( SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL)

Volume 47/ Number 1 / March 1993 • 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

The New International Context of Development By Barbara Stallings*

The 20th century draws to a close with a very mixed record in terms of development. Several sets of trends highlight the ambiguities. First, per capita income in the third world has risen dramatically in the postwar period. So have many social indicators such as literacy, nutrition, and longevity. Second, inequality has increased within most third world nations, between regions as well as classes. Third, international inequalities have also grown. The gap in living standards between third world and advanced industrial countries has widened, especially during the last decade, and the third world itself has polarized into a few strong performers and the large majority of weak economies. Depending on the definition of development, then, optimism or pessimism can be justified, and debate rages over the interpretation of these (perhaps) conflicting trends.

Scholars and policymakers have also debated extensively about the causal mechanisms behind the trends. In particular, there has been disagreement over the relative importance of international versus domestic forces in producing the outcomes mentioned above. Tn the 1960s and 1970s, international forces were generally privileged in analyses of development. At one end of the spectrum, theories of imperialism and dependency were used to explain the mechanisms by which growth was retarded and inequality increased. Such mechanisms included the extraction

change. At the other extreme, international forces­whether values or technology or capital- w~re indentified as the main way that development was diffused from center to periphery.

In the 1980s, by contrast, theories in vogue targeted domestic groups and institutions. For increasing numbers of analysts, the state took center stage, but there were widely differing views on whether the state served a negative or positive function. The "neo-utilitarian" approach emphasized the state's role in retarding development through siphoning off rents for bureaucrats or their clients. It

*Barbara Stallings is director of the Global Studies Research Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and chair of the Council's Joint Committee on Latin American Studies (JCLAS). Eric Hershberg, a political scienti&,t and staff to the JCLAS, assisted in condensing this essay from the introduction to a forthcoming volume on the new interna­tional context of development, edited by Ms. Stallings. Albert Fishlow (University of California. Berkeley) and Gary Gereffi (Duke University) provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. The project was originally funded through a seed grant awarded in February 1991 to the JCLAS from the President's Fund for Transnational and Comparative Research.

• CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE • The New InternatIonal Context

of Development, Barbara Stallings

Latino Poverty. Research: An Agenda for the 1990s, Dougltls S. Massey

Landed Property Rights and Global Environmental Change, John F. Richards and David C .. Major

Review Essay on The "Underclass" Debate:

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12

New Staff Appointments Current Activities at the Council

Glohal Cities Project Human Rights, Justice, and

Society in Latin America Indochina Planning

Workshop Puerto Rican Poverty

Workshop

18

19

19

20

20

21 22

Views from History, of surplus, the use of inappropriate technology, and Alice O'Conn", 16

Transnational Religion and Peace and Security

Three New Census Volumes Other Recent Council

Publications 24

ili, ""d~;";"g of go="~," "', mol " prom~ II

was also seen to be interfering with the market, subsidizing inefficient producers, and promoting macroeconomic disequilibria. Others, especially those advocating the "developmental state" approach, viewed the state as essential for growth. The state was portrayed as the key to providing infrastructure, supporting the acquisition of skills and technology, and assisting the private sector to become competi­tive. In both types of analysis, international forces were clearly secondary in accounting for policy choices or development outcomes.

In the 1990s, then, we confront a paradoxical situation. Dramatic international changes have occurred in the political, economic, and security realms, substantially changing the world we have known for the last half century. Common sense tells us that these changes must have an impact on the possibilities for development, but our conceptual tools have been allowed to grow rusty, so we are not in a position to analyze the mechanisms themselves or their effects. Nor can we do a very good job in accounting for the response to these changes. These are problems for policymakers trying to promote de­velopment as well as scholars trying to understand it.

Conference on "The New International Context of Development"

To begin to meet this challenge, the Joint Commit­tee on Latin American Studies has initiated a project to help rethink the role of the global context in shaping prospects for development in the third world. In collaboration with the Global Studies Research Program of the University of Wisconsin, a conference on "The New International Context of Development" was held in Madison on April 24-26, 1992.1 The

1 Papers were presented at the meeting by Fred Halliday, London School of Economics; Richard Feinberg, Inter·American Dialogue; Gary Gereffi, Duke University; Thomas Biersteker, Brown University; Yun­Han Chu. National Taiwan University; Suthiphand Chirathivat, Chula­longkom University; Ashok Guha, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Augusto Varas, FLACSO-Chile; and Michael Chege, Ford Foundation-Harare. Commentators included: Bruce Cumings. University of Chicago; Eric Hershberg, Social Science Research Council; Shafiqul Islam, Council on Foreign Relations; Raben Wade, University of Sussex; Joan Nelson, Overseas Development Council: Laurence Whitehead, Oxford University; Peter Smith, University of California, San Diego; Peter Evans, University of California, Berkeley; Atul Kohli, Princeton University; and Wolfgang Streeck, Joel Rogers, Steven Anderson, Bradford Barham. Cynthia Truelove. M. Crawford Young. Edward Friedman, Donald Emmerson. Ian Coxhead, Joseph Elder. Peter Bloch. and Gay Seidman, of the University of Wisconsin. Madison.

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conference was designed to identify the key interna­tional changes that have occurred in the past decade; assess their likely impact on the development process; and analyze divergent responses to these changes in various third world regions. Papers from the meeting are currently being revised for publication as a volume which will begin to construct-or recon­struct-a theoretical framework adequate for explain­ing the impact of the international context on development in the 1990s.

Probably everyone would agree that the world in the early 1990s looks different than it did a decade before, yet there are differences of opinion about which trends are worthy of note. We have chosen to focus on five trends that were identified as the core of the new international context of development. These include: the end of the cold war; shifting relations among capitalist powers; changing patterns of trade and production; declining availability of development fmance; and new ideological currents. Others could surely be added.2 The remainder of this brief article analyzes each of these trends. Where space permits we have illustrated the significance of these changes by sketching their divergent impact across various third world regions.

End of the. cold war

The cold war had multiple facets, but the most basic was the bipolar division between the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S.-Soviet rivalry, in turn, divided the rest of the world into two hostile camps, defended by the nuclear prowess of the two superpowers. The security dimension was exacerbated by economic, political, and ideological battles as "capitalism" and ."socialism" struggled to expand their respective turf. For the purposes of this analysis, two consequences of the cold war are central. First, the cold war promoted U.S. hegemony among its capitalist allies because of the premium on military power; the importance of this point will be elaborated in the next section. Second, the U.S.-Soviet rivalry spilled over into the third world, opening the way for governments to gain access to economic and military

::l: For example, attention to environmental problems will have a significant impact on developmental possibilities. The new wave of democratization will make some development strategies easier and others more difficult. The spread of ethnic and religious conflicts will bring to the fore goals that subordinate economic concerns to cultural ones.

VOLUME 47, NUMBER 1

resources. In the process , a set of "client states" was formed around each country, using political loyalty as a means to tap resources . A few nations, especially those in crucial geopolitical locations , were able to playoff the two against each other and maintain more independence.

With the ascension to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, and the Gorbachev-Shevardnadze foreign policy of cooperation with the West, many third world countries that had relied on the Soviets for assis­tance began to witness a shrinkage of support. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, some moved to change their policies and seek reconciliation with the West. Thus, for example, Angola and Mozambique began to shift alliances during the 1980s, and the Sandinista gov­ernment was advised both by the Soviets and the Cu­bans to maintain Western ties.

Later, with the collapse of the Soviet economy and eventually the state itself, the trend toward reconcilia­tion with the West was accelerated. With the exceptions of Cuba and North Korea, all of the ex-Soviet allies have embraced capitalism in some form; even these two are making concessions. Beyond governments allied with the Soviet Union, the latter's collapse has also had a negative impact on parties and movements in the third world, which looked to the Soviets for material assistance and perhaps an economic model of growth with greater equity than a capitalist model seemed to provide.

Within the U.S. sphere of influence , the implica­tions of the end of the cold war are less clear. The dominant view seems to be that it will lead to a lessened U.S. interest in the third world insofar as much of the previous interest was premised on checking Soviet activities. An alternative view suggests that the lack of a Soviet counterweight will allow the United States to intervene as it wishes, especially in Latin America but elsewhere as well. Based heavily on the Panama invasion of December 1989 and drug-related activities in the Andean region , this second interpretation is at odds with other trends , especially the decline in U.S. resources and demands that available resources be used at home.

Competition among capitalist powers

While the postwar world was dominated by the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, the United States in tum dominated its capitalist allies. West Germany and Japan were constrained by postwar agreements to rely

MARCH t993

on U. S. nuclear deterrence for their defense and the Urtited States was unrivaled economically for nearly two decades after World War n. U.S. corporations dominated Europe as well as the third world; U.S. aid bought influence in many regions; and U.S. exports, backed by sophisticated U.S. technology, could outperform those of any rivals.

When to date the shift and how to interpret the current situation are both contoversial. The cbanges began to emerge in the 1970s, when Japan and Europe had recovered from the war, but these changes were distorted by the oil price rises since Japan and most of Europe are reliant on petroleum imports. The Reagan era, supposedly devoted to the restoration of U.S. power, in reality underrrtined it further by creating huge budget deficits that were quickly mirrored in trade deficits.

The warting of the cold war also called attention to growing differences among the United States and its European and Japanese rivals. On the one hand, it seemed clear that Europe and especially Japan were rivaling the United States in terms of growth and productivity. On the other hand, with socialism eliminated from the picture, the different types of capitalism came into focus. In the United States and Japan, for example, savings and investment propensi­ties , time horizons, the relationship between public and private sectors as well as between capital and labor, and views about equality and national security differ substantially, highlighting the fact that capital­ism is not the same around the world. The impor­tance of differences among capital isms was magnified as the three parts of the capitalist world-Europe, North America, and Asia-appeared to move toward the formation of regional blocs. The trend began with the European decision to move rapidly ahead with economic integration. It was furthered by the stalemate in the GATT deliberations, the initiation of North American Free Trade Area negotiations, and various proposals for an Asian grouping (even though the latter is opposed by Japan).

