Fuelling Social Inclusion? Neo‐extractivism,State–Society Relations and Biofuel Policies in Latin America's Southern Cone

Scholarship on neo‐extractivism agrees that this ‘post‐neoliberal’ model of development is founded on an inherent contradiction between the commitment to continue natural resource extraction and the need to legitimize these activities by using their revenues for poverty reduction. Using the cases of the national biofuel policies of the ‘post‐neoliberal’ governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this article enquires why and how these policies emerged, how they were implemented, and how the resulting national experiences exemplify the inherent contradictions embedded in neo‐extractivist policies. Adopting a strategic‐relational approach to analyse state–society interaction, it is argued that the scope of progressive policies is conditioned to a large extent by pre‐existing social structures, institutions and state–society interactions. The article shows how progressive reforms intersect with the prevailing interests of agribusiness and state actors and are recast and used for different ends as these interact with powerful actors such as the multinational soybean complex and agrarian movements. It is suggested that the prevailing over‐emphasis in the neo‐extractivist literature on the politics of domination and contestation overlooks the multiple and complex rural responses of the different progressive governments. It also obscures the possibilities to explore the ruptures and continuities of these countries’ governments with previous models, and therefore fails to recognize state advances.     

Book Reviews

ROBERT E. CONRAD. Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. xxvi, 515. $50.00 cloth; $16.50 paper (US). Reviewed by A.J.R. Russell-Wood

STEPHEN KERN. The Culture of Time and Space: 1880–1918. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. 372. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Frank M. Turner

ESCOTT REID. On Duty: A Canadian at the Making of the United Nations, 1945–1946. Toronto: McClelland &; Stewart, 1983. Pp. xxii, 181. $16.95 (Can.). Reviewed by Robert Bothwell

LESTER LANOLEY. The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 1900–1934. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1983. Pp. vii-viii, 255. $26.00 (US). Reviewed by Richard D. Challener

RICHARD BOSWORTH. Italy and the Approach of the First World War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. Pp. 174. $22.50 (US). Reviewed by Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.

ROBERT MIRAK. Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. xiv, 384. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by George B. Kooshian, Jr.

LEE FEIGON. Chen Duxiu: Founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. 297. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by William Saywell

GHARLES CRUICKSHANK. SOE in the Far East. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. 285. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by David Stafford

F.H. HINSLEY et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations. Volume III, Part 1. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. xvi, 690. $39.50 (US). Reviewed by Patrick Beesly

RICHARD HOUGH. The Great War at Sea, 1914–1918. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. xviii, 353. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Jon Tetsuro Sumida

HERMIA OLIVER. The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London. New York: St Martin's Press, 1983. Pp. 176. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Haia Shpayer-Makov

STEWART A. STEHLIN. Weimar and the Vatican 1919–1933: German-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in the Interwar Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. 490. $50.00 (US). Reviewed by John S. Conway

GEORGE F.G. STANLEY. The War of 1812: Land Operations. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, in collaboration with the Canadian War Museum, National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada, 1983. Pp. 489. $24.95 (Can.); J.C.A. STAGG, Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. 538. $49.00 (US). Reviewed by William Stinchcombe

JACOB TOURY. Die Jüdische Presse im Österreichischen Kaiserreich: Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der Akkulturation 1802–1918. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1983. Pp. 171. Reviewed by George O. Kent

GOTTFRIED NIEDHART, ed. Der Westen und die Sowjetunion: Einstellungen und Politik gegenüber der UdSSR in Euro pa und in den USA seit 1917. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1983. Pp. 372. DM 48. Reviewed by Gerhard L. Weinberg

DANIEL H. THOMAS. The Guarantee of Belgian Independence and Integrity in European Diplomacy, 1830's–1930's. Kingston, Rhode Island: D.H. Thomas Publishing, 1983. Pp. xv, 789. Reviewed by D. Stevenson

FRED v. CARSTENSEN. American Enterprise in Foreign Markets: Singer and International Harvester in Imperial Russia. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Pp. vii, 289. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by John P. Mckay

JULIANNA PUSKAS. From Hungary to the United States, 1880–1914. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982; distributed in North America by Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983. Pp. 225. $24.25 (US). Reviewed by Janos M. Bak

ROGER CHICKERING. We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League 1886–1044. Boston: George Allen &; Unwin, 1983. Pp. 365. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by George L. Mosse

PETER KRTCDTE. Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists: Europe and the World Economy, 1500–1800, translated by V.R. Berghahn. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 191. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by Phyllis Deane

JAMES WILLIAM MORLEY, ed. The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on the Asian Continent 1933–1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Reviewed by Samuel C. Chu

ERIC HOBSBAWM, TERENCE RANGER, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 320. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Peter Stansky

AVI SHLAIM. The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948–1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Pp. xiii, 463. $38.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert A. Divine

JAMES CRACRAFT, ed. The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretative Guide. Chicago: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1983. Pp. ix, 348. $9.95 (US). Reviewed by Lawrence W. Lerner

M.J. TREBILCOCK, J.R.S. PRICHABD, T.J. COURCHENE, J. WHALLEY, eds. Federalism and the Canadian Economic Union. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. $25.00 (Can.). Reviewed by Eric Kierans

PHILIP S. KHOURY. Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860–1920. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. xi, 153. $34.50 (US). Reviewed by James Jankowski

PAUL MOSLEY. The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1963. Cambridge and New York: Gambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 289. $49.50 (US). Reviewed by Robert O. Collins     

Women in Suburbia

This research investigates the influence of a suburban lifestyle upon the attitudes of women. Specifically, a sample of suburban women are interviewed and information is ascertained concerning their attitudes toward commercial and social isolation in suburbia. Additionally, demographic data are acquired from the sample in order to describe the sample and compare it to the suburban female population that has previously been researched.     

Coercion and Warfare in the Rise of State Societies in Southern Zambezia

Researchers have raised a wide range of variables to account for the emergence and governance of complex polities. Warfare and investment in military power, along with an expansionist ideology, are often raised as catalysts for the emergence of state societies and hierarchical forms of leadership. In southern Africa’s Zambezian region, complex polities arose during the Later Iron Age, presently dated to the early second millennium CE. Wealth accumulation in the form of arable land for grazing cattle, as well as the development of a highly regulated elite ideology coupled with favorable climatic conditions, factored into this trajectory of sociopolitical development. This paper explores the role coercion may have played in cultural changes associated with increased political complexity in Zambezia. Coercive and persuasive leadership is often challenging to recognize archaeologically. Do we have sufficient visible datasets to support coercive power and conflict as a dominant factor for cultural change in this region? Was conflict a significant driver of change in the prehistoric Shashi-Limpopo Basin? How does the evidence stand up to scrutiny when evaluated against known archaeological signatures for warfare?     

Women With AIDS: Will It Change aids Service Organizations?

In the early 1980s, gay men formed AIDS service organizations (ASOs) in areas hardest hit by the disease, such as San Francisco and New York City, to provide assistance to infected members of their own communities. The Ryan White CARE Act of 1990 made funds available for community-based groups, such as ASOs, to provide support services to all people with HIV/AIDS. The epidemiology of AIDS has changed greatly in recent years, and increasing numbers of poor, minority women with children now contract HIV/AIDS. To determine if ASOs are in compliance with the CARE Act, this study surveyed 20 ASOs across the country and a number of their female clients to see if ASOs, some of which were started by gay men, have tailored their services for a growing minority, heterosexual population. The results indicate that a number of ASOs have been slow in responding to the diverse needs of women. Recommendations are offered to make the organizations more responsive.     

Hunter-gatherer economic complexity and “population pressure”: A cross-cultural analysis

This paper examines the relaionship between “population pressure” and socioeconomic complexity among hunter-gatherers. Population pressure is defined as the ratio between population density and the density of available resources. Socioeconomic complexity is measured by means of several correlated variables: storage-dependence, sedentism, social inequality, and use of a medium of exchange. Correlations between these variables are calculated from an ethnographic sample of 94 hunter-gatherer groups. The correlations between population pressure and socioeconomic complexity are found to be extremely high. Two major types of hunter-gatherers exist which are distinguished by a number of variables and may be termed “simple” and “complex.” Transitional groups between these two types are quite rare. It is also noted that population pressure does not arise in continental climates where famine mortality is common because of high-amplitude changes in productivity from year to year. It is argued that population pressure is a necessary and sufficient condition for and the efficient cause of socioeconomic complexity. The widespread disavowal by archaeologists of population pressure as a possible explanation for the prehistoric development of complex hunter-gatherers has no basis in ethnographic fact.