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examples of modern architecture in the interior of Turkey which deserve coverage in architectural historiographies are excluded from this text. Most importantly, the works of women architects are still in need of further research and recognition. With its rich and original material and language that engages various dimensions of cultural and social life, Modern Architectures in History: Turkey is an enjoyable read for those interested in the built environment and urbanism. It is also a timely contribution, as a right to the city movement has emerged in Turkey, drawing the interest of crowds to architectural and urban issues. In addition to students and scholars of architecture, urban design, architectural and urban history, sociology and cultural history, all environmentally conscious individuals will significantly benefit from this book. zge Sade Mete
Bellevue College University of Washington

Thomas Marois. State, Banks and Crisis: Emerging Finance Capitalism in Mexico and Turkey. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2012, xi + 263 pages.1 Neoliberal dogma has a Midas formula; it suggests that markets left on their own will turn everything into gold. The panacea for deeply rooted economic and social problems has been based on approaches favoring minimal state intervention and financial liberalization. As the 20072009 international financial crisis and the ensuing Eurozone crisis have shown, however, neoliberalism (and financialization as its prominent feature) have in fact aggravated the economic situation in many advanced capitalist countries and the periphery of Europe. Thomas Marois timely book looks at the picture from the perspective of the developing countries of Mexico and Turkey, known also as the emerging markets. It provides compelling details from the stories of the financial sector and development, recent responses to the crisis, restructuring of the banking sector in the neoliberal era, postwar economic development, and the neoliberal turn in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.
1 Published in Turkish as Thomas Marois, Devletler, Bankalar ve Kriz: Meksika ve Trkiyede Ykselen Mali Kapitalizm (Ankara: Notabene Yaynlar, 2013).

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Marois starts by arguing that neoliberalism took a more aggressive form in the 1990s. In this finance-led form of capital accumulation, financial capital expanded its power in determining the terrain upon which state managers and governments formulate policy packages. In the first chapter, Marois underlines the need to provide a detailed account of this transformation in middle-income, emerging economies. He contends that the relations between the banking sector and the state should be analyzed for a critical account of the emergence of these latecomer countries as they try to catch up with the advanced capitalist countries. Introducing the concept of emerging finance capitalism, the book suggests that the current phase of accumulation in Mexico and Turkey can best be characterized in political and economic terms by highlighting the fusion of the interests of the domestic and foreign financial capital in the state apparatus as the institutionalized priorities and the overarching social logic guiding the actions of state managers and government elites, often to the detriment of labor (p. 10). Growth in both countries could be characterized as export-led and debt-dependent. While their financial systems remained bank based, the importance of non-bank financial institutions and sources of funds are increasing. The second chapter gives the reader a brief critique of the dichotomous and ideal-typical understanding prevalent in the Varieties of Capitalism approach and points out the way to overcome problems in the literature; a structural and historical analysis of the development of the relations between financial institutions and the states financial apparatus. The study is based, within this perspective, on four basic premises: (i) Capitalist states are social formations ( la Poulantzas) and are best understood as social forms assumed by struggles which then turn into institutionalized power relations paving the ground for a social logic revealed in the forms of intervention by the state; (ii) Banks are social relations as well ( la Hilferding). The ways financial institutions act are shaped historically and the banks are embedded in a web of relations comprising their relationships with multiple actors, including customers, other banks, and states financial apparatuses, as well as international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund; (iii) Labor is vital to emerging finance capitalism as it creates value and staff costs critical for many financial institutions. Because of legal regulations, the working classes also allocate part of their income as tax, by the use of which states attempt to socialize financial risks; (iv) Crises are constitutive of emerging finance capitalism. They have not only shown the unsustainable features of idealized neoliberalism in Mexico and Turkey but have also been used by finan-

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cial capital and state managers for initiation of deeper transformations within the economy. Before elaborating the neoliberal turn and then further restructuring of the banking sector in the last couple of decades, Marois explicates its postwar development and the consolidation of capitalism in Mexico and Turkey in comparative terms. The third chapter summarizes the stateled strategies of development in the postwar era and their exhaustion in relation to the international political and economic changes in the aftermath of the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary order. The fourth and fifth chapters enable the reader to develop a fruitful understanding of the neoliberal reforms and the close relationship between the restructuring of states and banks and rise of neoliberal idealism. These chapters explain the uneven character and pace of the reforms in Mexico and Turkey respectively, revealing the commitment of state managers and policy makers to financial liberalization. The 1982 bank nationalization in Mexico gave way to a state-authored financial transformation. The privatization, a decade later, can be interpreted as financial capital buying not only the banks but also a new phase of accumulation in which financial actors and owners of money capital are promised handsome returns. The process of liberalization in Turkey also enabled private banks to increase their profits significantly, quadrupling their return on assets in two decades (p. 113). The speculative behavior of financial capital was reinforced thanks to public debt rollover problems and a lax regulatory framework. The sixth and seventh chapters complete the story by providing information on up-to-date changes in and structure of the banking sector and regulatory framework, as well as discussing the consolidation and costs of emerging finance capitalism in Mexico and Turkey. In both countries, public debt continues to be a vital source of profitability for financial capital. In both countries, banks have lent increasing amounts of money to individuals as consumer credit. The share of commissions and fees in bank profits has expanded rapidly in the last decade, as did credit before the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Foreign bank entry and the control of financial assets by foreign-affiliated financial actors have reached unprecedented levels in the last phase of emerging finance capitalism. In both Turkey and Mexico to day, the banking sectors are highly concentrated and centralized with relatively more concentration in Mexico. As of 2007, the four largest firms in the Mexican banking sector are controlled by foreign giants and provide 69 percent of private sector loans and 79 percent of mortgages (p. 144). In Turkey, state-banks continue to rank at the top of the banking sector, but their share in the control