The consequences of de jacra, even if not de jure, economic spheres of influence can be quite profound for the third world-especially when combined with the growth and productivity trends already mentioned. Those third world areas associated with the most dynamic growth poles in the advanced countries stand to gain at the expense of those associated with less dynamic countries. For example, East and Southeast Asia are benefiting from Japanese investment and

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finance; East Asian countries are also investing heavily in neighboring states. Southern Europe has likewise prospered as a result of its association with the European Community, and Eastern Europe clearly hopes to follow in Southern Europe's footsteps. Mexico expects to benefit from closer ties to the U.S. market, and other Latin American countries seem eager to jump on the bandwagon too. While the United States has a very large market to offer, it is not clear that its investment and finance potential can match those of Japan and Europe.

in addition to the differentiation that may emerge among third world countries associated with one of the three blocs, a distinction will also result between all of the above and those left on the sidelines. Most African countries, probably some of South Asia, and perhaps substantial parts of Latin America may be further marginalized in a regionalization process. The future of the marginalized group is made bleaker by the fact that some of these countries had managed to benefit in the past by tying themselves into the cold war rivalry. With that over, their "special positions," whether vis-a-vis the United States or the Soviet Union, have also ended.

New patterns of production and trade

The decade of the 1980s brought important changes in production technology and organization and in trading networks. Rapid innovations in microelectron­ics, materials science, and biotechnology jointly led to what some have called a new technological revolution. Research and development in these fields involved complex and expensive laboratory facilities and, in some cases, increased use of proprietary research. The latter, of course, increased barriers to entry as did the speed of technological advance. At the same time, microelectronics helped to accelerate the transition from linear systems of mass production to flexible specialization, producing smaller batches of differentiated goods.

These developments have encouraged multinational corporations to spread production around the globe. The resulting processes have been organized in two main ways: supplier-centered networks and buyer­centered networks. The former are centralized, vertically-integrated production chains, found in capital-intensive sectors such as autos, computers or aircraft. Subcontracting involves production of parts in various countries around the world. The latter are

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decentralized, design-intensive industries such as clothing. Subcontractors produce finished goods according to specifications for retail outlets in advanced countries.

These trends in production and trade offer both obstacles and opportunities for third world countries. Most of the latter have tried to increase exports, especially of manufactured goods. For those that have succeeded, the questions then are, first , what types of products should be exported, and second, how can access to markets be assured. The new premium on technological development has made it much more difficult for third world nations to break into high value-added production, but the costs of not doing so have risen. While there are niches for specialization in low value-added goods, countries that rely exclusively on these goods run the risk of falling ever further behind. Not only do they face the traditional problems of low income elasticities of demand for basic food items, textiles, low-grade steel, and so on, but the spillover in terms of training and technology are lost. Of course those countries that continue to concentrate their exports on raw materials are at an even greater disadvantage because the new technolo­gies minimize the use of such products.

As a result of differing approaches to trade and production, huge gaps have opened up within the third world in terms of productive capacity and international marketing sophistication. Some third world firms have themselves become significant foreign investors (the East Asian NICs) , while the majority cannot even sell in their domestic markets without high levels of protection (Africa, South Asia, and much of Latin America). Since protection is generally declining, many countries are finding that domestic industry i~ no longer competitive.

Shrinking development finance

Closely related to the problems of production and trade are issues of international capital flows. The overall volume of capital flows doubled during the 1980s, partly due to the increase in trade volume. At the same time, there were also important shifts in both suppliers and recipients of capital. Since capital flows are the counterpart of trade flows, it is not surprising that the main suppliers of capital were the successful exporters, especially Japan and Germany. Simultaneously, the United States and some other

VOLUME 47. NUMBER 1

industrial countries became major capital importers to cover their trade (and budget) deficits.

The other side of this reorientation was the lesser availability of capital for the third world and the "flight to quality" after the debt crisis broke out. Thus, East and Southeast Asia retained their access to capital, while Latin America became a capital exporter from the point of view of net transfers (new flows minus debt service and profits). Africa maintained small positive net transfers but was unable to take advantage of the flows. Types of capital flows going to third world countries also changed during the 1980s. While private bank loans had dominated in the 1970s, they were substituted by public-sector credits and direct investment in the 1980s.

Along with the change in types of finance came changes in conditionality. During the binge of private bank finance in the 1970s, governments outside Africa had little need to seek loans from agencies (especially the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) that put high levels of conditionality on their loans. A decade later, the situation changed dramatically. As private bank loans dried up, third world governments were forced to turn to interna­tional financial institutions (IFIs) for help. New types of lending instruments were developed that encour­aged structural change as well as traditional stabiliza­tion policies. The rising share of capital inflow accounted for by the IFIs, together with their increased role as coordinator of finance, gave them an enhanced influence in determining economic policies and strategies. The outcome was a greatly increased force in favor of the policy consensus to be discussed in the next section.

New ideological currents

As both cause and effect of the political and economic changes already described, an ideological consensus had emerged worldwide by the mid-1980s. Although not completely new-elements had been present among certain groups throughout the postwar period-it differed substantially from the dominant developmental ism of the 1950s and 1960s and the more radical approaches of the 1970s. Going under names ranging from neo-liberalism to neo-conserva­tism to neo-orthodoxy, the consensus featured three elements: macroeconomic stability (especially smaller deficits) , a reduced government role in the economy (deregulation and privatization), and greater openness

MARCH 1993

to the outside (reduced barriers to trade and a more hospitable approach to foreign capital).

The consensus embraced previously disparate groups, whose own views had been shaped by intellectual arguments and "real world" events during the 1980s. One of the latter was the emergence of more conservative forces in the advanced industrial countries, epitomized by Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl. The growing evidence of problems in Eastern Europe and eventually the Soviet Union, culminating in the fall of the communist governments, was the most dramatic of the world events and had ideologi­cal as well as practical reverberations. Finally, the marked success of the East Asian countries - high growth with-relative equality-in contrast to the dismal performance of Latin America and Africa on both of these dimensions, added further weight to the consensus, despite some distortions in the interpreta­tion of the East Asian success.

Intellectual arguments drew on some of the above, especially the comparisons of economic performance in different parts of the world. The renewed financial power of the IMF and World Bank, which espoused the ideology in a particularly forceful way, enabled them to influence borrowing governments. The latter were themselves observing international trends, sometimes arriving at similar conclusions, sometimes bowing to the realities of power. One of the most fascinating aspects of the last few years is the list of third world governments that have become outspoken advocates of privatization, free trade, and fiscal austerity, even though they or their parties had long followed a different path.

Today, evidence of cracks in the consensus is beginning to emerge. In part, the proponents themselves (especially in the IFIs) are beginning to have some doubts about the efficacy of their recom­mendations. At the same time, the Japanese are beginning to add voice to their votes in the IFIs, since their own successful development model was based on a much more active state and greater protectionism than would be consistent with laissez­faire policies being advocated for the third world in the 199Os. Gradually, the Japanese have begun to express doubts about key elements of the consensus and are demanding some recognition of their own achievements and those of their proteges in East Asia. Nonetheless, these doubts remain of a limited sort, mainly oriented toward a slower pace of reforms and the possibility of "exceptions" to the general

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rules . A wholesale challenge to the ideological consensus is unlikely.

Conclusion: implications of the new international context of development

These five trends together seem to have diverging implications for the third world. On the one hand , they suggest that a much more limited range of economic policies and strategies are realistic possibili­ties in the 1990s than in the 1970s. "Acceptable" policies stress laissez-faire capitalism that equates development with growth, leaving aside problems of more equitable distribution. The elimination of the Soviet Union as a source of support and an alterna­tive model of development, the increased importance of multilateral conditionality in obtaining finance, and the new ideological consensus all push in this direction.

On the other hand, more diversity is implied by other international trends. Of particular importance is greater differentiation within the capitalist world, now that the cold war is over. While the ideological consensus embodies the North American (or some would say Anglo-American) variant of capitalism, Europe and Japan offer models that give a greater role to the state, not only in promoting growth but also in looking for ways to guarantee some equity of

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distribution. New production and trade networks are tied into these different models, and the emerging cracks in the ideological consensus also seem to be linked to capitalist variation.

The two sets of implications appear contradictory­more similarity and more divergence-but perhaps they can be reconciled. It is true that few third world governments or even opposition groups are willing to advocate the import-substitution, welfare-state policies that were the norm little more than a decade ago; this is not even to mention socialism. But more subtle differences in policy may nonetheless remain under the common banner of "open economies" and "market orientation." This is a central concern of a number of the papers presented at the conference in Madison and currently under revision for publication. Written by political economists from Africa, East Asia, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, these essays examine experiences across third world regions in order to clarify the range of options available to third world countries in different settings. These studies suggest the possibility of elaborating a regionally-based framework which can help orient studies of development in the 199Os. Further conceptual and empirical research will be needed to assess the utility of such an approach to understand­ing the impact of international forces on policy choice as well as policy performance. •

VOLUME 47, NUMBER 1

Latino Poverty Research: An Agenda for the 1990s By Douglas S. Massey*

Over the past two decades, policy analysts, academic researchers, and private citizens focused on the issue of the black urban underclass. Given this surging interest, those concerned with Latino research issues faced a temptation that was hard to resist. By climbing aboard the underclass bandwagon, they could tap into the wellspring of funds available to study urban poverty. But to do so they had to work with concepts, theoretical models, and analytic methods developed largely with African Americans in mind. Looking back from the viewpoint of the 1990s, the wisdom of this tradeoff seems questionable, for it is clear that Hispanics and blacks differ in such fundamental respects that standard methods and theories of the underclass are inappropriate for studying Latino poverty.

Origins

A fundamental difference lies in the coherence of the two groups. Virtually all African Americans descend from people who were brought involuntarily to the United States before the slave trade ended in the 19th century. They entered southern states to provide free labor to plantations, and as late as 1890 90% of all blacks lived in the south and 80% were rural dwellers. In the south they endured harsh, violent, and arbitrary conditions under slavery and then Jim Crow. Although they left the south in large numbers after 1890, within northern cities they also encountered prejudice, discrimination, and an extreme level of segregation that exposed them to unusually high concentrations of poverty and other social problems.

