A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY52 start with I start with I
Most studies of deindustrialization in the United States emphasize the economic impact of industrial decline; few consider the social, human costs. "I Was Content and Not Content": The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry is a firsthand account of a plant closure, heavily illustrated through photographs and told through edited oral history interviews. It tells the story of Linda Lord, a veteran of Penobscot Poultry Company in Belfast, Maine, and her experience when the plant—Maine’s last poultry-processing plant— closed its doors in 1988, costing over four hundred people their jobs and bringing an end to a once productive and nationally competitive agribusiness.
Linda Lord’s story could be that of any number of Americans—blue- and white-collar—effected by the rampant and widespread downsizing over the past several decades. She began working at Penobscot straight out of high school and remained with the company for over twenty years. Lord worked in all aspects of poultry processing, primarily in the "blood tunnel," where she finished off the birds that had been missed by the automatic neck-cutting device—a job held by few women. Single and self-supporting, Lord was thirty-nine years old when the plant closed. In part because she was the primary caretaker for her elderly parents, Lord did not want to leave Maine for a better job but did want to stay in the area that had been her home since birth.
The book is comprised of distinct sections representing different perspectives on Lord’s story and the plant’s demise. Cedric N. Chatterley’s gritty black-and-white photographs, reproduced here as duotones, document the final days at the poultry plant and chronicle Lord’s job search, as well as her daily life and community events. Lord’s oral history interviews, interspersed with the photographs, reveal her experiences working in poultry processing and her perspectives on the plant’s closing. Carolyn Chute’s essay reflects on her own struggles as a worker in Maine, and, more generally, on the way workers are perceived in America. Alicia J. Rouverol’s historical essay explores the rise and fall of Maine’s poultry industry and the reasons for its demise. Stephen A. Cole’s epilogue brings the story full circle when he tells of his most recent visit with Linda Lord. Michael Frisch (Portraits in Steel, A Shared Authority) contributes a foreword.
Lord’s story and the story of Penobscot’s closing brings into question the relationship of business to community, reminding us that businesses and communities are in fact integrally linked—or, perhaps more accurately, should be. Her narrative makes plain that plant closings have particular ramifications for women workers, but her experience also points to the way in which all individuals cope with change, hardship, and uncertain times to create possibilities where few exist. Perhaps most important, her story reveals some of the challenges and complexities that most human beings share.
Residents in the coastal community of Salango pushed for formal recognition of Indigenous identity while highlighting their pre-Hispanic roots in order to make claims about cultural continuity and ancestrality. Bauer considers the extent to which the politics of identity is embedded in the process of community-based development, paying close attention to how local conceptions of identity and residents’ ideas about their own identity and the identities of others fit within the broader context of Ecuadorian and Latin American notions of mestizaje. He emphasizes ethnogenesis and the fluid nature of identity as residents reference prehistory and the archaeological record as anchor points for claims to an Indigenous ethnic identity.
Identity, Development, and the Politics of the Past moves beyond existing studies that center on questions of authenticity and instead focuses on the ways people make claims to identity. This book makes a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the Ecuadorian coast and directs scholars who focus on Ecuador to expand their focus beyond the highland and Amazonian regions. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American studies, anthropology, ethnology, economic development, and ethnic identity.
Starting with the notion of Germany as the ideal site for academic study and travel in the nineteenth century and concluding with the twentieth-century image of Germany as an aggressive country, this innovative work examines the ever-changing image of Germans and Germany in the writings of Louisa May Alcott, Samuel Clemens, Henry James, William James, George Santayana, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Dewey, H. L. Mencken, Katherine Anne Porter, Kay Boyle, Thomas Wolfe, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Styron, Walker Percy, and John Hawkes, among others.
Mindful of the widespread discontent generated by the ongoing economic crisis in postindustrial societies as well as the renewed attempts by social scientists to measure more effectively what we consider to be “development” and “economic success,” the contributors to this volume contend that the study of public wealth in indigenous Amazonia provides not only an exceptional opportunity to apprehend native notions of wealth, poverty, and the good life, but also to engage in a critical revision of capitalist constructions of living well.
Through ethnographic analysis and thought-provoking new approaches to contemporary and historical cases, the book’s contributors reveal how indigenous views of wealth—based on the abundance of intangibles such as vitality, good health, biopower, and convivial relations—are linked to the creation of strong, productive, and moral individuals and collectivities, differing substantially from those in capitalist societies more inclined toward the avid accumulation and consumption of material goods.
