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bluelilyblue's review
4.0
Yet his migration is like an event in a dream dreamt by another. As a figure in a dream dreamt by an unknown sleeper, he appears to act autonomously, at times unexpectedly; but everything he does--unless he revolts--is determined by the needs of the dreamer's mind. Abandon the metaphor. The migrant's intentionality is permeated by historical necessities of which neither he nor anybody he meets is aware.
tinito93's review against another edition
5.0
Critique of capitalism emerges as the essential theme of this book. Berger argues that there is a contradiction at the very root of capitalism. It is an economic system based on the idea that work, once it leads to productivity, must bring success. This is because productivity carries value in itself. However, in practice this is certainly not the case. Instead, the poorer countries face stagnation and a state called „underdevelopment“. The term „underdevelopment“ here implies a state of inescapable poverty, a lockdown of both productive and financial possibilities. This stems not from the incompetence of the „underdeveloped“ country or its people, but from the socio-economic factors which include the relationship between the rich and the poor countries, where different capitalistic elements of free market render the land useless for the people who live off it. In other words, the imposed economic system comes with its own values that define the productivity level of a certain type of work: „Modern rural poverty has a social rather than a natural basis. The land becomes barren through lack of irrigation or seed or fertilizers or equipment. The unproductivity of the land then leads to unemployment or underemployment. For example: an able-bodied man may be forced to spend his whole day grazing two cattle. The relations which intervene between the land and the peasants – the share-cropping system, the system of land tenure, the money-lending system, the marketing system – come to be seen as part of the bareness of the land, part of the incontestable truth that you can't make bread from stone.“ Berger is eager to make a connection between the decadence of the rural parts of (mostly) eastern Europe and the emergence of capitalism in these countries with increasing globalization. In order to achieve this, he does not only utilize theory but fictional stories which are supposed to represent an „average“ immigrant. It is his goal to use metaphor and literature to position the migrant worker and define the processes that influence his life. By telling the story of the worker, Berger uses metaphore to express the „abstract language of economic theory“, which can then help us contextualize the position of the migrant and give his position its "proper value“. As Berger put it, it is through metaphor that the „dreamer“ will become awake. This could be interpreted as a very strong argument that it is in fact art, the abstract, which can serve in purpose of illuminating complex processes regarding society and its development, especially when concentrating on the experience of the individual. The general underlying premise is a view of history as a dialectic of opposing forces which provoke a complex interaction between uneven societies, economies and ideologies. National frontiers are places where such power plays come into existence. The connection to the ideas of the likes of Said or Foucault are more than obvious.
sangxia's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Detailed and moving. Relevant for the decades since and beyond the border of Europe
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