African Americans thus share a distinctive history of slavery and racial subordination. Stating that someone is "black" does more than indicate skin color or physical appearance; it implies a shared

• Douglas S. Massey is professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and a member of the Council's Committee for Public Policy Research on Contemporary Hispanic Issues. This paper was commis­sioned by the committee as part of its erfon to establish a new research agenda based on new paradigms rooted in the Latino experience. Felix V. Matos Rodriguez. a historian, serves as staff to the committee.

MARCH 1993

memory and a set of common experiences. The term "black" thus denotes a meaningful social category that exists apart from the rubric that is used by statisticians to identify people of African ancestry. After decades of collective struggle against white racism, there is widespread consensus among African Americans about who they are.

The Hispanic population, in contrast, represents a diverse collection of national origin groups which are fragmented by class and generation. It has no independent life of its own and no real existence apart from the category created by federal statisticians to provide data on people of Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Hispanic origins in the United States. There is no precise, universally accepted definition of group membership, and Latinos do not even agree among themselves on an appropriate group label.

In theory "Hispanics" include all those who trace their origins to a region originally colonized by Spain. It subsumes Argentines whose grandparents migrated from Italy to Buenos Aires at the tum of the century; Chinese whose forebears were brought to Cuba as contract laborers; Amerindians whose progenitors entered the Amazon 30,000 years ago; Africans whose ancestors were imported to work as slaves on the sugar plantations of Puerto Rico; Spaniards whose families colonized Mexico; and mestizos who trace their lineage to a coerced union between Amerindian women and Spanish men.

Not only are the national origins of Hispanics confused, so is the timing of their arrival in the United States. One group arrived largely in the period between 1960 and 1980; another has been migrating continuously since around 1890; another obtained citizenship through colonial conquest in 1898; another was forcibly annexed into the United States in 1848; and several groups have just begun migrating to the United States within the past few years.

As a result of these varied histories, Hispanics may be found in a variety of legal statuses: they may be fifth-generation Americans or new imntigrants just stepping off the jetway. Depending on when and how they got to the United States, they may also know a long history of discrimination and repression or they may see the United States as a land of opportunity where origins do not matter. They may be affluent and well-educated or poor and unschooled; they may have no personal experience of prejudice or discrimi­nation, or they may harbor stinging resentment at

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being called a "spic" or being passed over for promotion because of their accent.

As a result, there is no "Hispanic" population in the sense that there is a black population. Hispanics share no common historical memory and do not comprise a single , coherent community. Rather they are a disparate collection of national origin groups with heterogeneous experiences of settlement, immigration, political participation, and economic incorporation into the United States. Saying that someone is "Hispanic" or "Latino" reveals little or nothing about likely attitudes, behaviors, beliefs , race, religion , class , or legal situation in the United States. The only thing reasonably certain is that either the person in question or some progenitor once lived in an area originally colonized by Spain.

Race

A second difference between Hispanics and blacks concerns the meaning of race. For the African Americans , race is a unifying factor. In Anglo­American culture, race is perceived as binary: one is either black or white . This view is reflected histori­cally in the legal system that evolved to regulate race relations under slavery and Jim Crow. Laws explicitly defined who was black and who was white, and until recently even a small fraction of African ancestry rendered one legally "black." In response to this systematic rejection , race became a key organizing principle among African Americans . Under the sustained pressure of racial subordination, an oppositional identity evolved to give African Ameri­cans a positive sense of self within a hostile world that otherwise devalued their attitudes and actions.

Among Latinos, in contrast, race is a divisive factor. Unlike blacks, Hispanics are a racially heterogeneous population made up of a variety of racial ancestries: Europeans, Africans, Amerindians, Asians, and various mixtures thereof. Not only are Hispanics naturally diverse in racial terms, but in the encounter between Latino and Anglo culture they are divided in an additional way: they are alienated from their own cultural system of racial classification.

Within Latin America race has traditionally been viewed not as a dichotomy, but as a continuum. In the Caribbean region, the continuum runs from white to black, and Caribbean Spanish contains many words to describe various shades of color and physical appearance. In Spanish-speaking Central and South

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America, the continuum runs from European to Indian, and although Spanish colonists originally used many terms to identify different racial mixtures, over time the word "mestizo" has come to indicate mixtures of European and Amerindian ancestries.

Hispanic immigrants thus arrive in the United States exhibiting a wide range of racial traits, skin colors, and physical appearances that are perceived through conceptual categories sharply at odds with the strict racial dichotomy characteristic of U.S. culture. Unlike U.S. blacks , Latinos do not possess a single, unifying identity; rather they recognize subtle racial differences running along continua from white to black or white to Indian; and unlike U.S. whites, they do not view racially mixed identities in strictly negative terms. Although color prejudice exists, it is more subtle, more intertwined with social class, and does not follow a well-defined color line.

Anglo prejudice and discrimination act upon Latinos' natural racial diversity to fragment them after they arrive. Research shows that markets in the United States reward Hispanics differentially on the basis of skin color. In the housing market, dark­skinned Hispanics are more highly segregated from non-Hispanic whites than are lighter-skinned Hispan­ics, and the probability of experiencing discrimination increases steadily as skin color darkens. In the labor market, darker-skinned Hispanics earn lower wages than those with lighter skins, even after relevant background factors are held constant.

Thus, whereas racism creates a coherent racial identity and a unifying ideology among blacks, it divides the Hispanic population along racial lines. For blacks , racism plays a consistent and uniform role in perpetuating poverty and creating disadvantage , but among Hispanics white racism yields advantages for some, disadvantages for others, and no effects for others. Rather than being a constant force in the Latino experience, race is a variable to be examined in attempting to untangle the complicated teleology of Hispanic poverty.

Segregation

Segregation represents a third factor distinguishing Hispanics and blacks. The degree of residential segregation that a group experiences is a key factor conditioning how broader socioeconomic trends in society affect it. When a group is segregated residentially, any increase in poverty produces an

VOLUME 47 . NUMBER I

immediate increase in the geographic concentration of poverty. As poverty is concentrated spatially, so are other traits associated with it: crime, violence, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, single-parenthood, and educational disadvantage. The concentration of these conditions creates a harsh and dysfunctional neighbor­hood environment, and the behaviors and attitudes that people adopt to survive within it isolates them from mainstream society and undermines their chances for socioeconomic success. Segregation is a key factor acting to tum a poor community into an underclass .

The black ghetto was constructed during the early 20th century as a deliberate means of isolating urban black populations that were rapidly growing through in-migration. Before 1900 blacks were not highly segregated in any U.S city, but as their numbers rose, ever greater levels of segregation were imposed to keep the likelihood of white-black contact low. By 1940 the ghetto was fully constructed and blacks were segregated everywhere. Although levels of racial segregation fell in certain metropolitan areas after 1970, the declines only occurred in places where the black population was so small that desegregation would not bring any meaningful white contact with blacks. In the nation's largest black communities, segregation continued at extreme levels with little or no downward trend.

For blacks , therefore , segregation has been a universal historical experience. Hispanics, in contrast, display a high degree of variability across metropoli­tan areas, and this variation generally reflects two factors: generation and socioeconomic status. As socioeconomic levels rise and generations in the United States increase, levels of Hispanic segregation progressively fall . Urban areas that have recently received a large number of poorly educated Latino immigrants therefore display relatively high levels of segregation, but other areas generally evince low to moderate levels of Hispanic segregation.

There is one notable exception , however. Studies have shown that the likelihood of housing discrimina­tion rises as skin color darkens. Consistent with this finding, black and racially mixed Hispanics display higher levels of residential segregation than white Hispanics. Race therefore divides Hispanics geo­graphically on the basis of skin color. Since Puerto Ricans display the lowest proportion of people who self-identify as white among major groups, they display higher levels of segregation than other

MARCH 1993

Latinos. As a result, during the economic turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s when poverty rose among all Hispanics, only Puerto Ricans experienced a system­atic increase in the geographic concentration of poverty that led, in tum, to the formation of distinc­tive underclass communities.

Immigration

A fourth difference between Hispanics and blacks is the degree to which they are affected by immigra­tion. Although immigration from Africa and the Caribbean has risen in recent years, black Americans are still overwhelmingly native born and immigration plays no significant role in their population dynamics. Theories of black poverty can therefore ignore immigration as a competing social process, and analytic methods developed to study the black underclass need not take it into account. The overall socioeconomic position of blacks in the United States is simply not affected in any significant way by black in-migration from abroad.

Immigration, in contrast, lies at the heart of Hispanic population dynamics and it is impossible to make a firm. statement about the social, economic , or demographic position of Latinos without taking it into account. The study of Hispanic poverty requires that explicit consideration be given to international migration as a social process that is potentially confounded with other processes related to poverty in the United States.

The importance of immigration is suggested by the fact that in 1980, 29% of all Hispanics were foreign born. Among Cubans and Central/South Americans, the percentages were 77% and 80%, respectively; the percentage of island-born Puerto Ricans was 51 % and the share of foreign-born Mexicans was 26%. The relatively small percentage of immigrants among Mexicans reflects their long history of migration to the United States and the large size of their popula­tion. Immigration nonetheless plays an important role in Mexican population dynamics: 46% of the growth in the Mexican origin population of the United States from 1970 to 1980 was attributable to immigration.

Migration , of course, is a highly selective process, and the diverse historical processes that brought different national origin groups into the United States yield populations with widely discrepant socioeco­nomic compositions and rates of poverty. In general, the greater the barriers to entry, the more selective

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the migration process. The more physical, legal, and economic impediments that stand in the way of an immigrant's admission to the United States , the greater the selection on traits such as motivation, education, and wealth.

Among Hispanic groups in the United States, Puerto Ricans experience the fewest barriers. As U.S. citizens they encounter no legal barriers to migration to the mainland, and the economic and physical barriers largely disappeared after World War II with the initiation of cheap air flights between the island and New York City. Puerto Ricans who entered the United States were selected from a lower segment of the socioeconomic distribution of their own society than other groups.