Honorable Mention for the 2020 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association
Over the last four decades, immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa to the U. S. has increased rapidly. In several states, African immigrants are now major drivers of growth in the black population. While social scientists and commentators have noted that these black immigrants’ social and economic outcomes often differ from those of their native-born counterparts, few studies have carefully analyzed the mechanisms that produce these disparities. In Immigration and the Remaking of Black America, sociologist and demographer Tod Hamilton shows how immigration is reshaping black America. He weaves together interdisciplinary scholarship with new data to enhance our understanding of the causes of socioeconomic stratification among both the native-born and newcomers.
Hamilton demonstrates that immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa is driven by selective migration, meaning that newcomers from these countries tend to have higher educational attainment than those who stay behind. As a result, they arrive in the U.S. with some advantages over native-born blacks, and, in some cases, over whites. He also shows the importance of historical context: prior to the Civil Rights Movement, black immigrants’ socioeconomic outcomes resembled native-born blacks’ much more closely, regardless of their educational attainment in their country of origin. Today, however, certain groups of black immigrants have better outcomes than native-born black Americans—such as lower unemployment rates and higher rates of homeownership—in part because they immigrated at a time of expanding opportunities for minorities and women in general. Hamilton further finds that rates of marriage and labor force participation among native-born blacks that move away from their birth states resemble those of many black immigrants, suggesting that some disparities within the black population stem from processes associated with migration, rather than from nativity alone.
Hamilton argues that failing to account for this diversity among the black population can lead to incorrect estimates of the social progress made by black Americans and the persistence of racism and discrimination. He calls for future research on racial inequality to disaggregate different black populations. By richly detailing the changing nature of black America, Immigration and the Remaking of Black America helps scholars and policymakers to better understand the complexity of racial disparities in the twenty-first century.
The essays in Imperial Decline describe the major changes that have occurred in Russia’s relations with China, Japan, and South Korea under Boris Yeltin’s presidency, speculating about both Russia’s future in the region and the impact this future could have on relations with the United States. Contributors to this volume demonstrate how incoherent taxation and investment, uncoordinated and contradictory economic policies, runaway inflation and currency instability, and problems of defense now constrain the possibility of Russia expanding its economic influence in the region. This book is essential for students and scholars of international relations, foreign policy, and Russian history.
Contributors. Stephen J. Blank, Bruce A. Elleman, Harry Gelman, Hongchan Chun , Rajan Menon, Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Oles M. Smolansky, Henry Trofimenko, Charles E. Ziegler
Central to the ROSCA is the cultural concept of mutual trust, or confianza. This is the cultural glue that holds the reciprocal relationship together. As Vélez-Ibáñez explains, confianza “shapes the expectations for relationships within broad networks of interpersonal links, in which intimacies, favors, goods, services, emotion, power, or information are exchanged.” In a border region where migration, class movement, economic changes, and institutional inaccessibility produce a great deal of uncertainty, Mexican-origin populations rely on confianza and ROSCAs to maintain a sense of security in daily life. How do transborder people adapt these common practices to meet the demands of a global economy? That is precisely what Vélez-Ibáñez investigates.
There is a familiar narrative about American suburbs: after 1945, white residents left cities for leafy, affluent subdivisions and the prosperity they seemed to embody. In Levittown’s Shadow tells us there’s more to this story, offering an eye-opening account of diverse, poor residents living and working in those same neighborhoods. Tim Keogh shows how public policies produced both suburban plenty and deprivation—and why ignoring suburban poverty doomed efforts to reduce inequality.
Keogh focuses on the suburbs of Long Island, home to Levittown, often considered the archetypal suburb. Here military contracts subsidized well-paid employment welding airplanes or filing paperwork, while weak labor laws impoverished suburbanites who mowed lawns, built houses, scrubbed kitchen floors, and stocked supermarket shelves. Federal mortgage programs helped some families buy orderly single-family homes and enter the middle class but also underwrote landlord efforts to cram poor families into suburban attics, basements, and sheds. Keogh explores how policymakers ignored suburban inequality, addressing housing segregation between cities and suburbs rather than suburbanites’ demands for decent jobs, housing, and schools.
By turning our attention to the suburban poor, Keogh reveals poverty wasn’t just an urban problem but a suburban one, too. In Levittown’s Shadow deepens our understanding of suburbia’s history—and points us toward more effective ways to combat poverty today.
India occupies a paradoxical plane among nation states: it is both developed and underdeveloped, rich and poor, strong and weak. These contrasts locate India in the international order. The Rudolphs' theory of demand and command polities provides a general framework for explaining the special circumstances of the Indian experience.
