Reviews for Gender, Welfare State and the Market: Towards a New Division of Labour

The average rating for Gender, Welfare State and the Market: Towards a New Division of Labour based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-06-18 00:00:00 Ebgenii Cylimob In The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, Reşat Kasaba rejects the notion of the Ottoman Empire having experienced a sustained decline from the 17th century onwards. Instead, although many traditional structures deteriorated, other administrative apparatuses were able to adapt to, and even for a time flourish in, the changing economic processes of the era. In Kasaba's narrative, the Ottoman Empire was incorporated into the emerging "world economy" and, although it is eventually pushed to the periphery, this result was not preordained. By examining trade as a mediating process and Western Anatolia in the mid-19th century as an area of concentration, he demonstrates that the empire had the potential to emerge as at least semi-peripheral in relation to Europe and analyzes its limited successes, as well the reasons for its eventual failure. Kasaba's discussion begins after the 16th century and explores the factors that led to the weakening of the central bureaucracy and the subsequent spread of decentralization. In these circumstances, local notables were able to gain power and economic leverage over the troubled finances of the Ottoman state, but at first there was little reason for them to divert trade away from the central government. As grain prices rose, demand in Europe increased, and distracting wars made illegal activities easier, however, smuggling operations performed by non-Muslim merchants became more prominent. These merchants built trade networks in agricultural products and currency in ways that circumvented the state. The empire, meanwhile, became integrated in the European world economy through the changing nature of its diplomatic agreements that permitted an ever-increasing amount of European social and economic influence. Facing both internal and external threats, and with an inefficient military, the Ottomans quickly became reliant on Europe for their survival, who was now in an excellent position to protect the non-Muslim merchants. The consignment of the Ottoman Empire to the periphery of the world economy, however, was not predetermined. Changes in the system caused raw material production to shift outwards and allowed Britain to focus on industrial production, creating two main economic zones: the center and the periphery. A handful of states, such as Austria, Russia, and the white settler colonies were able to build a lesser degree of industry and gain a modicum of political leverage and were therefore classified as semi-peripheral. The Ottoman Empire, meanwhile, went through two phases. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars through the 1840s it was a customer of British commodities and received little foreign investment. After the 1850s, however, the British invested in Ottoman exports in the hopes of expanding regional markets. The local notables, however, proved to be an insurmountable obstacle in the empire's attempts to achieve a semi-peripheral status. This new social order of tax farmers, merchants, and money lenders had no interest in reviving the central government and was in direct competition with foreign merchants, thus blocking both ways through which supranational capital could penetrate into the interior. Focusing on Western Anatolia, Kasaba describes the factors that facilitated a drive away from the interstate system, wherein local preoccupations of tax-farming, money-lending, and money-changing were such lucrative affairs that there was no need for the merchants to engage in international trade. Kasaba then moves on to describe a growth period in the 1840s through the 1870s where exports exceeded imports and the possibility of higher returns convinced some notables in Western Anatolia to become involved with trade. Yet regional circumstances meant that there was little way for the empire to extract this wealth out of Western Anatolia and it became concentrated in the coastal areas, with little benefit to the countryside. Beginning in 1873, depression seized the world economy and revived protectionism, which led to foreign trade becoming risky once again. A subsequent state drive to recentralize led to the networks of the intermediaries being subsumed into the bureaucracy financed by supranational capital, which isolated them from further development and prevented, in Kasaba's opinion, the rise of a pluralistic civil society in the region. While Kasaba's work displays some of the problems with world systems theory as a whole, the book itself is an excellent piece of scholarship and one worth of study for anyone interested in the economic status of the later Ottoman Empire. Despite its subject matter, the book is intelligible to someone outside of the field and is never overly technical. In questioning the notion of unidirectional decline, the author presents a new perspective that lays the foundation for a reinterpretation of the society as a whole.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-07 00:00:00 Andrew Lee The main argument of the book is that the Lebanese state has historically been controlled by the capitalist class/big businessmen (the "merchants" in the title) and the feudal lords (both categories not being mutually exclusive of course) to the detriment of the population at large. Anyone familiar with Lebanon easily knows that this argument is not new - convincing cases have already been made back in the early post-independence days by both Lebanese and non-Lebanese scholars, highlighting how the Lebanese state is little more than a vehicle through which sectarian feudal lords and their cronies in the private sector enrich themselves and ensure that their narrow interests are always preserved and maintained. This book poorly rehashes previous arguments, without adding much to the debate. The book's structure is somewhat confusing and disjointed. The introductory chapters attempt to give a historical overview of Lebanon (going back to the days of the Phoenicians, passing through the Islamic conquests and the Ottoman era), but the presentation is far too broad and superficial to be useful. The book then takes us to the modern era (late Ottoman/mutassarifiyya period, French Mandate, post-independence period), explaining how the interests of the "warlords" and the capitalist class/big business have always been intertwined, and their narrow interests led the country into the abyss. The chapters on the civil war are the book's strongest point, as the author (who is an economist) makes use of quantitative data to explain what was happening in the country. However, the weak writing style, coupled with the very loose usage of the term 'warlord' (the author seemingly confuses the term with 'feudal lord') and the disjointed nature of the text made me force myself to finish the book. The referencing is very poor. While a bibliography exists at the end of the book and at the end of each chapter there is a "Notes" section, there are many facts and figures that are mentioned without any source or reference or footnote put next to them. In addition, some paragraphs are repeated throughout the text (I cannot remember which ones exactly), and there are some factual errors (at the top of my head, I recall the author stating that Takieddine Solh became Prime Minister in May 1992 - in reality, Rachid Al Solh became PM in May 1992). The Statistical annex at the end of the book is perhaps one of the book's sole redeeming qualities, as it contains many useful figures that researchers interested in better understanding the Lebanese economy can make use of. Lebanon has long fascinated many scholars, and countless books have been written about it over the years. Some are brilliant studies that deeply dissect the country's social, economic and political context, explaining how sectarianism, capitalism and local/regional/international political intertwine and intersect; others are surface-level accounts that simply state facts with little in-depth analysis. This book unfortunately falls in the latter category.