Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 7 - January 2018) - Choice Review: Economics

The business of culture designs, produces, markets, and distributes cultural products that include art, education, literature, publishing, and mass media. Cultural entrepreneurs, both business people and cultural agents, take risks and innovate, develop, and sustain products and enterprises. In a South Asian context, cultural entrepreneurship is a continuing process that began in late-19th-century China. Declining state power, foreign intrusion, and war created a freewheeling sociopolitical environment conducive to entrepreneurship. Eleven academics in Canada, England, Singapore, and the US contribute to this anthology, which organizes Chinese cultural entrepreneurs into three archetypes corresponding to the three sections of the book: "Cultural Personalities," "Tycoons," and "Collective Enterprises." The chapters demonstrate how ingenuity and execution facilitated the individual successes of the various cultural entrepreneurs the authors explore, and in sum, the book presents a sphere of individuals engaged in cultural production. A 12-page Chinese-English glossary, 30 figures, and five tables add clarity to the discussion. Profuse bilingual sources and notations throughout.

Modern society stands in awe of the remarkable capacity of digital media to entertain, inform, and communicate. Academic researchers mostly ignore the work and sacrifices of those people who make this new media possible. Fuchs (Univ. of Westminster, UK) offers detailed descriptions of the relationships between labor and capital around the world, including detailed analysis of Indian software and call center workers, Google employees with incredible demands upon their time, the young people exposed to toxic materials while assembling Apple products in the Chinese Foxconn factories, and the workers in high-tech factories in the US with equally lethal exposures. Fuchs uses both Marxian analysis and cultural studies to dig deeper into the nature of the lives of such workers, whom he describes as digital slaves. The field of cultural studies offers a natural window for looking more closely at the role of labor in digital media. Although some pioneers in cultural studies began important work with respect to labor, Fuchs carefully describes how cultural studies has increasingly distanced itself from questions of class. Fuchs does a remarkable job of using Marxist theory to reinvigorate the world of cultural studies. In short, the book is both encyclopedic and easily accessible.

This book offers an in-depth look at a complex region, integrating the ideas of scholars and practitioners to examine businesses conducted in Latin America. The book consists of nine chapters: "Introduction to the Latin American Environment," "The Economic History of Latin America from Independence to the Debt Crisis of the 1980s," "The Economic Climate in Latin America," "Culture and Business," "Economic Climate of Doing Business in Latin America," "Political Climate," "Establishing Businesses in Latin America," "Marketing to Latin American Consumers," and "Learning from the Past." The book also includes 23 country economic surveys, including those from Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica. There are numerous interesting graphs and tables along with two cases, but the bibliography leaves out the Proceedings of the Business Association of Latin American Studies. With its combination of contemporary analysis and historical discussion, this book is well crafted. The ability of the authors to view Latin America through the lens of international business and globalization will make this book very useful for MBA students, upper-division undergraduates, and corporate executives.

In this remarkable book, Wenz (emer., philosophy, Univ. of Illinois at Springfield) offers a holistic approach to macroeconomics that reveals the hidden subsidies compelling companies to act against human well-being by promoting economic efficiency. In addressing the question "how can we reduce unemployment?" this book shows, counterintuitively, that the surprising answer is inefficiency. The author defines the concepts of "functional efficiency" and "fundamental efficiency" early in the book. He then proceeds to use those concepts as connecting themes while he examines such disparate subjects as hospital systems, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, automotive travel, and road construction. Each chapter, more revealing than the one before it, gives readers a picture of a system that needs to shift its focus in order to best serve humanity and the environment; human efficiences may be functional, the author argues, but they are too often harmful as well. Written in clear and straightforward language, the book contains both useful illustrative anecdotes from the author's life and examples from countries around the world. While global in scope, the book's main focus is on the United States. The author uses an extensive bibliography from a multitude of disciplines to show how interconnected the global economy is.

The Great Convergence is an important text, because it argues for a change in the way we think about and deal with globalization. Baldwin (Centre for Economic Policy Research, UK) disaggregates the monolithic, undifferentiated approach that considers globalization as a single phenomenon. Rather, the author argues that there are three major strands of globalization, and that these strands have been predominant during successive historical periods. First, globalization consisted of the movement of goods, then the movement of ideas/information, and, Baldwin posits, in the future the movement and enhanced functionality of people. Viewing globalization through this lens, supported by clear and lucid historical analysis, Baldwin’s view will cause the reader to think differently about trade agreement, government policy, the future of work, and other economic and political issues. This spirited thesis is presented with clarity in lucid and thoughtful prose that is accessible to all readers.

