across continental Europe and the resulting opposition. In the second part he gives a detailed description of fascist movements and groups in Britain and Ireland (from Mosley, the British Union of Fascists, and the National Front to the English Defence League and the UK Independence Party) and anti-fascist groups such as the Association of Jewish Ex-Service Men, Group 43, the Yellow Star Movement, Anti-Fascist Action, and Rock against Racism.
France
Herreng, Jean-Marc. Vingt ans de luttes paysannes en Vendée. 1968–1988. Du CDJA à la Conf’. Éditions du Centre d’histoire du travail, Nantes 2015. 255 pp. Ill. € 25.00.
After outlining the vast economic and social changes in the period known as the Trente Glorieuses in France and especially in livestock breeding and dairy production in the Vendée department, Mr Herreng describes how young agricultural workers in the Vendée, influenced by the events of May 1968, broke away from the conservative corporatist Fédération nationale des syndicats d’exploitants agricoles and founded the new organization the Confédération paysanne, dedicated to promoting alternative and economically viable agricultural policies.
Johnson, Christopher H. Becoming Bourgeois. Love, Kinship, and Power in Provincial France, 1670–1880. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2015. viii, 345 pp. Ill. $65.00.
Using personal letters, court proceedings, and sources such as marriage contracts and wills, Professor Johnson in this book traces the fortunes of three French families in Vannes, Brittany, between 1670 and 1880, concluding that the most enduring and socially advantageous connections forging bourgeois ascent were those of kinship, and that economic success was always supported by marriage strategies and the intervention of influential family members. The author also aims to elucidate how interactive forces of family kinship, gender, emotion, and class shaped the transition to modernity in the West.
Marec, Yannick, Jean-Oierre Daviet, Bernard Garnier, Jean Laspougeas, [et] Jean Quellien. La Normandie au XIXe siècle. Entre tradition et modernité. Éditions Ouest-France, Lille [etc.] 2015. 606 pp. Ill. € 27.00.
This general history of Normandy in the nineteenth century includes chapters on the distinct demographic history of the region (population decline after 1850), economic progress, the changing rural landscape and agricultural dynamics, urbanization, and the labour movement. The authors also examine to what extent the proximity of Britain influenced the development of agriculture, transport and industry in Normandy, especially the manufacture of textiles. All chapters conclude with a bibliography.
Marin, Lou. Rirette Maîtrejean. Attentatskritikerin, Anarchafeministin, Individualanarchistin. Mit Originalartikeln Rirette Maîtrejeans, übers. von Andrea Schärer und Lou Marin. Graswurzel, Heidelberg 2016. 262 pp. € 16.90.
Rirette Maîtrejean (1887–1968), a French anarcho-feminist, individualist anarchist and author of Souvenirs d’anarchie (1913), condemned anarchist acts of terrorism and robberies for being incompatible with anarchist principles. This book describes Maîtrejean’s life and work within the historical context of the anarchist movement and presents a selection of articles she published between 1909 and 1959, including an essay on free love, an obituary of the anarcho-syndicalist Pierre Ruff, and an article commemorating her former life companion Victor Serge.
Riot-Sarcey, Michèle. Le procès de la liberté. Une histoire souterraine du XIXe siècle. [Sciences humaines]. La Découverte, Paris 2016. 353 pp. € 24.00.
Examining literary works as well as political publications, Professor Riot-Sarcey in this book traces what happened to the ideas about liberty that emerged among workers’ associations and social revolutions in nineteenth-century France, especially during the Revolution of 1848. She contrasts ideas about liberty of socialists such as Pierre Leroux and Pauline Roland with those of Henri de Saint-Simon, Georges Sand, Victor Hugo, and other writers, reflecting on how the notion of liberty, reduced to liberalism and individualism, has become dissociated from collective liberty.
Trespeuch-Berthelot, Anna. L’Internationale situationniste. De l’histoire au mythe (1948–2013). Préface de Pascal Ory. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2015. 564 pp. Ill. € 29.00.
