| Hans G. Schuetze and Robert Sweet, Integrating School and Workplace Learning in Canada: Principles and Practices of Alternation Education and Training (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 2003)
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THE TITLE LARGELY SUMMARIZES the content of the essays in this work. The aim of the book is to consider ways in which employers can insure that their employees have the skills that will contribute surplus value for the former. But there is no mention of surplus value here or any other critical concept. One contribution by Paul Axelrod, Paul Anisef, and Zeng Lin provides a conservative defence of liberal arts programs at universities, and essentially argues that high-status professionals need to have a broad-minded education because they make decisions that have a broad impact on society. But the rest of the book mainly focuses on making the status quo work better for both employers and workers, with the underlying assumption being that the interests of the two groups are essentially the same.
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| Jennifer Henderson, Settler Feminism and Race Making in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2003)
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HENDERSON INTERROGATES the roles of white women in the construction of Anglo-Canadian imperialism in Canada as well as racial hierarchies. Her study discusses the discourse of three significant women's narratives, Anna Jameson's Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney's Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear, and Emily Murphy's Janey Canuck series.
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| David Witwer, Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press 2003)
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WITWER PROVIDES a detailed look at the operations of the Teamsters throughout the union's history. He places particular emphasis on the period in which Jimmy Hoffa led the union, a period mainly known to the public as one of "union corruption." But, as Witwer demonstrates, the corruption that bothered the American government often involved behaviour that was either completely legal or that was extra-legal but completely within the interests of union members. Officials used the term "corruption" to refer to all assertions of trade union power, deliberately confounding issues of class struggle with plain old theft and Mafia violence. This is a sophisticated analysis of a phenomenon that even many labour historians might have been tempted to view in black-and-white terms.
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| Susan Eleanor Hirsch, After the Strike: A Century of Labor Struggle at Pullman (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press 2003)
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HISTORIANS MAY HAVE been mainly interested in Pullman workers because of their bitter and ultimately unsuccessful 1894 strike. But Susan Eleanor Hirsch demonstrates that, despite the corporate and state repression that defeated them in 1894, Pullman workers continued to search for social justice and to attempt to form a viable trade union. She traces their history from the beginnings of railway car manufacturing to the closing of the Pullman plants in the 1980s.
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| Dimitra Doukas, Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an American Community (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 2003)
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THIS IS A HISTORY of a set of working-class towns in the Mohawk River Valley in New York from the early 1800s onwards. A mixture of industrial and working-class history, it blends ethnographic and historical research. Ultimately, it is a defence of the locally-based capitalism of the Remington family (arms and typewriters) of the 19th century as an alternative to the corporate capitalism of the 20th century that wreaked havoc in these communities. One can be rightly skeptical of its invoking of Marx to characterize locally owned capitalist manufacturing as follows: "communities can strategize to augment and apportion the commons, producing and selling goods in order to acquire goods that can be applied to the social purposes of community members." (168) The general mindset of this book can be better understood by reading the critique of similar books in Steven High's review essay in this issue.
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| Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters Between Black and Red, 1922–1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2002)
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THIS IS A SELECTIVE study of African-American intellectuals and cultural icons who were influenced by the Soviet experiment in their struggle against racism in the US. The book is a series of four studies, one each of a key African-American intellectual for whom the study of Soviet society proved an important influence on his thought. Langston Hughes, W.E. B. DuBois, Claude McKay, and Paul Robeson are the subjects of the four chapters.
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| Emmet O'Connor, James Larkin (Cork: Cork University Press 2002)
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THIS SHORT BIOGRAPHY of the lionized Irish labour leader of the 1913 Dublin Lockout places equal focus on Larkin's involvements in the labour movement after 1913. It examines critically his contributions as leader of the Workers' Union of Ireland, his relations with the Soviet Union during his Communist period, and his later political career, both on Dublin city council and as a parliamentary deputy.
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| Linda Reeder, Widows in White: Migration and the Transformation of Rural Italian Women, Sicily, 1880–1920 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2003)
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THIS IS A RICHLY-LAYERED account of the ways in which Sicilian women, whose menfolk had emigrated to find work, responded to their men's absence in ways that increased their social power and transformed their identities. They used monies sent from abroad to start small businesses or purchase land. Whether in their consumer purchases, their loans from banks, or their dealings with the state from schools to taxation authorities, they entered worlds from which patriarchal traditions once barred them. The book closely examines the extent of both changes and continuities in these women's lives.
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| Blair A. Rutherford, Working on the Margins: Black Workers, White Farmers in Postcolonial Zimbabwe (London: Zed Books 2001)
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RUTHERFORD GOES beyond the simplistic dichotomies that the media present with regards to the 2 million African farm workers who live on mainly white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. He examines the ways in which control by the farmers over their lives has shaped both their social customs and their struggles for better lives. Rutherford emphasizes the ways in which "domestic government," that is control by the farmers, rather than state control, has determined the allocation of resources on the farms. He also discusses the recent political struggles regarding farm workers, and the complex ways in which the workers relate to these struggles.
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| Sonia Sarker and Esha Niyogi De, Trans-Status Subjects: Gender in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2002)
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THIS COLLECTION of essays attempts to discover how women in a variety of South and Southeast Asian countries are negotiating their identities within the changes to their societies that globalization has introduced. The authors point out the ways in which first colonialism and then neocolonialism created hybrid societies in which ideologies of gender and sexuality have been constantly contended.
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| Hans Abbing, Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2002)
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CULTURAL WORKERS comprise a large section of the self-employed labour force in industrial countries. Few make a decent living, and this book explores both the political economy of the arts and the social attitudes, including those of artists themselves, that contribute to haphazard incomes for artists.
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| Peter M. Birkeland, Franchising Dreams: The Lure of Entrepreneurship in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2002)
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LIKE ARTISTS, franchisees include among their number a small group of very wealthy individuals and a large group of people barely getting by. Many fail. This book notes the power of franchisors and examines why franchisees are largely unable to exert collective power. Birkeland's case studies explore the thinking of both franchisors and franchisees. On the whole, however, the author demonstrates his sympathies with the franchisors and their need to control individuals often at a great geographical distance from headquarters.
A.F.
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