LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Mines, Communities, and States: The Local Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Africa. By Jessica Steinberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 282p. $99.99 cloth.

Photo from wikipedia

(p. 32), yet an appreciation of Polanyi’s and other economic sociologists’ arguments would imply that there is no such thing as the natural “free market.” Further, as noted earlier, Sharma… Click to show full abstract

(p. 32), yet an appreciation of Polanyi’s and other economic sociologists’ arguments would imply that there is no such thing as the natural “free market.” Further, as noted earlier, Sharma distinguishes between global market forces and politics (p. 33). Yet global market forces are not bereft of politics, at least if we take seriously Polanyi (and other economic sociologists, like Greta Krippner, whom the author quotes). Again, in the chapter on India, Sharma bemoans that decisions regarding the allocation of resources are “heavily influenced by political considerations rather than sound technical and economic criteria” (p. 149), as if “technical and economic criteria” are not or cannot be political. A realization that “markets and states are intrinsically interwoven” (p. 154)—or, as some might put it, mutually constitutive—is not quite consistent with statements about how “state intervention” distorts the market and is a “second-best” solution (pp. 155, 162). Some degree of contradiction is perhaps inevitable in a work that seeks to represent all sides of a debate without taking any specific position—beyond the very broad one that both market forces and politics matter—because some theoretical positions are difficult to reconcile, as is the case with the sociological and neoclassical views of the market. Finally, let me offer a few minor—mainly productionrelated—observations; the “high earner” referred to on p. 155 is presumably Mark Zuckerberg (the CEO of Facebook), and not Mark Zuckerman. Some direct quotes on pp. 89 and 90 are missing page number citations. Illegal immigration, and the resultant labor market competition, is mentioned as one of the causes of growing inequality in the United States, but no evidence is cited for this assertion (p. 50). Overall, the book’s broad coverage is valuable, even if it lacks a precise and cohesive argument and its claims about the relationship between politics and economics with respect to the market are problematic. As such, it would be useful in an undergraduate or beginning graduate course on inequality and economic development.

Keywords: states local; cambridge; communities states; market forces; mines communities; market

Journal Title: Perspectives on Politics
Year Published: 2020

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.