Book Review: Globalizing Issues: How Claims, Frames, and Problems Cross Borders

Abstract

consequences for this class across Europe. The authors’ final contribution deepens the analysis of European political conflicts by advancing Fligstein’s (2008) argument that the ‘European field’ pits a class of mobile, trans-European elites against working classes rooted in different nations, seeking to retain their former ‘citizenship rents’. They reveal the structural depth of this division, which has intensified as the European project has deepened. Rather than Brexit being due to English peculiarities, driven by political contingencies and populist rhetoric, Hugree et al. see it as characterising divides across Europe. They chart the systematic decline of popular engagement with European institutions over time. ‘Although the working class makes up 43% of people at work across Europe, it remains completely absent from EU institutions, and it struggles to establish a trade union and political presence at European level’ (p. 178–179). This underlines the structural difficulties of generalizing this class antagonism across Europe, and how nationalist and xenophobic repertoires have become a default. This is a bleak prognosis since there are no obvious progressive political responses by the EU because it is so bound up with elite privilege. It is also unclear how the left can respond. Streeck’s endorsement that the book is ‘an important step forward for the left in developing a European strategy’ is only true insofar as it reveals how bleak the landscape is. More balance tilted to the latter of Gramsci’s couplet ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ would be welcome. It is telling that the authors do not address Streeck’s controversial call endorsing a nationalist left response to the European project. This book represents a major milestone in the maturation of a European sociology which does not default to internal national comparisons. It does this through readable prose with arresting insights – like how class divisions are rendered in terms of how much of our working time is spent standing. It underscores the cultural and symbolic dimensions of class, including ethnographic material revealing the texture of class inequality, as well as broad patterns. It covers many vital issues, including gender and migration, but says little about race and ethnicity. The handling of geographical variation, including the distinctive role of Eastern Europe’s ‘dominated dominant class’, is impressive. A nagging issue remains. The actual extent of class inequality sometimes seems rather modest (e.g., 84% of dominants read a book in the last year, compared to 76% of the middle class and 56% of the working class (p. 74)). Dominants broadly earn a bit less than three times as much as the working class and 50% more than the middle class. When equivalized at household level, dominants earn a bit less than twice as much as the working class. These are significant divisions but nothing like the scale revealed by economists like Piketty with their fine-grained percentile breakdowns. This use of ‘big class’ analysis turns out, at times, to be a blunt tool. Finally, it is important to put Europe in global perspective (Savage 2021) as the world’s least unequal continent. The rise of top income shares has been more subdued within Europe than anywhere else. We should note that the European project has restricted inequality and retained ‘social’ models committed to inclusion better than elsewhere. If the alternative is the hegemony of neo-liberal, authoritarian, and imperial models coming to the fore elsewhere, perhaps, despite it all, we should still remember Benjamin’s invocation to Adorno, who was urging him to flee the Nazis, ‘In Europe, there are still positions to defend’.