Elite Project Research Articles

Book review: The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, by Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, Verso: London, 2012; 304 pp: 9781844679522, 16.99 [pounds sterling] (hbk) With The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, Vijay Prashad concludes his project of 'telling the history of the contemporary world (the past hundred years) from the standpoint of the South' (see Prashad 2013)--a project that started with his seminal study of the third world project, The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World (Prashad 2007). In fact, The Poorer Nations flows from the author's sense of dissatisfaction with the prequel's conclusion, which, according to him, 'was told in haste and ... appeared to be without a dynamic that led any further, [implying] that there was no hope for the rejuvenation of a Southern agenda' (Prashad 2013). This shortcoming is amply rectified in the volume under review, which subjects the decline of the third world project as a radical force, its many and contradictory metamorphoses during the 1980s and 1990s, the current rise of the BRICS states, and the proliferation of popular resistance to neoliberalism in the global South to a discerning analysis. Admittedly, Prashad covers very familiar terrain in this book: the decline of the post-Second World War capitalist order, in which market forces were embedded in regimes of state intervention and regulation; and the rise to global hegemony of the neoliberal project. However, it is singularly to his credit that he manages to do so in a genuinely original way, which brings to light aspects of this trajectory that are far too often neglected in the extant Marxist literature on the subject. Prashad's point of departure is the unraveling of the third world project in the context of the political and economic crisis of post-Second World War capitalism dubbed here 'Northern Atlantic Liberalism' (p. 15)--during the 1970s. This was not, Prashad argues, merely the effect of the internal contradictions of the third world project--which were dissected and discussed at length in The Darker Nations--but the result of a coordinated offensive by the G7 powers to advance a project of neoliberal restructuring. This offensive was multi-pronged: it did not just target the third world project, but also the Communist bloc and the remaining vestiges of social democracy in western Europe. It entailed a change of guard in international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, as well as in key United Nations organisations, which witnessed the departure of the Keynesians and the grand entrance of the monetarists. It also, perhaps most crucially, relied on utilisation of the international debt crisis as lever by which to enforce a new policy regime across large parts of the global South. This facilitated the reintegration of Southern economies on adverse terms into what Prashad calls 'the new geography of production' (p. 4) and thus also the reproduction of Northern hegemony in the world-system. 'Rather than a South-led New International Economic Order, the world had to live with a North-led International Property Order' (p. 7). In many extant accounts of the trajectory of global capitalism, this is normally the point at which the global South recedes into the background, more often than not cast as the passive victim of the hegemonic projects of transnational elites and the institutions they act in and through. Not so in the case of The Poorer Nations. What we get instead is a detailed narrative of the metamorphoses--and, arguably, transmogrifications--of the third world project across the 1980s and 1990s--the 'lost decades' of development across substantial swathes of the South. The most innovative and valuable part of this analysis is undoubtedly Prashad's groundbreaking analysis of the work of the South Commission (1986-1990) under the leadership of Julius Nyerere. The story of the South Commission is one in which persistent ambitions towards progressive change ran up against both the limits imposed by a rapidly changing geopolitical economy and the erosion of third-world solidarity. …

Huarpe Archives in the Argentine Desert: Indigenous Claims and State Construction in Nineteenth-Century Mendoza

Abstract The narrative of indigenous extinction and the construction of a “white” Argentina entailed an ethnogeographic imaginary by which the territories of the former Spanish colonies were inhabited since the nineteenth century by gauchos or eventually peasants. The population classified as indigenous, in this view, was projected outside the central areas controlled by the nation-state, beyond the frontiers of the Pampas, Patagonia, and the Chaco. Historical writing accepted and contributed to the formation of this image by characterizing the political mobilization of gauchos or peasants (especially in their bellicosity as montoneras — irregular militia units) as a natural reflection of the projects of elites, factions, patrons, or parties. That historiography dismissed as irrelevant any demands stemming from the gauchos and peasantry themselves, such as those based on the long historical experience of indigenous peoples. Based on documents preserved by inhabitants of the travesía, or the desert, of Guanacache, in the central Cuyo region, the descendants of the Huarpe Indians who were considered extinct in the seventeenth century, this analysis stresses the continuity of indigenous claims and the political strategies of the communities of the countryside during the nineteenth century. While recognizing that other factors were involved in political mobilization, this analysis shows the primary importance of indigenous claims in an area of traditional montonero rebellion and civil conflict, and the active participation of the region in the construction of the state beginning in the 1820s. Indigenous leaders who also served as government officials pressed for institutionalized recognition of indigenous rights. That pressure eventually led to the acceptance of their claims and the maintenance of relative political autonomy until the 1870s.

