The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea

Brett Bowden

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009, $45 hbk, ISBN: 9780226068145, 320 pp.

Reviewed by: Stephen Vertigans, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland

In The Empire of Civilization, Bowden provides an illuminating, well-informed and convincing positioning of the concept within both historical and contemporary political processes. Considered emphasis is placed upon the longue durée both to gain a better understanding of the associated language and the actions which tend to follow the language. Tracing these interconnections enables Bowden to detail ‘how significant forces acting within and upon the international states system have a clear-cut vision of the form of international society they envisage for the future and are taking certain steps to see that it is realized’ (p. 2). By establishing Western traditional conceptualisation and application, Bowden is able to locate the ‘war on terror’ within this tradition. In so doing, he challenges the tendency to examine world-shaping ideas and events in isolation and the ensuing perception that Western post-September 2001 policies are anomalous. On the contrary, they have been embedded features within Western relations with other parts of the world and continue as the uncontested basis for value judgements.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One provides the conceptual framework, identifying origins and normative features. Historically, variations upon the idea of progress precede the application of the concept of civilisation by many centuries.  Modern usage of progress is linked to scientific advancements, methods and reason embedded within the Enlightenment. The discovery of the New World contributed to the spectrum extending from barbarism to civilisation. Enlightenment ideals such as progress, modernity, markets, liberal democracy, capitalism and cosmopolitanism become interwoven within the concept of civilisation. The concept stops being a judgement and becomes a political, social and moral norm.  From this point onwards, the Western modern liberal democratic state is a benchmark for other nation-states and emergent nations to emulate. Western standards of civilisation become the means to distinguish between ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ nations and peoples, and continue to provide the criteria for determining membership to international collaborations. Hence ideas and processes associated with civilisation were, and remain, ‘more uniform than universal’ (p. 5). Somewhat ironically, one possible criticism of Bowden’s approach is that he tends to apply a universal conceptualisation of civilisation across and within nation-states.

Influenced by Elias’ consideration of the development of civilisational language in French and English thought and comparative analysis of Kultur and Zivilisation in Germany, Bowden considers how the origins are lost within poplar perceptions as civilisation becomes a taken for granted concept. However unlike Elias, in the cases of France and Germany there is a disjunction between the conceptual discussion and subsequent development of ideas and behaviour. Clearly there is only so much material that could be included in this book. Nevertheless this does seem like a missed opportunity to locate the language surrounding French colonialism, particularly its brutal ending, and the trajectory from Germanic forays in Africa through to the Holocaust. Conversely Bowden does not allocate the same attention to the development of Spanish discourse, yet includes considerably more examples of Spanish expansion and civilisational intent. Furthermore, there was arguably more scope to consider the habitus in which the standards were formulated and the influence of materialistic factors on colonialism which are somewhat neglected.

Enlightenment features that became uncritically adopted within the formulation of the concept of civilisation are then transferred in Part Two from medieval to modern periods and European expansion. Fascinating examples are drawn upon. For instance, Bowden establishes early versions of European assertions for superiority within the crusades generally and in particular refers to Martin Wight’s analysis of Pope Innocent IV’s papal claims to the Mongol Emperor Guyuk Khan. The standardisation of Western European values was to subsequently become quickly embedded and the political and legal benchmark on which to measure and classify other peoples. When natives were deemed to not be performing to European standards, colonialism was judged to be necessary and lawful.

Bowden also describes Adam Smith’s observations on the advantages firearms provided for the ‘opulent and civilized, over a poor and barbarous nation. The invention of firearms ... which at first sight appears to be pernicious, is certainly favourable, both to the permanency and to the extension of civilization’ (p. 145). That the outcome is that the ‘civilised’ adopt brutal methods of destruction and annihilation in order to change the standards of the uncivilised has frequently been uncritically accepted as a price worth paying.  The cost of the damage against the standards in whose cause warfare was initiated was rarely considered during the early phases of colonialism and was similarly neglected within the ‘war on terror’s’ military surge. Considerable evidence is allocated to the civilising intentions within colonialism, although this may overestimate the capabilities of some of the colonialists. The role of academics would also have helped to provide a more comprehensive account for the formulation of policies, underpinning standards and declarations of progress. Moreover, there is little discussion about how colonial discourse was implemented and its impact, both intentional and unintentional.

