A. J. Jacobs

Conclusions and Future Auto FDI Prospects for CE and SEE Nations

This unique chapter provides near-term outlooks for passenger car production in each of the CE nations and speculates on the role SEE nations will play in this future. For this purpose, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Croatia also are brought into the discussion. In order to evaluate these prospects, a back-of-the envelope scoring system is presented that rates the likelihood for expansions of existing plants and the potential for each of the ten nations and East Germany of attracting a new full-fledged car factory (manufacturing 150,000 to 300,000 cars per year). The chapter and book then closes with some thoughts regarding the future geography of auto production in Post-Socialist Europe.

Passenger Car Plants Before and After the Former East Germany

This chronicles the legacies of Post-Socialist East Germany’s five current car factories, back to Auto Union’s (the forerunner to Audi) early-twentieth century plants in Saxony. To help guide the discussion, specific factories are reviewed together along grouped with their respective current automaker group, that is: VW Zwickau (former Auto Union); the pre-war BMW Eisenach is coupled with the current BMW Leipzig factory; and GM’s takeover of the former BMW Eisenach Works and its subsequent construction of today’s Opel Eisenach.

Foreign Passenger Car Plants in Poland

This chapter traces the lineage of Poland’s three current and four former foreign car plants. This complicated saga demonstrates the initial chaos of the early Post-Socialist Period privatization process. Whereas the active plants FCA Tychy, VW Poznan, and GM’s Opel Gliwice all evolved within this context, Poland’s sometimes poor decisions on which automakers to depend upon, Daewoo of Korea, resulted in the failures of its state-run car plants in Warsaw and Lublin. The chapter concludes by summarizing Poland’s Post-Socialist production data over time and by briefly discussing Toyota’s powertrain facilities (engine and transmission) and Mercedes-Benz’s engine factory and rumored car plant in southern Poland. Due to the sheer number of plants to be covered, this chapter is easily the longest in the book.

Foreign Carmakers in Czechia

This chapter reviews Czechia’s four current car plants. This discussion begins with Skoda’s early-twentieth century formation, including the now Vrchlabi components plant, and follows these plants through their takeover by VW in the early Post-Socialist Period. It also examines Toyota of Japan and PSA Peugeot-Citroen of France’s joint venture TPCA Kolin factory and Hyundai of Korea’s Nosovice plant near Ostrava. Similar to all other country-specific chapters in the book, the discussion concludes with a data summary of foreign-led auto production in Czechia in the Post-Socialist Period.

The Next Ring:The Emerging Southeast Europe Auto Zone

This chapter outlines the Socialist and Post-Socialist car industry developments in Romania and the former Yugoslav Republics of Serbia and Slovenia. The discussion begins with Socialist and Post-Socialist histories of Renault’s Dacia Pitesti and Ford’s Craiova in Romania, including Daewoo’s brief failed ownership of the Craiova factory. It then traces the similar paths of FCA Kragujevac complex in Serbia and Renault’s Revoz plant in Slovenia. The review of FCA Kragujevac includes some background on the violent breakup of Yugoslavia and a chronicle of Fiat’s long relationship with the state-run Zastava (maker of Yugo). The Slovenia discussion also introduces possible entrance of a new automaker, Magna of Canada, whose rumored plant in Hoce-Slivnica would be a major breakthrough for the SEE Nation.

Foreign Automakers in Independent Slovakia

This chapter offers an overview of Post-Socialist Slovakia’s three existing and one planned car factories. This begins by tracing the origins of today’s VW factory in Bratislava under Socialist Czechoslovakia through the German automaker’s takeover and subsequent numerous expansions of the complex. This is followed by sections on PSA Peugeot Citroen’s (PSA) Trnava complex, Kia’s Zilina plant, and Tata Motors’ under construction Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) facility in Nitra. Its conclusion brief summarizes the now independent nation’s rise to become the most prolific vehicle producer per capita in the world.

Foreign Car Plants in Hungary

This chapter examines Hungary’s three active and one former foreign car plants. This begins by providing some background on Hungary’s pre-war Socialist commercial vehicle industry and its connections to its now booming car and engine production. It then chronicles GM’s decision to end its small car assembly operation at its Opel Szentgotthard powertrain complex after the opening of its Opel Poland Gliwice. This is followed by reviews of the nation’s three present car plants, Suzuki Esztergom, Audi Gyor, and Mercedes-Benz Kecskemet. The Kecskemet factory’s tumultuous expansion is also discussed.

Two Blocs to One Market: The Shift East of Auto Production in Post-Socialist Europe

This brief chapter sets the scene for the nation-specific chapters by providing a short synopsis of passenger car production in CE during the Socialist Era (1949–1989). It then provides a chronology of foreign car plant production launches in CE and SEE and a summary of car production data by nation for CE, SEE, and Western Europe. These figures are broken up into two distinct periods: 1989–2001 or Post-Socialist Phase I; and 2001–2015 or Post-Socialist Phase II.

