Reviews
Social & Behavioral Sciences
52-0560 HQ536 2013-45704 CIP
Carbone, June. Marriage markets: how inequality is remaking the
American family, by June Carbone and Naomi Cahn. Oxford, 2014.
258p index afp ISBN 9780199916580, $29.95
Law professors Carbone (Minnesota) and Cahn (George Washington)
follow up on their Red Families v. Blue Families (CH, Sep’10, 48-0544),
which centered on ideological differences in family formation and policy.
In this book, they take up the cross-cutting issue of class differences in
family making. The central puzzle is that marriage and two-parent child
rearing are increasing in the top classes, are threatened in the middle, and
have all but disappeared at the bottom. In explanation, they offer the
cultural change toward greater autonomy for women and the structural
change away from manufacturing jobs. These factors together have
contributed to quite different sex ratios in the different classes—more
employed and reliable men than women at the top, but the reverse in
the middle and bottom. This argument is useful to anyone studying
family life at the macro level. In the final section, the authors offer policy
solutions and a new model of family law, which may be of more interest
to specialists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. HHH All academic
levels/libraries.—B. Weston, Centre College
52-0561 HT690 2013-24961 CIP
Chinese middle classes: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and China,
ed. by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao. Routledge, 2014. 268p bibl index
ISBN 9780415677264, $145.00; ISBN 9780203380086 e-book, contact
publisher for price
Editor Hsiao has put together a solid, informative overview of the
structural forces that have created a new Chinese middle class. The
book’s strength is comparing social classes across geographical and
cultural regions. The contributors provide a thorough overview of the
way sociologists conceptualize social stratification in Chinese society.
One of the book’s core findings across the various Chinese cultural
enclaves is that the middle class tends to be first-generation middle class;
experiencing intergenerational mobility; created by state developmental
policies; more highly educated; and enjoying higher income and more
material possessions. The researchers found that mainland government
polices along with the pull of the market economy have created a new
middle social class of public servants. Benefiting from these changes,
this social class is overwhelmingly politically conservative. This is not
so for those in Taiwan’s middle class, who, unlike Hong Kong’s middle
class, are more critical and pessimistic about their future. The book is
the first to systematically provide an overview into the emergent ethos
and lifestyles, mobility, and political ideals of the Chinese middle classes.
Summing Up: Recommended. HH Upper-division undergraduates and
above.—W. R. Jankowiak, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
52-0562 E185 2013-31290 CIP
Feagin, Joe R. Racist America: roots, current realities, and fu-
ture reparations. 3rd ed. Routledge, 2014. 373p index ISBN
9780415704007, $150.00; ISBN 9780415704014 pbk, $39.95
Arguably, Feagin (Texas A&M Univ.) is the top white sociologist in
the US to cover race and ethnic relations from the viewpoint of African
Americans. He is a prolific writer on white privilege and its tentacles,
which reach outward on the continuum of white supremacy as a systemic
system, operating covertly and overtly in the realms of North American
society. Feagin pulls few punches in his analysis of “racist America.”
This third edition (previous eds., 2000, 2010) offers the usual context of
racism in historical to contemporary (Obama era) times. However, the
168 CHOICE
constant referencing to how whites have “racialized” African Americans and
“other” people of color while leaving out the stereotypes that have beset
the various white ethnic groupings, in a sociological sense, is unfortunate.
This perspective can leave readers thinking that all whites have ever done
is savaged the image of blacks, browns, yellows, reds, and others without
fully comprehending the bastardizing of whiteness itself. That stated,
Feagin does an exemplary job outlining the continued significance of
racism in society, and he offers a chapter on anti-racist strategies that can
be employed by his white counterparts (essentially speaking) to ease the
existence of its practice. Summing Up: Recommended. HH Upper-
division undergraduate and graduate collections in the social sciences and
humanities.—M. Christian, Lehman College
52-0563 HT361 2013-42160 MARC
Global city challenges: debating a concept, improving the prac-
tice, ed. by Michele Acuto and Wendy Steele. Palgrave Macmillan,
2013. 278p bibl index ISBN 9781137286864, $105.00
The global city concept has a special place in the minds of
government officials, international corporations, and urbanists. Not
unlike its close cousin, globalization (which is highly contested and
widely debated), the global city is both a state of being and an idea.
In this way, it is also plagued by many of the same operational and
definitional problematics of the globalization concept. The contributors
to this volume maintain that the challenges facing global cities are
numerous. They further suggest that the existing literature is empirically
impoverished, that it places the global city in a “wrongful” hegemonic
position in urban research, and that it is uncritical and lacking in new
insights. Accordingly, the authors seek to highlight the many multi- and/
or cross-disciplinary conversations currently underway—knowledge
pertaining to global circuits of security, postcolonial perspectives, literary
geographies, cultural experiences, virtual layers of the city, diversity of
architectural landscapes, geopolitical views, and historical models of
urban evolution—that have shaped how scholars pursue a global cities
research agenda. While the book claims to break new ground, a thorough
synthesis is lacking, and it is difficult to fully comprehend the limits
of the “very fluid human geography of global cities that is ceaselessly
remade and recast.” Summing Up: Recommended. HH Upper-division
undergraduates and above.—R. Sanders, Temple University
52-0564 HT1523 2013-39339 CIP
Global mixed race, ed. by Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain et al. New
York University, 2014. 335p bibl index ISBN 9780814770733, $79.00;
ISBN 9780814789155 pbk, $26.00
Mixture—racial, national, ethnic—while not a new phenomenon,
is increasingly evident in today’s globalized world. The authors of these
12 absorbing essays examine and discuss the status, identity, and life
experiences of mixed-descent individuals and communities in different
cultural and political environments. How the state treats and categorizes
mixed people is a major concern of the authors, as is the extent to
which racism impacts their lives. Every context is different, but there
are similarities. Both Mexico and Brazil incorporate “mixture” in their
national ideologies, and certain conditions lead to comparable outcomes.
Colonialism frequently results in highly gendered roles. Due to an
extended US military occupation (1945-72) in Okinawa, the fathers
of mixed-race offspring are usually white and the mothers Japanese. In
Zambia, the former British colony of Northern Rhodesia, the paternal
component is British and European, the maternal one native African.
The chapters address how people of mixed descent manage their lives,
September 2014
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.