Contrary to what one might expect in a country with great disparities of wealth, no national party, right or left, pursues the politics of class. Instead, the Rudolphs argue, private capital and organized labor in India face a "third actor"—the state. Because of the dominance of the state makes class politics marginal, the state is itself an element in the creation of the centrist-oriented social pluralism that has characterized Indian politics since independence.
In analyzing the relationship between India's politics and its economy, the Rudolphs maintain that India's economic performance has been only marginally affected by the type of regime in power—authoritarian or democratic. More important, they show that rising levels of social mobilization and personalistic rule have contributed to declining state capacity and autonomy. At the same time, social mobilization has led to a more equitable distribution of economic benefits and political power, which has enhanced the state's legitimacy among its citizens.
The scope and explanatory power of In Pursuit of Lakshmi will make it essential for all those interested in political economy, comparative politics, Asian studies and India.
In this first book to view modern Mexico in the era of NAFTA and globalization, In the Shadow of the Giant offers insight into the land on our southern border.
What we find is a nation that looks more like the United States than even Mexicans themselves could have imagined a decade ago: Rates of obesity are second only to the United States among the world's industrialized countries. Recreational drug use is soaring among young Mexicans, Citigroup owns the largest bank in Mexico Wal-Mart is the country's biggest private employer revealing a vastly different physical and cultural landscape from his days as a young journalist living in Mexico in the mid-1980s. Joseph Contreras tracks the relentless and ongoing Americanization of his ancestral home. Although these changes may seem a natural part of globalization, the country had long prided itself on the social, political, economic, and even spiritual differences that distinguished it from the United States. In addition to embracing our virtues and vices, Contreras argues that our southern neighbor has become a de facto economic colony of the United States.
At a time when immigration looms as a leading hot-button issue in American politics, the time is ripe for examining our influences, for better or worse, on our neighbor to the south.
Based on testimonies from the 1990s, this book stands as a polyvocal account of the radical political and environmental changes the region and its people have faced in the twentieth century. Not just the story of modernity from the perspective of a rural village, these interviews and author commentaries narrate this small rural community’s relatively sudden transformation from subjection to a local despot and to a remote colonial power to citizenship in a modern postcolonial democracy. Unlike other recent studies of Rajasthan, the current study gives voice exclusively to former subjects who endured the double oppression of colonial and regional rulers. Gold and Gujar thus place subjective subaltern experiences of daily routines, manifestations of power relations, and sweeping changes to the environment (after the fall of kings) that turned lush forests into a barren landscape on equal footing with historical “fact” and archival sources. Ambiguous, complex, and culturally laden as it is in Western thought, the concept of nature is queried in this ethnographic text. For persons in Sawar the environment is not only a means of sustenance, its deterioration is linked to human morality and to power, both royal and divine. The framing questions of this South Asian history revealed through memories are: what was it like in the time of kings and what happened to the trees?
In the early 1990s, South Korea was showcased as a country that had combined extraordinary economic growth with a narrowing of income distribution, achieving remarkably low rates of unemployment and poverty. In the years following the financial crisis of 1997–1998, however, these rates ballooned to pre-crisis levels, giving rise to the perception that the gap between the rich and the poor in Korea had once again widened.
Income Inequality in Korea explores the relationship between economic growth and social developments in Korea over the last three decades. Analyzing the forces behind the equalizing trends in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the deterioration evident in the post-crisis years, Chong-Bum An and Barry Bosworth investigate the macroeconomic conditions, gains in educational attainment, demographic changes and conditions in labor markets, and social welfare policies that have contributed to the evolution of income inequality over time.
The authors also raise fundamental questions about whether the pre-crisis pattern of combining strong economic growth with improving equality can be restored, as well as how government policies might be designed to promote that objective. The book concludes with a discussion of some proposals for improving the efficacy of redistributive policies in Korea.
Informed by both historical research and extensive fieldwork, this book pays special attention to the natural resource base and economic outlook of the reservations, as well as the crucial issue of tribal sovereignty. Chapters also cover the demography of American Indian groups and their socioeconomic status (including standard of living, employment, and education). A new afterword treats some of the developments since the book's initial publication in German, such as the effects of the 1988 Indian gaming law that allowed Indian reservations to operate gambling establishments (with mixed success).