In this history of the Situationist International (1957–1972), Professor Trespeuch-Berthelot analyses the influence of this “last avant-garde movement”, examining how this movement, which addressed a limited audience at the time of its inception and refused to gather a following, could become so influential. She highlights the roles of Asger Jorn, Guy Debord, Constant, and Raoul Vaneigem and movements such as Dada, CoBrA, lettrists, and surrealists as well as Provo and other new social movements from before and after May 68. The bibliography, which, according to the publisher, may be downloaded from the publisher’s site, cannot be found.
Germany
Haug, Frigga. Der im Gehen erkundete Weg. Marxismus-Feminismus. [Berliner Beiträge zur kritischen Theorie. Band, 18.] Argument Hamburg, InkriT, Berlin 2015. 384 pp. € 24.00.
Frigga Haug (b. 1937), a German social scientist and philosopher and a Marxist before she manifested as a feminist, polemicized against feminism in the early 1970s. In this autobiographical work, she discusses political and theoretical issues concerning the relationship between the women’s movement and the labour movement as well as how she became a feminist Marxist, illustrating this trajectory by reproducing some of her anti-feminist and feminist Marxist articles and lectures and commenting on these texts, arguing that feminist Marxism, like her own trajectory, is a learning process.
Great Britain
Adams, Matthew S. Kropotkin, Read, and the Intellectual History of British Anarchism. Between Reason and Romanticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [etc.] 2015. x, 251 pp. £84.79; $90.00; € 83.19. (E-book: £66.99; $69.99; € 66.99.)
Both Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) and the English art and literary critic Herbert Read (1893–1968) endeavoured to articulate anarchism for a British audience, according to this thematically organized book, in which Dr Adams analyses Kropotkin’s and Read’s ideas on progress and poverty, modern science (e.g. Darwinism), the role of the state, the social basis of art, violence, and pacifism and their visions of post-capitalist society, intending to demonstrate the distinctive nature of British anarchist political culture.
Desan, Christine. Making Money. Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2015 (Paper). xxii, 478 pp. Ill. £50.00. (Paper: £17.99.)
This book about the origins of the modern monetary system describes in detail the monetary system in medieval England, its use of commodity money and the kinds of exchange and credit involved. At the end of the seventeenth century, the English government established a national bank and shared its monopoly on money creation with private investors. This “monetary revolution”, argues Professor Desan, ushered in the practice of circulating public debt, the decline of commodity money, and the rise of commercial bank currency, heralding the start of capitalism.
Gibbons, Ivan. The British Labour Party and the Establishment of the Irish Free State, 1918–1924. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2015. ix, 263 pp. £60.00.
This book analyses the relationship between the British Labour Party and the Irish nationalist movement in the years following World War I, when both parties were transitioning from opposition and extra-parliamentary politics to becoming the governments of their respective states. Dr Gibbons aims to demonstrate that the Labour Party, eager gain recognition as a legitimate holder of political office, mitigated its overt sympathies with Irish nationalism to the extent that Labour’s Irish policy differed little from that of previous British governments.
Nott, James. Going to the Palais. A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2015. ix, 327 pp. £65.00.
Dancing and dancing halls were among twentieth-century-Britain’s most popular leisure activities, according to this history of the dance hall industry in Britain from 1918 to 1960, which examines the economics of the dancing hall industry as well as its influence on British society, especially on working and lower-middle class communities. Dr Nott also considers the role of dancing in interaction between the sexes and the emancipation of women, reactions to dance halls and dancing, and issues of morality, gender, race, and juvenile delinquency.
The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution. Ed. by Michael J. Braddick. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015. xiv, 619 pp. Ill. £95.00.
