From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

The New Imperialism

Foundations Of Statistics

Michel Agier’s Managing the Undesirables is one of several texts that addresses the complex and proliferating humanitarian infrastructure that is increasingly prevalent in regions of the world besieged by violence and displacement, but his work stands out as particularly important and innovative. Agier addresses some of the central questions facing our world today: belonging, personhood, and the ability of those most cut off from political power to speak for themselves and shape their own lives, and he does so in a way that combines passion and keen observation. In doing so, his work should be of interest to a broad range of sociologists who study social inequality and the structures (even those built from the best of intentions) that perpetuate it. In this volume, Agier explores the concept of humanitarian government, the political apparatus set up during emergency situations that takes responsibility for the life and death of individuals no longer protected adequately by a state. For as Agier shows, a refugee camp is far more than a place of shelters and emergency food aid. They are places in which someone decides who gets plastic sheeting and who does not, who receives food rations and for how long, what social programs should be put into place and who should be in charge of them, and what barriers need to be constructed (barbed wired, armed guards, cinderblock walls) to ostensibly protect those inside but also to protect the local population from incursions of these displaced ‘‘undesirables.’’ Further, these ‘‘camps’’ are hardly temporary shelters; many have existed for decades, taking on the appearance of towns and cities with entrepreneurs setting up small businesses and political elites emerging from the post-flight chaos. And yet, the camp is a hybrid social form, taking the shape of something entirely new from what existed before in the lives of its inhabitants, and as Agier convincingly argues, it exists in a state of exception, outside the bounds of the political and social life that humanitarian law and human rights ostensibly guarantee. Agier uses his ethnologist’s eye for culture to analyze observations he made during fieldwork in refugee camps in Kenya, Zambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea between 2000-2007, accessing the camps through Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; in English, Doctors Without Borders). His affiliation with MSF gave him a level of flexibility and independence (particularly from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees) that allowed him sufficient time in the camps to not only observe humanitarian government at work but also the response of the refugees under its purview. He combines his observations with detailed histories of different migrations, explaining the historical and geographic paths that led different groups of refugees to the camps that he studied. Agier demonstrates the discursive power that humanitarian organizations have over defining and categorizing the displaced individuals in the camps; defining a person’s status as a refugee leads to acceptance into the camp and the security that brings, but the denial of such status leads to rejection and often deportation back to life-threatening circumstances. Once determined as a refugee, a person’s suffering and vulnerability come to define their place in the camp and the world, with moral hierarchies created around different definitions of vulnerability with different access to resources provided by the humanitarian organization. This process, Agier argues, de-socializes refugees; they lose their individual personhood and either become ahistorical, pitiable masses that the charitable-at-heart seek to keep alive, or potential threats to order and the safety of the non-displaced that must be managed or

Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance

Liquidated : an ethnography of Wall Street

In this original, erudite book, Jens Beckert examines the ways in which market participants confront market contingencies in modern capitalism. What sets Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics apart from most previous accounts is Beckert’s privileging of ‘‘imagined futures’’ and ‘‘fictional expectations’’ rather than the dominant practice of using past market patterns to explain future markets. In doing so, Beckert not only introduces a different framing for understanding how market participants confront market contingencies but provides a richer sociological framing of how markets function. A central theme running through this account is the temporal character of modern capitalism. Capitalism, according to Beckert, not only assumes an open future full of contingencies but embraces this future. In this ever-changing world, the ability to predict what the future will produce is of vital importance. You may not be able to be right all the time, but you need to be able to make ‘‘reasonable’’ predictions. Though numerous different means for doing this have been generated over the years, most, as noted above, have relied heavily on trying to discover patterns in the way past markets have behaved. Beckert reviews these methods in great detail. In doing so, he reveals their limitations. More importantly, he makes his own case that market participants actually rely to a greater extent on what he labels as ‘‘imagined futures’’ and ‘‘fictional expectations’’ to deal with the contingencies they confront. Beckert shows that the unpredictability of the market is due in large measure to the fact that modern markets are embedded in a wide range of multi-faceted socially grounded narratives. Different narratives generate different predictions. While this is an original argument, Beckert draws on a wide range of sociological, economic, and philosophical theorists, including Dewey, Durkheim, and Keynes, to make his case. Beckert realizes that these expectations can in no way actually predict the future for the simple reason that there always exists a multitude of these expectations. He nevertheless makes an extremely strong case that the dynamics of modern capitalism and market behavior rely on them, given that they are embedded in sociologically grounded narratives. Beckert provides a detailed account of how the four major ‘‘building blocks’’ of capitalism—money and credit, investments, innovation, and consumption—embody and utilize ‘‘imagined futures’’ and ‘‘fictional expectations.’’ He expands on this overview by showing how both economic forecasting and economic theory formalize their own range of narratives that rely on ‘‘imagined futures’’ and ‘‘fictional expectations.’’ Analysis and past behavioral patterns clearly play a role, but when it comes to grasping the dynamics of modern capitalism, ‘‘imagined futures’’ dominate. Though Beckert’s argument is focused on modern capitalism, he ends his book by suggesting that the power of ‘‘imagined futures’’ and ‘‘fictional expectations’’ is not limited to economics and modern capitalism. They function in a wide range of political and social activities. This perspective underscores another theme that deserves wider attention, namely the extent to which economic events and models continue to seep into other sectors of our society. Taken together, the central themes of this book more than qualify it as a significant contribution not only to economic sociology but to the social sciences in general. It does leave us, however, with an unacknowledged elephant in the room, namely, the contingencies of future events. Put somewhat differently, the contingencies of future events may necessitate ‘‘imagined futures,’’ but it is a stretch to credit them with generating these contingencies. They very well might contribute in the manner of ‘‘self-fulfilling prophecies,’’ but they can’t be held responsible for all contingencies. The physical world we live in is itself pervaded by all sorts of natural or physical contingencies. Keynes, who privileged 538 Reviews

Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics

Resume Le premier fevrier 2008, les trois organisations syndicales Force ouvriere, la Confederation francaise democratique du travail et la Confederation generale du travail appellent a la premiere journee nationale de greve dans la grande distribution. Le 2 fevrier, le mouvement n’est pas reconduit nationalement, mais les salaries de l’hypermarche marseillais Hypermag Grand Large entament une greve de 16 jours pour demander une prime exceptionnelle de 250 euros, le passage des salaries en temps partiel contraint a temps complet et l’augmentation des tickets-restaurants de 3,05 a 5 euros. L’objectif de cet article est de rendre compte du temps – a ce moment-ci – et de l’espace – a cet endroit-la – de la mobilisation, en questionnant le couple conceptuel interet objectif/ressources disponibles, qui dans ses declinaisons marxiste, puis bourdieusienne, d’une part, et utilitariste, d’autre part, tend a faire des mobilisations portees par des salaries precaires aux ressources limitees des mouvements pour le moins « improbables ». En redefinissant la notion d’interet a l’action collective sur un terrain subjectif, il s’agit ici de mettre en evidence les processus materiels conduisant a l’elaboration du constat selon lequel « ce n’est pas juste », pour comprendre comment ce qui etait percu comme supportable finit par ne plus l’etre.

Les raisons de l’action collective : retour sur la mobilisation improbable des salariés d’hypermarchés

L'article analyse le traitement de la souffrance psychique des salaries au sein des entreprises Electricite de France-Gaz de France entre 1985 et 2008, a partir d'un depouillement exhaustif des proces-verbaux d'une instance nationale. Il entend montrer que l'emergence et les problematisations du theme de la souffrance psychique sur la periode ne peuvent etre comprises sans tenir compte des debats preexistants sur la responsabilite des accidents, de l'identite des personnes qui le mobilisent, et des argumentations qu'il permet.