For Mexicans the barriers are higher, but they have the advantage of sharing a land border with the United States , which substantially reduces the costs of entry. Moreover, prior to 1965 the legal impedi­ments to entry were rudimentary and during the period 1942 to 1965 Mexicans were actually recruited into the United States by the federal government. During this period of open migration, a substantial social infrastructure built up to connect sending and receiving communities. Potential Mexican migrants are now linked directly to the United States through a wide array of social ties. As a result, there are few significant barriers to entry and Mexico's emigration is skewed toward the lower end of its socioeconomic hierarchy.

Other Latino immigrant groups face substantially greater barriers to entry, and these barriers have selected more middle-class migrant streams. Potential entrants from the Dominican Republic and Colombia arrive by air through immigration checkpoints. The first migrants arrived through provisions in U.S. law designed to encourage immigration by highly skilled and educated individuals, or they simply entered with tourist visas and then stayed on in the United States to work illegally. Either way, the movement was selective. To migrate through the latter mechanism, someone must have enough money to purchase a round-trip air ticket and display sufficient economic stability at home to convince a U.S. consul they are not likely to remain in the United States and work.

The most select migration of all has been that of Cubans, and later, Nicaraguans. These groups arrived in the United States with the coming to power of left-wing governments in their countries of origin. With the nationalization of industries and the

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extension of government control into the private sector, the initial waves of migrants were dominated by entrepreneurs, financiers, and professionals who were instrumental in establishing business enclaves in the United States. Later waves of migrants were less selected, but have been able to use the businesses established by earlier arrivals as ladders of socioeco­nomic mobility, yielding a very high status immigrant group. Different migratory processes have thus selected a diverse set of Latino national origin groups that differed substantially from one another at their point of arrival in the United States.

Despite all these crucial differences, attempts to include Latinos in studies of the underclass usually involve little more than inserting a column for Hispanics into analyses and tabulations that would otherwise compare only whites and blacks. Such tables end up comparing native whites and blacks (both groups are more than 94% native-born) with a population that is a mixture of immigrants and natives.

Whereas black and white outcomes can be assumed to stem from socioeconomic processes that occur purely within the United States, Hispanic outcomes reflect the operation of these processes plus immigra­tion. The simple, ad hoc inclusion of Hispanics within studies of the underclass thus provides no guarantee that anything useful will result unless confounding migratory processes are explicitly modeled and taken into account.

Criteria for future research

These basic differences call into question the way that Latino poverty has been conceptualized and studied by researchers over the past decade. Much of this work was guided by the underclass model, a set of interrelated concepts, propositions, and methods developed largely from the African American experience. As we have seen, however, blacks and Latinos differ so fundamentally that this approach is not likely to be fruitful. Although it is not possible at this point to specify a comprehensi ve theory uf Hispanic poverty to replace the underclass model that has been so influential in galvanizing research on blacks, we can specify the criteria that a successful theory of Latino poverty must satisfy.

• First, it must recognize the diversity of the Spanish origin groups. Although Latino poverty may be described by a single theoretical model that incorporates an underlying set of causal factors, it is

VOLUME 47. NUMBER 1

clear that different factors will carry different empirical weights across groups, and that the underlying theory may lead to subtle, yet important differences in model specification for different national origins.

• Second, a comprehensive theory of Hispanic poverty must recognize race as a key factor in differentiating the experience of Latino groups and individuals in the United States. Since Hispanics are racially diverse and U.S. society clearly rewards people differently on the basis of skin color and racial heritage, race represents a very problematic factor of socioeconomic differentiation crucial to understanding how poverty is generated among Hispanics.

• Third, given segregation's key role in generating economic disadvantage and creating communities of spatially concentrated deprivation, a theory of Hispanic poverty must recognize the key role that residential segregation plays in conditioning the effect of other socioeconomic processes and in determining the opportunities open to Hispanics. Unless a model recognizes that different Hispanic groups experience

MARCH 1993

different levels of segregation, and that even within groups Latinos experience different levels of geo­graphic isolation on the basis of race, it will fail to capture the dynamics by which Hispanic poverty is generated and perpetuated .

• Finally, a well-specified theory of Latino poverty must incorporate immigration explicitly as a socioeco­nomic process that is confounded with other pro­cesses that produce poverty domestically. Interna­tional migration acts selectively through a variety of mechanisms to affect socioeconomic outcomes that we observe in the United States . Different legal, political, and economic barriers select widely different socioeconomic compositions among national origin groups, and selective processes of settlement and return affect the characteristics of who stays and who goes back. Unless these selective processes are modeled and studied directly, theories of Latino poverty will be fundamentally flawed and the empirical analyses that follow from them will be inherently biased. •

ITEMS! II

Landed Property Rights and Global Environmental Change by John F. Richards and David C. Major*

The massive environmental changes affecting the earth today, including but not limited to global warming, are having and will have substantial impacts on land use. The extent to which land use will adjust effectively to global environmental change depends in large measure on the systems of landed property rights that govern land use throughout the world, and how adaptable these systems are. This is not a simple legal problem, but rather a complex problem of social decision-making: the bundles of rights and obligations referred to as landed property rights reflect deep social concerns in every society. Moreover, there is an important historical dimension to the problem, since landed property rights often change slowly over time. The project described here is designed to study the role of landed property rights in global environmental change. It is sponsored by the Council's Committee for Research on Global Environmental Change, with initial funding from the National Science Foundation l Like the committee's other research activities, this one is being carried out by a consortium headed by a committee member. 2

• John F. Richards is professor of history at Duke University. a member of the Council'S Committee for Research on Global Environmen­tal Change (GEe), and head of the committee's research consortium on landed property rights and global environmental change. David C. Major is an economist and natural resources planner. He serves as staff to the GEe.

I The membership of the committee presently includes Edith Brown Weiss, Georgetown University Law Center, chair; Richard A. Berk. University of California, Los Angeles; William C. Clark. Harvard University; Harold K. Jacobson, University of Michigan; Diana M. Liverman, Pennsylvania State University; William O. Nordhaus, Yale University; John F. Richards, Duke University; Thomas C. Schelling. University of Maryland; Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford University; and Billie Lee Turner II, Clark University. Descriptions of the committee and its work are in Social Science Research Council, Annual Report /990-9/. New York. 1992; Richard C. Rockwell . "Institutions: Social Science Research Council," Environment 32(7):2-4. September 1990. and Richard C. Rockwell , "Report: SSRC Committee for Research on Global Environmental Change." Global Environmental Change 1(3):254-258. June 1991 .

1 Current members of the Research Consortium on Landed Property Rights are: Mr . Richards. chair; David H. Feeny, McMaster University; Eric T. FreyfogJe , University of Illinois; Stephen F. Gudeman, University of Minnesota; Ronald J. Herring. Cornell University; Margaret A. McKean, Duke University; Peter C. Perdue, Massachusetts Institute of

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Planning for the project began with a workshop held in Durham, North Carolina in September 1991, sponsored by a transnational research planning grant from the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.

This article describes the basic problems of landed property rights in global environmental change, theoretical issues and perspectives, the research approach, and plans for expanding the work to incorporate the insights of practitioners in sustainable development.

The problem

Intensification of land use has been one of the defining traits of our shared modern world history. Over the past five centuries, the world's lands have produced more and more goods and services to meet the needs of rapidly increasing human and domestic animal populations. The growth of world markets and the creation of standard commodities have stimulated production on the land. In varying sequences around the world expanding frontiers of settlement, cultiva­tion, commercial pastoralism, timbering, and mining have characterized this expansion in productivity. Settler populations have displaced, marginalized, or extinguished thousands of groups of indigenous peoples whose use of the land was centered on hunting, fishing, shifting cultivation, or nomadic pastoralism. 3

Massive transformations on the land have had large, cumulative effects on the global environment. For example, centuries of deforestation, expanding wet rice cultivation, and expanding livestock raising have made substantial contributions to the release of carbon dioxide, methane and other trace gases into the atmosphere. Pesticides, herbicides, and artificial fertilizers used in intensified agriculture have altered the natural environment throughout the world.

Technology (MIT); Karen B. Polenske, MIT; Steven E. Sanderson, University of Florida; Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz; and James L. Wescoat, Jr., University of Colorado.

1 J. F. Richards, "World Environmental History and Economic Development," in W. C. Clark and R. E. Munn. eds., Sustainable Development of the Biosphere (Cambridge. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield, cds., Land Degrada­tion and Society (London and New York: Methuen , 1987) , pp. 100--122. Douglass C. North and Robert P. Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge. UK: Cambridge University Press. 1973).

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Numerous other relationships between intensified land use and environmental change are easily discerned. Therefore, any effort to comprehend, to mitigate, or to adapt to global environmental change must necessarily address questions of changing human land use at varying space and time scales.

To understand human land use we must answer a fundamental question: Who has the right to do what with the land for how long? In each society drastic changes in the sets of rules for land use-the norma­tive system of landed property rights-have permitted and encouraged increased exploitation. The centraliz­ing state has asserted and later seized direct control over newly claimed frontier lands. New state-legiti­mized, market-driven holdings have swept aside the complex layered rights of access to land characteristic of tribal and peasant societies throughout the world. In some areas, new forms of land tenure have con­ceded nearly absolute right to dispose of all re­sources-animals , water, soil , forests, and minerals .

In every world region the state has imposed new landed property rights to secure and maintain intensified production on the land. Each state has carefully demarcated land in a new expression of human territoriality, i.e., "a powerful geographic strategy to control people and things by controlling area. "4 Naming , surveying, mapping , and bounding parcels of land has been a critical task for every regime. Landed property rights must be formally registered and approved by official agency. Taxation on the land and its production, unless specifically forgiven , has invariably accompanied demarcation and registration.

Land rights thus obtained have acquired new monetary value in a market for land. "[C]ommercial­ization of the soil" has been an essential step in meeting the ever-growing needs of an industrializing and urbanizing world order. 5 As development frontiers advance, land tenures ratified by the state rise in value. Generally, responding to buoyant regional and international commodity demands, land managers have engaged in largely unimpeded exploitation of their holdings. Indeed , those land owners who fail to make the most intensive use of their holdings may suffer disabilities. To obtain legal

4 Robert Sack. Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cam­bridge. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

, Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press. 1957; reprint of 1944 edition), pp. 178-179.

