Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

BOOK REVIEWS 270
repertoires of violence also have multiple publics where transnational dialoguing and networking
are taking place. I felt that a brief discussion would have bolstered her points about the
polymorphic nature of globalization fostering progressive and violent movements. Next, in
relation to violent movements, Moghadam argues that groups utilize violence to seek state power.
However, other scholars have found evidence showing groups use violence as a response to
government repression. Other variables such as group ideology, identity, etc. may have
explanatory power as well.
Despite these limitations, this is a compelling book. Social movement and globalization
scholars will appreciate Moghadam’s improvement upon both literatures and her explanatory
framework she puts forth to remedy the theoretical gaps. The book will also be valuable in a
graduate student seminar as an overview of contemporary transnational social movements and
globalization. This succinct integration of topics such social movement theory, globalization
processes, gender inequality, and religious fundamentalism also makes the information easily
accessible to activists and public intellectuals.
Gina Marie Longo, M.A.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Sociology
glongo@wisc.edu
Babones, Salvatore. 2009. The International Structure of Income: Its Implications for
Economic Growth. Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM Verlag. 180 Pages. ISBN: 9783639101591
Paper $105.
In The International Structure of Income Salvatore Babones addresses two interrelated questions.
In the first half he addresses the shape or structure of the distribution of world-income at both the
simulated person-to-person level (Chapter 3) and at the national level a la Arrighi and Dangel
(1986, Ch. 4). In the second half he examines the consequences of the structure of the worldeconomy
for economic development. Babones integrates a standard growth model from
economics with the structural intuition of the world-systems perspective to suggest that specific
growth mechanisms “differ systematically across the three zones of the world-economy” that he
identified in the first half of the book (p. 5). The book is an excellent read for world-system
scholars who take seriously the notion that social structure matters for economic development. It
also provides solid reviews of the global distribution of income, neo-classical theories of growth,
and a clear demonstration of simultaneous equation and instrumental variable regressions (which
have yet to make it into mainstream sociology, but have been used in economics for over two
decades).
Babones’s motivation for the book includes a review of the relevant literature on global
income inequality. He notes that the only conclusion one can draw from this literature is that
inequality has remained fairly stable over the last half of the 20 th century, after rising
precipitously since the industrial revolution. This conclusion is based largely on the major
difficulties regarding issues of national income measurement, sample selection, and the inherent
ambiguity of summary measures of inequality themselves, all of which lead to different findings
regarding the level of global income inequality and its trend overtime. Others have drawn similar