The final part locates the concept within the ‘war on terror’ and the continuing underpinning of global, hugely powerful institutions by Western derived civilisational standards. Like the classical standard, contemporary measure of civilisation continues to be based upon the extent to which non-Western nation-states can govern and conduct themselves according to Western terms.  Contrary to their presented representations for the interests of the world, Bowden convincingly argues that international UN Security Council and IMF decisions represent interests of the West. Moreover economic imperialism has meant that the economic and monetary policies that must be followed to secure World Bank and IMF lending are determined according to the normative civilisational standards which orientate around free trade.  The interplay between economics, politics and international relations is also subjected to the same criteria, namely the emphasised connections between free trade, democracy, security and international cooperation.

Bowden explains that he is focussing upon Western political, legal and social traditions of thought because these have been most instrumental in the landmark events. While understandable, this tends to mean that the subjects of the civilising missions are lost in the processes, even when they could add substance to his exposition. For instance, although Bowden acknowledges that anti-colonial nationalist movements emerged in part to challenge standards of civilisation he fails to consider why the newly-formed elites adopted many of the same Western derived standards, policies and structures. And the tendency to concentrate on what were, and remain, ostensibly elite led civilising missions, means that the ‘minority of the best’ becomes transposed as uniform standards within. Hence discrepancies within Western nations, both socio-economic and ethnic-religious, are lost. Although disagreements among and within Western nations are acknowledged, they are not explored. Consequently the presence of the ‘uncivilised’ other in ‘civilised’ nations and what that has meant for the ‘war on terror within’ is not explored.

These quibbles aside, this is an impressive, timely book which is likely to become an influential text within international relations. Locating the ‘war on terror’ and international agencies in the legacies of the past contributes to a starkly sobering outlook; namely a change in approach must overcome deeply-rooted expansionist ‘civilised’ values and institutions. Imperial-style interventions, even when under the remit of humanitarianism, have significant and often severe consequences which have to be considered in advance. History shows that this rarely happens. Moreover today the nature of international relations and global figurations means that such consequences are no longer directly restricted to those who are ‘being civilised’.  On the contrary, the civilisers’ nations will also face challenges that stem from an unwillingness or inability to recognise or accommodate other peoples and values.

Capitalism and the Jews

Jerry Z. Muller

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010, $24.95 hbk, ISBN: 9780691144788, 280 pp.

Reviewed by: Daniel Klenbort, Morehouse College, Georgia, USA

Capitalism and the Jews by Jerry Z. Muller is about how capitalism, the modern economy, and ‘capitalism’ the idea of the modern economy have had a profound effect on Jews. On the one hand, Jews have prospered wherever modern capitalism has flourished; on the other, the identification of Jews with a system that has transformed the world, disturbing social relations and creating vast resentments, led to catastrophe – the mass murder of European Jews. Capitalism and the Jews is an investigation of the long- and medium-term processes governing the fate of the Jews in the Twentieth Century.

In the nineteenth century, economic modernisation and the creation of more democratic and secular states led to what was called the emancipation of the Jews, i.e. the acquisition of equal rights under the law. This development went furthest in Western Europe and was least evident in the Russian Empire, where the majority of European Jews lived, and where Jews continued to be subject to legal restrictions and to sporadic violent attacks. The logic of secularisation and the spread of rule of law would seem to entail a decline in anti-Semitism, but, as Muller points out, a new nationalistic anti-Semitism developed in the late nineteenth century. This new anti-Semitism was an amalgam of the old religious anti-Semitism and on emerging nationalism which defined Jews out of the nation, i.e. as ethnic outsiders.

Capitalism and the Jews consists of four largely independent chapters, each taking up one aspect of the relationship. The first chapter discusses the way in which pre-modern attitudes towards capitalism, which was seen as corrupt and illegitimate and which was connected to Jews, persisted into modern times. Muller argues that those thinkers, such as Voltaire, Marx and Sombart who disliked capitalism, tended to identify it with Jews and express anti-Semitic sentiments, while thinkers who had a favourable view of capitalism, such as Montesquieu, Hume and Simmel, had a more favourable view of Jews. The medieval identification of Jews with capitalism, especially with usury, made it easy to blame the Jews for the real and perceived evils of capitalism as it expanded in the nineteenth century.

Chapter two, ‘The Jewish Response to Capitalism’, takes off from a 1972 lecture by Milton Friedman, called ‘Capitalism and the Jews’, which provided Muller with the title for his book. Friedman lamented that Jews, who benefited greatly from capitalism, were also leading ideological opponents of capitalism. I recently walked into a dry cleaner, and the Indian woman who owned the shop noticed the book I was carrying and proceeded to ask me why Jews, who were hardworking and successful, support welfare for all those lazy people who are unwilling to work – shades of Milton Friedman. Muller discusses both Jewish success and Jewish attitudes towards capitalism. As the development of modern capitalism created new economic opportunities in Europe and its colonial offshoots, Jews were disproportionately successful in seizing them. That is because the Jews of Europe were well positioned by their pre-modern history. Their experience, and the cultural propensities it engendered, predisposed them toward commerce and finance, and toward the free professions.