Institutional and Ideological Re-construction of the Justice and Development Party (PJD): The Question of Democratic Islamism in Morocco

An analysis of fieldwork research on the deliberations, policy option debates, and outcomes of the 2008 Sixth National Convention of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) crystallizes issues relevant to the party's recent transformations, with focus on the balance between its Islamist character and its democratic/governance merits, central to the leadership transition that occurred during convention. This investigation presents potential scenarios of this ambivalent Islamist democratic experiment in Morocco amid rapidly changing national and regional contexts in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011 and the new politics that resulted. Outcomes were hardly predictable during the July 19-22, 2008 Sixth National Convention of the Islamic Justice and Development Party (PJD) in Morocco. Counter to all political speculations, the ten-year leader of the party, Sa'd al-Din al-Othmani (marketed during his visit to Washington DC in 2006 as the Erdogan), came second in votes for the Secretary General post to 'Abd al-Ilah Benkiran. Al-Othmani was later elected to head the party's national convention in succession of its previous leader, Mr. Benkiran himself. This outcome was far from being pre-engineered. On the contrary, this complete bombshell took all observers and party leaders, including al-Othmani and Benkiran, by surprise.1 The case of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) demonstrates how far non-violent Islamist movements have been integrated into Morocco's democratic transition process and how much they have transformed their ideological and organizational positions in the adaptation. That said, Islamism still challenges the religious hegemony of the Moroccan monarchy and the policies of the political establishment, but the movement has adapted well to new political circumstances and institutional constraints following the rise to power of King Muhammad VI in 1999. This investigation of the effects of the PJD's institutional structure and ideological choices on the broader question of democratization of Moroccan Islamism addresses several questions. First, does the democratic institutionalization of an Islamic movement reflect its de-Islamization or rather its considerable maturity in organization and objectives? Second, how were the deliberations, outcomes, and debates on policy options during the PJD's 2008 convention carried out,2 and how can they shed light on the potential scenarios of this Islamist democratic experiment? This article will start with an analysis of the institutional and ideological politics of the PJD in the lead up to the 2008 party convention, including politics/prosletyzing relations, PJD factional politics, and standpoints on questions of national democratic and constitutional reforms. Then, it shall proceed to explore the details and deliberations of the 2008 sixth national convention and contextualize its outcomes within the changing national and Islamist politics in Morocco before and through the Arab spring in 2011. THE END OF PROSELYTIZING AND THE BEGINNING OF POLITICS The separation of the Movement of Unity and Reform (MUR, founded in 1993) and the Party of Justice and Development (PJD, 1997) was an all-important and controversial issue. Critical to its democratic development, the PJD ventured to separate proselytizing from politics. Questions of Islamic identity were relocated as a function of the social and cultural movements operating in the proselytizing field. The party was to be responsible only for governance and administration. The theoretical merits of such a hypothesis are still controversial, but the practicalities precluded the awaited full separation. In a country like Morocco, identity politics are inescapable given the traditional ruling regime and the active secularization projects of the Francophone elites. In contrast, full separation was possible in the Turkish case. The Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP), in its official discourse, presents itself as a center-right socially conservative party lacking any cultural agenda. …

