Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit OrganizationsVol. 16, No. 2, June 2005 ( C© 2005)DOI: 10.1007/s11266-005-5699-z

Book Reviews

Adalbert Evers and Jean-Louis Laville (eds.), The Third Sector in Europe,Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2004, xii+266 pp., references, index,$110.00 (cloth).

This is an important book. The growth of scholarly interest in the third sec-tor over the past thirty years has been largely driven by American researchers.Economists in the United States have shaped theory development, focusing onnonprofit organizations, particularly those listed in the US tax code as charities.In this process of theory development, they have worked within the neoclassicalparadigm, privileging markets. Nonprofit organizations are explained as responsesto various sorts of market failure. Although these theories claim universal appli-cation, for the most part they unconsciously reflect the cultural and institutionalenvironment of the United States and assume that it applies everywhere. Empiricalresearch provides only limited support, and other theories have begun to emerge.

Drawing on European experience and the disciplines of sociology and po-litical science, The Third Sector in Europe begins to elaborate an alternativetheoretical framework for understanding the third sector and its likely future de-velopment. The book contains a series of chapters, organized into four parts. Thefirst part, a single essay by the two editors assisted by others among their collabo-rators, sets out a European approach to theorizing the third sector and introduces asecond part containing essays analyzing developments in six European countries.These essays explore both the history and likely future development of the sectorin each country, using to varying degrees, the theoretical emphases elaborated inthe first part. In different ways, all explore relations between governments and thethird sector, emphasizing the closeness of this relationship. A third part containsthree essays viewing the third sector within the wider governmental frameworkof the European Union. A final part with two chapters builds upon a number of thethemes prefigured in earlier chapters. Perhaps because several of the authors haveworked on other projects through the European EMES network, there is coherenceto the volume not usually found in a book built around a series of country studies.Yet there is also a puzzling contradiction at its heart.

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0957-8765/05/0600-0203/1 C© 2005 International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University

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The authors of the volume are conscious of the dominant US approach to thethird sector and propose a different approach. Points of difference can be found indefining the sector, in proposing a plurality of economies within which the sectortakes on an essentially intermediary or hybrid character and, finally, in proposingthat with the right form of state institutional support, the third sector might spawninnovative forms of hybrid organizations that are better equipped to address publicproblems that the state can no longer address.

Viewing the third sector through a European lens draws in cooperatives andmutuals as well as the charities (foundations in the civil law tradition) and voluntaryassociations that are most commonly the focus in the US. Through this lens, aconstraint on the distribution of profit is a less important explanatory variable thanthe valuing of solidarity and democratic ownership.

A more radical departure is to draw from the mid-twentieth century economistPolanyi to argue for a plurality of economies: a market economy, a nonmarketor redistributive economy, and a nonmonetary or reciprocal economy. Each ofthese economies relies on a particular defining principle and is associated witha particular organizational form: the firm, the state, and the household. Withinthis model, the third sector with its defining principle of solidarity exists in atension field between the three main economies. It is a hybrid of other forms, ormore precisely, a series of hybrids. Changes in the relative strength of the threeeconomies generate changes in the third sector. This underpinning is fundamentalto the book; it shapes other themes and is thought provoking, but is not as fullydeveloped as it needs to be.

European third sector organizations develop from and continue to be shapedby a different set of institutional constraints than apply in the United States. Onecrucial difference is that the third sector is more closely intertwined with the statein European countries. The socio-political perspective of the authors forces greaterattention on the power of government, especially on the legal forms that can shapenew forms of citizen action, such as the social cooperatives initiative in Italy lateradopted in some other parts of Europe.