One could say that there was a Jewish habitus (a term Muller does not use), which enabled Jews to succeed. Why? For centuries Jews had been engaged in petty trade and the skills that petty traders had could be applied to more lucrative trade as opportunities increased. Jews had also long emphasised learning, and the skills and habits of religious learning, once applied to secular learning in societies which needed many more doctors, lawyers, journalists and other educated professionals, led to success in the free professions. By 1900 Jews were over represented by a factor of five or ten in many professions in Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. A similar trajectory can be seen in the USA, where the children and grandchildren of poor immigrants achieved extraordinary success. Just count the number of Jewish billionaires and Nobel Prize winners (Jews are 2 per cent of the population of the USA and have won 36 per cent of Nobel Prizes). Jewish success is so extraordinary that it needs to be more thoroughly investigated.

Muller examines Jewish anti-capitalism and concludes that Friedman was exaggerating. Jews were active in left-wing politics, but not all Jews were on the left and only a small minority were on the extreme left. And, if one examines what Jews did, one sees that they were not shy about going into business. This brings Muller to his third chapter, ‘Radical Capitalism Reconsidered: The Jew as Communist’. This discussion of the heavy presence of Jews in the Communist leadership in Eastern and Central Europe both right after WWI and WWII is mostly peripheral to the main argument. What Muller does point out is the prominence of Jews in the Communist revolutions after WWII provided fuel for anti-Semitism; Communism could and was portrayed as part of a Jewish conspiracy and the Nazis as crusaders against Judeo-Bolshevism. Muller is at pains to defend Jews against this charge by pointing out that most Jews were not attracted to Communism. Muller notices that some Jews, especially Communists and Zionists, were critical of diasporic Jewish life, but I would place more emphasis on this than Muller does. These Jewish critics believed a normal nation consists of many peasants, a large number of workers, a smaller number of merchants and an even smaller number of intellectuals. Jews, these internal critics said, were like an upside-down pyramid. This image was explicit among the Zionists, but more implicit for the Communists. These Jews, members of an outsider group, had internalised the establishment’s negative image.

The fourth chapter, ‘The Economics of Nationalism and the Fate of the Jews in Twentieth-Century Europe’, shows how and why a new and dangerous anti-Semitism developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Muller’s main point, which he takes from Ernest Gellner, is that as capitalism developed in central Europe, Jews were prepared to take advantage of the new opportunities in the commercial world and in the free professions, while the members of the newly conscious nationalities were far less equipped to succeed in this new economic world. The result was that Jews were much more successful. Since the newly conscious nationalities tended to see Jews as outsiders, and since there was already a long tradition of despising Jews, it is not surprising that Jewish success exacerbated anti-Semitism. Mass murder was not thereby made inevitable, but the preconditions for it had come into existence. Taken together the four chapters of Muller’s book help to illuminate the processes involved in the fate of the Jews in the twentieth century.

Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France

Brian Sandberg

Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, $60 hbk, ISBN: 9780801897290, 393pp.

Reviewed by: Helmut Kuzmics, University of Graz, Austria

Early readers familiar with Elias’s account of the last battle of the last Duke de Montmorency has learned to see his defeat, capture and death not only as a personal tragedy but as a landmark of the French civilising process – medieval, chivalrous attacking spirit gives way to the more machine-like and efficient behaviour of the royal army, directed by Schömberg and organized by Richelieu. According to Ranke’s narration, the Duke’s spontaneous, fatal decision could be seen as a romantic act of resistance; in Elias’s theoretical interpretation, it marked also the difference between two types of ‘affective household’ – in a transition from spontaneity to precaution, to self-discipline and self-constraint.

In Sandberg’s Warrior Pursuits, there is not only one Montmorency, but many of his kin and of his kind. They dominate large parts of Southern France in the early seventeenth century before the rise of the Fronde and of absolutism. The last Montmorency’s suicidal daredevilry was not exceptional, and it was not half as ‘irrational’ as it may seem to the reader of Elias or Ranke. Instead, these warrior princes were both rational war-entrepreneurs and, according to Sandberg’s scrutinising of various historical sources (letters, treaties and contracts, political pamphlets), also emotionally deeply shaped by their training in the profession of arms and the permanent practicing and experiencing of military violence during nearly permanent warfare. This richly documented and coloured picture of warrior nobles who defended their religious cause (Huguenots versus Catholics, often also directed against a weak and split royal authority) does not allow the forecasting ex post facto of any simple trend towards royal absolutism. On the contrary, lacking the bird’s-eye view of the long time-span of history, we gain a surprisingly complex jigsaw puzzle of a social landscape in which warrior-nobles develop broad networks of patronage and clientelism, mediated through bonds of affectionate ‘friendship’ and linking public with private violence in a way quite impenetrable to most observers. Nobles’ bodyguards formed a good example – they could serve state needs (p. 202), or also private interests.

