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"Cowie has provided an extended, detailed example. . . His book is a useful step toward a new interpretation of the history of mass production industry in the post-World War Two years."—Daniel Nelson, University of Akron. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, April 2001, Vol. 54, No. 3"This is a very refreshing read, successfully melding the experiences of workers and bosses with wider structural forces. The research is meticulous . . . and scholars will benefit from the many archival sources Cowie has trawled to excellent effect. This book deserves to be read for many reasons, not least of which is that it really does put flesh on the often rather bare bones of the debates around the local effects of capitalist globalization."—Leslie Sklair, London School of Eonomics and Political Science. Labour/Le Travail
"Labor historian Jefferson Cowie's book, Capital Moves, makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the way 'capital mobility' is enacted on the ground. This important work is a social history in the 'subaltern' tradition."—Rebecca A. Johns, University of South Florida. The Professional Geographer, Vol. 53, No. 1, Feb. 2001
"After reading Cowie's thorough and even-handed treatment of highly complex issues, one is left with neither outright despair no giddy optimism. . . His intention is to make people aware of the historical forces that have shaped our lives, and how our lives in turn are embedded to these forces."—Tom McCourt, University of Illinois at Springfield. Journal of Communication, September 2001
"This is a thought-provoking and innovative piece of scholarship that deserves a wide audience."—Choice
"Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor is not the old familiar tale of deindustrialization as it exists in the popular imagination. . . Cowie insists upon resurrecting the agency of local communities and upon portraying how worker actions affected decisions taken by management, perhaps more than the other way around. Captial Moves is an historically and geographically comparative study of the impact of capital migration on working-class communities."—Joanna B. Swanger, Earlham College. Latin American Research Review, June 2003.
"Capital Moves is a stunningly important work of historical imagination and rediscovery which links the present with the past in a fashion that is exciting and suggestive. Jefferson Cowie has written no 'contribution to the literature,' but instead has reconfigured a huge slice of recent business and labor history. His is one of the most provocative and useful books I have read in many years."—Nelson Lichtenstein, University of Virginia
"A conceptually rich and deeply humane book. Jefferson Cowie narrates how industrial workers in two nations and four different communities coped with one company's relentless search for cheap and pliable labor. He is a rare historian who illuminates the future by explaining a vital part of the past."—Michael Kazin, author of The Populist Persuasion: An American History
"Jefferson Cowie's important book mobilizes labor history, social history, and gender analysis to challenge conventional conceptions of globalization and transnational capital migration. He traces RCA's factory relocations from the 1930s to the present, both within the United States and into Mexico, exposing the long-standing dynamic of industrial relocation as a response to working-class struggles, and showing how relocation in turn leads inexorably to labor and community resistance in each new locality. This insightful book deserves attention from anyone interested in cross-border organizing.—Ruth Milkman, University of California, Los Angeles
"Jefferson Cowie takes us on a remarkable tour of four communities transformed by industrial capitalism. This powerful, original book recasts our understanding of capitalism, labor, gender, and geography. It is a sobering reflection on the possibilities and limits of community in an era of transregional and transnational economic power. Capital Moves is must reading for those who want to understand the forces that have reshaped the American and global economies over the last half century." —Thomas J. Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania
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