But the book’s focus on the interconnection between state and third sectorcreates a paradox. On the one hand, it argues to include cooperatives and mu-tuals within the third sector, but then it focuses on “welfare” services, mostlysocial services, but also health and education. In this regard, it reproduces thesame narrowing of the third sector that we find in a good deal of the US liter-ature, which frequently reduces the nonprofit sector to charities (or 501c3s ofthe US Tax Code) or even more narrowly to nonprofits providing social services.While what is happening to “welfare states” is important, it should not obscureother equally important developments such as globalization that impact upon awide range of other third sector organizations, less affected by changes to thewelfare state. Examples would be third sector organizations involved in sport, ininterest representation, in advancing the economic concerns of some producers orconsumers, or in international aid and development.

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A second difficult part of the book’s argument concerns the concept of hy-bridization. The book contains both weak and strong versions of the hybridizationconcept. On the one hand, it argues that new forms of organization, such as socialenterprises are better understood as hybrids, incorporating business, public, andthird sector forms of behavior. On the other hand, as the welfare state changes,various government organizations behave more like more traditional third sectororganizations. There is empirical support for this argument. There are organiza-tions that combine behavioral characteristics from two sectors; in many countriesuniversities provide such an example.

A much stronger version of hybridization claims that the third sector isitself a hybrid form, drawing from state, market, and households, but having nodistinctive “sector identity.” This claim is derived from Polanyi’s three economiesmodel, but the model is not elaborated and most of the chapters that assert thestrong hybridization claim do so without reference to Polanyi. Instead, they relyon assertions about a relatively small number of third sector organizations. Theseassertions conflate the effects of industry and sector on organizational behavior.They point to third sector organizations borrowing from businesses, but couldequally point to businesses borrowing from the third sector, or government frombusiness. The for-profit and government sectors exist in tension fields as much asthe third sector. There is much here to debate, but it will be a debate that advancesunderstanding.

In short, Third Sector in Europe is a stimulating book, the product of a gooddeal of collective deliberation. It offers a nice alternative to the theorizing aboutthe third sector on the other side of the Atlantic. Anyone interested in the theoryof the third sector should have a copy.

Mark LyonsUniversity of TechnologySydneyAustralia

Marion R. Fremont-Smith, Governing Nonprofit Organizations: Federal and StateLaw and Regulation, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,Cambridge, MA, and London, 2004, 472 pp., preface, appendices, indexof cases, general index, $95.00 (cloth).

The publication of Governing Nonprofit Organizations, by Marion Fremont-Smith, the scholar, practitioner, and charities law enforcement officer, offers thoseseeking to understand the history, current condition, and normative meaning ofcharities regulation in the United States a book well-grounded in history andtheory, and infused with nuanced judgments that flow from careful research,

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deep understanding, and valuable experience. Fremont-Smith’s accomplishmentis notably impressive because the characteristics of American charities law defymost efforts to write a synthesis.

The subjects mastered and connected in this work include: the complicatedhistorical evolution of the American law of charitable corporations and trusts,built on British antecedents and informed by world philanthropic traditions; thebifurcated state–federal regulatory scheme which flows from American constitu-tional principles and from an organic federalism; the diversity of state and localstatutory treatments of benefits and duties; the contradictory enforcement patternsamong various jurisdictions and agencies; and the complex tax regulations andadministrative decisions. The skills necessary for this work need to be both spe-cialized and broad and until now there have been few if any truly multidimensionaland comprehensive efforts to explore the history and current nature of Americannonprofit governance.

The strengths of Governing Nonprofit Organizations include dissection ofstate limitations on charitable purposes; delineation of numerous politically driveninvestigations of charitable abuses; and explanation of common law decisionswhich have developed the law regarding cy pres, fiduciary duties, and charitableimmunities. Fremont-Smith explores the state and federal regulatory regimes indetail, and her appendices provide invaluable tables that indicate better than anyother source the wide variations in laws and enforcement activities in the US.