Sandberg’s detailed empirical study aims at a comprehensive account of three aspects: (1) there was the tradition of a ‘profession of arms’, no longer proliferated in the chivalrous spirit of feudal knighthood, but mediated in formalised military service of early modernity and, though, deeply impregnated by courtois norms and values; (2) there was also the extended system of kinship and family, with personal bonds that were complemented by non-kin networks of patronage – the ties of nobility were ties of friendship, and royal offices could be acquired both by royal favours and be bought for money; (3) add to these ingredients a ‘culture of revolt’, shaped by unstoppable, permanent religious warfare and creating what Elias would have called a ‘habitus’.

This habitus enabled noblemen to sustain a climate of violence in which mutilation, killing, raiding, and cruel sieges were often of a ‘performative’, demonstrative, and intimidating kind. No clear separation was possible between perpetrators on the one hand and victims on the other. For the period under scrutiny, no pacification is visible. And, this is one core message, this culture of war and honour appears quite similar to the age of chivalry, when the sword and not the gun was the main weapon. But, at the end of this period, change occurred: the Bourbon dynasty grew stronger and closed ranks, opposition was delegitimised and French participation in the German Thirty Years’ War guided professional noble warriors in a new direction: away from religions protest and to a merely professional ethos of warfare, devoid of the former ‘culture of protest’.

This is an extraordinarily well-researched book, highly readable and informative. Does it really refute Elias’s theory of the transformation from warrior to courtier, of the courtly domestication of the French aristocracy and the monopolisation of the means of violence in the hands of the absolutist monarch? The book shows how difficult it is to recognise larger trends aiming at a distinct direction if seen from the perspective of contemporaries. I share this impression or feeling if I try to make out the future direction of the European Union and the Euro, confessing that I simply do not know where this all will lead to. Elias’s theory of the monopoly and royal mechanisms provides us with powerful models. This book makes us aware how risky these models are – how risky and how helpful will have to be decided by the reader, at last.

After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West

Ayşe Zarakol

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in International Relations), 2011, £19.99 pbk, ISBN: 9780521145565, 291 pp.

Reviewed by: Brett Bowden, University of Western Sydney, Australia

This thoughtful and thought-provoking book begins with something of an apology from Zarakol for daring to venture beyond the ‘familiar confines’ of international relations (IR) and in to neighbouring disciplines. There is no need to apologise. Zarakol could not have undertaken this project anywhere near as thoroughly or as successfully as she has without venturing beyond the confines of IR. She navigates through and across a range of disciplines with aplomb, including political theory, sociology, philosophy, history, and touches of psychology. More colleagues should follow suit. That said, while Zarakol successfully steps outside of IR in gathering evidence to make her case, much of the language she uses still reflects the ‘familiar confines’ of IR. If scholars are going to reciprocally reach across boundaries, then there is a need to go beyond reading across disciplines and to get better at also talking to other disciplines. Granted, this book is published in Cambridge’s distinguished Studies in IR series, but it is in the interests of the discipline as a whole that the confines become less familiar.

The principal aim of After Defeat is to highlight how ‘defeated’ states subsequently incorporated into the international states system are inclined to become stigmatised, to have a heightened sense of national shame, and to internalise deep-seated feelings of inferiority. This has the potential to make stigmatised states overly sensitive to perceptions of their international status, which in turn is likely to impact on their foreign policy decision-making, often detrimentally. In order to demonstrate her argument, Zarakol draws on Erving Goffman’s theorising on stigma and stigmatisation in respect to three in-depth case studies – Turkey after the First World War (1918–38), Japan after the Second World War (1945–74), and Russia after the Cold War (1990–2007) – and their post-defeat choices in their engagement with the international system and in relations with fellow members of that system.