Collision course: Ronald Reagan, the air traffic controllers, and the strike that changed america

money by deterring fraudulent duplicate applications. Magnet nicely outlines how this is only one particular and relatively rare type of fraud, and that the cost to states (in the tens of millions per year) more than overshadows any savings resulting from decreased fraud. Significantly, providers of services (e.g., doctors and landlords) commit a greater percentage of welfare fraud. Lawmakers in one state considered monitoring the providers, but the proposal was rejected, making clear that some groups of people are more able to avoid a criminal classification than others. The power of this example is further evident in consequences of the logistics of managing the technology. Because it could be cumbersome to transport the fingerprint machines to off-site locations, outreach efforts decreased, as did the number of people aided by the programs. In all, this case provides a convincing analysis of the social consequences of deploying the technology. Magnet’s final case study reviews biometrics as prominent features of post-9/11 U.S./ Canadian border agreements. Like the accessible prison population and governmentfunded welfare programs, government contracts for national security after 9/11 provided an enormous market and opportunity for companies to demonstrate how biometric technology can protect us from security threats. As Canadians come to be envisioned differently—potentially polluting rather than benign— their bodies are revisualized. The promise of the objectivity of biometrics is purported to provide a translation of these bodies that can easily be identified as ‘‘us’’ or ‘‘them.’’ The strength of this example is how it demonstrates the role the technology, by constructing bodies as clean, stable, and identifiable, plays in defining the border, not just maintaining it. When Biometrics Fail concludes that the technologies have served as a politically successful policy failure: they do not work, and they harm certain individuals, but they succeed politically because they appear to keep us safe. Magnet’s theoretical reliance on corporeal fetishism while attending to failures, leads her to significant conclusions: first, the technology falsely imagines bodies as stable entities, and second, it intensifies inequalities. Of particular interest to sociologists is her focus, especially in the welfare chapter, on the human costs of the technologies. The analysis of the technology, its uses, and its failures inform us about the cultural context in which they were developed and are believed to be productive solutions. Our reliance on them to identify (and profit from) particular bodies—prisoners, welfare recipients, and security threats—is central to this argument. Overall, the book is well organized and the archival material clearly presented. The introduction sets up the interesting question of how biometric technology codifies inequality, and subsequent chapters provide a convincing argument. Most helpful within chapters were the ‘‘significance’’ sections that contextualized the archival findings. Sections are often brief, though, and could be expanded. For instance, it would have been informative to have an analysis of the sources themselves: Where does most information on the topic come from? Who are the authorities? What do these answers tell us about how we understand biometrics and make decisions about employing them? Though not for the purpose of methodological reflection, the chapter on depictions of biometrics in fiction and news taps the dynamic between public information and product development, providing some information on the flow of ideas. Sections of the book would be well-received in courses in criminology, social policy, and immigration. Additionally, details of the development and use of the technologies, outlined clearly in the appendix and referenced in the text, will be of interest to social scholars of science and technology.

Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the WorldTsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, by BestorTheodore C.. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 411 pp.

The place of the underemployed in workfamily conflict research has been overlooked in a way similar to the working poor in urban-poverty research. Just as Newman’s 1999 study of the working poor in Harlem in No Shame in My Game brought some needed attention to that understudied group, so The Time Divide shines a light on the growing population of underemployed workers whose work-family conflicts derive largely from inadequate income levels and benefits. Jacobs and Gerson show how there are time dilemmas at both ends of the continuum between the overworked and the underemployed. While these are qualitatively different, they have similar implications for rethinking work-family conflict. The policy-based reforms presented at the end of the book are refreshingly pragmatic. Refraining from indulgent idealisms of total system overhauls, the authors present material solutions that are both feasible and promising, given the experiences and direction of other Western industrialized nations; although increased government aid or support for either shorter or more flexible work schedules is unlikely to get much support from the current government. For instance, the authors point to the European system of publicly sponsored childcare and shorter workweeks as ways to reduce work-family conflict. They also call for the extension of the Fair Labor Standards Act and implementation of mandatory proportional benefits that would provide benefits to workers across the occupational divide, not just the well-employed. The gender analysis is solid and confirms mainstream feminist principles on the gendered nature of work and family. There were some intriguing insights gained from the cross-national research in terms of the negotiations between work-family integration strategies and gender equality. Jacobs and Gerson show that in the Netherlands and Sweden, for instance, reductions in working time have come at the price of gender inequality, with women heading up the parttime sector of the labor force and placed in compromising positions of economic dependency. One disappointment with the book is its lack of any racial analysis. Given that class, gender, and race are arguably the three central organizing principles on which American society is structured, it seems important that we examine racialized, as well as class-based and gendered work-family conflict and time dilemmas. It would be naïve to think for instance that the bifurcated labor force is not in some ways a racialized occupational divide. This book presents an original thesis supported with extensive quantitative research, cross-national data, and an incisive analysis of the key debates and issues surrounding work-family conflict in the academic and policy arenas. Jacobs and Gerson have produced a useful piece of scholarship that will inform scholars in the fields of family, gender, and work, as well as public policy analysts. This is a thoughtful, coherent, and accessible book that is required reading for those interested in the balances of work and family; they should make time for The Time Divide.