The book also addresses the enforcement programs of leading states individu-ally, as well as the activities of Congress, the General Accounting Office, the Trea-sury, and various components of the Internal Revenue Service. She discusses thehistorical investigative efforts of some well-known Congressional committees andprivate bodies, such as the Filer Commission, and recommendations to limit accessto nonprofit benefits and to coordinate enforcement activities. Especially interest-ing are the discussions of the role of lesser-known but highly important privatelegislative products, including Restatements, Uniform Laws, and Model NonprofitLaws developed by the American Law Institute and the National Conference ofCommissioners on Uniform State Laws. Readers of Voluntas will be particularlypleased to find discussion of comparative developments in England. Fremont-Smith treats seriously internal administrative and statutory developments and alsoprovides some interesting longitudinal data regarding enforcement resources.

The organizational flow of the book reflects some of the intrinsically dis-jointed aspects of the nonprofit legal regime. After a brief look at contemporaryevents, Fremont-Smith turns back toward a substantial and interesting historicaland philosophical discussion, which moves in an arc toward present events. Thenarrative then moves back and forth in time with each ensuing topical discussion.As time and topics shift between forms and levels of government, the narrativethread becomes attenuated, and the result is a book which is in part a story with apoint and in part a treatise.

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Several conclusions about the wisdom of present law will prompt debate andinvite further investigation. Fremont-Smith describes the majority of scholars asof the opinion that the duty of loyalty as codified is “too lenient.” She suggests thatthe modern Internal Revenue Service has been transformed from “a tax-collectingagency to one with broad power to control fiduciary behavior” (p. 114). Andwhile she indicates many important distinctions between corporations and trusts,and many differences between the laws of different states, she suggests a generalconvergence between the corporate form and the trust form, without taking astrong normative position.

The surest evidence of Marion Fremont-Smith’s success in portraying thetangled past and the frustrating complexity of present-day nonprofit supervision isthe sophistication of her carefully developed thinking about ways to improve lawsand charities regulation going forward. Fundamentally, she summarizes, it hasbecome necessary “to remove the almost complete protection from liability givento fiduciaries in the later part of the twentieth century” (p. 471), and to provideenforcement authorities with dramatically increased resources with which to carryout their duties. There are no magic bullets here – instead there are many differentchanges that need to be made, at many different levels of government, and by manydifferent actors. Fremont-Smith has helped to bring coherence to the previous workin this field, and made a major contribution to the emerging literature about theAmerican nonprofit regulatory environment.

Norman I. SilberSchool of LawHofstra UniversityUnited States

Sarah Henderson, Building Democracy in Contemporary Russia: Western Supportfor Grassroots Organizations, Cornell University Press, New York, 2003,229 pp., appendices, $29.95.

International efforts to strengthen civic initiatives in Russia are well pastthe half mark of the second decade since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.It is high time to assess how effective this intervention has been, what goodhas been achieved, and what lessons we need to learn from mistakes commit-ted. Henderson approaches this particular issue with a strategic vision, pene-trating questions, and frank discussions followed with concrete recommenda-tions. Her clarity of approach and sense of purpose makes this book a guide toexisting shortcomings and potential pitfalls of external support to civil soci-ety initiatives not just in Russia but in other countries that share a socialistpast.

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The author is specifically interested in the development of civil society – therealm of activism situated between the nodes of state, family, and business, wherecitizens interact and form and join organizations. Civil society is a broad term thatcaptures the wide range of voluntary organizations operating outside the realm ofgovernment, business, and the family. It is a concept whose purchasing power ison the rise since the late 1980s.

The dramatic events of 1989 created a visual narrative of civil society inaction and turned academic interest away from a focus on elite bargaining tochange regimes and reform systems, notes the author. She is, however, cautious ofany extreme or ambitious position attached to civil society. Wary of its portrayalas a mantra for political changes in the post-Socialist societies, Henderson is alsocognizant of the use of civic groups as good photo opportunities. She argues thatcivil society is an integral component to deepening the quality and substanceof those fledging electoral democracies, which are often in danger of politicalsetbacks in their initial years. In effect, civic groups “convey citizens’ interests,and serve as mediators between private citizens and the institutions of state. Theyare also nesting grounds for social capital, the habits of cooperation, solidarity,and public spiritedness that act as a glue against the danger of the constant pursuitof naked self-interest” (p. 2).