"Provides a good overview of the basic questions and problems facing reservation Indians today."—Peter Bolz, Journal of American History (on the German edition)
Representations of Indian economic life have played an integral role in discourses about poverty, social policy, and cultural difference but have received surprisingly little attention. Daniel Usner dismantles ideological characterizations of Indian livelihood to reveal the intricacy of economic adaptations in American Indian history.
Officials, reformers, anthropologists, and artists produced images that exacerbated Indians’ economic uncertainty and vulnerability. From Jeffersonian agrarianism to Jazz Age primitivism, European American ideologies not only obscured Indian struggles for survival but also operated as obstacles to their success. Diversification and itinerancy became economic strategies for many Indians, but were generally maligned in the early United States. Indians repeatedly found themselves working in spaces that reinforced misrepresentation and exploitation. Taking advantage of narrow economic opportunities often meant risking cultural integrity and personal dignity: while sales of baskets made by Louisiana Indian women contributed to their identity and community, it encouraged white perceptions of passivity and dependence. When non-Indian consumption of Indian culture emerged in the early twentieth century, even this friendlier market posed challenges to Indian labor and enterprise. The consequences of this dilemma persist today.
Usner reveals that Indian engagement with commerce has consistently defied the narrow choices that observers insisted upon seeing.
India’s Rise as an Asian Power examines India’s rise to power and the obstacles it faces in the context of domestic governance and security, relationships and security issues with its South Asian neighbors, and international relations in the wider Asian region. Instead of a straight-line projection based on traditional measures of power such as population size, economic growth rates, and military spending, Sandy Gordon’s nuanced view of India’s rise focuses on the need of any rising power to develop the means to deal with challenges in its domestic, neighborhood (South Asia), and regional (continental) spheres.
Terrorism, insurgency, border disputes, and water conflict and shortages are examples of some of India’s domestic and regional challenges. Gordon argues that before it can assume the mantle of a genuine Asian power or world power, India must improve its governance and security; otherwise, its economic growth and human development will continue to be hindered and its vulnerabilities may be exploited by competitors in its South Asian neighborhood or the wider region. This book will appeal to students and scholars of India and South Asia, security studies, foreign policy, and comparative politics, as well as country and regional specialists.
What does “development” mean for Indigenous peoples? Indigenous Economics lays out an alternative path showing that conscious attention to relationships among humans and the natural world creates flourishing social-ecological economies.
Economist Ronald L. Trosper draws on examples from North and South America, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Australia to argue that Indigenous worldviews centering care and good relationships provide critical and sustainable economic models in a world under increasing pressure from biodiversity loss and climate change. He explains the structure of relational Indigenous economic theory, providing principles based on his own and others’ work with tribal nations and Indigenous communities. Trosper explains how sustainability is created at every level when relational Indigenous economic theory is applied—micro, meso, and macro.
Good relationships support personal and community autonomy, replacing the individualism/collectivism dichotomy with relational leadership and entrepreneurship. Basing economies on relationships requires changing governance from the top-down approaches of nation-states and international corporations; instead, each community creates its own territorial relationships, creating plurinational relational states. This book offers an important alternative to classic economic theory. In Indigenous Economics, support for Indigenous communities’ development and Indigenous peoples’ well-being go hand-in-hand.
Publication of this book is made possible in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science.
The indigenous Bedouin Arab population in the Naqab/Negev desert in Israel has experienced a history of displacement, intense political conflict, and cultural disruption, along with recent rapid modernization, forced urbanization, and migration. This volume of essays highlights international, national, and comparative law perspectives and explores the legal and human rights dimensions of land, planning, and housing issues, as well as the economic, social, and cultural rights of indigenous peoples. Within this context, the essays examine the various dimensions of the “negotiations” between the Bedouin Arab population and the State of Israel.
Indigenous (In)Justice locates the discussion of the Naqab/Negev question within the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict and within key international debates among legal scholars and human rights advocates, including the application of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the formalization of traditional property rights, and the utility of restorative and reparative justice approaches. Leading international scholars and professionals, including the current United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, are among the contributors to this volume.
This illuminating study of the evolution of Chinese capitalism chronicles the fortunes of the Song family of North China under five successive authoritarian governments. Headed initially by Song Chuandian, who became rich by exporting hairnets to Europe and America in the early twentieth century, the family built a thriving business against long odds of rural poverty and political chaos.
