Sociology and international relations: legacies and prospects

While sociological concepts have often been implicitly used in International Relations (IR), recent years have seen a more explicit engagement between IR and Sociology. As with any such interdisciplinary assignation, there are both possibilities and challenges contained within this move: possibilities in terms of reducing IR's intellectual autism and opening the discipline towards potentially fertile terrain that was never, actually, that distant; challenges in that interdisciplinary raiding parties can often serve as pseudonyms for cannibalism, shallowness and dilettantism. This forum reviews the sociological turn in IR and interrogates it from a novel vantage point—how sociologists themselves approach IR concepts, debates and issues. Three sociological approaches—classical social theory, historical sociology and Foucauldian analysis—are critically deployed to illuminate IR concerns. In this way, the forum offers the possibility of (re)establishing exchanges between the two disciplines premised on a firmer grasp of social theory itself. The result is a potentially more fruitful sociological turn, one with significant benefits for IR as a whole.     

Employment versus empowerment: A case study of the nature of women's work in Ecuador

This research re‐evaluates the female marginalisation thesis through an examination of the changing nature of work in Latin America and of women's incorporation into paid employment. We combine labour market segementation theory, which explains the emergence of low level occupations in terms of capitalist restructuring, with feminist theory, which explains why women become concentrated in inferior positions. We operationalise this reconceptualisation through an empirical analysis of women's and men's relative occupational position across economic sectors and through time in Ecuador. A key finding is that women's and men's occupations are differentiated in terms of control over economic resources and control over the labour process and that this worsens over time.     

Innovation and growth in traditional agriculture of the lower Volta,Ghana

This article addresses the important question of whether foreign direct investment enhances economic growth and labour productivity in Mexico, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective. After briefly reviewing the Mexican experience with net FDI inflows during the 1990s, the article presents a simple endogenous growth model which explicitly incorporates any positive (negative) externalities generated by additions to the foreign capital stock. Using cointegration analysis, the article estimates a dynamic labour productivity function for the 1960-95 period that includes the impact of the growth rate in the stocks of both private and foreign capital (as opposed to the flows) and the economically active population (EAP) (rather than the rate of population growth). The error correction model (ECM) estimates suggest that increases in both private ad (lagged) foreign investment spending, as well as the rate of growth in exports, have a positive and economically significant effect on the rate of labour productivity growth. In addition, the results show that increases in the EAP have a negative and statistically significant effect on the rate of labour productivity growth, while changes in the government consumption variable have a negative but marginally significant impact. The error correction terms of the estimated models are negative and statistically significant, thus suggesting that deviations of actual labour productivity growth from its long-run value are corrected in subsequent periods. Finally the article generates historical simulations from the estimated ECM's and offers some policy recommendations to enhance the positive externalities associated with FDI inflows.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Familias con Voz</Emphasis>: Community Survey Results from an Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Prevention Project with Migrant Workers

The Migrant Clinicians Network’s Familias con Voz (Families with a Voice) project aims to train migrant men and women to become intimate partner violence (IPV) peer educators in their communities. In preparation for implementing educational activities, a community survey was conducted with 298 participants in three Texas border counties. Verbal abuse, such as name calling, was the most frequent type of violence reported. Men perceived anger as a cause of partner violence significantly more than women. Only 22% of respondents reported knowing of a shelter they could turn to for help. Surprisingly, a majority of participants cited “seeking help from the police” when asked about ways to decrease partner violence. Survey results offer insight into developing effective intervention programs by capturing the intended audiences’ beliefs and attitudes. Additionally, survey results reveal possible strategies for how to tackle IPV in U.S.-Mexico border migrant farmworker communities.

The thrill of victory,the agony of defeat

This paper presents experimental evidence from a rent-seeking exercise where the highest bidder wins the rent, but all bidders, including the winner, lose their wagers. This exercise closely resembles the rent-seeking dilemma facing agents in many settings. There are two main conclusions from the results. First, there is a tendency towards overdissipation of the rent. Second, some individuals are willing to pay more for a rent than its face-value would warrant. We attribute this phenomenon to a “thrill of victory” effect.     

Reviews

Joseph M. van Brabant, Remaking Eastern Europe—On the Political Economy of Transition. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990, xiv+223 pp., £57.00 h/b.

Ronald J. Hill, Communist Politics under the Knife: Surgery or Autopsy? London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1990, 224 pp., £30.00 h/b; £9.95 p/b.

Andrei Akatovich Belykh, Istoriya sovetskikh ekonomiko‐matematicheskikh issledovanii. Leningrad University Press, 1990, 141 pp., 2 rubles.

Gregory Gleason, Federalism and Nationalism: The Struggle for Republican Rights in the USSR. Foreword by John N. Hazard. Boulder, CO: Westview Press: Westview Special Studies on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1990, xiv+170 pp., £17.50 p/b.

James Hughes, Stalin, Siberia and the Crisis of the New Economic Policy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, xiii+260 pp., £30.00

Joan Sokolovsky, Peasants and Power: State Autonomy and the Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, 181 pp., £18.95.

Louis Guy Michael, More Corn for Bessarabia: Russian Experience, 1910–1917. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1983, 245 pp., $18.95.

P. Pomper, Lenin, Trostsky and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, xiii+446 pp., $19.00 p/b.

Tony Cliff, Trotsky, 1923–27. Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy. London: Bookmarks, 1991, 306 pp., £6.95 p/b.     

Reviews

Christel Lane, Christian Religion in the Soviet Union: A Sociological Study. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978. 256 pp. £10.00.

R. Amann, J. M. Cooper, R. W. Davies (eds.), The Technological Level of Soviet Industry. New Haven, Conn, and London: Yale University Press, 1977. xxxii +575 pp. £20.00.

M. M. Kostecki, East‐West Trade and the GATT System. London: Macmillan, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1979. xviii + 157 pp. £12.00.

Josef C. Brada and V. S. Somanath (eds.), East‐West Trade: Theory and Evidence. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University International Development Institute, 1978. xi + 178 pp. $10.00. No index.

Jeremy R. Azrael (ed.), Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices. New York: Praeger Publishers (Praeger Special Studies), 1978. xi + 393 pp.

Robert G. Wesson, Communism and Communist Systems. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, 1978. x + 227 pp.

Adam Bromke and Derry Novak (eds.), The Communist States in the Era of Detente, 1971–1977. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1978. 306 pp. $7.95.

Jaroslav Krejci, Social Structure in Divided Germany. London: Croom Helm, 1976. 262 pp. £7.95.

Miklós Molnár, A Short History of the Hungarian Communist Party. Boulder, Colorado & Folkestone: Westview, Dawson, 1978, 168 pp. £9.00.

Robert N. North, Transport in Western Siberia: Tsarist and Soviet Development. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press and The Centre for Transportation Studies, 1979. viii + 364 pp. $22.00.