Though this book primarily uses the Russian case to illustrate lessons learnedfrom assitance strategies currently pursued by Western development organizations,it is equally applicable to other post-Socialist societies with similar backgroundsand circumstances. As the popularity of democracy aid rose, so did the faith in theconnection between healthy civil societies and good governance. Civil society aidhas increasingly become an integral component of democracy aid and efforts tofund civil society either explicitly or through other defined key areas are pursuedby governments, international organizations, development agencies, and privatefoundations alike.

This book incisively examines whether the Russian NGOs are making anyprogress in institutionalizing their structures, activities, and forms of relation-ship to the public at large. Without fail, Henderson is both conscious and vocalabout the threat of a continued dependency of local NGOs on external assis-tance and an inability to expand their outreach to their primary constituents. Thebook’s perceptive and sensitive questions provoke the readers on issues suchas: Is the Western strategy for supporting democracy inappropriate and ulti-mately futile for organizations operating in a different political climate? Howdoes external assistance alter the dynamics of how civil society works in a specificplace?

Henderson cautions that despite the enormous interest and good will amongforeign assistance programmes, NGO development may not contribute to mean-ingful civil society development and draws attention to some strange and somewhatparadoxical effects of foreign aid. The book notes that although the number of civicorganizations is impressive, “there is a large gap between the statistical presence of

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NGOs and the substantive reality of their operations” (p. 31) giving an impressionof a civil society “that claims to be larger and more effective than it really is” (p. 28).A vivid example cited is of the Soviet Women Committee, a federation of 230,000local women’s councils that claimed to represent over two million members who infact “were notable more for their rhetorical flourishes than their actual substantiveactivities; as was the case for many Soviet sanctioned organizations” (p. 93).

The book notes that during the 1992–2002 phase, Western aid to NGOs hasnot been a failure. It provided crucial short-term financial and technical supportto many organizations that should ideally translate into long-term stability. Butit has also created unintended negative consequences which, the author warns,if not addressed could create long-term impediments to increased development.Institutions, interests, and incentive structures impede successful collective actiontowards building a civic community by encouraging both donors and NGO ac-tivists to pursue short-term benefits over long-term development. The problemsthat arose owe more to avoidable mistakes in the foreign aid process than tointernal cultural deficiencies or corrupt agents. The donors should take all pre-ventive measures to avoid taking up any roles that domestic groups should befulfilling themselves since developing clientelistic relationships risk weakening“the nexus between the organizations and the society they supposedly represent”(p. 28).

To help chart one’s way through the vast maze of the post-Soviet territory, thisbook equips the reader with pertinent questions and raises a list of issues, risks to beaware of, pitfalls to avoid, and alternatives to consider for getting effective resultsof aid to NGOs. It serves as a good guide for researchers on the development ofNGOs in the transitory, post-socialist phase. For those contemplating appropriateevaluation measures, this book offers valuable input in sketching the contours forothers to fill in according to their own needs and priorities.

Najam AbbasCentral Asian Studies UnitInstitute of Ismaili StudiesLondonUnited Kingdom

Sanjeev Prakash and Per Selle (eds.), Investigating Social Capital: ComparativePerspectives on Civil Society, Participation and Governance, Sage,New Delhi, 2004, 315 pp., $49.95 (cloth).

Joining the seemingly inexorable growth of social capital literature is thisedited collection compiled by senior social researchers from the former Norwe-gian Centre for Research in Organization and Management. Their “Social Capitaland Collective Action” project (1999–2001) hosted a May 2000 workshop that

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brought together an impressive array of social capital writers and the papers pre-sented form the major part of this book. The introductory chapter by the editors –“Why Investigate Social Capital?” – provides a coherent rationale for the collationof studies of social capital and civil society drawn from India, Scandinavia, TheNetherlands, and Italy. Attempting to re-evaluate some of the key assumptionsthat underpin the social capital literature, the choice of these democratic coun-tries is justified on the basis of the highest rates of associational participation inScandinavia and The Netherlands contrasted with some of the lowest rates in In-dia, and the mainly American and Italian examples around which the early socialcapital literature has revolved.