A savvy political operator, Song Chuandian prospered and kept local warlords at bay, but his career ended badly when he fell afoul of the new Nationalist government. His son Song Feiqing—inspired by the reformist currents of the May Fourth Movement—developed a utopian capitalist vision that industry would redeem China from foreign imperialism and cultural backwardness. He founded the Dongya Corporation in 1932 to manufacture wool knitting yarn and for two decades steered the company through a constantly changing political landscape—the Nationalists, then Japanese occupiers, then the Nationalists again, and finally Chinese Communists. Increasingly hostile governments, combined with inflation, foreign competition, and a restless labor force, thwarted his ambition to create an “Industrial Eden.”
Brett Sheehan shows how the Song family engaged in eclectic business practices that bore the imprint of both foreign and traditional Chinese influences. Businesspeople came to expect much from increasingly intrusive states, but the position of private capitalists remained tenuous no matter which government was in control. Although private business in China was closely linked to the state, it was neither a handmaiden to authoritarianism nor a natural ally of democracy.
Sara A. Whaley Book Prize, National Women's Studies Association, 2017
AMEWS Book Award, Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2017
Millions of Egyptian men, women, and children first experienced industrial work, urban life, and the transition from peasant-based and handcraft cultures to factory organization and hierarchy in the years between the two world wars. Their struggles to live in new places, inhabit new customs, and establish and abide by new urban norms and moral and gender orders underlie the story of the making of modern urban life—a story that has not been previously told from the perspective of Egypt’s working class.
Reconstructing the ordinary urban experiences of workers in al-Mahalla al-Kubra, home of the largest and most successful Egyptian textile factory, Industrial Sexuality investigates how the industrial urbanization of Egypt transformed masculine and feminine identities, sexualities, and public morality. Basing her account on archival sources that no researcher has previously used, Hanan Hammad describes how coercive industrial organization and hierarchy concentrated thousands of men, women, and children at work and at home under the authority of unfamiliar men, thus intensifying sexual harassment, child molestation, prostitution, and public exposure of private heterosexual and homosexual relationships. By juxtaposing these social experiences of daily life with national modernist discourses, Hammad demonstrates that ordinary industrial workers, handloom weavers, street vendors, lower-class landladies, and prostitutes—no less than the middle and upper classes—played a key role in shaping the Egyptian experience of modernity.
The Mexican Revolution has long been considered a revolution of peasants. But Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato’s investigation of the mill towns of the Orizaba Valley reveals that industrial workers played a neglected but essential role in shaping the Revolution. By tracing the introduction of mechanized industry into the valley, she connects the social and economic upheaval unleashed by new communication, transportation, and production technologies to the political unrest of the revolutionary decade. Industry and Revolution makes a convincing argument that the Mexican Revolution cannot be understood apart from the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, and thus provides a fresh perspective on both transformations.
By organizing collectively on a wide scale, the spinners and weavers of the Orizaba Valley, along with other factory workers throughout Mexico, substantially improved their living and working conditions and fought to secure social and civil rights and reforms. Their campaigns fed the imaginations of the masses. The Constitution of 1917, which embodied the core ideals of the Mexican Revolution, bore the stamp of the industrial workers’ influence. Their organizations grew powerful enough to recast the relationship between labor and capital, not only in the towns of the valley, but throughout the entire nation.
The story of the Orizaba Valley offers insight into the interconnections between the social, political, and economic history of modern Mexico. The forces unleashed by the Mexican and the Industrial revolutions remade the face of the nation and, as Gómez-Galvarriato shows, their consequences proved to be enduring.
Much has been debated about the presence of undocumented workers along the South Texas border, but these debates often overlook the more complete dimension: the region’s longstanding, undocumented economies as a whole. Borderlands commerce that evades government scrutiny can be categorized into informal economies (the unreported exchange of legal goods and services) or underground economies (criminal economic activities that, obviously, occur without government oversight). Examining long-term study, observation, and participation in the border region, with the assistance of hundreds of locally embedded informants, The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border presents unique insights into the causes and ramifications of these economic channels.
The third volume in UT–Pan American’s Borderlife Project, this eye-opening investigation draws on vivid ethnographic interviews, bolstered by decades of supplemental data, to reveal a culture where divided loyalties, paired with a lack of access to protection under the law and other forms of state-sponsored recourse, have given rise to social spectra that often defy stereotypes. A cornerstone of the authors’ findings is that these economic activities increase when citizens perceive the state’s intervention as illegitimate, whether in the form of fees, taxes, or regulation. From living conditions in the impoverished colonias to President Felipe Calderón’s futile attempts to eradicate police corruption in Mexico, this book is a riveting portrait of benefit versus risk in the wake of a “no-man’s-land” legacy.