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title pioneers routinely have cleared land as evidence of productive use. Today on the Amazonian frontier, occupancy supported solely by hunting or other forms of forest extraction is not sufficient to support legal ownership for the settler-

Over the last century or so, restraints on the market and landed property rights have reappeared. In this countervailing trend, communities and state agencies have begun to impose zoning and other restrictions aimed at conservation and preservation of natural resources or ecosystems. Modem societies thereby reintroduce more complex, bundled, land tenures . These constrain land use within certain acceptable modes and reduce the scope and operation of the market for land. Although still subordinate to the drive for production, these conservation or preserva­tion-oriented property rights have been gaining steadily in scope and importance. More recently, social scientists have rediscovered common property systems that at local and regional scales seemingly have managed their resources on a sustainable basis. Increasingly, theorists are looking to various common property models to provide a better approach to land management.

A new global discourse is emerging in which environmental issues and questions of proper land use playa prominent role. Increasingly, environmentalists are claiming new transnational property rights in land. Transnational claims assert the value of lemurs in Madagascar, gibbons in Indonesia, or tropical forests in the Amazon. Organizations like the World Wildlife Fund now extend a specialized property claim on behalf of humankind and assert the value of lemurs against the indigenous owners of lands in Madagascar. Associated with this is a reversal of terms like "upgrading" and "degrading" of land­both social constructs and moral judgments. Under conventional norms of productivity land was up­graded and made more valuable by reducing biodiver­sity and biomass to improve output. From today's ecological perspective, reductions in biodiversity and biomass are seen as degrading thc land and lcsscning its value. The clash between these opposed moral perceptions is expressed in the struggle over property rights in land. 7

6 Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn , The Fate of the FOrl!st: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon (London and New Yon" Ve"'>. 1989). pp . 151-152.

7 Ronald J. Herring, guest ed ., Agriculture and Human Values , 7

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A workable taxonomy of property rights or regimes in land exists. Property rights in land can be classi­fied by type of ownership. The spectrum includes: unowned property; state property (both public property held in trust and state property); the property of groups of individuals Uointly-owned or common); and individually owned private property. For many sorts of analyses this taxonomy is useful and appropriate. But for a close study of the global context of rights in land and the relationship of these rights to environmental change, this scheme is not sufficient. We need a much more supple and powerful way to think about property rights in land. In a broader sense, we are really looking at the relationship between culture, nature, and place.

How do we study comparatively and globally modern regimes of property rights in land? Have there been converging trends in landed rights in recent world history? Is the model set out above accurate? Do certain property regimes iavariably lead to environmental stress and degradation on the land while others do not? Or, alternatively, do property rights systems simply reflect and respond to the larger forces of markets, population pressure, or state policy? How do we untangle the complex, interwo­ven, legal systems that define land rights in every society?

Shared theoretical issues and perspectives

The September 1991 planning workshop, held under the auspices of the Council's Committee for Research on Global Environmental Change, identified several significant theoretical issues embedded in any comparative study of property rights and land which must be addressed iIi the project. In their case studies and critical reviews, consortium participants will explicitly discuss these issues-although emphases will certainly vary by discipline and by the society and period studied. These shared theoretical concerns are as follows:

(Spring 1990), special issue: "Development Pressures and Ecological Constraints: The Deltaic Forests of India and Bangladesh." Also Harold Demsetz. "Toward a Theory of Property Rights." American Economic Review, 57 (May 1967):347-359, and Harold Demsetz, "The Property Rights Paradigm," Journal of Economic History, 33 (March 1973): 16--27. Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. HiD , "From Free Grass to Fences: Transforming the Commons of the American West," in Garrett Hardin and John Baden , eds., Managing the Commons (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. 1977) .

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• First, land as immovable property has distinctive qualities. One, of course, is location in space. Land acquires value for its owners in part by its location in a continually changing social and natural context. Certainly value by location figures heavily in any market for land rights. Property rights in land may also confer social identity and confirm the cultural heritage of an individual, a lineage, an organization, or a nation-state. In some instances, these landed rights are held to be non-negotiable and non­transferable and must be defended by extreme means.

• Second, differing scales of application are important. We live in multiple communities at local, regional, national , and increasingly, at global levels . Property rights in land may well be differently understood in each of these communities. Certain kinds of relationships exist within small local communities that are impossible in larger units such as nation-states.

• Third, land rights invariably consist of complex "bundles" of rights and must be viewed from that perspective. Access to subtractible resources-soil, water, minerals, plants , wildlife-are part of the rights to be allocated. Territorial rights include the right to exclude others from occupancy and/or from access to land resources. Obviously these rights can be allocated among several owners in intricate ways or they can be retained by a single owner. Entire bundles or a single element of these rights may be transferred to other owners.

• Fourth, property rights are made within communi­ties. Any functioning set of property rights in land must possess a moral grounding in the culture of the community. To be effectively enforced, rules governing the use of land assets, including space for occupancy, must rest on shared cultural assumptions about the proper use of those assets. Serious conflict can arise when community conceptions of property rights clash with those held by the state or ruler. Finally, property rights in land emerge from and are defined by a continuing process of conflict and negotiation. Even the most rigid of property regimes is constantly challenged, altered, and redefined. Therefore, a cross-section of established property rights at a single date, as defined by the state, fails to convey the extent to which property rights form a changing social construct. The specific historical context in which conflict occurs is an important object of study. Conflict and negotiation over land occurs within societies and, most dramatically,

VOLUME 47, NUMBER 1

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between societies. Often an invading or intrusive state imposes new forms of more uniform land ownership in the face of dogged resistance from local communi­ties possessing their own systems of landed property rights. The resistance of existing property rights systems to change is another important variable. A significant empirical question is: How do people behave when their property rights in land are threatened with change? Any consideration of property rights in land must include an analysis of past, present, and future change.

The approach

The project is structured around an interactive research process that includes a total of four two-and­a-half day group meetings to be held over a two-year period. This process is one of the most important aspects of the project. At the first working meeting of the consortium (February 26--28, 1993), participants are presenting proposed topics for group consider­ation. Each participant will write a substantial scholarly paper over the course of the two-year period. The papers will present data and analysis from one or more case studies of changing property rights in land drawn from the scholar's world region of expertise, e.g., Southeast Asia. After intensive consideration of each paper by the group, participants will refine their approaches. Some papers may be confined to a single case study; others may adopt a broader synthetic or comparative perspective. By initially sharpening the actual paper topics and scholarly approaches to be taken, we will contribute directly to the coherence of the published work of the project. At the second meeting, each participant will present a draft of his or her paper. At the third and fourth meetings, each paper will be presented, critiqued by the group, and subsequently revised for future publication in a volume to be edited by John Richards. For each workshop session an outside

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commentator will be invited to help critique the work in progress and, if necessary, to challenge assump­tions already made by the working group.

In other words, our approach is to organize a sustained, creative conversation about the topic that will build from one session to the next. Each author will benefit from group critiques and discussions at the meetings and from informal networking and exchanges as the project progresses. This interaction ensures a better, more coherent set of papers than that emerging from the ordinary one-meeting workshop or symposium. That this is a truly interdisciplinary enterprise will also challenge many unspoken assumptions and lead to clearer, fresher thinking on the issues.

Extensions of the project

Plans are being formulated to expand the scholarly project described above to include practitioners in sustainable development. This would add to the project in two important ways. First, an additional workshop would be held, at which the research team will discuss their findings and their potential applica­tions with practitioners of sustainable development and environmental management. The invited practi­tioners will provide their own critiques and perspec­tives on the work in draft. This will be an exceptional opportunity to trade ideas and information. Second, a monograph based on the workshop will be written, which would make available to practitioners the principal practical implications of the research work. The monograph will be a working guide that will complement the scholarly volume to be produced.

Given that this topic has been insufficiently studied, it is hoped that this project will contribute fundamentally to knowledge and understanding of the role of landed property rights in global environmental change. •

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Review Essay: The "Underclass" Debate: Views from History

The Underclass Debate: Views from History, edited by Michael B. Katz. Sponsored by the Committee for Research on the Urban Underclass. Princeton University Press, 1993. Cloth and paper. 507 pp.

Reviewed by Alice O'Connor*

Debates about contemporary social problems too often neglect what we know from the past, and recent literature on persistent urban poverty is no exception. Recognizing the need for more historical perspective in its own work, the Council's Committee for Research on the Urban Underclass agreed to sponsor a volume on the historical origins of the urban underclass and commissioned chapters through a request for proposals which were then subject to peer review. The "Underclass" Debate: Views from History is edited by University of Pennsylvania historian Michael B. Katz. Tbe twelve-chapter volume includes contributions from a diverse group of urban bistorians and sociologists, including senior scholars as well as recent Ph.D.'s, thus fulfilling the important Council objectives of stimulating collabora­tions across disciplines and bringing new voices into scholarly discourse on persistent urban poverty. ** More than informing the scholarly debate, this provocative volume also promises to stimulate new historical scholarship on poverty.

As Katz points out in his introductory essay, the volume aims to present contemporary urban poverty as a product of historical transformations in the economy, geography, politics, and institutions of urban America-transformations that have been occurring over the past two centuries. The "urban underclass," Katz suggests, has become a metaphor for these transformations in urban life and as such the

• Alice O'Connor, a historian , is program director (with Martha A. Gephart) of the Committee for Research on the Urban Underclass.

··Contributors include: David Bartelt. Temple University; Barbara Srenzel . Welles ley College; Thomas F. Jackson , Stanford University; Jacqueline Jones, Brandeis University; Harvey Kantor. University of Utah; Michael B. Katz. University of Pennsylvania; Robin D. G. Kelley, University of Michigan; Andrew T. MiJler, Union College; Suzanne Model . University of Massachusetts; Eric H. Monkkonen , University of California. Los Angeles; Kathryn M. Neckerman, Columbia University; Mark J. Stem, University of Pennsylvania; Thomas J. Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania; and Joe William Trotter, Jr. , Carnegie Mellon Univer­sity.