Tackling the perpetually vexed question of what social capital actually meansand hence what importance can be placed on its alleged causes and effects, thebook sets out to offer a set of empirical and conceptual analyses of the contexts,causes, and consequences of social capital “in an attempt to achieve a basicmodicum of clarity and consistency” (p. 19). It is debatable whether in fact theyachieve such a difficult if not impossible task, but the volume’s principal strengthis its construction of a broad comparative perspective that spans disciplinary andthematic boundaries – traits that remain underdeveloped in the vast writings onthe idea of social capital. In particular, most of the contributors grapple with theextent to which voluntary associations are the primary basis for the development ofsocial networks and civic trust, drawing attention to the limitations and US-centricassumptions of Putnam and his predecessor de Tocqueville. In the collection’sfirst part – “Social Capital: Whence it Came” – both Rudolph’s paper on civilsociety and Dekker’s on the social capital of individuals illustrate that other formsof association like traditional caste groups, neighborhood associations, extendedfamilies, class factions, and social movements have significant implications for theapplication of social capital to the complex arenas of society and governance evenif, as seems to be the case in contemporary social capital studies, these applicationstend to exacerbate the conceptual confusion.

Most of the book’s contributors are essentially concerned with the specificmechanisms that explain the formation and performance of social capital. Theseefforts are most obviously captured in the volume’s second part – “EmpiricalApproaches” – where in particular, Diani’s review of trust and voluntary action inItaly and Stolle’s analysis of trust and local governance in Sweden reveal a varietyof different mechanisms that serve to facilitate or obstruct social capital, dependingon both the institutional context and the kind of social capital involved. Each ofthe papers in this part of the book attempt to address what the editors correctlyidentify is a noticeable weakness in social capital empirical studies, namely thatthere is so little analysis of underlying mechanisms in the development of a conceptexplained primarily through its functions. Such a condition “makes it extremelydifficult to distinguish between different causes for the same effect and differenteffects from the same causal process” (p. 20). Collectively, all the contributors

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find little evidence that trust can be generalized evenly or symmetrically across asociety, and that membership in all its many forms needs to be further analyzed anddifferentiated for its impact on civil society. Sampling some of the wide range ofmethods used to measure and assess social capital, the book also provides room forsome skepticism about the utility of survey techniques, particularly for measuringcivic or public forms of trust, without becoming bogged down in the increasinglynarrow debates that unfortunately characterize much social capital empiricism.

Importantly, the collection’s third and final part – “New Directions andCul-de-Sacs” – acknowledges the critical implications of social capital studiesfor governance and public policy. The Scandinavian contributors in particularsuggest that the more plausible arenas for analyzing the processes that give riseto social capital and the associated socialization of norms of trust and fairnesslie at an intermediate level, in meso-level dynamics and processes that are rootedin specific institutional histories, even in the midst of such location-defying tech-nologies as the Internet – as Tranvik identifies in the final chapter. Perhaps themost obvious gap in the collection is the absence of a concluding chapter, but itnonetheless impressively succeeds in meeting the hopes of the editors’ closing re-marks in the Introduction of “stimulating a new and refreshing set of perspectiveson a critical and unfinished discussion.” (p. 39)

Geoffrey WoolcockSocial & Behavioural SciencesThe University of QueenslandIpswichAustralia

Rupert Taylor (ed.), Creating a Better World: Interpreting Global Civil Society,Kumarian Press, Bloomfield, CT, 2004, xii, 210 pp., $24.95.