Within the next twenty years, an unprecedented proportion of Americans will be over sixty-five. New research in the economics of aging is an essential element of understanding what the future holds for this aging population. Inquiries in the Economics of Aging presents both empirical papers that consider questions that are fundamental to public policy and more theoretical contributions that lay new groundwork for future research in the economics of aging.
Inquiries in the Economics of Aging provides a timely overview of some of the most important questions facing researchers on aging and outlines new techniques and models that may help to answer these questions. This important volume will be of great interest to specialists and policy makers as it paves the way for future analysis.
The South American nation of Colombia has seen more than forty years of unrest, conflict, and civil war. It is a country in which social violence and warfare are intricately intertwined. Colombia is also notorious for its drug trade, being one of the leading producers of cocaine in the world, and for its central role as a staging ground for the U.S. “war on drugs.” Since 9/11 the Bush administration has sought to draw political links between the Colombian drug trade, guerrilla organizations, and terrorism.
Inside Colombia offers a valuable introduction and quick reference guide to this complex nation. With chapters devoted to history, human rights issues, the economy, drugs, the controversial antidrug intervention known as Plan Colombia, and relations with the United States, the book offers an easily accessible and comprehensive overview. Readers will learn about the major players in the conflicts, significant political figures, how Colombia’s economy has fared in the twentieth century, how the country’s geography influences its politics and economy, and how U.S. intervention shapes Colombia’s political scene.
Based on historical records and revealing interviews with over one hundred residents and officials, Inside Newark traces Newark’s history from the 1950s, when the city was a thriving industrial center, to the era of Mayor Cory Booker. Along the way, Curvin covers the disturbances of July 1967, called a riot by the media and a rebellion by residents; the administration of Kenneth Gibson, the first black mayor of a large northeastern city; and the era of Sharpe James, who was found guilty of corruption. Curvin examines damaging housing and mortgage policies, the state takeover of the failing school system, the persistence of corruption and patronage, Newark’s shifting ethnic and racial composition, positive developments in housing and business complexes, and the reign of ambitious mayor Cory Booker.
Inside Newark reveals a central weakness that continues to plague Newark—that throughout this history, elected officials have not risen to the challenges they have faced. Curvin calls on those in positions of influence to work for the social and economic improvement of all groups and concludes with suggestions for change, focusing on education reform, civic participation, financial management, partnerships with agencies and business, improving Newark’s City Council, and limiting the term of the mayor. If Newark’s leadership can encompass these changes, Newark will have a chance at a true turnaround.
Precious oil and export markets, wars in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, peace talks at the White House, terrorist eruptions: more now than ever, Arab affairs are the West's affair. And yet as we find ourselves increasingly enmeshed in its politics and economics, the Middle East remains a mystery to most of us, a world of dimly understood connections and impenetrable complexities. The Arab world at last becomes accessible in this book. The only study to include developments since the Gulf War and the historic pact between Israel and the PLO, Inside the Arab World gives us a complete and detailed picture of the region as it is today, as well as a clear sense of how Arab affairs have evolved and where they may lead.
Despite its abundance of oil, the Arab world has failed to produce a single successful economy. Michael Field, a recognized expert and longtime reporter on the Arab states, ably explores the cultural, political, and geographic reasons for this failure. Ranging from Algeria to the Gulf states to Egypt and Syria, he considers the fragmentation of society, the people's tolerance of bad government, corruption, and the deadening economic effect of Arab socialism. But he also shows how the region--influenced partly by exposure to Western media, partly by reforms imposed by creditors--is changing now, taking its first cautious steps toward democracy, whose opportunities so far have been most firmly grasped by Islamic fundamentalists.
Timely, thorough, and highly readable, this book offers much-needed insight into the Arab world as its politics and policies increasingly engage our own.
When Willard M. Kiplinger launched the groundbreaking Kiplinger Washington Letter in 1923, he left the sidelines of traditional journalism to strike out on his own. With a specialized knowledge of finance and close connections to top Washington officials, Kiplinger was uniquely positioned to tell deeper truths about the intersections between government and business. With careful reporting and insider access, he delivered perceptive analysis and forecasts of business, economic, and political news to busy business executives, and the newsletter’s readership grew exponentially over the coming decades.
More than just a pioneering business journalist, Kiplinger emerged as a quiet but powerful link between the worlds of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, and used his Letter to play a little-known but influential role in the New Deal. Part journalism history, part biography, and part democratic chronicle, The Insider offers a well-written and deeply researched portrayal of how Kiplinger not only developed a widely read newsletter that launched a business publishing empire but also how he forged a new role for the journalist as political actor.
