Volume 52 part 3 (December 2007)

Summaries

Matthew Hilton, The Consumer Movement and Civil Society in Malaysia
This paper examines the consumer movement in Malaysia, especially the Consumers' Association of Penang and the Federation of Malaysian Consumer Associations. It traces their history from the late 1960s, through a period of rapid social and economic change associated with the New Economic Policy of the 1970s and 1980s. Partly because of the absence of other NGOs in Malaysia (due to government clampdowns on civil society), consumer groups were able to take a prominent position and to develop socio-political campaigns on behalf of the poor and the disadvantaged. This proved an inspiration to consumer organising globally, especially in the developed world, but it is not clear that consumerism as a social movement can be sustained. Since the mid-1980s, other NGOs have emerged, eclipsing the influence of consumerism, and promoting a human rights agenda which has overtaken the politics of consumption as the dominant oppositional rhetoric of non-governmental groups.

Davide Turcato, Italian Anarchism as a Transnational Movement, 1885-1915
Analyses of anarchism emphasizing cyclical patterns of advances and retreats inadequately explain how anarchism sustained itself over time. They foster a picture of powerlessness before repression and cyclical reappearances as if by spontaneous germination, thus lending themselves to interpretations, such as Hobsbawm's millenarianism, that identify discontinuity, spontaneism, and lack of organization as features of anarchism, and ultimately supporting charges of ineffectiveness and irrationalism. A narrow framework of analysis of national scope is responsible for such explanatory inadequacy. This article illustrates the transnational dimension of Italian anarchism, by analysing its presence in the United States and worldwide, with special emphasis on the anarchist press. A transnational analysis reveals new forms of integration, continuity and organization, based on the mobility of militants, resources, and ideas across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. In times of repression, seeming entrances and exits of anarchism on the Italian stage often corresponded to shifts of initiative across the Italian border. Transnationalism was a built-in characteristic that supported insurrectionary tactics by enhancing the opaqueness of their preparation. Together, insurrectionism, organizational opaqueness, and transnationalism help providing an alternative to the advance-and-retreat pattern of explanation.

Chris Nottingham, The Rise of the Insecure Professionals
The role of professions in the development of advanced industrial societies has long been recognised; for example, by Harold Perkin. However the focus has been on the higher professions. Other professions have usually been dealt with as imperfect variants, with Etzioni, typically, referring to nurses, schoolteachers and social workers as 'semi-professions'. However, by conceptualising such professions as social formations in their own right, as ladders of social mobility, and in terms of their permanent social and professional insecurity, it is possible to create a different picture both of their internal dynamics and broader influence. Members of such groups fostered types of social and political activity that became a recognisable feature of developed societies. Moreover an appreciation of the distinctive ideational and professional contribution of insecure professions can offer a perspective on a number of the major concerns of social historians. The argument is illustrated by reference to the development of such professions mainly in England and Scotland.