Of particular interest to readers of this journal, Zarakol further draws on Norbert Elias’s established–outsider figuration to explain the three nations’ choices in terms of their concerns about perceptions of their esteem and status in the international system. By ‘wedding’ together the theorising insights of Elias and Goffman, Zarakol hopes that After Defeat offers a new way to think about state interaction in the international system’ (p. 14). And that it does, quite lucidly. While this sounds like a large and ambitious multidisciplinary project, and to a great extent it is, one of Zarakol’s aims is rather more concerned with the ‘familiar confines’: linking two strands of constructivist IR theory (p. 18). Nevertheless, the greater aim of advancing ‘a more nuanced understanding of the unevenly experienced social constraints driving the socialization of states (p. 18) is likely to appeal beyond not only constructivists, but the discipline of IR more generally. It certainly helps that the book is written in a nice conversational style making good use of the occasional colourful turn of phrase.

In terms of organisation, the book is sensibly laid out; Part I includes the first two chapters which are dedicated to setting up the theoretical framework. The first chapter charts the foundations and evolution of the modern international states system. It is here where Elias’s established–outsider figuration first comes into play. The second theoretical chapter continues the established–outsider figuration while also bringing Goffman’s theorising on stigmatisation to bear on the realm of international relations. Part II contains three chapters, one on each of the case studies. Drawing primarily, but not exclusively, on secondary sources, particularly in regard to Japan and Russia, the case studies are comprehensive and will also likely be of interest to area studies and country specialists. The chapter on Turkey, Zarakol’s homeland, makes for particularly good reading, for while there is clearly a personal attachment, she does not allow it to cloud her judgment or colour her perspective.

Apart from doing what most conclusions do, reiterating and summing up arguments, the final chapter also offers an interesting discussion of the contemporary state of play in the international system and international relations more generally and where Turkey, Japan, and Russia now find themselves. A theme introduced early in After Defeat that piqued my interest is the idea that Turkey, Japan, and Russia all see themselves as sitting uncomfortably between East and West. In some ways, Australia, my homeland, is similarly conflicted, albeit inversely and probably to a considerably lesser degree, and without the sense of inferiority. Australia has long seen itself as a Western nation yet finds itself located in or surrounded by the East. But there has been a realisation for decades now that its security and economic prosperity is closely tied to its Eastern neighbours, especially Japan, China, and its close neighbour Indonesia. Like Turkey seeking entry and acceptance in Europe, Australia finds itself knocking on the door of ASEAN (Association of the Southeast Asian Nations) in search of a more integrated and meaningful role in the region.

Not that I think we were ever meant to take it too literally, but it seems as though Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘The Ballad of East and West’ (1889), which opens with the line: ‘Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,’ really is of another time, and maybe even another place. As we move deeper and deeper in to the increasingly interconnected twenty-first century, it seems to be more the case that the lines between East and West are becoming ever more blurred and porous.

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy

Dani Rodrik

New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2011, $26.95 hbk, ISBN: 9780393071610, 368 pp.

Reviewed by: Reinhard Blomert, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Berlin, Germany

In summer 1944, when victory of the allied forces was foreseeable, the representatives of finance ministries and central banks of 44 nations met in Hotel Mount Washington at Bretton Woods in the state of Vermont, to fix the financial architecture of the postwar world. The representatives of the USA, Harry Dexter White and of the British Empire, John Maynard Keynes, delivered construction plans for the new building, which had a three-pillar structure – free trade of goods, fixed exchange rates and strict capital controls. This was what they had learned from history – control of finance must be national, because governing states would otherwise be impossible, and, as Dani Rodrik states in his new book, societies tend towards political ‘immune reactions’, as he calls it. Indeed, the high time of deregulated finance markets of the so called ‘golden twenties’ ended in collapse, widespread unemployment and depression, and in heavy political troubles which brought about dictatorial regimes.

Rodrik, who holds a chair in Political Economy at Harvard University, had warned in 1997 not to go too far with globalization. He did not realize that the sector which he saw as the least contested and endangered, the financial sector, would presest the biggest problem of globalization par excellence. He was not the only one who did not take too seriously the warnings of Keynes. But now, after the crash of 2008, he thinks again about the impact of this sector.

The Bretton Woods system was a guarantee of the self-determination of nation-states in relation to internal politics. Without painting an idyllic postwar world – which was a time of cold and hot wars like Korea and Vietnam – one can say that the Bretton Woods system was economically successful: full employment; banks were the maidservants of national economies; there were no stock exchange scandals; and the postwar years were a long and prosperous period of social security. In the seventies, when the costs of the Vietnam War inflated the dollar by up to 20 per cent, oil prices inflated too, because oil producers did not want to pay for Vietnam. After some trouble, the US gave up the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system collapsed. The breakdown of the system of fixed exchange rates was followed by the end of capital controls and the financial centres of New York and London began to trade excessively in currencies.

