Book reviews

Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). Pp.xiv + 331. $25.00.

Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press, 1983). Pp. 300. £19.25.

Hans van Amersfoort, Immigration and the Formation of Minority Groups: The Dutch Experience 1945–1975 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982). Pp.vi + 243. £19.50. (Translated from the Dutch by Robert Lyng).

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in ‘70s Britain (London, Hutchinson University Library, 1982). Pp.324. £5.95.

Susan Benson, Ambiguous Ethnicity: Interracial Families in London (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982). Pp.xi + 172. £16.50 (hardback); £5.50 (paperback).

Ashok Ohri, Basil Manning and Paul Curno (eds.), Community Work and Racism: Community Work Seven (London, Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1982). Pp.xv+188. £5.95.

Harold Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England (London, Associated University Presses, 1983). Pp.339. £20.

Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs, Multiculturalism for All Australians (Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1982). Pp.54. NP.

Peter D. Osborne, The Other Australia: The Crisis in Aboriginal Health (Occasional Monograph 2, Department of Political Science, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 1982). Pp.144. NP.

J.W. Blassingame (ed.), The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series One, Volume 2: 1847–54, Speeches, Debates and Interviews (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1983). Pp.616. £38.

Robert Ross, Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa (London, Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1983). Pp.xi + 160. £9.50.     

U.K. Foot and Mouth Disease: A Systemic Risk Assessment of Existing Controls

This article details a systemic analysis of the controls in place and possible interventions available to further reduce the risk of a foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in the United Kingdom. Using a research‐based network analysis tool, we identify vulnerabilities within the multibarrier control system and their corresponding critical control points (CCPs). CCPs represent opportunities for active intervention that produce the greatest improvement to United Kingdom's resilience to future FMD outbreaks. Using an adapted ‘features, events, and processes’ (FEPs) methodology and network analysis, our results suggest that movements of animals and goods associated with legal activities significantly influence the system's behavior due to their higher frequency and ability to combine and create scenarios of exposure similar in origin to the U.K. FMD outbreaks of 1967/8 and 2001. The systemic risk assessment highlights areas outside of disease control that are relevant to disease spread. Further, it proves to be a powerful tool for demonstrating the need for implementing disease controls that have not previously been part of the system.     

Intersectional Epistemologies of Ignorance: How Behavioral and Social Science Research Shapes What We Know,Think We Know,and Don’t Know About U.S. Black Men’s Sexualities

Epistemologies of ignorance describe how ignorance influences the production of knowledge. Advancing an intersectional epistemologies of ignorance approach that examines how conscious (or unconscious) ignorance about racism, heterosexism, and classism shapes empirical knowledge about Black men’s sexualities, we conducted a critical review of the behavioral and social science research on U.S. Black men, ages 18 and older, for two time frames: pre-1981 and the most recent decade, 2006–2016. Our search yielded 668 articles, which we classified into five categories: sexual violence, sexual experiences and expressions, sexual identities, cultural and social-structural influences, and sexual health and sexual risk. We found that most of the research, particularly pre-1981, centered the experiences of White heterosexual men as normative and implicitly constructed Black men as hypersexual or deviant. Most of the research also color-blinded White privilege and ignored how racism, heterosexism, and classism structured Black men’s inequities. We also found notable exceptions to these trends. Black men who are gay, bisexual, or who have sex with men, and research on HIV risk were prominent in the past decade, as was research that emphasized the social-structural (e.g., poverty, heterosexism, racism) and cultural (e.g., masculinity, religion) contexts of Black men’s lives and sexualities. We provide 10 recommendations to avoid intersectional epistemic ignorance in future research.     

Soutenir le marché : les nouveaux instruments de la politique du logement

This examination of the tax incentives to individuals, established since the 1980s, for stimulating investments in building new rentals runs counter to the prevailing opinion about the French state's withdrawal from the housing sector. These arrangements have become a key instrument in housing policy. Though playing a decisive part in designing them, public authorities then lose control to private players, in particular real estate developers, who play a key role in implementing them. As the analysis of these arrangements shows, players in the market depend on interventions by public authorities. In fact, the very nature of public interventions is altered not only by being more oriented toward market players but also by losing visibility. Furthermore, the costs are hard to assess, and the effects, highly uncertain.     