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concept must be scrutinized for the "implicit and unexamined" assumptions about history it contains. A second and related purpose is to inform contemporary social scientific and policy debates about the nature of persistent urban poverty with evidence from history.

Four sections

The volume is divided into four sections. Part one explores the roots of ghetto poverty in the African

. American urban experience, focusing particularly on black migration from the rural south and on the labor market and residential constraints blacks faced in the industrial urban centers of the Northeast and Mid­west. Section two examines this experience in light of the structural transformations of cities over the past two centuries , linking changing economic and labor market patterns with patterns of race and class-based residential segregation. With these broad structural developments as context, section three takes us to the level of individuals and families, examining family and ethnic group strategies for coping with economic hardship and achieving upward mobility. Essays in this section analyze the emergence of ethnic nicbes in urban labor markets, the impact of economic change on family household arrangements and gender relations, the role of welfare in household economies and the distinctive cultural heritage of African ' American families. Section four looks at the political and institutional dimensions of poverty. These essays discuss the political consciousness and activities of the urban poor as well as the agendas of more established social movements and the contemporary welfare state, continuing the emphasis from the previous section on how poor people have shaped their lives amidst the circumstances of deprivation, and introducing a long-neglected dimension to the literature by talking about the role of public policies and institutions in responding to and shaping urban poverty.

In his concluding essay, Katz uses the evidence and interpretations offered in the preceding chapters to suggest a way of reframing the underclass debate, seeking to ground it in an understanding of the long-term historical processes that shaped urban America-migration, segregation, the organization of

VOLUME 47. NUMBER 1

labor markets, the history of civic life and public institutions-and looking at the urban poor as political and economic actors in their own right. Katz offers this more historically grounded framework as an alternative to the individual-level analysis that characterizes a great deal of scholarly literature on the underclass.

Provocative themes

Here it is possible to highlight just a few of the many important and provocative themes that make this volume unique . First, for all their attention to the historical structures and processes shaping poverty, the authors share a concern with restoring a sense of agency to our understanding of the urban poor-and these essays depict poor people as historical actors with adaptive economic and cultural strategies and political consciousness rather than as passive victims of forces beyond their control. A second important theme of the volume draws attention to the role of policy, and of conscious political choices, in shaping patterns of urban inequality historically. A third theme that emerges from this analysis is an apprecia­tion for the complexity of urban poverty. Economy, geography, race and class discrimination, and policy choices have historically interacted to produce inequality and they cannot be understood as individ­ual variables to be weighed against one another in social scientific analysis.

Fourth, individually and collectively these essays offer a critique of the historical assumptions in the underclass literature. For example, critical of the truncated time-frame that discusses the underclass as a post-1970s phenomenon, the authors point out that the deindustrialization and depopulation that has decimated inner-city labor markets and neighborhoods long predates the 1970s, and can be traced to public policies as much as to economic forces. In a related point, several of these essays take issue with the assumption that pre-I970 ghetto neighborhoods were gcnuinely integrated across class lines and featured positive communal interaction between middle class and poor blacks - an assumption labeled the "golden ghetto" myth in one essay and challenged by evidence of class conflict among blacks. According to these essays, the contemporary underclass literature also underestimates the extent, longevity and impact of racial discrimination in urban labor markets and public institutions, perhaps reflecting a tendency to

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view the opening up of labor market opportunities after World War II as the historical norm. Finally, the authors of these essays are uniformly critical of the term "underclass," considering it imprecise, focused on individual characteristics to the neglect of the contextual dimensions of poverty, and above all stigmatizing because it is based on an idea of how poor people behave.

Conclusions

This is not to suggest that the essays in this volume add up to a single historical perspective on the urban underclass . Nevertheless, it is possible to generalize about a historical framework for thinking about important aspects of the underclass debate. Two issues emerge as especially important. One comes in the form of a question highlighted by the very act of taking a historical view of the problem. That, as Katz puts it, is the question of novelty: are we seeing a new and unprecedented form of inner-city poverty, as the underclass literature suggests? The volume offers no simple answer to this question, with some authors emphasizing the continuity of the poverty experience since the 19th century, and others arguing that the extent of the isolation and lack of opportunity faced by the urban poor are indeed unprecedented. There is agreement among the authors that while current patterns of urban poverty have deep historical roots and were a long time in the making, there are things that distinguish contemporary urban poverty from historical precedents. This is poverty in a post­industrial economy, when opportunities for low­skilled employment are shrinking (if not disappear­ing). Given the spatial configuration of metropolitan areas, the physical isolation of the poor and the gulf between classes appears more extreme; the situation of the urban poor has been worsened by the deteriora­tion of public institutions in recent years; and there may be a qualitative difference to life in poor inner-city neighborhoods. Is life more violent, or violence morc Icthal due to crime, drugs, and the availability of weapons than it was in the 19th century industrial city? This is a question that is raised but not definitively answered in the volume.

A second set of conclusions takes us to the realm of policy. In pointing to the various ways in which past policies and political choices have set up the conditions of urban poverty, these essays indicate that poverty is a more "tractable" problem than much of

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the literature makes it out to be. Moreover, as Katz suggests in his closing essay, the history of poverty is not about "other" people, but involves economic, social and political processes that affect all Ameri-

cans. To the extent that the historical view can stimulate a more inclusive analysis of poverty, it is also suggestive of the need for a new, more inclusive framework for policy responses. •

New Staff Appointments

Scott Bruckner has joined the Council as the second program officer (with Susan Bronson) for the Joint Committee on the Soviet Union and Its Successor States. His appointment was occasioned by the departure last fall of Robert T. Huber, the former program director, for a position as vice president of the International Research & Exchanges Board (lREX).

Mr. Bruckner received his Ph.D. in political science in 1992 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he specialized in Soviet studies, comparative political economy, and international relations. His current research interests include the post-Soviet region and the problems of institutional rigidity and change. Mr. Bruckner's dissertation, entitled "The Strategic Role of Ideology: Exploring the Links between Incomplete Information, Signaling, and 'Getting Stuck' in Soviet Politics," explored these concerns by asking why Soviet central decision­makers were unable to disengage themselves from self-destructive policy programs and ideas.

Mr. Bruckner received his M.A. from UCLA in 1988 and completed his undergraduate training in international relations and Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Southern California in 1984. Prior to coming to the Council, he was a

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postdoctoral fellow of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. While there he began work on a new project that is examining the emergence of private property rights (specifically, the "privatization decision" by elites) in the former centrally planned economies.

Itty Abraham has been named program officer to the Joint Committee on South Asia and the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia. After completing his undergraduate training at Loyola College in Madras, Mr. Abraham earned his M.S. in economics in 1986 and his Ph.D. in political science in 1992 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His dissertation, entitled "Security, Technology and Ideology: 'Strategic Enclaves' in Brazil and India, 1945-1989," is a comparative study of technology development in two large developing countries.

Mr. Abraham's current research interests lie in the relationship between science and politics, specifically the growth and political economy of modem scientific institutions in the developing world. His most recent publication appeared in the journal Armed F Drees and Society (Winter 1992). Before coming to the Council, Mr. Abraham was a research associate in the Program in South and West Asian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

VOLUME 47, NUMBER 1

Current Activities at the Council

Global Cities Project

On October 27- 30, 1992, twenty scholars from the United States, France, England , Ger­many, and Italy met at the Ministry of Research in Paris to consider the status and direction of the research project on comparing key urban nodes in the global system. The meeting discussed which European cities might be included in the project, how the comparative research project should be articulated with urban research being sponsored by the European Science Founda­tion on the changing European system of cities, and how to treat the case of Germany which, though one of the three strongest economies of the world, does not have a single city that combines all the functions usually under­taken by global cities . In addition, participants in the meeting worked on refining how to go about comparative and collaborative research on the specific topics for research , and heard reports from French scholars on these topics with respect to Paris.

The meeting produced a consensus on three points: that London should be added to the comparison; that the project should concentrate on a manage­ably small number of cities; and that, while the project needed to be sensitive to changes in regional systems of cities, the ESF should undertake to organize a separate but loosely linked research effort that would concentrate on the European city system in general.

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The issue of a possible German comparison was left open.

As a result of the Paris meeting , a second meeting was held on November 20 in London to determine whether there was sufficient interest among British scholars to organize a team that would bring that city into the comparison. Sixteen British scholars from the disciplines of sociology, economics, political science, geography, and planning participated in a session hosted by the Polytechnic of the City of London. They were enthusiastic about joining the collaboration. Subsequent discussions between the Economic and Social Re­search Council and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique regarding their collaborative research program have identified this project as one which they both wish to support. Staff: John H. Mollenkopf.

Human Rights, Justice, and Society in Latin America

In cooperation with the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), and with funding from the Ford Foundation, the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies sponsored a conference entitled "Human Rights, Justice, and Society" in Buenos Aires , Argentina on October 22- 24, 1992.' The conference was part

I Authors of papers included Teresa CaJdeira , Centro Brasileiro de Analise e Planejamento (CEBRAP), Sao Paulo; Carlos Ivan Degregori , Instituto de Estudios Peruanas (lEP), Lima; Manuel Antonio Gamlcn, FLACSO-Chile; Carlos Acuna and Catalina Smulovitz , CEDES; Jennifer Schirmer.

of an ongoing effort by the committee to stimulate dialogue between researchers and practi­tioners concerned with human rights in Latin America and to encourage interdisciplinary, comparative research on human rights-related topics.

While the systematic violation of basic human rights by state authorities aiming to stamp out political dissent no longer prevails in most of the region, a new set of concerns has come to the fore, as various groups have employed the discourse of human rights to press for an expansion of their rights and entitlements . Feminism and women's rights led the way; claims for the rights of children, youth, the elderly, and other marginalized groups followed. The reemergence of ethnicity and nationality as bases for collective identity have also played a critical role in the expansion of tradi­tional definitions of human rights.