The deregulation of capital markets was the origin of a new form of financial aristocracy, that propagated new neoliberal devices out of political control, aided by political economists like Jeffrey Sachs and others who taught that the removal of trade barriers was good for all and would lead to more growth for all countries, whether they were poor or rich, or whether they had highly of poorly educated populations. After the fall of the Berlin Wall the victory of the new neoliberal ideologies was inexorable. Bill Clinton, whose ‘New Democrats’ were linked to the financial aristocracy of Wall Street (his finance minister came from Goldman Sachs), helped to propagate the myth of globalisation as good for all. A huge army of economists, some misled sociologists and political scientists, consultants and journalists hurried to teach us that the world was flat, the nation-state was passé and internal politics could now replaced by new forms of governance. Political activities were now in the hands of a new generation of activists of civil society that organise in non-governmental organisations.

In the years after the collapse of the Breton Woods system, more and more states were forced by diplomatic pressure and public propaganda to give up capital controls. Capital flows went without political control into assets and firms, investment banks profited from fusions and outsourcings over borders and created new conglomerates in growth areas, be it growth regions – like Asia, which ended in the Crisis of 1997 – or be it growth industries like information technology, which ended in the dotcom crash of 2001. Thomas Friedman from The New York Times declared the end of politics; millions of capital investors decide what governments have to do. Governments have to wear the golden straitjackets of balanced budgets, deregulated labour markets and capital markets. Governments have to lower taxes and guarantee open borders for the export of gains that capital made in the country; otherwise the herd of investors passes by, states sink into poverty and voters remove governments from office.

Rodrik makes it clear that this style of globalisation is just the counter concept of Bretton Woods; it is an inverted world. Banks no longer served the national economy, but national economies, regional and communal administrations now had to deliver services in favour of the banks and investors – services that bring about lower wages and reduced social security. When Paul Samuelson, the grand old man of Western economic thought, entered into the debate and showed that the advantages the Chinese economy accrued from globalisation could mean disadvantages for the US economy, nobody listened; the mainstream economists did not want to hear and Samuelson was treated like a rude child breaking a taboo. Trade unions and old leftists could be marginalised as traditionalists or populists, and mainstream economists had become a sect that adored Ricardo and prayed with the holy texts of comparative advantages and free trade. The state seemed to have no more functions at all.

But global governance did not help to overcome the subprime crisis; it was the state that had to lend a hand to the banks in trouble, to shift liquidity into the system and to stimulate the economy, giving allowances to discharged workers by expanding budgets. Supranational entities could not help, as they had no money from taxes. It was the nation-state that had to take over the burden. The Lehman collapse not only brought the state back in to prevent the bankruptcy of the big Wall Street banks and the collapse of the architecture of world finance, but also the reversal of paradigms at least by some of the most capable economists like Paul Krugman, who had been one of the propagators of the blessings of globalisation. Now, in 2008, he changed his mind and realised that he might not have been aware of the social tensions that can be created by open trade and capital markets. People never wanted globalisation. All social surveys show the same outcome; they see themselves as citizens of their homelands, not as Europeans or cosmopolitans. The globalisation project was a project of the financial aristocracy, and it has failed.

The question is whether the elites see the political danger that lurks from this failure. It is dangerous to put governments into straitjackets because societies have their own desires and their own paths of development, their own arrangements and institutions of taxation and public services. All these institutions are based on historical compromises between intranational forces, factions and wings. The national preferences of development are not identical with the paths of growth that are described by global capital investors. Capital control must be given back to governments and national political bodies to save democracies from derivatives – in the double sense of aberrations from democratic paths after the collapse of markets and from the hollow derivatives of the stock exchange. Then we will have really learned the lessons from the thirties.

Rodrik is right, but errs in one respect; when he puts Europe as an exception from that rule, he is wrong. The single European market cannot work without a common social component. The European currency does not work either: Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland have opened their borders for capital investments and a bubble was created. The market was overinvested because the national governments could not control the investments. The European Union is incapable and hitherto unwilling to direct capital flows. And it is unable to really avoid Greek bankruptcy; this seems to have only been delayed for the moment because the conditions of homogeneity of partners in a monetary union, as Mundell has put it, will not be fulfilled in the coming decades. As long as European politicians sing the song of the financial aristocrats – that we have a crisis of state debts –trouble will continue. Without capital controls there can be no autonomous democratic development. Societies that feel like the objects of investors rather than subjects of their fate will tend towards immune reactions, like a military putsch.

The more external trade, and the more foreign capital investment, the more social security is necessary, according to Rodrik. European politicians do the contrary by dictating more savings and less social security. It is their duty to control the financial aristocracy.

