482 Book reyiews

advanced their own fund proposals based on profit-sharing and individual shares. Opposition

to the idea of any form of wage-earner funds was confined to the conservative Moderate Party. In 1980, however, two fundanlental chan- ges occurred. Discontent in the People’s Party over co-operation with the Social Democratic Party in a referendum on nuclear power that year strengthened the People’s Party’s right wing, which was less willing to compromise with the social democrats on wage-earner funds. At the same time, a campaign against any negotiations with the social democrats on wage-

earner funds organized by the owners of small firms in the Swedish Confederation of Employ- ers (SAF) strengthened the right wing of that organization.

If these changes in Sweden’s political atmos- phere had not occurred, a compromise on wage-earner funds might have been achieved. After 1976, the social democrats drafted wage-

earner fund proposals that were closer to those of the liberal People’s Party. But the rightward shifts of the People’s Party and the SAF reduced the grounds for compromise, and the debate on wage-earner funds became increasingly polarized.

In his analysis, Olsen fails to account for the importance of the division within the socia- democratic movement as explaining the demise

of the LO fund proposal. This may be related to Olsen’s lack of sources in Swedish. He also fails to account for the initial splits between the non- socialist parties on the funds issue. In addition, his discussion on a division within Swedish capital between export capital and home market capital is labored. The most vocal opponents to wage-earner funds within the SAF were not

found among representatives for export capital, as Olsen implies, but rather among owners of small companies producing primarily for the

Swedish market. To summarize, Olsen’s book provides a brief

and concise statement of the development of, and divisions within, Swedish labor and capital. However, by devoting too much room to historical analysis of the power of Swedish labor and capital, Olsen oversimplifies the political process that led to the subsequent demise of the original fund proposal. If Olsen bad elaborated further on the divisions within Swedish social democracy and on the development of the positions among the non-socialist parties and

within the employer organizations, it is this reviewer’s opinion chat his analysis would have been even more to the point than is the case at present.

References

&PING-ANIXKSEN, G. (1985). Politics Against Markets:

The Social Democratic Road to Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

FFX~T, K.-O. (1991). Alla dessa dagar. i regetingen

1982-1990. Stockholm: Norstedrs.

KOXPI, VT. (1978). lbe Wo&fng C&ss in We&are Capitaiism: Wxk. Unions and Politics is Sweden.

London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Sven Holdar

Department of Geography Unifier&y of Colorado Bouldq CO 80309-02G0, USA

London: A New Metropolitan Geography, Keith

Hoggart and David R. Green feds), Edward Arnold, London, 1992, 225 pp.

Having spent the Fall of 1992 in the Smoke, teaching a class on London’s geography to

young Floridians, I kicked myself when I saw the front of this book, for missing the opportu-

nity to use an up-to-date source. Opening it, I discovered there was no great loss. Indeed to have presented my students with this as a text would have killed stone dead the considerable enthusiasm with which they followed me around the streets and alleys.

This volume of essays is packed with bureau- cratic brie-li-brat and tabulated tedium, averag- ing two references a page. As a bench-mark

study and information source it sailed too early, missing the 1991 census results. The tables, then, are based on a serious underestimate of

Britain’s 3 million ‘ethnic’ population, 45 per- cent of whom live in Greater London. It misses the fact that 45 percent of the population of Brent is Black or Asian, for example. The reaf- estate prognostications contained here are dated too. They came too early to catch the dramatic image of a bankrupt and empty Canary Wharf, together with over a third of Central London office space star&q empty. There is an excuse

for failing to foresee trends in the dangerous enterprise of being up to date in times of rapid change. Missing the Census was not a fault of

Book reviews 483

outrageous fortune, however, but of poor plan-

ning. More damning than these is the total failure to evoke the tangs of the place. Who are

these London School of Economics-King’s Col-

1egeJoint School of Geography worthies writing for? Only Londoners, who know its sights and smells? The chief flavor of the book is the soggy dampness of London’s paper-pushing, minister- ial and local government minions. This is,

indeed, one of London’s tastes, but what is missing is the compelling combination of scuzz and style, bazaar and bowler, pomp and pimp,

dogshit suburb, and sheikh, Rasta and Pole, that are London’s delight, What keeps you coming

back to the Great Wen is its capacity to surprise. Narrow winding defiles suddenly break out into broad geometric vistas. In buildings and people, opulence and poverty intermingle with a touch of grace, along with the gritty tension that occasionally flares. This is not captured in a couple of paragraphs on ‘Polarization within London’, tables of percentages and choropleth borough maps.

I suppose it is not surprising that the denizens of Houghton Street and the Strand should acquire the green-grey patina of their commut- ing compadres on the way across Waterloo Bridge. But it is an indictment of the discipline of geography that this is what passes as our contribution to human knowledge and under- standing. The only relief in this bland collection is Emmys Jones, a voice from the past, adding a touch of Cymric hwyl to flavor the discussion of race and ethnic&y.

Patrick O’Sullivan

~e~~rne~~ of cYeogr6@Jy Flortda State University

Implicate Relations: Society and Space in the

Israeli-Pak?stinian Conflict, Juval Portugali, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1993, 202 pp.

This book is a comprehensive study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict written by a pro- fessor of social geography at Tel Aviv University and lieutenant in the Israeli army reserve. Its

approach comes from a specific angle: philo- sophical theory and academic research based on

experience of 30 days’ army service yearly in the occupied territories of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

Israel today is characterized by many unusual

features. Consequently western leaders con- templating Israeli politics and seeking to under- stand it are surprised by the rapidly changing political situation. In Israel, persistent conflict with the Palestinians and the constant menace of terrorist acts continue to produce a feeling

which leads to hatred of the foe and a tendency to escape from reality, whether in the belief that a lasting peace can speedily be obtained or in the belief that absolute security can be ensured by military and settlement means and through the annexation of territories.

In this book, Portugali suggests that the

Israelis and Palestinians compose a single soci- ety, and each has no existence exclusively

independent of the other. His approach is based on Bohm’s theory of wholeness and the impli-

cate order which distinguishes entities that exist independently and outside each other and entities which enfold each other, and do not have an existence independent of each other (Bohm, 1980). While the external and internal relations approaches conceive of Israeli and Palestinian societies as essentially independent of each other, the enfolded relation approach considers such a conception as a political appearance of a deeper implicate domain. The two social groups, as the author indicates, are dialectically inseparable and form a single social unit, while the Palestinian ethno-nation~istic

entity enfolds within it Zionism, and the Zionist- Israeli-Jewish entity enfolds Palestinianism.

A second approach is based on the principle of self-organization, which relies on Waken’s synergetics theories in physical science and the

discovery that disequilibrium and chaos may be a source of order (Haken, 1977). During the period of chaos several order states compete until one wins, enslaves the system and brings it into a new steady state.

A third approach in this book is based on the ideas of Gianbattista Vito’s poetic geography with its essential principle that nations employ

events, distant in time and space, as materials with which they build their present and their future. Zionist activities in Israel provide a very special case of the poetic geography. The Jews took materials from their distant past and used them to construct their modern nation and state-Israel. They skipped over 2000 years of Jewish life and tradition in the diaspora and selected the materials for their country. So did