Book Review: Erica S Simmons, Meaningful Resistance: Market Reforms and the Roots of Social Protest in Latin America
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Author | Sophia Ostler |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917718151 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsThe Americas |
Book Reviews 673
The relative weakness of the theoretical essays
in Part I suggests that APD should keep up that
relationship, both for the sake of APD and so
that comparative politics can be enriched by the
US experience.
Scott L Greer
(University of Michigan)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917718666
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John Adams and the Fear of American
Oligarchy by Luke Mayville. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2016. 216pp., £22.95
(h/b), ISBN 9780691171531
The scholarly reputation of John Adams has in
recent years experienced a renaissance of aca-
demic and popular interest. This long-neglected
American Founder has been the subject of
numerous biographical studies examining the
nature of his legacy. In particular, Adams’
unique contribution to political science has
formed a central part of this rehabilitation.
Luke Mayville’s book contributes to a
highly engaging reassessment of his subject’s
ideology pivoting on his concerns about elites
and oligarchy. Through four chapters, the
author reconstructs the bases of his subject’s
thoughts and fears, attempting to gain insight
into a complex world of political science and
moral psychology.
Underpinning Adams’ fears lay his dismissal
of what is now termed American exceptional-
ism. America, like Europe, was riven with the
same threats posed by wealth and privilege.
Society was not a unified core but a collection of
factions, held uneasily together (p. 9). Through
his account, Mayville presents the Founder as a
man modelling a remarkably prescient concern:
concern about the concentration of wealth and
political influence into the hands of the few, the
so-called ‘soft oligarchy’ (p. 15). As the author
notes, the second president may very well have
been the eighteenth century’s critic of what we
now term ‘the one per cent’ (p. 14).
While previous biographers such as
Charles Thompson and Richard Ryerson
have documented their subject’s deeply held
concerns regarding the power of the elites,
Mayville’s study centres on explicating its evo-
lutionary trajectory through Adams’ political
science, culminating in his Defence and
Discourses. The oligarchy posed a greater
threat to government due to its pervasive yet
intangible nature, since the source of its power
was rooted not only in material resources but
also in moral sentiments (pp. 121, 123).
Adams’ method for restraining oligarchy
was perhaps the most derided (and misunder-
stood) aspect of his political career: titles.
Drawing on the Roman model and Rousseau’s
Considerations, he argued that ‘the passion for
distinction’ lay at the root of human interest.
Titles for office would therefore encourage the
best of society to serve government and coun-
teract the passion for wealth (pp. 137, 140).
The author concludes with an elegantly
expressed clarion to heed Adams’ warning on
the perils of oligarchy: America has become a
land of oligarchs.
Mayville’s work is a thoughtful, original
study of an essential element in Adams’ politi-
cal conceptions. Through it, one gains insight
not only into the tensions in early American
history but also the corrosive effects of wealth
and privilege upon politics, a topic as relevant
today as it was in the eighteenth century.
Jamie Macpherson
(University of Stirling)
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917718150
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Meaningful Resistance: Market Reforms and
the Roots of Social Protest in Latin America
by Erica S Simmons. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2016. 226pp., £18.99 (p/b), ISBN
9781107562059
Why is there protest in response to economic
hardship only in some contexts? Erica
Simmons sets out to look beyond material
explanations for the origins of social resistance
to the commercialisation of subsistence goods.
She argues that the ideational, or symbolic,
nature of a good within the community is what
determines whether the community will mobi-
lise against its marketisation. Too often the
notion of grievance is thought of as a constant
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