Attention! Rumor Bombs, Affect, Managed Democracy 3.0

The elite projects of steering mass communication, especially journalism through an increasing professionalization of politics via the methods of marketing, advertising and public relations, have met serious obstacles in the new digital culture era. However, I argue that elite projects of managing democracy are investing immense resources in studying the new digital culture and adapting propaganda methods to the new challenges. I argue that political rumor (in addition to rumor generally) is a site where one can study the struggles to manage communication flows in the present. More precisely, what I call rumor bombs (Harsin 2006) have produced a crisis of verification that produces what I call vertiginous democracy, which benefits elites more than citizens. In the rest of the essay, I offer a convergence theory of rumor bombs that explains their current historical ubiquity, while also employing recent insights from neuroscience, affect theory, and Tardean sociology of influence and imitation to explain their powerful viral efficacy — all of which have no small consequences for democracy.

The Meaning of Alan García: Sovereignty and Governmentality in Neoliberal Peru

This paper draws on Foucault's distinction between sovereign power and governmentality, and on subsequent theoretical developments of that distinction by, among others, Agamben, Butler, Wendy Brown and Aiwha Ong, to explore a key aspect of the neoliberal ‘revolution’ of current Peruvian president Alan García. I argue that García's instrumental conflation of political and biopolitical enemies in his denunciations of those who oppose his revolution reveals both how his project of rule is inherently racialized (and racist), premised as it is on the overcoming of indigeneity, and why, for this very reason, despite its apparently novel neoliberal veneer, it is best understood as the latest iteration of the myriad elite projects of rule enacted against the population that have characterized Peruvian history.

Beyond postdevelopment: civic responses to regional integration in the Amazon

Postdevelopment theorists often try to read “alternatives to development” in the actions of local social movements or non-governmental organizations. More recent studies of development, however, emphasize the imbrication of state agendas with those of civil society. In the context of a major regional integration initiative in South America, this essay argues for the need to move beyond postdevelopment. Launched in 2000, IIRSA, the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America, calls for a massive expansion of the continent's transport, energy and telecommunications networks and as such has the potential to redefine both the ecological and political-economic landscapes of South America. In particular, IIRSA's Amazonian mega-projects have prompted outcries from environmentalists and indigenous peoples. In examining some of the salient methods activists are using to challenge IIRSA, this paper takes issue with postdevelopment and argues that activists are not rejecting elite projects, but instead are engaging them. Activists generate this space of engagement by invoking and problematizing the idea of active citizenship. The essay ends by exploring the implications of such a strategy, emphasizing an awareness of the entanglements between civil society and dominant institutions through a consideration of development, environment and citizenship.

Shanghai Public Moralist Nie Qijie and Morality Book Publication Projects in Republican China

With an emphasis on the compilations of Shanghai philanthropist Nie Qijie, this article examines the flourishing of morality book and popular moral prescriptive text publication in the early decades of the twentieth century. The mass production and dissemination of such ostensibly traditional didactic texts advanced, in large part, due to the interests and resources of new urban elites and the capacity of the Shanghai-centered modern publishing industry. In the course of this process, the uses and meanings of these books shifted, and their lessons in traditional ethics often affiliated age-old terms and concepts with emerging ideologies and social images identified with a new, urban modern world. These widely available texts, in effect, became scripts of public moralism that were readily available to and influential among those promoting elite and state-building projects.

The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue (review)