U.S. foreign economic policy and illegal immigration

It is often suggested that the most effective policy for the United States, if it wishes to curtail illegal immigration from nearby countries, is to manipulate foreign economic instruments to support their economic development. The Reagan administration's Caribbean Basin Initiative is responsive to this approach in its proposals for increased aid and trade and tax preferences for beneficiary countries. Analysis of U.S. trade, investment, and aid relations with migrant-sending countries leads to the conclusion that these preferences could have a marginal impact on job creation in these countries, but there is no assurance that a modest rise in economic opportunity will lead to a decrease in emigration in the foreseeable future. In addition, preferential trade and tax treatment for some countries involves a departure from U.S. policy and would lead to a clamor for equal treatment by other countries.     

Paradigm Warriors: Regress and Progress in the Study of Contentious Politics

Paradigm warfare is a well-worn way of engaging in the polemics of research, but it frequently reduces paradigms to caricatures and turns complex reports of empirical research into cartoons. This is illustrated by two one-sided accounts of the Chiapas rebellion: one based on a simplistic political opportunity cartoon and the other on a foreshortened culturalist one. Reducing the many-sided (and in some ways ambiguous) approaches of the political process model to a supposedly hegemonic paradigm neglects many substantive contributions and cuts with too broad a stroke at social movements while ignoring the many-branched contributions of research and theory on contentious politics.     

Primary care: the driver in health care reform

The changes occurring in the health care industry have resulted in a cost-quality competition that has not been present in the past. Because of this competition, managed care is a growing way of financing and providing health care to the people of the United States. Managed care depends heavily on competent primary care physicians. Because primary care physicians are in short supply, the status and financial rewards of primary care practice are increasing. The primary care physician will be the dominant force in medical practice in the immediate future. He or she is capable in a managed setting of resolving the perceived problems of the health care industry in responding to the drivers of health care reform. Costs are reduced while quality is maintained. Access to health care is improved, and fragmentation of health care is significantly lessened.     

Changes in mental well-being, blood pressure and total cholesterol levels during workplace reorganization: the impact of uncertainty

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of uncertainty caused by large-scale workplace reorganization, on psychological well-being, blood pressure and total cholesterol levels. Employees (98 women and 86 men) were assessed four times, at approximately 6-monthly intervals, twice before and twice after reorganization. Self-reported psychological well-being was at its lowest level shortly prior to reorganization, as predicted. Greater self-reported uncertainty about one's own future occupational situation was associated with a bigger reduction in mental well-being before reorganization, as was role ambiguity after reorganization. Systolic blood pressure was elevated over initial levels just prior to reorganization, and shortly after reorganization, but at the final assessment was not significantly different from initial levels. A bigger increase in systolic blood pressure was seen in those reporting greater future job uncertainty before reorganization, and in those who started a new job or who reported greater role ambiguity after reorganization. Diastolic blood pressure was also significantly elevated over initial levels just before reorganization, but this effect became nonsignificant once changes in body mass index were statistically controlled. Total cholesterol also reached its highest level just prior to reorganization, but this effect was not significant. It is concluded that workplace reorganization caused significant increases in distress and in systolic blood pressure and that uncertainty contributed to these effects.     

Unequal at the starting line: Creating participatory inequalities across generations and among groups

We investigate how inequalities in political participation are shaped across generations by considering the influence of family background-in particular, parents' education and political involvement-on political participation. We pursue this issue, first, for individuals, investigating the effects of parental characteristics on the participatory profile of their offspring. Then, we use what we have learned to understand how group differences in political participation-between women and men and among Latinos, African Americans, and Anglo Whites-are rooted in the legacy of class and political background and in experiences throughout the life cycle. They are co-authors of The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) which was the co-writer of the Victoria Schuck Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on gender and politics of its year.