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Responsabilités en souffrance. Les conflits autour de la souffrance psychique des salariés d'EDF-GDF (1985-2008)

A la fin des annees 2000, la sociologue Marlene Benquet a mene pendant trois ans une enquete dans une des principales entreprises francaises de grande distribution : d'abord devenue caissiere, elle a ensuite fait un stage au siege du groupe et un autre au sein de l'organisation syndicale majoritaire. C'est le resultat de cette enquete hors norme qu'elle restitue dans ce livre, assez stupefiant par ce qu'il revele sur les « dessous » de la grande distribution.
L'identite des fondateurs (« des epiciers ») a ete bouleversee par l'arrivee de nouveaux actionnaires financiers : le management par la promotion a largement disparu, et l'ensemble des salaries accepte mal ce qu'ils vivent comme une perte d'autonomie et une insecurite grandissante. Des lors, pourquoi acceptent-ils d'« encaisser » ces reorganisations fragilisantes ?
Pour mieux comprendre, il fallait vivre leur vie : « Je voulais savoir ce que cela faisait d'etre caissiere pour comprendre pourquoi elles ne se revoltaient pas ou, en tout cas, moins que dans d'autres secteurs professionnels. » Au sein du siege, le cloisonnement est de regle : les badges ne donnent acces qu'a l'etage ou est situe son propre bureau, impossible de se deplacer dans d'autres services sans une bonne raison, les informations circulent peu et mal. Quant a l'organisation syndicale majoritaire, comment a-t-elle reussi a s'implanter ? Comment contribue-t-elle a la paix sociale ?
Ni l'« adhesion » ni la repression ne suffisent a expliquer pourquoi les salaries s'investissent dans leur travail malgre un environnement oppressant et des remunerations peu motivantes. Plus proche de la technique d'un joueur de go que d'un amateur d'echec, les strategies patronales neutralisent les salaries, mais ne les soumettent pas.

Encaisser ! Enquête en immersion dans la grande distribution

How do private equity firms decide on a fair price for a business? Drawing on 76 semi-structured interviews, this article contributes to the sociology of finance and valuation studies by showing that pricing companies is not just a valuation operation but also a capital-repartition issue. In so doing, it shows how concrete, local pricing methods contribute to the financialisation of the economy through the creation of a new capital accumulation centre. The article’s ethno-accounting approach describes three pricing steps: first, the capital access rules applicable to the private equity firm members (the price rationale); second, the expectations about the capital that can be transferred from the business to the private equity firm (the theoretical price level); and third, the transaction participant coordination mechanisms (culminating in the actual price). This description of the practices and concepts inherent in business valuation sidesteps the traditional divide between price formation in constructivist concepts of value as well as price discovery in substantivist concepts of value. Instead, value is defined as the expectation of a transfer of capital from the productive sphere to the private equity firm.

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Pricing companies: Ethno-accounting of private equity activity

Le 1er fevrier 2008, les caissieres d’un hypermarche du sud de la France ont decide de se mettre en greve pour demander une prime exceptionnelle de 250 euros, le passage a temps complet des salariees employees a temps partiel contraint et l’augmentation des tickets-restaurant de 3,05 a 5 euros. En depit de l’inexperience militante de la grande majorite d’entre elles, la greve a ete reconduite tous les matins pendant 16 jours.
Cette enquete sur le quotidien d’un hypermarche, les conditions de travail, mais aussi les relations professionnelles, les aspirations et les deceptions de ces caissieres, tente de montrer comment cette mobilisation, improbable au regard de leurs caracteristiques sociales, a ete possible. Pourquoi sur les 75 000 personnes employees en France dans des hypermarches, ces employees-la se sont-elles mobilisees, et pourquoi a ce moment-la ?
Montrer quelles sont les conditions de la revolte, comment nait et se propage un jugement d’injustice, pourquoi ce qui etait percu comme supportable finit par ne plus l’etre : tels sont les objectifs de cette enquete conduite dans un secteur exemplaire du triple mouvement de precarisation, de tertiarisation et de feminisation du marche de l’emploi contemporain.

Marlène Benquet

Papers

Les raisons de l’action collective : retour sur la mobilisation improbable des salariés d’hypermarchés

Responsabilités en souffrance. Les conflits autour de la souffrance psychique des salariés d'EDF-GDF (1985-2008)

Encaisser ! Enquête en immersion dans la grande distribution

Pricing companies: Ethno-accounting of private equity activity

Les damnées de la caisse : enquête sur une grève dans un hypermarché