Reviewed by: The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue Jeannine Hill Fletcher The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue. By Catherine Cornille. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2008. xii + 265 pp. In this very readable volume, Catherine Cornille lays out the essential principles that she characterizes as requisite conditions for interreligious dialogue. With a short introduction and conclusion, the substance of the book is presented in five chapters, each unpacking one of these virtues: humility, commitment, interconnection, empathy, and hospitality. While at first glance these may seem commonsense for any conversation, the strength of this volume is the way in which Cornille problematizes any easy adoption of these, recognizing the limits we run up against in interreligious exchange. She goes further, then, in both complicating an easy read of the principles and pursuing their possibility with the help of a wide range of religious thinkers and theorists. By helping readers identify these principles within the Christian tradition, she invites individuals to transform their traditions toward more positive postures in dialogue. Two of the most persuasive chapters—on humility and empathy—investigate these themes with a rigorous scholarly excavation of resources, seeing them present in religious traditions and practices of encounter. While the reader may intuit "humility" as an important intellectual posture, Cornille demonstrates it also as a theological [End Page 238] virtue. From Christian theological traditions, humility in dialogue is grounded in an affirmation of the eschatological nature of our striving toward truth. This is complemented by the long-standing practice of apophatic theology in recognition of the ineffability of ultimate reality. Similar themes are identified in the other major religious traditions of the world. In the chapter that treats empathy the reader moves from out of an understanding of empathy as a primarily emotive category and pursues with Cornille's careful scholarship the hermeneutical, phenomenological, and theoretical traditions that might be brought to bear. With the help of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Edith Stein (1891-1942), and Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950) (among others), empathy is rendered as a fundamental interpretive orientation necessary for the real possibility of learning across difference. Recognizing that "there are inevitable limits for the empathic understanding to be gained" in interfaith learning, nevertheless, Cornille successfully employs both theory and practice as invitation toward its possibility. While going in depth with each of the themes develops theological nuance and theoretical sophistication, the orientation is at times sustained by a very particular understanding of religions as authoritative sources of truth to which individuals give their consent. In the chapter on commitment, for example, Cornille insists on identifying those involved in the dialogue as fully committed members of particular faith traditions, embracing authoritatively constructed understandings of its truths. "Religious commitment," Cornille writes, "is generally understood as a deliberate identification with the teachings and practices of a particular tradition. It thus entails assent to the truth-claims of a particular tradition and recognition of the authority of the tradition in matters of doctrine and discipline" (p. 66). This suggests, at times, a fairly rigid notion of religious participation and tends toward homogenized religious bodies with clear authoritative structures. Further, this construction of 'religion' renders the relation among them fundamentally conflictual, as when Cornille argues that "most religious traditions regard themselves as the ultimate if not the sole repository of truth, as the highest path to salvation or the most efficacious means to liberation" (p. 10). Although admitting exceptions to this general rule, "religions" are regularly reduced to their competing truth claims, and interreligious dialogue is envisioned concretely as "a two-way process in which each partner is engaged in a process not only of informing but also convincing the other of the truth of his or her own beliefs and practices" (p. 71, emphasis added). Cornille is describing a rather elite project of dialogue where "representatives of traditions" engage in argumentative practice (albeit one conditioned by humility, interconnection, empathy, and hospitality). Dialogue is not the "hodge-podge" and "mish-mash" of New Age syncretism (p. 64), where individuals speak from out of their own experiences. Rejecting any such non-normative stance of allegiance to a particular authoritative tradition, Cornille writes (disapprovingly), "If no particular religion...

Canadian border resident experience of the “smartening” border at Niagara

Much of the writing on the post‐9/11 Canada/U.S. border analyses (supportively or critically) the border‐related projects of economic and political elites. This paper focuses instead on local residents’ experiences of a changing border. Drawing on interviews and press reports from the Niagara region, the paper provides a grounded account of Canadian border life both at and after 9/11. Local experiences of altered cross‐border mobilities, intensified border inspections and reworked political subjectivities complicate dominant claims of straightforward congruence between a “smartening” Canada/U.S. border and border resident interests and concerns.

Urban Highways as an Embodiment of Mega and Elite Projects: A New Realm of Conflicts and Claims in Three Middle Eastern Capital Cities

This article considers the relation between mega-projects, major urban highway developments and internationalization. A comparative study of th vocabulary of the project is necessary: cityscapes embodied in the projects as well as social visions are examined first. Changes in the mobility design process in various cities in the Middle East, such as Beirut, Cairo and Tehran are outlined. Mega cities illustrate that major infrastructure has a capacity to change social and spatial morphologies on a large scale, andto address slum problems in a destructive manner. The forms of public mobilisation that have arisen as a result of these projects are described. When facing non-democratic forms of decision-making that put their residential stability under pressure and at risk, city dwellers tend to derive new answers to the difficulties they face.