The evolution of these trends will shape the character of new

Wellesley College; Kathryn Sikkink , Uni ver­sity of Minnesota; Carlos Hasenbalg, Centro de Estudos Afro-asiaticos , Rio de Janeiro; Rodolfa Stavenhagen , EI Colegio de Ml!xico; Fabio Wanderley Reis, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Bela Horizonte; and Elizabeth Jelin. CEDES. Written comments were presented by Meg Crahan. Occidental College; Laura Gingold , CEDES; Mario Lungo, Universidad Centroamericana , San Salvador; Carina Perelli . Peitho, Sociedad de Analisis Politico. Montevideo; Juan Mendez, Americas Watch; Emilio Mignone, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales. Buenos Aires; Fernando Rojas, Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Legales Alternativos·Bogot.4; Enrique Mayer, University of Illinois; Hilda S~balo, Centro de Investigaciones Sociales sabre el Estado y la Administraci6n!Universidad de Buenos Aires; and Nancy Cardia , Universidade de S30 Paulo.

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democracies throughout Latin America, yet the social sciences are only now beginning to recognize the relevance of human rights issues to the current period. By analyzing the impact of contemporary changes in Latin America on several dimensions of the field of human rights, this conference aimed to help set the stage for future research on human rights in the region.

The meeting was organized into sections analyzing five broad themes: violence and human rights; civil-military relations following democratic transitions; the international dimension of human rights; ethnic and collec­tive rights; and the construction of democratic citizenship. All of the papers presented, as well as the comments prepared by discus­sants, are currently being revised for publication in a volume to be edited by the conference orga­nizer, Elizabeth JeHn.

Indochina Planning Workshop

During the late 1980s, agree­ments between the Council and seven counterpart organizations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were signed to foster scholarly cooperation. The last few years have seen enormous transforma­tions within those three countries and in their relationship with the world beyond their borders.

Given these conditions and the SSRC's new emphasis on comparative and transnational processes, and with the support of the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, the Council invited scholars from the region to meet with Western experts on Decem-

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ber 11-12, 1992 to define a new agenda for research in and about the region.' Participants identified the relevant transitions occurring in each of the three countries, and outlined the pressing social science issues surrounding these transitions.

Discussions were held on current sociopolitical, demo­graphic, and economic trends; issues linking the three countries and those connecting them to their neighbors in Southeast Asia; comparable changes in other regions; and transnational or global processes including environmental change, population movements, and peace and security.

In the coming months, the SSRC will be developing a set of projects based on the insights derived from tt,is initial planning session. One of the project's goals is to encourage other institutions involved in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to act

·Participants included David L. Feathennan, SSRC. cochair; Andrea Panaritis. Christopher Reynolds Foundation, cochair; Vu Than Anh, Economics Institute, National Center for the Social Sciences (NeSS) , Hanoi; Deuang Deuane Bounyavong. SSRC Laos field officer; Duthine Bounyavong, Deputy Chief, Depart· meot of Literature, Ministry of Infonnation , Vientiene, Laos; David Chandler, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University; Peter Geithner. Ford Foundation; Stephan Haggard. University of California, San Diego; Charles Hirschman, University of Washington; Carol Ireson . Williamette University; Khieu Khanarith, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister, Prime Minister's Office, State of Cambodia; Ben Kiernan , Yale University; Terrill Lautz. Henry Luce Foundation; David Marr, Research School for Pacific Studies. Australian National University; Dwight Perkins. Harvard Institute for International Development; Cham Prasidh , Deputy Minister, Prime Minister's Office. State of Cambodia; Pham Bich San, NCSS, Hanoi . Mary Byrne McDonnell and Toby Alice Volkman served as staff.

cooperatively and to encourage funders to focus resources on selected priorities in the three countries.

Puerto Rican Poverty Workshop

On October 23-25, 1992 the grantees from the Initiative on the Causes and Consequences of Puerto Rican Poverty, sponsored by the Committee for Public Policy Research on Contemporary Hispanic Issues and the Commit­tee for Research on the Urban Underclass, attended a workshop hosted by the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos at Hunter College, New York. The purpose of the workshop was to give the grantees an opportunity to present work in progress, and to ex­change ideas with scholars engaged in related research.

The workshop was designed around subject areas related to the topics of the grantees' papers: economic and employment issues; residential segregation; and health and the environment. Four panels were organized based on these subject areas'

The workshop opened with an introductory address by Frank Bonilla, co-director of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos and director of the Inter-University

• Scholars invited to participate as facilita­tors for the panels included: Maria Enchau­tegui, Urban Institute; Lisandro Perez, florida International University; Edwin Melendez, University of Massachusetts, Boston; Terry Rosenberg , Community Services Society of New York City; Douglas Gurak, Cornell University; Jose S!nchez, State University of New York , Old Westbury; Iris Lopez, City College, City University of New York; and James Edell , New York Foundling Hospital. Felix V. Matos Rodriguez and AJice O'Connor served as staff.

VOLUME 47, NUMBER I

Program for Latino Research (lUP), who talked about the importance of Puerto Rican poverty research in understanding the larger processes of social stratification and racial domina­tion within and among peoples and nations. Mr. Bonilla also pointed out some of the inadequa­cies of the underclass framework for explaining the poverty of Latinos in general , and of Puerto Ricans in particular. If academics are to have an impact in changing the poverty affecting the Latino community, Bonilla said, it is important that poverty research try to keep Latinos more scientifi­cally informed and politically conscious .

Following Mr. Bonilla's address , the panels met to discuss and critique the grantees' drafts. Later, each group organized a brief presentation for a larger audience, which included guests from the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos , the Urban Underclass dissertation program, the International Predissertation Fellowship Program, and the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, among others. The presentations focused on the major theoretical and methodological issues raised during the individual panel discussions, and attempted to tie the particular focus of each panel to the larger issues related to Puerto Rican and Latino poverty. Among the issues discussed during the presentations were the necessity of combining quantita­tive and qualitative (particularly ethnography) research strategies; the importance of race in determining Puerto Rican poverty;

MARCH 1993

the need for community, neigh­borhood, or enclave analysis for Puerto Ricans; the potential use of new longitudinal data sets to complement previous cross­sectional analysis; investigating survival strategies (such as participating in the informal economy) among the poor; the importance of locating Puerto Rican poverty within emerging transnational phenomena; and the need to ensure that Puerto Rican poverty research reaches those in public policymaking circles.

Financial support for the workshop was provided by the Ford Foundation and the Rocke­feller Foundation.

Transnational Religion and Peace and Security

Over the last two years, a small group of scholars has been exploring the issue of transna­tional religious movements and their influence upon the domestic politics of states and upon international relations in general. The project borrows some of its metaphors and theoretical orientation from international political economy, which has elaborated the idea of transactions and networks that cross state boundaries, but do not emanate from - nor are controlled by­state actors .

Sponsored by the SSRC's Committee on International Peace and Security, the group has attempted to define a research agenda which would relate religious institutions, practice , ideas , and cultures to conflict and

cooperation in the international arena. It seeks to create bridges between scholarship on interna­tional relations where the unit of analysis has traditionally been the state, and scholarship on religion where the focus is on institutions, doctrine, and strategies of proselytization.

The project has sought to explore the ways in which Christian , Muslim, Judaic, and Hindu revitalization movements have become deeply implicated in domestic and transnational politics, and the challenges which they pose to the system of states in international politics. By borrowing concepts and meta­phors from political economy, the project seeks to establish the importance of scholarship which takes national boundaries less seriously than conventional approaches which have dominated the study of international relations and security. A meeting has been scheduled for the summer of 1993 to discuss and synthesize the papers given at past meetings, with a view to future publication.

The project is part of a wider effort by the SSRC's Committee on International Peace and Security to promote new ap­proaches to the study of issues of international affairs. The commit­tee's work has primarily sup­ported fellowships for interdisci­plinary training and research of junior scholars. However, it also seeks to encourage a broadening of debates and the promotion of policy-relevant research on issues of international peace and security. Staff: Cary Fraser.

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Three New Census Volumes

The publication of the three volumes noted below represents the completion of "The Popula­tion of the United States in the 1980s," a Census monograph se­ries planned, commissioned, and monitored by the Committee for Research on the 1980 Census (1981-1988). The committee was sponsored by the SSRC, the Rus­sell Sage Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with the collaboration of the U.S. Bu­reau of the Census. The series is a landmark in social science re­search and revives a long tradition of independent census analysis. There are 17 volumes in all.

America's Children: Resources from Family, Government, and the Economy, by Donald J. Hernandez. A publication in the series, "The Population of the United States in the 1980s." Sponsored by the Committee for Research on the 1980 Census. New York: Russell Sage Founda­tion, 1993. 480 pages.

America's Children offers an overview of the dramatic transformations in American childhood over the past 50 years, a period of historic shifts that reduced the human and material resources available to our children. Despite these reduc­tions, economic, family, and educational programs for children eam low national priority and must depend on inconsistent state and local management.

Drawing upon both historical and recent data, including census information from 1940 to 1980,

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the author puts forth a compelling case for overhauling our national child welfare policies. He shows how important revolutions in household composition and income, parental education and employment, child care, and levels of poverty have affected children's well-being.

The book explores the interac­tion of many trends in children's lives and the fundamental social, demographic , and economic processes that lie at their core. The book concludes with an analysis of the ability of families and governments to provide for a new age of children, with emphasis on reducing racial inequities and providing greater public support for families, comparable to the family policies of other developed countries. As the traditional "Ozzie and Harriet" family recedes into collective memory, the impor­tance of creating strong national policies for children is amplified, particularly in the areas of financial assistance, health insurance, education, and daycare. This volume provides a guide for reassessing the forces that shape our children and the resources available to shape their future .

Donald J. Hernandez is chief of the Marriage and Family Statistics Branch of the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, by Herbert Barringer, Robert W. Gardner, and Michael J. Levin. A publica­tion in the series, "The Popula-

tion of the United States in the 1980s." Sponsored by the Committee for Research on the 1980 Census. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1993. 384 pages.

Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States examines in comprehensive detail the most rapidly growing and quickly changing minority group in the United States. Once a small population, Asians and Pacific Islanders are now recognized by official census counts and in society at large as a diverse people. In spite of the variety of ethnic origins , the public image of Asians as a single "model minority" still persists, clouding the struggles that many have encountered in American society.

