Susan Eckstein

The Poverty of Revolution: The State and the Urban Poor in Mexico

The plight of the urban poor in Mexico has changed little since World War II, despite the countrys impressive rate of economic growth. Susan Eckstein considers how market forces and state policies that were ostensibly designed to help the poor have served to maintain their poverty. She draws on intensive research in a center city slum, a squatter settlement, and a low-cost housing development.Originally published in 1977.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Urbanization revisited: Inner-city slum of hope and squatter settlement of despair

Abstract In Latin America, shantytowns and squatter settlements were portrayed as “slums of hope” and inner-city areas as “slums of despair” in the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued in this article that the positive conception of the former and the negative conception of the latter were both exaggerated. By the latter 1980s, inner-city areas may be “slums of hope” while shantytowns, in comparison, are “slums of despair”. The reversal is attributable to changed macro conditions: the economic crisis plaguing Third World economies, and the austerity policies implemented as a consequence. Ethnographic work in Mexico City over a 20-year period shows center-city residents to be better situated than residents of the city periphery to adapt to the economic crisis.

Cuba: Order and Revolution

Introduction Part One: Prerevolutionary Cuba Governing through PluralizatIon, 1902-1933 The Political Impact of Imperialism Imperalism and a Pluralized Economy Government Authority The Purposes of Government The Political Party System Cleavages outside the Party System Governing through Regulation and Distribution, 1933-1958 The Retreat of Empire and the Rise of Hegemony Hegemony and the Economy Social Mobilization Economic Growth and Social Welfare Government Authority The Weight of Government The Purposes of Government Political Cleavages and Parties The Breakdown of the Political System The Problem of Political Illegitimacy The Politics of Breakdown Part Two: Revolutionary Cuba: Governing through Centralization International Influences, Society, and the Economy Hegemony and Revolutionary Politics Social Mobilization through Education The Economy and Social Welfare Establishing a New Government Government Authority and the Centralization of Power Structuring Revolutionary Politics The Formation of the Communist Party Social Bases and Political Purposes Social Effects of Redistribution Bureaucratization and Social Change The Constitution of 1976 and the Formalization of the State The Law and the Courts Mass Political Participation The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution The Cuban Womens Federation The Cuban Labor Confederation Youth Organizations The Political Impact of Popular Participation in Government Elections and Electoral Procedures Political Mobilization Measuring the Public Mood The Communist Party The Ruling Elite Party Membership The Communist Youth Union Functions of the Communist Party Internal Party Structure Party Schools The Partys Claim to Rule The Civic Soldier The Military Mission of the Armed Forces The Socioeconomic Mission of the Armed Forces The Political Mission of the Armed Forces Part Three: Political Processes and Change Setting Public Policy Setting Economic Policy Setting Intellectual and Scientific Policy Policymaking and Social Institutions Legislation and Legislative Processes Planning for the Nation Agrarian Conflict and Peasant Politics Agrarian Conflict before the Revolutlon Revolution Revo&iffonary Rule, and Agrarian Conflict The National Association of Small Peasants Political Culture Political Participation Cooperation and Individualism Explaining Continuity and Change after the Revolution Change among Students in the Early 1960s National Integration Forming the New Socialist Citizen Women and the Revolution Social Stress and Revolutionory Change Appendixes The Impact of International Economic Factors on Internal Affairs: Three Perspectives Changes in the Height of Cubans Racial Inequality in Public Health Textual Changes in the Draft Constitution of 1976 and the Draft Family Code Members of the Peoples Socialist Party in the Communist Partys Central Committee Cooperation among Cuban Scientists Notes Bibliography Index

The Making and Transnationalization of an Ethnic Niche: Vietnamese Manicurists.

The article addresses how Vietnamese immigrant women developed an urban employment niche in the beauty industry, in manicuring. They are shown to have done so by creating a market for professional nail care, through the transformation of nailwork into what might be called McNails, entailing inexpensive, walk-in, impersonal service, in stand-alone salons, nationwide, and by making manicures and pedicures de riguer across class and racial strata. Vietnamese are shown to have simultaneously gained access to institutional means to surmount professional manicure credentializing barriers, and to have developed formal and informal ethnic networks that fueled their growing monopolization of jobs in the sector, to the exclusion of non-Vietnamese. The article also elucidates conditions contributing to the Vietnamese build-up and transformation of the niche, to the nation-wide formation of the niche and, most recently, to the transnationalization of the niche. It also extrapolates from the Vietnamese manicure experience propositions concerning the development, expansion, maintenance, and transnationalization of immigrant-formed labor market niches.