Apartheid Vertigo: The Rise in Discrimination Against Africans in South Africa

David M. Matsinhe

Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2011, £55 hbk, ISBN: 9781409426196, 230 pp.

Reviewed by: Artur Bogner, University of Bayreuth, Germany

The subject of this book entitled Apartheid Vertigo: The Rise in Discrimination Against Africans in South Africa is the relations between citizens of South Africa (especially of African ancestry) on the one hand, and Africans who are foreigners or (im)migrants in this country on the other. Since the end of apartheid these relations have seen a remarkable increase of collective acts of violence directed at these foreigners, with a climax in May 2008 when over 60 people were killed and over 700 injured within one month, while perhaps up to 100,000 were displaced. As the facts described in this book show, these events were preceded by many symptoms of a long-term process of escalating xenophobia and xeno-discrimination focused on foreigners of African descent. This xenophobia and discrimination at least partially exhibited traits and proportions of a nationwide witch-hunting campaign.

Many of the immigrants or migrants originate from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique – countries that have similar histories as South Africa itself. Many of the Congolese came here due to the consequences of the long civil war in their home country. In the cases of Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique and Angola, it is notable that the former armed struggles against colonialist or racist regimes in these countries were closely intertwined with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, because the rulers of these territories formed a political and military coalition. It is possible or likely that the rule of apartheid in South Africa would have lasted considerably longer had the rebellions in the then Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola and in Zimbabwe (‘Rhodesia’) not succeeded in the 1970s. How is it possible, one may ask, that people who have so much in common, and who suffered from European colonialism and racism, are now discriminating and fighting against one another? Everyone who is interested in the answer to this question will do very well to read this book carefully. This is an excellent, skillful application of Elias’s theory of established–outsiders relations and Abram de Swaan’s theory of dyscivilisation to the case of post-apartheid South Africa and it masterfully shows the power of explanation inherent in these theories.

David M. Matsinhe, the author, is a sociologist and Canadian citizen, but born in Mozambique. He has experienced a considerable share of the painful aspects of his subject matter when he was an international student in South Africa from 1994 until 2000, and later when doing fieldwork in South Africa for this book. As the series editor observes, this sociological book offers an impressive scholarly explanation, and perhaps the hitherto most adequate scholarly explanation for the recent rise of xenophobia and discrimination of African foreigners in South Africa. The title ‘Apartheid Vertigo’ refers to the phenomenon of a bewildering resurfacing of something that was believed to be a matter of the past. As the author himself notes, this book is about the ‘haunting ghostly presence of past group relations’ (p. 191) or in other words: ‘The idea of apartheid vertigo is a metaphorical representation of historical interdependence and interpenetration between two sets of group relations: citizen-subject relations under apartheid and insider-outsider relations since the early 1990s’ (p. 27).

In this context, Matsinhe uses Freud’s simile for the psyche of a city without linear time, where the present and various pasts coexist and interact in the same historical moment. While the proposition that past sets of we–they relations has an impact on the present seems very evident (and is confirmed by many of Matsinhe’s data and findings), the hypothesis of a causal link in the opposite direction would benefit from more clarification. However, it is obvious that our definitions of the present are highly dependent on our understanding of the past, an understanding in turn dependent on our interpretation or constructions of the present. This is one of the most exciting dimensions of this text and the research work associated with it. It is interesting to note that Matsinhe’s book is positioned at the intersection of three or four scientific discourses – the discourse of figurational sociology, the discourse on nations as forms of ‘imagined communities’ (in a way forms of ‘invented’ tradition), and the discourse on so-called race relations that has partly transformed itself into a discourse on the articulation or intertwining of various scientific categories of inequality, usually with the triad of ‘race, class and gender’ at the forefront (whilst marginalising others such as ‘generation’). As a fourth discourse one might add the Africanist and ‘post-colonial’ discourse on the consequences of colonialism and ‘Western’ hegemony in the historical (political, economic, cultural, socio-psychological) relations between diverse world-regions, their populations and cultures.

The theory of established–outsider relations appears as an example of a generalising or universal form of theory. This book shows how fittingly the social reality of South African society is mastered by a seemingly rather simple sociological theory, to the extent that other more complex, more specific, more context-bound theories and explanations appear as if they were just little instructive extensions or skillful applications of the general theory, though necessary for coupling concrete historical reality with a general sociological theory. One is also often surprised how much of what this book describes could be almost equally said about citizens and non-citizens living in many nation-states and could be equally well described by using the generalizing vocabulary of the established–outsider theory. Matsinhe’s attempts at a synthesis of figurational sociology with the recent discourse on the ‘invention’ of nations shows how these two strands of thinking could greatly enrich each other and increase their explanatory power when combined. The same applies to other theories of power-based stratification as for example Mamdani’s theory of the colonial invention and institutionalization of a structural dichotomy between ‘citizens’ and ‘subjects’ that reflects the inequality between colonisers and colonised populations (precisely by differentiating the population into several diverse subdivisions with unequal rights, similar to different castes).