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of assets has been in steady decline over the last decade. As of 2009, the five largest Turkish banks controlled 62 percent of total assets (p. 183). In Turkey, banking sector seems to have become stronger and remained profitable. As in Mexico and many other emerging economies, however, this alleged success seems to rest on the continued transfer of wealth from the working classes to financial capital. Overall, Marois claim that the new phase of capital accumulation in Mexico and Turkey reflects the institutionalized priorities of financial capital and has been shaped through the restructuring of the financial apparatuses of the respective states as well as their relations with the bank-based financial sector in the neoliberal era is supported by meticulous research. The book makes two major arguments: The first insistently underlines the fact that labor should be integrated into the analysis of the restructuring of banks. Although cutting staff costs was only one element in the multi-faceted process of restructuring of banks in emerging finance capitalism, it was an important one, as evidenced in the declining number of branches and employees. In both Mexico and Turkey, fewer bank workers had to deal with more and more money and financial operations throughout the process. This has contributed to the profitability of banks. Although operational costs seem to remain negligible when compared with the leveraged operations of banks, the persistent attempt to assign more jobs to fewer bank workers should be taken into consideration. The second argument derives from the critical portrayal of the logic of finance capitalism. As Marois emphasizes, the profitable operation of a bank rests on the establishment of the debtor-creditor relationship in such a way that the owners of financial capital expropriate part of the future income of the debtor. This expropriation takes place under the banner of the mobilization of savings and efficient allocation of monetary sources. The creditors, in our case the banks, discipline the debtors via the interest-bearing asset symbolizing the claim of the creditor upon the future revenue of states, corporations or individuals. The profitable operation and expansion of banks are based on the overarching logic of finance, which embraces both particular individuals and society at large. Bank bail-outs and restructurings are reflections of this. According to Marois, studies on finance and development should not give up searching for radical and democratic alternatives. Indeed, Marois provides the reader with hints of a democratized social economy in which credit relations are organized around the notion of labor money. Taking labor time as the unit of accounting and shaping credit relations accordingly would also mean the creation of a non-exploitative material

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basis upon which credit relations could function. It would also mean a new mode of distribution in which the banks responsible for the allocation of labor money would serve social purposes and not profit-oriented speculative activity. For Marois, studies of finance and development should not limit themselves to problem-solving but use a critical understanding to nourish the search for radical alternatives. In conclusion, the authors meticulous research and sharp critical perspective give us a well-drawn picture of the two developing countries and the current phase of capital accumulation in emerging markets. Students and scholars in the relatively underdeveloped fields of study of financialization in emerging markets, market orientation in bank-based financial systems, and the restructuring of states financial apparatuses to strengthen the financial sector in response to crises will find useful insights and critical arguments worth questioning and discussing in this rigorous work. Ali Rza Gngen
Ondokuz Mays University

Bure elik. Technology and National Identity in Turkey: Mobile Communications and the Evolution of a Post-Ottoman Nation. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011. 224 pages. Bure eliks study examines the cultural practices of cellular telephony in Turkey during the 2000s. The objective of the study is to offer one explanation as to why and how cellular telephony has become an object of collective attachment in a developing country such as Turkey. elik rightly points out that much of the pre-existing academic literature in the social sciences treats mobile phones as either a status symbol or as an instrumental tool facilitating inter-personal communication. She argues that these approaches overlook the culture of cellular telephony and questions of how the cell phone is imagined and fantasized, how it moves people, why one wants to make or receive a call, and what kinds of affectivities or emotionalities this concept produces (p. 7). Her study proposes that there is an important element of attachment in the culture of cellular telephony which cannot be explained by symbolic or instrumentalist perspectives on the subject. For elik, the cell phone impresses, affects, moves and gathers bodies in particular ways that incur