Adam Timmins

Chavs - The Demonization of the Working Class

Although this is a very worthwhile book, this review must start on a note of caution; the book’s title is a touch misleading. Anyone purchasing this title on the basis of the prospect of reading about Chavs will be disappointed. Trying to define a ‘Chav’ has always been a tricky business; more often than not it tends to fall into the ‘I know one when I see one’ school of conceptual analysis. Jones has a half-hearted stab at arguing that the term ‘Chav’ has been used as an umbrella to denigrate the working class as a whole; but eventually gives this up as a bad job. One suspects that the ‘Chavs’ aspect of the book, and indeed the title, was tacked on with potential sales in mind. When Jones moves onto the demonization of the working class however, he is on much firmer ground. Jones argues that the Labour general election landslide in 1945 saw the working class become a visible, respected presence: ‘Sweeping social reforms were introduced to address working class concerns. Trade unions enjoyed influence at the highest level of power. Working class people could no longer be ignored’ (pp. 109–110) However, just over a decade of Thatcherism destroyed much of British industry and turned the idea of being working class into a dirty word:

Darth Vader or Don Quixote? Keith Jenkins in review

Keith Jenkins is undoubtedly one of the most controversial and divisive historical theorists of the contemporary era. This article examines the reception that Jenkinss work has received from academic reviewers, in order to see how the Jenkins ‘brand’, so to speak, has been constructed over the past 20 years or so. The article studies how the reception of Jenkinss work by reviewers allowed them to continue the ‘history wars’ away from the main battleground of full-length books and journal articles. We argue that the reviews liberally blended empirical fact, interpretation and personal opinion with a series of literary flourishes. All in all, and for the most part, consumers of these reviews were cued to ‘imagine’ Jenkins as a strange combination of Darth Vader and Don Quixote; further evidence that Jenkins remains one of the most significant and misunderstood figures in historical theory today.

Georgia: A Political History since Independence

native low wage workers’ (p. 256). Finally, Tomas Korpi (Chapter 9) examines how different migration policies affect the skills of migrant populations using data from the International Adult Literacy Survey. The study indicates that in countries where immigrants have the highest literacy skills, the majority of immigrants come from countries with the same language (e.g. British citizens in New Zealand). Nonetheless, these differences in generic skills do not seem to be ‘related to migration policy in any systematic manner’ (p. 278), a result that raises questions about demand-based migration policies aiming at attracting highly skilled migrants. In summary, the contributions give an insight into the most recent dynamics underlying intraEuropean labour mobility in times of economic crisis, and examine the phenomenon of overeducation/underemployment. Especially chapters like Anacka and Fihel’s work on the sociodemographic characteristics of Polish returnees represent important data on recent migration movements from and to sending and receiving countries. On a similar note, Huber’s work on crossborder commuters describes a sector largely overlooked by scholarly research. However, the volume would, at times, have benefited from a deeper insight into the matter. For example, Tijdens and Klaveren prove that over-education is a global phenomenon, but do only briefly mention possible explanations like language problems or difficulties with the recognition of foreign educational credentials. On a similar note, Korpi states that immigration policies, even those aiming at attracting highly skilled migrants in particular, do not seem to have an impact on migrants’ generic set of skills, but fails to give an answer to the question of what factors do influence the possibility of skill import. In conclusion, some of the studies presented in the volume produce a sharp description of recent social phenomena in the context of inner-European labour migration, but paint a rather blurry picture when it comes to explaining these phenomena. In general, however, the volume is a valuable resource for scholars working on recent migration streams within the European Union of twenty-seven.

Derrida: A Biography

constructivist divide and dichotomous categories on the logic of appropriateness and consequentiality. Also, it would be misleading to jump to the conclusion that social learning explains domestic reform if the external incentives model fails to do so. Furthermore, there are some contradictory statements: for instance, while Nas views visa waiver policy as a function of Turkey’s Europeanness, MacMillan suggests the opposite. There is also confusion about whether the Turkish government’s approach to secularism is in tune with the EU. According to Oder, the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights on the headscarf ban in Turkey conflicts with the Turkish government’s agenda. Finally, the claim that Turkey acquired a ‘new understanding’ on minority rights due to the EU process is open to debate, given the selective and inconsistent policies towards minority groups such as Alevis. Nevertheless, the volume provides a fine review of the domestic transformations in Turkey from a theoretically informed perspective and would be useful to students of Turkish politics who seek to understand the complex nature of domestic reform in an EU candidate country whose Europeanness is heavily contested.

Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain

therefore also easily identifiable on the basis of local knowledge. The issue of bias is most controversial in relation to gender, with three chapters asking in turn whether the test was fair, whether women know less or just have the ‘wrong knowledge’ and whether low scores reflect the different professional interests of women. All three, the ten authors of which include four men, warn against drawing too many conclusions from the raw data. The first chapter claims that a third of the questions give men an advantage, the second agrees, with the proviso that this alone does not explain the performance of women, while the third is concerned that opportunities for women might be reduced if the use of similar tests were to reduce opportunities for women. Another factor seen as influencing results is the use of media, both traditional and online. The results, given in the chapters on this subject, show that especially the frequent use of Spiegel Online improves scores, particularly in the area of politics. However, there is a limit to the improvement of those who are already specialists in an area, with ‘outsiders’ gaining more from consulting publications devoted to an area outside their main field. If this conclusion may be slightly surprising, others in relation to media are not, in particular the conclusion that it is not the length of time spent on the computer that counts but the nature of the material consulted. The authors of the final chapter in this area suggest, no doubt rightly, that further research should not concentrate on the supposed dichotomy between traditional and on line but on the issue of quality. Recent years have seen in Germany, as elsewhere, the increased appearance of league tables ranking educational establishments. A number of the other chapters relate to this issue, asking for example which universities perform better in certain areas and whether the best students, who have the financial means, tend to break with German tradition and move further from home to find the best course. This is apparently the case for undergraduates but not post-graduates, while overall the best places to study are seen to be cities with a high graduate population. There is much in this volume that is of interest to those concerned with (or about) higher education, even if some reservations seem in order. Only experts can decide if the methodology used is appropriate. Others may wonder if so many conclusions can be drawn from a twenty-five minute test and, perish the thought, be slightly cynical about the conclusion of so many chapters that further research is necessary.

One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century

explained within the context of the larger surveillance and ideological operations of the GDR. The neglect with which some of these individuals have been met since the unification of the two Germanies is also presented critically. The ‘conclusion’ of the book does not really meet the criteria of the word, something which Rodden freely admits. His conclusion is actually an epilogue, recounting a conversation with an East German school teacher during the 1990s after a joint lesson teaching Brecht’s play, Das Leben des Galilei. In the conversation, this teacher tries to explain, and to a certain extent to justify, the complacency and ignorance that was rife in the GDR about the abuses of the State and of Eastern-bloc communism in general. She judges her own past in the light of the GDR’s official critiques of Nazi Germany, and in doing so professes her shame about ‘a nation that effectively dictated that the only truly decent human beings were those with the courage to be heroes’ (p. 158). This enables Rodden to end his book with some meditations on the qualitative similarities between Nazi Germany and the GDR, and the repercussions for Germany as it seeks to move past ‘the demons of [its] nation’s twentieth century crimes’ (p. 159). The ultimate conclusion is that Germany—and Germans—by telling life-stories and by following paths of truth and hope and empathy, have the chance to pursue a better future and to turn away from its past. The stories told, and the events they relate, are both moving and exasperating. The arbitrariness and cruelty behind the treatment of citizens by a state are no less appalling than the fact that the individuals who survived such treatment are shocked that someone should find their stories important. Oral histories of the GDR, although reasonably plentiful in German-language scholarship, are still somewhat lacking in English. The format and content of this book place it in line with works such as Anna Funder’s Stasiland, (2004) and as such this book provides a supplement to more mainstream works of academic scholarship on the ‘lived’ aspects of GDR social and cultural history in English.

Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire 1850–1920

Within the past decade, the British Empire has come back onto the historiographical agenda; Niall Ferguson’s government-approved tub-thumping account of the Empire has recently been countered by Richard Gott’s compilation of its crimes and misdemeanours—with neither likely to become a byword for cool, objective scholarship. Post-hoc criticism of the Empire has been common enough: but what about those contemporaries who spoke out against it in its pomp? This is the subject of the present book. Claeys argues that the well-worn narrative of criticism of the Empire beginning with the reverses of the Boer War is incorrect, and that there was a wellarticulated body of anti-Imperial opinion well before the end of the nineteenth century. Another shibboleth that Claeys attempts to demolish in this book is the fact that the main critics of imperial policy in the nineteenth century were socialists. In fact, Claeys argues, it was Positivist critiques of Empire that carried the most weight from the 1850s onwards, with socialist criticism only really beginning from the 1880s onwards. The neglect of the aforementioned Positivist critiques may well be related to how Auguste Comte’s star has fallen since his heyday. Yet it was Positivists who provided the most coherent and sustained critique of imperialism from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. The most influential of these was Frederic Harrison, the son of a stockbroker born in 1831. In 1866, he edited a volume of essays entitled International Policy, a tome which demonstrated ‘how coherent the Positivist critique of Imperialism was well before the revival of British socialism’ (p. 63). Positivist accounts of imperialism generally saw it as a device with which to extort wealth from indigenous peoples, and indeed this thread runs heavily through what became the two areas of greatest Positivist concern, India and Ireland. Edward Beesley—Professor of History at University College, London—wrote in 1869 that: