Jonathan Rieder. Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985

• Published date: 01 March 1985
• Date: 01 March 1985
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/003232928501400112
• Subject Matter: Articles

109

have

little

idea

of

the

true

impact

of

economic

variables

upon

them-

selves

and

others,

and

tend

to

overstate

or

misperceive

the

negative

effects

of

inflation&dquo;

(p.

24).

This

has

made

it

possible

for

political

leaders

to

pay

little

attention

to

the

expressed

wishes

of

the

general

electorate.

Instead,

Peretz

finds,

policy

makers

tend

to

try

to

maxi-

mize

the

general

welfare

only

after

satisfying

the

intcrests

of

the

groups

to

which

they

are

most

closely

connected.

One

of

Peretz’s

major

purposes

was

to

test

the

usefulness

of

pluralist

versus

Marxist

or

elitist

explanations

of

the

policy

process.

Expecting

to

find

con-

firmation

for

pluralist

analysis,

he

discovers

it

offers

the

weakest

account

of

the

three

possibilities

explored.

The

Political

Economy

of

Inflation

is

a

very

useful

little

book.

Peretz

makes

both

sense

and

nonsense

out

of

macroeconomic

theory.

He

offers

a

primer

to

inflation.

And,

he

contributes

to

the

on-going

debate

about

the

usefulness

of

Marxist

analysis

of

policy

in

advanced

capitalist

societies.

Janice

A.

Radway.

Reading

the

Romance:

Women,

Patriarchy,

and

Pop-

ular

Literature.

Chapel

Hill:

University

of

North

Carolina,

1984.

In

this

exploration

of

why

women

read

romance

novels,

Janice

Radway

fuses

literary,

feminist,

and

sociological

analyses

into

a

complex

and

powerful

argument.

Dissatisfied

with

conventional

cultural

analysis

that

simply

reads

the

texts

and

infers

reader

responses,

Radway

decided

to

interview

the

readers

to

find

out

their

own

explanations

for

their

often

voracious

reading

of

ro-

mances.

She

used

the

interviews

to

get

her

respondents

to

make

distinctions

among

those

romances

that

really

worked

for

them,

those

that

were

acceptable,

and

those

that

failed

completely.

With

this

data

in

hand,

Radway

is

then

able

to

use

feminist

theory

and

plot

analysis

to

delineate

the

deep

structure

of

successful

romances.

The

result

is

an

analysis

that

is

truly

dialectical;

Radway

is

able

to

interpret

this

form

of

popular

culture

as

embodying

both

an

affir-

mation

of

patriarchy

and

a

protest

against

male

dominance.

Jonathan

Rieder.

Canarsie:

The

Jews

and

Italians

of

Brooklyn

against

Liberalism.

Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

University

Press,

1985.

The

influx

of

nonwhite

minorities

into

many

urban

neighborhoods,

along

with

the

political

mobilization

of

blacks

since

the

1960s,

are

trends

that

have

left

white

&dquo;middle

class&dquo;

ethnics

embittered

and

willing

to

listen

to

reactionary

community

and

political

leaders.

Jonathan

Rieder

offers

a

vivid

exploration

of

this

process,

as

viewed

by

Jews

and

Italians

in

the

Canarsie

section

of

Brooklyn.

Rieder