Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz and Katharine E. Andrade-Eekhoff, Communities in Globalization: The Invisible Mayan Nahual (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), pp. v+167, $72.00, $26.95 pb; £18.95, pb.
to neoliberalism is, of course, open to debate. Some critics of neostructuralism have seen it as no more than the ‘human face ’ of neoliberalism, while others argue that it constitutes a synthesis between structuralism and neoliberalism. Be that as it may, the book would have been enhanced by a chapter on neostructuralism. It is unfortunate also that despite the long gestation of this book no contributor was able to refer to, and benefit from, the books in the United Nations Intellectual History Project Series. The outstanding book by John Toye and Richard Toye, The UN and Global Political Economy : Trade, Finance, and Development (Indiana UP, 2004), is particularly relevant in this context as it discusses the development of structuralist ideas and the ascendancy of the economic neoliberal doctrine in the 1980s which they refer to as the ‘conservative counterrevolution ’. Notwithstanding these critical comments, this is a most scholarly book on a crucial topic of our times. By analysing the origins and trajectories of economic doctrines in a comparative and interdisciplinary manner it facilitates the search for an alternative to the hegemonic neoliberal doctrine. There is an increasing clamour throughout Latin America for such an equitable and inclusionary development paradigm and strategy.