Examining how the English Revolution originated and impacted politics, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, this handbook also aims to present the history of the Scottish Covenanters, the Irish Rising of 1641 and the government of Confederate Ireland in a broader context. The thirty-three chapters include examinations of the Revolution in print; state and society in England, Scotland, and Ireland; crowds and popular politics; and women’s agency and gender relations. Five contributions explore the long-term legacies of the Revolution in the Three Kingdoms and Europe, e.g., in economic and social development. Each chapter concludes with a list of suggested reading.
Strong, Michele M. Education, Travel and the “Civilisation” of the Victorian Working Classes. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2014. viii, 243 pp. £55.00.
By organizing working-class educational travel abroad (to continental exhibitions, etc.) nineteenth-century-British middle-class liberal reformers aimed to prepare the working classes for citizenship. Focusing on institutions such as the travel agency Thomas Cook, the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union, and the London Regent Street Polytechnic and using workers’ letters, autobiographies, and published reports, Dr Strong examines the travel experiences of working men and women, showing how they explored places like Paris and Vienna based on their own agendas and perspectives.
Thompson, Dorothy. The Dignity of Chartism. Ed. by Stephen Roberts. Verso Books, London [etc.] 2015. x, 206 pp. £60.00. (Paper: £14.99; E-book: £14.99.)
This volume brings together fifteen abridged and otherwise edited essays that Dorothy Thompson (1923–2011) published between 1952 and 2007 as well as one essay on Halifax Chartism, which she wrote with E.P. Thompson in the late 1950s. The collection includes essays on women Chartists, Chartist autobiographies, possible sources for research into Chartist localities, individual Chartists, the Chartists in 1848, the British state and Chartism, and Marxist teleology. The book includes a biographical introduction by the editor and suggestions for further reading.
Whyte, William. Redbrick. A Social and Architectural History of Britain’s Civic Universities. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2015. xvi, 389 pp. Ill. £65.00.
This history (1783–1997) of British civic “Redbrick” universities (i.e. universities that, unlike Oxford and Cambridge, did not exclude prospective students because of their religion or lack of wealth) aims to give insight into the relationship between class and education and between universities and the state. Approaching universities as societies, Professor Whyte examines divisions of gender, class, and discipline within these societies as well as common experiences and the growth of a wider Redbrick culture. Referring to Bourdieu, he also considers the extent to which the civic universities reproduced existing social structures.
Italy
La Barbera, Guido. Lotta comunista. Verso il partito strategia 1953–1965. Edizioni Lotta Comunista, Milano 2015. 331 pp. Ill. € 10.00.
This is a detailed history of the roots of the Italian revolutionary Marxist party Lotta Comunista from its early beginnings in the mid-1950s to its official establishment by Arrigo Cervetto and Lorenzo Parodi in 1965. Mr La Barbera recounts how, in response to the “crisis of Stalinism” (the twentieth congress of the CPSU, the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Uprising of 1956), the Gruppi Anarchici di Azione Proletaria joined the Azione Comunista to form the Movimento della Sinistra Comunista, later renamed Lotta Comunista. The book also features a chronology and a series of small biographies.
Lavoro mobile. Migranti, organizzazioni, conflitti (XVIII–XX secolo). A cura di Michele Colucci, [e] Michele Nani. New Digital Frontiers, Palermo 2015. 217 pp. Ill. (Paper € 18.00.)
This collection about migration and social conflict features seven case studies on Italian migrants: geographical diversity in trade organizations in eighteenth-century Turin; responses by socialist workers to migrant day labourers in the Po valley (1901–1904); migrant workers in the textile industry of Bremen, Germany (1880–1914); migrant workers and labour organization in early nineteenth-century Friuli; a reflection (in English) on writing the history of Italian immigrant workers in America; the Italian “colonization” of the Croatian island of Lastovo (1934–1943); and labour unions and migration politics in Italy. The publication may be downloaded from newdigitalfrontiers.com free of charge.
The Netherlands
Smit, Christianne. De volksverheffers. Sociaal hervormers in Nederland en de wereld 1870–1914. Verloren, Hilversum 2015. 444 pp. Ill. € 39.00.