This volume assembles a wealth of data from the 1980 and 1990 censuses, as well as other published and unpublished sources, to provide a complete demographic, social , and economic portrait. Comparisons of income, employment, and education demonstrate surprising inequalities among the many different national groups. The authors' analyses suggest that, despite their relatively successful public image, Asians and Pacific Islanders are a complex, multi­dimensional people still struggling in their pursuit of the American dream. With" Japan-bashing" on the rise and hostility toward Asian Americans escalating in some quarters, this book provides much needed insight into this increas­ingly significant group.

Herbert Barringer is professor

VOLUME 47. NUMBER I

of sociology at the University of Hawaii. Robert W. Gardner is assistant director of the East-West Population Institute , Hawaii. Michael J. Levin is a member of the Population Division of the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

A Generation of Change: A Profile of America's Older Generation, by Jacob S. Siegel. A publication in the series, "The Population of the United States in the 1980s." Sponsored by the Committee for Research on the 1980 Census. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1993. 640 pages.

As modern medicine extends the average life span and the baby boom generation begins to

MARCH 1993

approach middle age, the number of older Americans is expected to more than double in the next century. Seventy-five percent of U.S. health care expenditures go toward the elderly. But as national trends toward early retirement and low birthrate continue, an aging American population could face crises in meeting its financial and physical needs. According to the author, astute public planning must be informed by an understanding of the demographic, social, and economic characteristics of the older population as it is today and as it will be in the coming years .

Siegel employs census and survey data from 1950 through the mid-1980s to describe a population constantly shifting in

its ethnic and gender composition, geographic distribution, marital and living arrangements, health, employment, and economic status. Through comparisons with other age groups as well as with the elderly of previous decades , the author portrays the crucial influence of social and economic conditions over the life course on the quality of later life. A

Generation of Change should serve as a resource for policymak­ers seeking more effective solutions in critical areas such as housing , long-term health care, and the funding of Social Security and retirement programs.

Jacob S. Siegel is professor of demography at Georgetown University.

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Other Recent Council Publications

Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka, edited by James Brow and Joe Weeramunda. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on South Asia and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992. 445 pages.

This collection of essays came out of a 1984 conference on "Symbolic and Material Dimen­sions of Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka," which was held in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The thematic focus of the conference, and of this volume, was to understand the scope and intensity of the transformation of the Sri Lankan non-plantation economy in the last 40 years. Unlike more traditional studies, here the process of agrarian change is dialectically analyzed as both cause and outcome of larger political and cultural economies.

The set of essays collected in this volume addresses both micro­and macro-level concerns to give a highly nuanced picture of recent agrarian developments in Sri Lanka. The two introductory essays and the variety of ap­proaches used by contributors, i.e., ethnographic, historical, economic and cultural, frame the "small holder" section of Sri Lankan agriculture in the largest possible dynamic context.

James Brow is associate professor of anthropology and Asian studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Joe Weeramunda is senior lecturer in the Depart­ment of Sociology at the Univer­sity of Colombo.

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Capital of the American Century: The National and International Influence of New York City, edited by Martin Shefter. Sponsored by the Committee on New York City (1985-1991). New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1993. 256 pages.

This is the fourth in a series of books on New York City to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation. While previous volumes (Power, Culture and Place, Dual City, and Landscape of Modernity) have been primarily concerned with internal transfor­mations of the city, this volume examines the changing relations of New York City to the larger American society and the world beyond its shores.

New York's power base of corporations, banks, law fIrms, labor unions, artists, and intellec­tuals has played a critical role in shaping areas as varied as American popular culture, the nation's political doctrines, and the international capitaJist economy. If the city has lost its unique prominence in recent decades, the decline has been largely-and ironically-a result of the successful dispersion of its cosmopolitan values.

In exploring New York's influence, the authors of these essays assess the larger social and economic conditions that made it possible for a single city to exert such power. Despite New York's loss of preeminence, it has taken on new roles that reflect an increasingly global era: it is the center of U.S. foreign trade and

the international art market; New York also retains a crucial influence in information-intensive sectors such as corporate law, accounting, management consult­ing, and advertising.

This book serves as a link between the study of cities and the analysis of national and international affairs. It should contribute to a greater understand­ing of modem culture, the economy, and politics.

Martin Shefter is professor of government at Cornell University.

Chinese History in Economic Perspective, edited by Thomas G. Rawski and Lillian M. Li. Studies on China, 13. Based on a conference held in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1987 and another in Oracle, Arizona, held in January 1988 and sponsored by the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. xvii + 362 pages.

Most histories of the Chinese economy, whether by Western or Chinese scholars, tend to view the economy in institutional or social terms. In contrast, the studies in this volume systematically apply economic theory and methods to the study of China. While demonstrating to historians the advantages of an economic perspective, the authors, who include both historians and economists, contribute some new insights on issues of longstanding interest to both disciplines.

Part One, on price behavior, presents preliminary analyses of the extraordinarily wealthy Qing

VOLUME 47, NUMBER I

dynasty (1644-1911) grain price data from the imperial archives in Beijing and Taipei. These studies reveal long-term trends in the Chinese economy since the 17th century and present little known information about market integration, the agricultural economy, and demographic behavior in different regions of China.

The essays in Part Two, on market response , are concerned with different aspects of the economy of Republican China (1912-1949), showing that markets for land, labor, and capital sometimes functioned as predicted by models of economic "rationality," but behaved at other times in ways that can be explained only by combining economic analysis with knowl­edge of political, regional, class, and gender differences. Based on new types of data, they suggest novel interpretations of the Chinese economic experience.

Thomas G. Rawski is professor of economics and history at the University of Pittsburgh. Lillian M. Li is professor of history at Swarthmore College.

The Powers of Art: Patronage in Indian Culture, edited by Barbara Stoler Miller. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on South Asia and the Indo-U.S. Subcom­mission on Education and Culture, in conjunction with The Festival of India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. x + 338 pages, incl. plates.

As the subtitle of this volume indicates, . this selection of articles by leading scholars of Indian history, art history, anthropology,

MARCH 1993

language, and culture attempts to problematize the concept of patronage through a variety of methods and across regions and time periods. The very range and scope of the articles presented here indicates the complexity of what is usually uncritically referred to as "patronage" in the production of aesthetic commodi­ties . The volume hence engages in the "unpacking" of this concept from a multiplicity of positions. The essays are organized into four sections: Ancient India, South India, Mughal and Hindu Courts, and British Rule.

The book emerged from a symposium on Patronage in Indian Culture which was developed by the Joint Committee on South Asia during the year-long Festival of India in 1985. The symposium was held at the National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park , North Carolina) from October 10-13, 1985. A number of organizations provided support, including the American Institute for Indian Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.

The editor, Barbara Stoler Miller, is Milbank Professor of Humanities at Barnard College, New York.

Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture, edited by Eric Davis and Nicolas Gavrielides. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East. Miami: Florida International

University Press, 1991. xviii + 274 pages.

The chapters in this recent volume treat a number of important topics regarding the processes and mechanisms by which post-Ottoman states in the Middle East, almost entirely the creations of colonial powers, have shaped political identity, popular culture, and social relations in the modem Middle East. One essay, for example, explores the reshaping of the historical past to fit emerging needs in the new societies. Another analyzes identity formation in the new states and mechanisms that worked to change self-perceptions within the newly formed national boundaries. Arab scholars have contributed articles on the use of cultural materials-literary texts and folklore-as vehicles for understanding state formation and social change.

The volume also calls into question the assumption of many Western social scientists that our understanding of the Arab world has been impeded by the relative absence of a social science "tradi­tion" in the region. It suggests that the most appropriate sources for acquiring a better understand­ing of social change in Arab countries may not be in social science journals but rather in de­bates in historical and cultural journals, and in creative forms of expression, such as literature, art, photography, and film.

The papers in the book were developed in the course of an extended series of workshops and conferences in the early and mid-1980s. The foreword, by Donald Quataert, director of the South West Asian and North

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r

African Studies Program at the State University of New York, Binghamton, links the papers to ongoing events in the Middle East and to current theoretical debates in Middle East studies, the social sciences, and the humanities, which are of considerable interest to a wide range of scholars.

Eric Davis is associate professor of political science at Rutgers Uni­versity. Nicolas Gavrielides is pro­fessor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Cort­land .

Also noted: Democracias diferentes: Los regimenes con

Joint Committee on Western Europe Announcement

un partido dominante, edited by T.J. Pempel. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1991. (Spanish edition of Uncommon Democracies, Cornell University Press, 1990.) Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies and the Joint Committee on Western Europe. viii + 423 pages.

The Joint Committee on Western Europe would like to inform readers of Items that successful applicants for the Western Europe dissertation fellowship competition become automatically eligible for two special awards if their projects relate to French or Portuguese studies. The awards are the Tocqueville Fellowship and the Luso-American Development Foundation Fellowship. Two Tocqueville Fellowships and one Luso-American Development Foundation Fellowship are awarded each year. Both awards are administered by the SSRC's Western Europe program and are designed to promote substantive knowledge of a specific country's politics, society, and culture. The awards are made possible by grants from the French-American Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation.

For more information concerning these awards please contact the Western Europe program of the Social Science Research Council.

26\ ITEMs VOLUME 47 . NUMBER I

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Directors. 1991-92: PAUL B. B ,UTES. Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin); ROBERT H. BATES, Duke University; LAWRENCE D. 80BO, University of California, Los Angeles; ROBERT M. eOEN, Northwestern University; WILLIAM CRONON, University of Wisconsin, Madison; DAVID L. FEATHERMAN, Social Science Research Council; ALBERT FISHLOW, University of Calif ami a, Berkeley; BARBARA HEYNS , New York University; NAGAYO HOMMA, Tokyo Woman's Christian University; DAVID MAGNUSSON , University of Stockholm; EMILY MARTIN, The Johns Hopkins University; JOEL SHERZER, University of Texas, Austin; BURTON H. SINGER, Yale University; MARTA TlENDA, University of Chicago; DAVID WARD, University of Wisconsin , Madison; ROBERT B. ZAlONC. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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