Strategies to Combat Poverty in Latin America

Combating poverty requires economic growth and job creation along with complementary social policies that help the poor become productive participants in development. This book emphasizes the importance of comprehensive social programmes that co-ordinate all of the political, technical, economic, institutional and management elements that make up the development process. Key to a successful national strategy is developing the human resources and institutional capacity to effectively design, carry out and evaluate social programmes. The role of decentralization and the private sector in combating poverty is also examined. Case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Costa Rica look at social policies in the context of each countys historical and institutional framework. The studies analyze the extent to which these countries have been able to integrate economic and social policies to effectively combat poverty.

Patterns of Cuban development: The first twenty-five years

Abstract This paper interprets the post-1959 evolution of Cuban economic policymaking and performance as a function of the shifting and interacting domestic and foreign sources of surplus accumulation. Policy choices previously seen as strictly subjective, such as the use of moral incentives in the late 1960s, are attributed objective components. The tensions between decentralization and centralization, market and plan, private and public, agriculture and industry, efficiency and equity are discussed in relation to domestic surplus generation. The role of Soviet aid, commodity prices, trading patterns and debt repayment are treated in analyzing foreign influences on surplus generation.

Transformation of a "Revolution from Below" Bolivia and International Capital

A nationalist coalition with middle-class leadership seized control of the Bolivian state in 1952. Uprisings immediately broke out in the countryside, and peasants seized lands previously held in large estates. In response to pressure from below, the new government in 1953 initiated an agrarian reform that destroyed the economic base of the landed oligarchy. It also reorganized old agrarian institutions and created new ones to serve the rural poor. Yet government policies a short while after the revolution ceased to favor the peasantry. Why? One would expect governments in capitalist societies which have not experienced peasant revolutions to promote the interests of capital. But in a society where peasants have successfully pressured the government to rule in their interests, and where an agrarian capitalist class has historically been weak, one might expect an alternative model of development to evolve. After a brief description of the conditions that gave rise to the revolution and the changes which subsequently occurred, this article will describe how, and explain why, postrevolutionary governments shifted their agrarian class priorities. First, it will be shown that, from the beginning, the postrevolutionary Bolivian regimes were concerned with promoting agrarian capitalism, but that despite this concern they initially also allocated resources to the peasant sector. Changes in government, land, and fiscal policies over the years will be documented. Second, the reason for the shift in government priorities will be analyzed and shown not to have been economically rational. That shift reflected both the biases of foreign creditors, who came to finance local agricultural development, and the changing nature of the ruling coalition. Data on the biases of international creditors and on the ability of the financiers to undermine the political autonomy and economic interests of the Bolivian state will be presented. Third, the capitalist class created by the foreign financial

The Coming Crisis in Cuban Education

Abstract Since the revolution of 1959 Cuba massively expanded and, in many respects, transformed its education system. While the strategy under Fidel Castro initially differed from other LDCs in its emphasis on mass education and technical training, with time the island has been inflicted with the same ‘diploma disease’ as so many other LDCs. And once inflicted, it has had exceptional difficulty curing the illness. The country has come to be overeducated, relative to the employment opportunities available. Overeducation has become a political as well as fiscal problem following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Soviet aid and trade in turn. Faced with the problem, the government is attempting to deschool the younger generation. However, families are resisting the downward mobility implicit in the education restructuring.

Immigration, remittances, and transnational social capital formation: a Cuban case study

Abstract Social capital takes on distinctive meaning in the context of large-scale immigration from poor to rich countries. In this article, characteristics of social capital embedded in transnational networks and norms, conditions conducive to the formation of such networks, and effects such networks have are extrapolated from an analysis of how and why cross-border relations among Cuban-Americans and Cubans in their homeland have changed since the 1959 Castro-led revolution. The transnational social capital generating benefit on which the study focuses is remittances. Remittances are of growing global importance to less developed countries, and in some countries they generate more revenue than foreign aid and foreign investment. The analysis addresses a range of unintended as well as intended consequences remittances may have.

Capitalist Constraints on Cuban Socialist Development

To what extent has the socialist transformation of the Cuban political economy helped the country diversify and develop its productive forces, reduced the islands vulnerability to vicissitudes in the world market price for a single export commodity, and decreased its dependence on trade with a single internationally dominant nation? In this article it will be shown, respectively, that sugar plays as central a role in the Cuban economy since the 1959 revolution as it did before and that the island currently is about as dependent on Soviet trade as it previously was on trade with the United States. It will also be shown, though, that the islands economic prospects still hinge on world market conditions, despite its integration into the Soviet socialist bloc and despite the nationalization and socialization of its domestic economy. Capitalist forces impinge on the islands economy directly, through the countrys dealings with capitalist countries, and indirectly, through its dealings with the Soviet socialist bloc.