Extraction, Territory, and Inequalities: Gas in the Bolivian Chaco

Conflicts over extractive industry have emerged as one of the most visible and potentially explosive terrains forstruggles over distribution, territory, and inequality in the Andes. We explore these relationships in Bolivia, focusing on gas extraction in the Chaco region of the southeastern department of Tarija. We consider how the expansion of extractive industry intersects with territorializing projects of state, sub-national elites, and indigenous actors as well as with questions of inequality and inequity. We conclude that arguments over the territorial constitution of Bolivia are inevitably also arguments over gas and the contested concepts of equity underlying its governance.

Twenty years after the Wall: geographical imaginaries of ‘Europe’ during European Union enlargement

Cultural geography is increasingly intersecting with critical and popular geopolitics analyse how sociocultural constructions of space and place arise within, and play a role in shaping, geopolitical processes (e.g., Mitchell 2000; Dodds 2005; Dittmer and Spears 2009). The current round of the reshaping of as an economic, political, social, institutional and imagined entity provides a dynamic context in which further explore these links. As Delanty (1995, pp. 3-4) suggested, 'Europe' has been constituted as a frame of reference for the formation of identities and new geo-political realities, but while it is deployed as a universalising it is also the perpetual threat of fragmentation from forces within European society. Similarly, European borders and identities and the very idea of 'Europe' itself are perpetually under renegotiation and contestation (e.g., Derrida 1994; Wolff 1996; Todorova 1997; Passi 2001; Kuus 2004; Kuus 2006; Habermas :2006). As Paasi (2001, p. 7) suggests, the challenge for geography is to reflect how regions and places come together and what kind of spatial imaginaries are involved in this process. Spatial or geographical 'imaginaries' are representations of place and space that play a role in structuring people's understanding of the world and which, in complex ways, influence people's actions. As an extensive literature in cultural geography has demonstrated, these representations or constructions of the world are also closely intertwined with the material world and play a role in the ordering and bordering of space and the construction of normative visions of how space 'should be.' Thus the papers in this theme issue focus on 'Europe' as a collectively imagined and contested representation which has important implications for how is constructed, regulated and re-defined as a material entity. Similar topics have been the focus of other thematic issues in human geography journals. See, for example, Area 2005, 37(4); Geopolitics 2005, 10(3); Eurasian Geography and Economics 2006, 47(6). All of these thematic issues were concerned, more or less directly, with unpacking the terms of reference for a geography of Europe (McNeil 2004, p. 353). However, the enlargement of the European Union (EU) in 2004 and 2007 incorporate 10 formerly state-socialist countries from 'Eastern Europe' has introduced a whole new set of geographies. The papers in this thematic issue emphasize the sociocultural dimensions of these new geographies through the lenses of culture and political economy. Specifically, the EU enlargement has produced new sets of political, economic and institutional arrangements which have been much discussed. However, intertwined with these are new geographical imaginaries of 'Europe' which have an important role play in shaping the 'New Europe' (the term adopted by the popular as well as academic press identify the dynamic economic, cultural and social changes that are affecting the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe). Political elites attempt legitimize the institutional and economic changes brought by the European integration through the shaping of a political community with a collective identity with which citizens can identify. However, these elite projects are always contested, and are particularly challenged during the 'eastward' expansion of the EU. Other powerful processes and events are also at play here, including the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The context of twenty years after provides an opportunity for reflection on two decades of actually existing transition (Altvater 1993). Further, attempts establish a European Constitution were rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, and the Lisbon Treaty by Irish voters in 2008, throwing into question the nature of the EU and 'Europe'. The European integration process has been further challenged by the good results obtained by Eurosceptic political parties at the 2009 European Parliament elections, fuelled by a global economic crisis that evidences the weaknesses of the neoliberal project at the heart of the EU. …

Be Careful How You Frame the Issues

Immigration is related to widening inequality and insecurity in the United States, but it is not the main cause of such changes and to focus on the host/immigrant conflict diverts attention from many different elite projects that have widened inequality. Moral arguments about immigration cannot just address outsiders who only want to get into nations, but must address the moral situation of people in the process of entry and especially of insider/outsiders, people already in. Over the long run, civic nationalism is a healthier model than exclusionary biological or cultural fundamentalist definitions of the national community.