This book is about the work of Dutch social reformists who, inspired by examples from Great Britain and elsewhere, endeavoured to elevate the working classes, e.g., through improved housing and education. Professor Smit highlights the heterogeneous social backgrounds of the reformers, the transnational network in which they operated, the innovative approach of their work and the diversity of their initiatives, aiming to demonstrate that the reformers were motivated by more than a desire to control and oppress, and that their work helped define political decision-making.
Vugt, Thijs van. Een arbeidersbuurt onder de rook van “De Sphinx”. Een sociaal-ruimtelijke geschiedenis van het Boschstraatkwartier-Oost te Maastricht, 1829–1904. [Maaslandse Monografieën, 78.] Verloren, Hilversum 2015. 228 pp. Ill. Maps. € 25.00.
This dissertation (University of Maastricht 2015) closely examines how the rise of an industrial empire of glass and earthenware factories (named “De Sphinx” from 1899) between 1829 and 1904 turned a socially and demographically diverse district into an overcrowded working-class quarter. Dr Van Vugt also traces the life courses of five generations from two families of this quarter, concluding that social and geographical mobility among the inhabitants of this area was greater than traditionally assumed by sociologists. The volume includes an English summary.
Poland
Trębacz, Michał. Israel Lichtenstein. Biografia żydowskiego socjalisty. [Israel Lichtenstein. A Biography of a Jewish Socialist.] Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Łódź 2016. 250 pp. Pzł 40.00.
In this biography of Israel Lichtenstein (1883–1933), a leader of the Łódź Bund organization, the author describes Lichtenstein’s life, from his youth in poverty, through his involvement in the labour movement, to his political activity on the City Council of Łódź, until his premature death. In the story of Lichtenstein’s activities in multi-ethnic Łódź, an important centre of Polish proletariat in the interwar period, the issue of ethnic and class divisions played an important role. As leader of the Łódź Bund, Lichtenstein always put workers’ rights first. For this reason, he enjoyed authority among Polish workers from both the Polish Socialist Party and Germans from the Deutsche Sozialistische Arbeitspertei Polens. See also Piotr Żuk’s review in this volume, pp. 510–513.
Portugal
Chorão, Luís Bigotte. Para uma história da repressão do anarquismo em Portugal no século XIX. Seguido de «A Questão Anarchista», de Bernardo Lucas. Letra Livre, Lisboa 2015. 170 pp. € 6.00.
This book about Portuguese anarchism and its repression focuses on the Portuguese lawyer Bernardo Lucas and his defence of anarchist militants charged under the law of 13 February 1896, which targeted anarchists and the labour movement. Professor Chorão, a legal historian, also examines the criminological debates surrounding the prosecution of anarchists and the anti-anarchist conference held in Rome in 1898. The volume also includes a substantial bibliography and a facsimile reproduction of Lucas’s defence, which appeared as “A Questão Anarchista” in the first issue of A Ideia. Periodico Scientifico (1898).
Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Gronow, Jukka and Sergey Zhuravlev. Fashion Meets Socialism. Fashion Industry in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. [Studia Fennica: Historia, vol. 20.] Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki 2015. 303 pp. € 45.00.
Based on interviews as well as archival sources, this is a history of the origins and rise of fashion and fashion institutions, such as the GUM department store and the Tallinn House of Fashion Design, in the Soviet Union after World War II within the context of the economic, ideological, and aesthetic programmes of and disputes among Soviet authorities. The authors contend that the study of Soviet fashion, which was an anomaly in its planned economy, may reveal some of the inner tensions and contradictions built into socialism.
Hunger and War. Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union during World War II. Ed. by Wendy Z. Goldman and Donald Filtzer. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN) [etc.] 2015. xvii, 371 pp. Ill. $85.00. (Paper: $35.00; E-book: $34.99.)
