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.
(Journal of Communication) It does not take long to recognize an excellent book and this is one. With an innovative and successful mix of labor and business history, economic geography, and gender and community studies, Jefferson Cowie writes a complex story of capital migration, class formation and social change.
(Journal of American History) The author brings to life through a well-written narrative and the skilful use of oral history. Fundamentally, Cowie reinforces the need for labour historians and industrial relations scholars to consider both the spatial and temporal dimensions of work.
(Journal of Industrial Relations) The strength of Capital Moves is its narrative, which demonstrates, better than any schematic argument or abstract model could, the persistent logic behind RCA's location decisions.... Its argument is one from which labor can take hope, for it suggests that the strategy of capital relocation is, ultimately, self-undermining.
- Kimberly Phillips-Fein (New Labor Forum) A compelling reinterpretation of postwar American history.
(American Historical Review) Capital Moves—based impressively on research about four sites and in two languages—exemplifies the salutary effect of the revival of geography on the social sciences. Cowie's core argument—that in spite of the claimed novelty of globalization, spatial factors long have been critical to the stability of capitalist production—deserves close attention.
(Dissent) 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.
(The Professional Geographer) This book is significant because of its powerful story, innovative methodology, and the challenges and elaborations it offers to contemporary research on industrial restructuring.
(Contemporary Sociology) This is a thought-provoking and innovative piece of scholarship that deserves a wide audience.
(Choice)