From number to name: symbolic capital, places of memory and the politics of street renaming in New York City

Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of street naming as a strategy for constructing ‘places of memory’. This paper draws upon Bourdieu's theory of symbolic capital to examine two key moments in the history of street renaming in New York City: the renaming of the avenues on Manhattan's Upper West Side in the latter nineteenth century and the street renamings in Harlem a century later. The aim of such a comparative case study approach is to demonstrate how the symbolic capital associated with street naming may be linked to an elite project of symbolic erasure and forced eviction, on the one hand, and the cultural recognition of a historically marginalized group, on the other. Both cases consider attempts to rename formerly numbered streets and avenues, and the benefit of considering them together is that they illustrate the multiple interests—as well as the exclusionary politics of race, class, and gender—involved in such shifts from ‘number’ to ‘name’. In doing so, this paper extends the current literature on street naming as a commemorative practice by linking it to a broader relational view of place-making, memory, and symbolic capital.

Sitting on the dock of the bay:1 partial views of change – Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong

Cities embody the political projects of elites; the spaces that are made frame the lives of their inhabitants; it is within these spaces that ordinary people make their lives. Cities seem dense, resistant and hard but they are always in flux; their transience marks their elites’ responses to the shifting demands/opportunities of changing circumstances; change has its benefits and its costs; these are not borne equally; all these matters can be accessed in many ways, here the route is though the accumulation of ethnographic detail; partial recollection; cities illuminated through the small scale; it is the way in which we all grasp the cities in which we live.

Phony Populism: The Misuse of Opinion Polls in theNational Post

This paper describes how the National Post regularly excludes polling details that are essential to an accurate reading of the data. It then looks at how business and labour issues are covered in the paper and shows that opinion polls are manipulated to confer popular legitimacy upon the economic conservatism of the Post’s editors. It concludes by arguing that while polls may be presented as a form of direct democracy, they are more aptly regarded as promoting a phony populism: the use of popular idioms to mask an elite project. Although opinion-poll results are presented as the unfiltered expressions of popular sentiment, they are in fact regularly manipulated by media outlets. I find that rather than giving voice to the general population, polls in the National Post are routinely used to “manufacture consent” for the viewpoints of the corporate and political elite, while misrepresenting popular opinion.

« Na tumba dos ricos ou no esquife dos pobres » : representar a ordem da vida e a da eternidade no Rio de Janeiro colonial

The colonization in the Portuguese America born of the violence from European metropolis that determined the bud of a productive structure returned to have well-taken care of the external interests. To a imposition the obligatory work in the tropic like fundamental component of a modern economy and destined to quickly reunite the wished rates of yield, settled a society much shaped by hierarchy and deeply cut by the modern slavery. That contradictions are form again in ceremonial that puts in scene the death like the continuity of the statu quo. According to Egon Flaig, Michel Vovelle and Jara Fuente, the social culture and agents who produce it, make an effort with their art to produce the eternal scene being in an image from further on conformed like a territory where the elite projects and returns to strike its symbolic sovereignty. The contract production with the Roman Catholic Church in colonial situation, indicates for the several facets of there presentation of the passage for the eternity like a strict perpetuation of the system of political power of the Portuguese Ancién Régime.

Empire is in the details

Recent writing that identifies the United States as an empire has focused overwhelmingly on its political-economic underpinnings, without questioning the cultural making of value or examining empire as more than an elite project. This writing has not drawn on ethnographic work that would reshape it in more adequate, less economistic forms, make the human face and frailties of imperialism more visible, and, in so doing, make challenges to imperial practice more likely. Focusing on military institutions, and via some examples from U.S. imperial projects in the Philippines and elsewhere, I suggest where ethnographies of empire might be done and what vulnerabilities they might explore.

Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810-1910

Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810-1910

Studies in the Formation of the Nation-State in Latin America

This volume originated at a conference at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the University of London in June 1999. It is a variegated bouquet of essays; the authors have chosen diverse themes relating to the development of the nation-state and have approached their tasks in dissimilar ways. Most of the essays focus on the nineteenth century, although some extend into the twentieth. The first essay, by Florencia Mallon, provides a useful discussion of some issues, abundantly citing relevant works on the formation of the nation-state in Mexico, Peru, and Chile, with particular emphasis on the roles of indigenous subalterns. Paul Gootenberg offers a synthetic summary of much of his work on nineteenth-century Peru, both that on the early period of caudillistic regional conflict (1821– 45) and his later study of elite developmentalist dreams and projects after 1845. These essays have the advantage of offering students relatively brief introductions to their perspectives. Seemin Qayum’s essay on Bolivia, taken from her University of London dissertation, also addresses elite projects. But, bearing in mind their impact on the indigenous population, it characterizes them more negatively. Qayum describes Bolivian elites as engaging in a project of internal colonialism, with Bolivia’s National Geographic Society (1904) as a salient expression of that project. The elite project included railway construction but was directed more generally at the appropriation of indigenous land. Qayum concludes that Bolivian elites failed to consolidate a nation-state, in part because of indigenous resistance and in part because of “structural economic factors relating to Bolivia’s position in the world market” (p. 298). Colin Lewis contributes an informative discussion of railway construction and monetary reform as integrative factors in post-1852 Argentina. Fernando López-Alves, focusing on the 1890–1930 period, treats the institution of Uruguay’s welfare system as a means of consolidating the state; he sees the welfare system as having been patterned, to some degree, on earlier military pensions.Miguel Centeno asks a central question: if war led to the construction of nation-states in Europe, why did nineteenth-century wars in Latin America not stimulate the development of strong states? He correctly notes that lack of economic integration (particularly before 1900) represents a fundamental obstacle to state formation. He also appropriately points out that many civil wars in Latin America were not about territory but rather about competing claims to central power. However, as the literature on war as stimulus to state-building in Europe stresses its role as an impetus to revenue collection, it is surprising that Centeno does not discuss the revenue consequences of the partisan civil wars of nineteenth-century Latin America. (Civil wars undermined the state’s fiscal resources, while forced loans undermined respect for the state.) Centeno’s speculation on the reasons why war failed to strengthen Latin American states in the nineteenth century is accompanied by Malcolm Deas’s informative discussion of military recruitment as a “blood tax.” Deas refrains from drawing explicit conclusions about the significance of this phenomenon for the construction, strengthening, or weakening of the state.Among the more interesting essays is Guy Thomson’s revealing comparison of differing modes in primary education, desamortización, liberal constitutionalism, church-state relations, and the manipulation of patriotic symbols in the construction of the nation-state in nineteenth-century Mexico and Spain. And Steven Topik offers a vigorous essay arguing (against interpretations that emphasize the relative effectiveness of the central state in nineteenth-century Brazil) that the empire was in reality a “hollow state.” Externally—to European states, financiers, and merchants—the Brazilian empire appeared a functioning state. But, Topik contends, internally it had little operative reach into the provinces. David McCreery’s first-rate essay on “State and Society in Nineteenth-Century Goiás” supports Topik’s contention. However, studies of São Paulo or Minas would provide a more conclusive test of Topik’s vision than the distant, relatively unintegated frontier region of Goiás. Alan Knight’s “The Weight of the State in Modern Mexico,” while referring particularly to Mexico, has much more general relevance. Knight critically analyzes concepts about state formation and problems in measuring both the strength of the state and the effectiveness and political implications of institutions constituting civil society. Knight’s essay and, in differing ways, Topik’s, seem to me the most important and generally significant in this book.As varying in theme and approach as the essays in this volume are, they offer broadly useful approaches to the state and nation in nineteenth-century Latin America. Even those essays that I found in some respects wanting are likely to prompt interesting class discussions. I will be using this book in my next seminar on the nineteenth century.