Despite itself, Rupert Taylor’s edited collection of essays establishes clearlythat “global civil society” (GCS) is not an existing state of affairs, but an ambitiousprogram. Like world peace, universal justice, and civil society tout court, GCSpoints to a possible future that its advocates are trying to bring into being. I say“despite itself” because Taylor and a number of the book’s contributors write asthough GCS now exists in the guise of certain organizational forms and typesof worldwide action. Verification is vital in the presence of such strong claims.Verification is not the book’s strength; its otherwise valuable essays fail to locateGCS and substantiate its existence. More than anything else, they single out recentlarge-scale mobilizations against international economic organizations: the WorldTrade Organization, of course, but also the International Monetary Fund, the WorldBank, NAFTA, and (less obviously) the European Union.

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Taylor has assembled a knowledgeable international group of activist-scholarcollaborators: Ronaldo Munck, Gillian Hughes Murphy, Massimiliano Andretta,Lorenzo Mosca, Srilatha Batliwala, Robert Lambert, Edward Webster, Paul Nel-son, Terje Tvedt, Christopher Rootes, Jacklyn Cock, and Kumi Naidoo. Theiranalyses range from Seattle (Murphy) to European environmentalism (Rootes) tolabor internationalism (Lambert and Webster) and the World Social Forum (Cock).But almost all shrink from committing themselves to the concrete location of GCS.

Taylor’s introduction rejects the semi-official Anheier-Glasius-Kaldor defini-tion of GCS in terms of international connections among NGOs. As an alternative,however, it proposes that GCS is “marked by – at a structural level – an emergingcomplex multi-organizational field with innovative network forms and – at anideological level – transformative purpose” (p. 7). That looks a lot like a programrather than an observable social reality. Echoing Taylor, Rootes speaks of GCS as“an emergent reality” (p. 147). Lambert and Webster assert that “a GCS, boundby broad values that run counter to the values embodied in the [World EconomicForum] is in the making” (p. 82).

Most other authors, nevertheless, express less confidence in the reality. Asa prelude to describing the 1999 Seattle mobilization against the WTO, Murphysettles for “identifying mechanisms various GCS-building efforts have in com-mon” (p. 28). As a prelude to concrete descriptions of two grassroots feministorganizations, Batliwala mentions new social movements, networks, and organi-zations “often collectively – and somewhat inaccurately – described as global civilsociety” (p. 64). Tvedt complains about the tendency of GCS advocates to reject“bad” NGOs such the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church as notqualifying for GCS membership. Some authors simply avoid the topic.

Andretta and Mosca provide a valuable analysis of network connectionswithin the 2001 Genoa protest against the G8 while saying nary a word aboutGCS, just as Cock offers an upbeat account of the World Social Forum endingwith no more than general questions about the possible advance of a “new globalsolidarity, a new collective identity” (p. 181). Most dubious of all the doubters,Ronaldo Munck explicitly treats GCS as a “myth” lacking even a shared discursiveframework, much less a coherent organizational structure. At the end, the con-clusion by Taylor and Naidoo confirms the sense that “taking global civil societyseriously” (their chapter’s title) means not discovering a concrete reality but com-mitting oneself to a program. GCS, in their words, “seeks to radicalize society asa critical category and intends a new polis – a new definition of politics” (p. 184).

Do a number of people across the world share such a hopeful view ofGCS? Unquestionably. Have an impressive series of intercontinental mobiliza-tions against the policies of international financial institutions occurred recently?Certainly. Have activists and NGOs specializing in long-distance coordination ofsuch mobilizations multiplied? No doubt. Does this mean that a global civil societythat will counter the power of international capital is now coming into existence?

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It would help to know what that society would look like if it emerged. For all itseffort, surprisingly, Creating a Better World does not tell us.

Charles TillyColumbia UniversityNew YorkUnited States

Sarah Waters, Social Movements in France: Towards a New Citizenship,Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003, 180 pp., notes, bibliography,index, $85.00 (cloth).