This volume collects 13 essays by political scientists, sociologists, labor relations specialists, labor activists, a social anthropologist, and a union organizer on various aspects of nontraditional organization and activism in a variety of settings and countries around the world. Editor Ness (political science, CUNY) contributes a substantive introduction and one of the essays. The book includes useful chapters on worker protests in Russia and China by well placed and experienced observers, and more specific case studies of Indian car workers, South African mine workers, unskilled workers in conservation in Madagascar, Colombian open-pit coal workers, and transport workers in Argentina. There follow more historical studies of syndicalism in Sweden and workers’ control in Australia, case studies of the Wobblies in US fast food and British contract cleaners, and finally a historical contrast of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) ideas to conventional US unionism and the legal framework of collective bargaining and binding contracts. In general, the committed authors espouse a radical viewpoint, and are open about their advocacy against existing capitalism and in favor of workers and a renewed rise of labor power. The essays are uneven and many are jargon-laden, but the content is valuable and should be widely available.

Zhang, a corporate governance adviser based in Hong Kong, has written a short paperback that reads more like a journalistic work than an academic one. The book provides a firsthand account of the way Chinese state-owned enterprises function, particularly in terms of internal governance during a period of rapid changes in market rules and conditions. Zhang attempts a Michael Lewis–style account of the internal dynamics and culture of state-owned firms and the relationships these firms form with private and public financial institutions, including state banks and China’s relatively new private investment firms. Unfortunately, the book lacks the organization and focus of journalistic writing and is analytically shallower than one would hope, especially given Zhang's self-promotion as the consummate insider with both connections and expertise. Nevertheless, readers unfamiliar with how Chinese firms work or the way the Chinese economy is evolving may find Zhang's relatively informal description of business deals and strategies interesting. Although it may not satisfy academics seeking a more complex understanding of Chinese state capitalism, this book would be a satisfying read for business people interested in pursuing deals in mainland China.

During WW II, some US business leaders formed organizations to plan for the postwar economy and to provide social and economic policy options for the US government. A fundamental motivation was to avoid an economic relapse into the Great Depression and a desire to continue the massive US wartime production. Diplomatic historian Whitham (Edge Hill Univ., UK) meticulously examines these various organizations, especially the Committee for Economic Development (CED), National Planning Association (NPA), and Twentieth Century Fund (TCF). Business leaders, academics, and government officials made up these groups, and each organization had its own approach to the postwar period. Drawing upon new archival material on the NPA and the TCF, Whitham depicts the tensions between “corporate liberals” and their New Deal vision of government involvement and business conservatives who espoused laissez-faire, which led to the emergence of “corporate moderates” in the CED that dominated the postwar years. These moderate planners formed a consensus understanding of accepted government involvement in the economy while advocating increased global trade to advance US interests within their vision of the postwar world. Whitham argues that these planners helped establish a pattern of government-business relations that lasted for decades and shaped US economic might.

Shopping is not just about acquiring everyday necessities or luxuries. In their insightful introduction to this collection, Bay and Fabian (both, history, Rutgers Univ.) write that the essays document the “tangled relations of race and retail.” They open this introduction with a discussion of a 2013 case of racial profiling that illustrates the “loss prevention practices” retailers use, practices that plague nonwhite shoppers. Bringing to the discussion the methodologies of various disciplines—including history, urban planning, sociology, public health, ethnic studies, business, and geography—the contributors explore both national and local cases. Despite the methodological diversity, the 14 essays are consistently fascinating, accessible, well researched, and evocatively written. The editors do a good job of balancing background material and newly researched cases. Providing effective analyses of how ethnicity affects people’s experiences as consumers as well as citizens, this cohesive collection will have a broad audience. For students who care more about shopping than race and ethnicity, this book provides a valuable opportunity to engage in discussions about why race and ethnicity matter on both sides of the so-called color line.

Are corporations dying as a business form? Davis (Univ. of Michigan) thinks so. In this clearly written book, he outlines the rise and fall of large US corporations in terms of impact, particularly with regard to employment. Only a small percentage of workers would now expect to spend the majority of their careers within a single corporation, and the sharing economy world of contingent labor has grown, with the few controlling companies employing vastly fewer workers than the major corporations of the past. Davis makes a convincing case for the perverse argument that the demise of large corporations as employers has contributed to increased income inequality through the hollowing out effect of the loss of stable, middle-income jobs in large corporations as tasks replace jobs replace careers. The book ends on a more optimistic note regarding the promises of platform capitalism and other new potential organizational forms. The author also exhorts the young to develop marketable, serviceable skills rather than hoping to follow ill-defined passion so as to prepare for employment in the post-corporate future economy.