In the theoretical part of his book, Matsinhe skillfully combines and integrates these various theoretical models into the general framework of figurational sociology. In this context he provides one of the most concise, clear and sophisticated expositions of Elias’s established–outsiders theory that I have seen. Amongst others he observes that at the centre of figurational sociology is the examination of diverse sets of changing we–they relationships and their dynamic intertwining. He also makes good use of Abram de Swaan’s theory of dyscivilization as different from, or a specific form of, a process of decivilisation, namely one that is combined with the ‘invention’ or preservation of a we-group (usually a so-called nation). In accordance with the duality of norms produced and maintained by nation-states and similar we-groups, social spaces of cruelty are constructed where brutality is allowed and promoted, while the surrounding space of wider society adheres to a very different, ‘civilised’ code of conduct. Concentration and labor camps, prisons, armies and other total institutions offer the most obvious examples. However, this conception of a ‘compartmentalization of cruelty’ is also applicable to less clearly demarcated social spaces such as certain city quarters or more generally codes and forms of conduct in the we–they relations to non-citizens (e.g. constructed via immigrations laws). Following Victor Turner’s suggestions, the author draws a parallel to the spaces of liminality created by rites of passage. The important commonality is that these rituals create boundaries between different forms of social status and thereby between different sets of interpersonal and group relations (and thus a conspicuous diversity of rules of conduct, including ones for decivilised and ‘anomic’ conduct).

The middle part of the book discusses the findings of recent empirical research on xeno-discrimination, including Matsinhe’s qualitative interviews and group interviews with immigrants in South Africa. One wishes that this part of the book was much longer as it provides important data that aptly complement the largely quantitative data that have been published so far, and because it offers a lot of data material that may be used for further refinement and elaboration of the theoretical models that were employed by the author. The most interesting part of this section of the book, and among the many parallels between this case and the we–they relations examined by Elias and Scotson, is the data on counter-stigmatisation – on negative they-images about South-African citizens held and communicated by the (im)migrants. Though they are communicated to little effect, these images and stereotypes appear fairly differentiated and developed. I would have liked a greater quantity and differentiation in the presentation and analysis of the data material, for example with regard to the specific social, biographical and other characteristics of the various subsections or groupings of the outsiders, including their biographies, regional, geographical and social backgrounds, educational careers and personal histories of migration.

The last part of the book connects the past and present of the power relations between established and outsiders in South Africa, showing for example the long-term persistence of a pattern of an essentially triadic power structure or multi-layered stratified plurality – for example in the ambivalent and tense relations between the British and the Boers as competing segments of a power elite, and the relations of both these groups (with diverse and conflicting we-images) to the African population as the lowest layer at the hierarchy of intertwined sets of we–they relations. In certain ways the African foreigners in today’s South Africa inherited much of the former position of the Africans under apartheid and the previous colonial regimes. Matsinhe combines an historical or genealogical approach with his analysis of the recent data on we–they relations. This part shows the striking parallelism and even continuity between the they-image attached to Africans by white-supremacist ideology and practice, and the they-image attached to African foreigners from neighboring countries today. It is here where the book’s main title appears fully justified. However, there is a certain tension here. Both Elias’s essay on nationalism (in The Germans) and the more recent studies on the invention of nations agree to a considerable degree that the construction of nation-states (in Europe as elsewhere) tended to go hand in hand with heightened competition over resources, communal conflicts and a propensity for mass violence.

At the level of method and theory, there remain several open questions here about the nature of the continuity of exclusion and of the organized, collective violence encountered in South Africa over several centuries. Sometimes this appears rather as a structural parallelism at a fairly abstract level of analysis (that is when using generalizing concepts such as ‘outsider’, ‘citizenship’ or ‘liminality’). And sometimes this appears as a historical continuity/causality that is rooted rather in the concrete and unique, locally and historically specific features of a social body and culture that has developed over multiple centuries, and, one may be tempted to say, has put on the costume/corset of the modern nation-state today. Amongst others this book gives a great deal of valuable material and stimulating inspiration for further theoretical as well as empirical investigation of these questions.