Social movements, by their very nature, are not easy to research. At whateverlevel of social scale, from a group of farmers breaking up a partly built McDon-ald’s in Millau, southwest France, to tens of thousands of marchers on the streetsof Paris campaigning for SOS Racisme, certain problems recur. The elusivenessof leadership, the fluidity of organization, and the frustrating predictable unpre-dictability of events, all discourage time-limited, resource-constrained research.Even the most eminent and experienced academics often by-pass the whole com-plex scene. Those researchers of the third sector who coined the term “loose andbaggy monster” for the more visible and formal phenomena of voluntary organi-zations, should count themselves lucky that they have not set themselves the taskwhich faced Sarah Waters. Her modest, but over-priced, publication provides awelcome introductory overview to the complex worlds of contemporary Frenchsocial movements. For all its faults, it is a much better starting-point than some ofthe more prestigious English language commentaries.

Perhaps the most authoritative text on the French third sector is Edith Ar-chambault’s The Nonprofit Sector in France. Here we are presented with barelyfive pages on “civic organizations,” in a work of over three hundred and twentypages. The bulk of the civic material is historic, yet we are then informed that (a)data are lacking; (b) this is a tiny sub-sector; and (c) farming is the strongest socialmovement. This is not a very promising foundation for Waters’ project.

The structure and content of Waters̀ book are reminiscent of a doctoraldissertation. Preliminary conceptual and theoretical discussion gives way to anoutline of the French political and economic context. Then, three chapters focuson specific movements relating to anti-racism, unemployment, and human rights.A series of general conclusions follow.

Wisely, Waters does not wrestle too long with familiar conceptual puzzlessuch as “when does a movement become an organization?” There are some sen-sible remarks about alleged distinctions between earlier “life-style” movements(feminism, sexual politics, and ecology) and the economic and citizenship focus

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of her examples in the 1990s. Similarly, she dismisses talk of the supposed “new-ness” of the latter by demonstrating continuities in the anti-racist struggles, andthe different combinations of political activists, intellectuals, and les exclus insuch groupings as the Comites des chomeurs (unemployed). For her, all thesemovements “contribute to a preservation and extension of democratic values andideals within contemporary society. This is new citizenship” (p. 57).

A number of questions are inevitable in the face of such claims. First, arethey not a bit sweeping in view of the very real contradictions (both in ideologyand behavior) within the whole broad to far left spectrum which Waters (wrongly)considers to be synonymous with the essence of social movements? Second, wedeserve at least a few sentences about the darker side of social movements emanat-ing from the political right. It is more than a little ironic to be told that the NationalFont has achieved political prominence and ethnic minorities are experiencingincreased harassment, even as we consider the impacts of movements such asSOS Racisme and Sans Papiers (literally, the undocumented). This need not haverequired additional chapters so much as some explanation as to why movementsshould be inherently “democratic.” As for the prominence attributed to farmingmovements, Waters’ total absorption in urban contexts drives us elsewhere. Read-ers interested in checking out Archambault’s claim about mainstream farmingfederations could usefully turn to a very accessible account of the emergence ofthe Confederation Paysanne in Bove and Dufour’s The World is Not for Sale:Farmers Against Junk Food.

Despite these reservations, Waters’ main three chapters provide high qualityreflective description on some very important phenomena. She takes on the criticsof the anti-racist movements, and correctly argues that narrow criteria for successrisk losing sight of the impacts on popular French consciousness. Similarly, thehitherto virtually silent and fragmented unemployed are depicted as episodicallycenter-stage. At a general level, this is a convincing case. But, all the references toactivities, campaigns, and cultural events are never filled out with detail. Althoughwe are told that the book was partly based on two years of interviews with activistsand leaders (p. 8), there are insufficient signs of rich detail.

At the end of the day, this book does have the potential to become the intro-duction to current French social movements. Sociologists and political scientistsmay find it frustrating that big issues are introduced then underdeveloped. Never-theless, it can serve both as a step away from the limited focus of some third sectoracademics, and as a bridge to the often livelier accounts emerging from specificcollective struggles.

Duncan ScottCentre for Applied Social ResearchUniversity of ManchesterUnited Kingdom