The five contributors to this volume (based on a workshop held in April 2012) about food supply politics in World War II explore topics that were once taboo in the Soviet Union, according to the editors: the role of the state in provisioning the urban population, particularly workers, with food; feeding the Red Army; the extent of hunger in blockaded Leningrad; and the medicalization of hunger. The contributors aim to demonstrate, e.g., how state and party organizations, representing different interests, fought over food provisioning. See also Julie Hessler’s review in this volume, pp. 513–516.
Spain
Coignard, Cindy. Les militantes du POUM: 1935–1980. [Mondes hispanophones, Vol. 44.] Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2015. 249 pp. € 18.00.
Dr Coignard explores the roles of women in Spain’s Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) from its foundation in 1935 to its official dissolution in 1980. She examines POUM views concerning women’s issues and the early stages of women’s militancy within the organization and describes the women’s secretariat and POUM women’s activities both at and behind the front lines during the Civil War working for Red Aid, e.g., for newspapers and in education. Using interviews as well as archival resources, she also considers the experience of POUM women in exile and examines the consistency between political discourse about gender equality and the reality of everyday life.
Homenaje a Antonio Parejo. [Revista de Historia Industrial. Economía y Empresa, Vol. 58. Numéro especial.] Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona 2015. 450 pp. No price.
The fourteen chapters in this special issue of the Revista de Historia Industrial, published as a tribute to the historian and former executive editor of this journal Antonio Parejo (1956–2012), include articles on the significance of Barcelona as a seaport, the Andalusian textile industries, the cotton market of Barcelona (1790–1840), calico manufacturing in Catalonia (1796–1807), male height differentials in Antequera (Andalusia, 1879–1899), industrial production statistics for the Balearic islands (1850–2007), foreign investments in Spain, Mediterranean olive oil production and trade, and the Malaga steel industry. The volume also contains a bibliography of works by Antonio Parejo.
Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. International Communism and the Spanish Civil War. Solidarity and Suspicion. Cambridge University Press, New York [etc.] 2015. xiii, 278 pp. Ill. $99.99. (E-book: $80.00.)
Offering a grassroots history of international communism and analysing the appeal of communism, Professor Kirschenbaum follows the trajectories of Americans and Spaniards who worked and studied in Moscow in the 1930s, e.g., at the International Lenin School. She explores transnational contacts between participants in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, especially the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and, focusing on Spanish exiles in the Soviet Union and on American communists, tracks their personal and institutional connections after the Spanish Civil War, through World War II, and the early years of the Cold War.
María Cambrils. El despertar del feminismo socialista. Biografía, textos y contextos (1877–1939). Rosa Solbes, Ana Aguado [y] Joan Miquel Almela, eds. Universitat de València, València 2015. 421 pp. € 22.00.
María Cambrils Sendra (1877–1939) was a socialist and feminist writer from Valencia, one of the first and most important in 1920s Spain, according to this book, which consists of a short biography of Cambrils, an analysis of her work within the context of Spanish working-class culture before the Civil War, the text of Cambrils’s book, Feminismo socialista (Valencia 1925) and reprints of the majority of the articles she published between 1924 and 1933 in socialist newspapers such as El Socialista, El Obrero Balear and La Voz del Trabajo.
Switzerland
Tobler, Max. “Die Welt riss mich”. Aus der Jugend eines feinsinnigen Rebellen (1876–1929). Hrsg. mit einem Nachwort von Christian Hadorn. [Schweizer Texte. Neue Folge. Band 45.] Chronos, Zürich 2015. 371 pp. Ill. € 46.00.
Max Tobler (1876–1929) was a Swiss socialist physician, teetotaller and war opponent and a close friend of the more widely known “doctor of the poor” (Fritz Brupbacher). This volume contains Tobler’s autobiography, which also illustrates the history of the multifaceted Swiss youth temperance movement. In the afterword, the editor of Tobler’s text sheds more light on this movement and on Tobler’s involvement.