The contributions to Insights in the Economics of Aging uncover how financial, physical, and emotional well-being are integrally related. The authors consider the interactions between financial circumstances in later life, such as household savings and home ownership, physical circumstances such as health and disability, and emotional well-being, including happiness and mental health.
Organized into three main parts, the book first discusses the evolution and nature of China's FDI regulatory framework. Part 2 examines the various modes and variant patterns of FDI in China in the reform years. Part 3's central task is to demonstrate a systematic link between institutional changes in China's FDI regulatory framework and the changing patterns of FDI. In conclusion, Jun Fu finds that China has made substantial progress from a command economy to a market system, but that it still has a long way to go before it truly attains a transparent and rule-based system.
This book adds new dimensions to the scholarship on China as a growing economic power and will be of particular interest to international economists, political scientists, and business scholars studying China.
Jun Fu is Associate Professor in the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University.
One of the most well-established relationships in the economics of aging is that between health and wealth. Yet this relationship is also changing in conjunction with a rapidly aging population as well as a broad evolution in how people live later in life.
Building on findings from earlier editions in this National Bureau of Economic Research series, Investigations in the Economics of Aging focuses on the changing financial circumstances of the elderly and the relationship of these circumstances to health and health care. Among the topics addressed are the significance of out-of-pocket health care costs, the effects of inflation on social security, and the impact of the recent financial crisis on Americans’ well-being. Encompassing new data and advances in research methodology, the developments presented in this volume will have important implications for economies worldwide.
Investing Japan demonstrates that foreign investment is a vital and misunderstood aspect of Japan’s modern economic development. The drive to become a modern industrial power from the 1860s to the 1930s necessitated the adoption and internalization of foreign knowledge. This goal could only be achieved by working within the overarching financial and technological frameworks of Western capitalism. Foreign borrowing, supported by the gold standard, was the crux of Japan’s pre-war capital formation. It simultaneously financed domestic industrial development, the conduct of war, and territorial expansion on the Asian continent. Foreign borrowing also financed the establishment of infrastructure in Japan’s largest cities, the nationalization of railways, the interlinked capital-raising programs of “special banks” and parastatal companies, and the rapid electrification of Japanese industry in the 1920s.
Simon James Bytheway investigates the role played by foreign companies in the Japanese experience of modernization while highlighting their identity as key agents in the processes of industrialization and technology transfer. Investing Japan delivers a complex, multifaceted analysis, intersecting with the histories of formal and informal economic imperialism, diplomacy, war financing, domestic and international financial markets, parastatal and multinational enterprise, and Japan’s “internationalization” vis-à-vis the emerging global market.
As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern.
China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the workers who have fueled the country’s rise come from rural villages and have never been to high school. While this national growth strategy has been effective for three decades, the unskilled wage rate is finally rising, inducing companies inside China to automate at an unprecedented rate and triggering an exodus of companies seeking cheaper labor in other countries. Ten years ago, almost every product for sale in an American Walmart was made in China. Today, that is no longer the case. With the changing demand for labor, China seems to have no good back-up plan. For all of its investment in physical infrastructure, for decades China failed to invest enough in its people. Recent progress may come too late. Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle and Hell reveal that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. Over half of China’s population—as well as a vast majority of its children—are from rural areas. Their low levels of basic education may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere.
In Invisible China, Rozelle and Hell speak not only to an urgent humanitarian concern but also a potential economic crisis that could upend economies and foreign relations around the globe. If too many are left structurally unemployable, the implications both inside and outside of China could be serious. Understanding the situation in China today is essential if we are to avoid a potential crisis of international proportions. This book is an urgent and timely call to action that should be read by economists, policymakers, the business community, and general readers alike.
Austin, Texas, is renowned as a high-tech, fast-growing city for the young and creative, a cool place to live, and the scene of internationally famous events such as SXSW and Formula 1. But as in many American cities, poverty and penury are booming along with wealth and material abundance in contemporary Austin. Rich and poor residents lead increasingly separate lives as growing socioeconomic inequality underscores residential, class, racial, and ethnic segregation.
In Invisible in Austin, the award-winning sociologist Javier Auyero and a team of graduate students explore the lives of those working at the bottom of the social order: house cleaners, office-machine repairers, cab drivers, restaurant cooks and dishwashers, exotic dancers, musicians, and roofers, among others. Recounting their subjects’ life stories with empathy and sociological insight, the authors show us how these lives are driven by a complex mix of individual and social forces. These poignant stories compel us to see how poor people who provide indispensable services for all city residents struggle daily with substandard housing, inadequate public services and schools, and environmental risks. Timely and essential reading, Invisible in Austin makes visible the growing gap between rich and poor that is reconfiguring the cityscape of one of America’s most dynamic places, as low-wage workers are forced to the social and symbolic margins.
Paralleling his friend Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America, Gustave de Beaumont traveled through Ireland in the mid-1830s to observe its people and society. In Ireland, he chronicles the history of the Irish and offers up a national portrait on the eve of the Great Famine. Published to acclaim in France, Ireland remained in print there until 1914. The English edition, translated by William Cooke Taylor and published in 1839, was not reprinted.
In a devastating critique of British policy in Ireland, Beaumont questioned why a government with such enlightened institutions tolerated such oppression. He was scathing in his depiction of the ruinous state of Ireland, noting the desperation of the Catholics, the misery of repeated famines, the unfair landlord system, and the faults of the aristocracy. It was not surprising the Irish were seen as loafers, drunks, and brutes when they had been reduced to living like beasts. Yet Beaumont held out hope that British liberal reforms could heal Ireland's wounds.
This rediscovered masterpiece, in a single volume for the first time, reproduces the nineteenth-century Taylor translation and includes an introduction on Beaumont and his world. This volume also presents Beaumont's impassioned preface to the 1863 French edition in which he portrays the appalling effects of the Great Famine.
A classic of nineteenth-century political and social commentary, Beaumont's singular portrait offers the compelling immediacy of an eyewitness to history.
With clarity and depth, Gerard McCann explores the complex developments that have shaped Ireland’s economic development, north and south, and led to recurring crises and instability.
The Irish economy has been traditionally portrayed as a product of its political divisions and the colonial legacy, divided and analysed in terms of the hegemonic tensions that exist on the island. Influenced by these divisions, academics have tended to look at a two-region approach to economic development, without adequately acknowledging the interactive nature of the island economy as a source of the crises or as a solution to systemic divergence.
McCann's definitive and dynamic history of the Irish economy circumvents conventional analyses and investigates the economic development of the island economy as a whole, highlighting where aggressive differentiation has been divisive and destabilising. He concludes by considering an alternative integrated and cohesive process of economic development.
Located off the west coast of the Mexican state of Baja California, Isla Cedros—Island of Fogs—is site to some of the most extensive and remarkable archeological discoveries on the continent. Two sites dated to before 12,000 cal BP have been excavated, as well as portions of two large village sites dated to the last one thousand years. Among the artifacts discovered are the earliest fishhooks found on the continent.
Drawing on ten years of his own historical, ethnographic, and archaeological research, Matthew Des Lauriers uses Isla Cedros to form hypotheses regarding the ecological, economic, and social nature of island societies. Des Lauriers uses a comparative framework in order to examine both the development and evolution of social structures among Pacific coast maritime hunter-gatherers as well as to track patterns of change.
Because it examines the issue of whether human populations can intensively harvest natural resources without causing ecological collapse, Island of Fogs provides a relevant historical counterpart to modern discussions of ecological change and alternative models for sustainable development.
Winner of the Society for American Archaeology Book Award.
Israel has changed. The country was born in Europe’s shadow, haunted by the Holocaust and inspired by the Enlightenment. But for Israelis today, Europe is hardly relevant, and the country’s ties to the broader West, even to America, are fraying. Where is Israel heading? How do citizens of an increasingly diverse nation see themselves globally and historically?
In this revealing portrait of the new Israel, Diana Pinto presents a country simultaneously moving forward and backward, looking outward and turning in on itself. In business, Israel is forging new links with the giants of Asia, and its booming science and technology sectors are helping define the future for the entire world. But in politics and religion, Israelis are increasingly self-absorbed, building literal and metaphorical walls against hostile neighbors and turning to ancient religious precepts for guidance here and now.
Pinto captures the new moods and mindsets, the anxieties and hopes of Israelis today in sharply drawn sketches of symbolically charged settings. She takes us on the roads to Jerusalem, to border control at Ben Gurion Airport, to a major Israeli conference in Jerusalem, to a hill overlooking the Dome of the Rock and Temple Mount, to the heart of Israel’s high-tech economy, and to sparkling new malls and restaurants where people of different identities share nothing more than a desire to ignore one another.
Vivid and passionate but underpinned by deep analysis, this is a profound and sometimes unsettling account of a country that is no longer where we might think.
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