Review of Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (ed.) O Império Colonial em Questão (2012)

PJSS 13 (2) pp. 233–243 Intellect Limited 2014

Portuguese Journal of Social Science Volume 13 Number 2 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Reviews. English language. doi: 10.1386/pjss.13.2.233_5

Reviews

O Império Colonial em Questão (Sécs. Xix–Xx): Poderes, Saberes e Instituições/The Colonial Empire in Question (Nineteenth-Twentieth Centuries): Power, Knowledge and Institutions, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (ed.) (2012) Lisbon: Edições 70, 600 pp., ISBN: 9789724417233, Paperback, 19.80 Norrie Macqueen, University of St Andrews Scholarly engagement with Portugal’s imperial past has followed an interesting vector over the decades since the 1974 revolution. We are now firmly in the second generation of post-New State historiography. The first was composed in the main of historians and authors who themselves had direct personal experience of authoritarianism. Their work is, unsurprisingly, shaped by this and tends to have a twentieth century – and metropolitan political – focus. The new generation involved in this collection depart somewhat from this earlier pattern. For one thing, their approach embraces an enlarged chronological range. This is not to say there has been a retreat from the twentieth century, but now the discourse is of late colonialism (colonialismo tardio) as a distinct phase. Distinct and also open to comparative study which is another feature of what we might call the new historiography of Portuguese colonialism. In the immediate post-1974 there was a tendency to emphasize, either explicitly or by implication, the notion of Portuguese exceptionalism, consciously or unconsciously adopting the perspectives of the New State itself. While few authors would have accepted any of the lusotropical mythology that provided the Salazar regime’s philosophical justification for its overseas presence, nevertheless the Portuguese experience (and not least its most recent, post-1945 phase) appeared to point up fundamental differences with other European colonial powers. More recently, however, some foreign writers (perhaps

233

Reviews

most notably Patrick Chabal) have challenged this basic supposition and this revised perspective, though slow to take hold in Portugal, is now gaining ground. The anti-exceptionalist position is based to a much greater degree on Afrocentric analyses than on Eurocentric ones and this has become a more general characteristic of current work by Portuguese authors who, as already observed, do not share the direct experience of pluri-continental Portugal of their predecessors. Much of this new orientation is founded in the ideological and methodological positions of the multi-discipline of postcolonialism, which has been embraced by a significant section of this latest generation of Portuguese historians of empire. These themes and trends are very well-represented in this collection. Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and his authors have made a significant contribution to the developing historiography of Portuguese (and indeed comparative) colonialism in this substantial and diverse set of essays. Importantly, the diversity is a positive strength rather than a dilution of focus. The work is held together by a logical ordering into four thematic sub-collections, each of which reflects not just a unity of theme but to an extent as well, a unity of methodological approach. The first section is concerned with what might loosely be described as ‘official’ narratives of colonial rule (‘Government of the Empire: Ideology, politics and war’). Two of the papers deal with the same totemic event: the 1961 Angola uprising in Baixa de Cassenge, which marked the beginning of the colonial war(s) and the final phase of Portugal’s late colonialism. Each essay illuminates different modes of thought by different levels of colonial authority on how to respond to events. The first, by Diogo Ramada Curto, interrogates a specific report prepared by an official of the Overseas (colonial) ministry on the response of European cotton growers to the uprising and the reluctance of the Governor-General to accede to their more bloodthirsty security demands. The colonial state was evidently more concerned about international reactions to reprisals than subsequent observers may have expected. In contrast, the second essay on 1961, by António Araújo, explores the ‘unofficial’ firing-squad execution by Portuguese troops of five suspected ‘terrorists’ in the sanzala of Mihinjo, and the display of their decapitated bodies as a warning to others. The impression emerging from these ground-level studies of the revolt is not of a colonial regime united behind a considered policy response, but of a fragmented an uncoordinated set of official reactions to wholly unexpected circumstances. The following chapter by Fernando Tavares Pimenta tackles the role of race in the nationalist movements in Angola and Mozambique. This has long been a subject of particular interest to those of us from other European imperial countries where the multiracial nature of the MPLA in Angola and Frelimo in Mozambique in particular has been an object of both curiosity and some admiration. Pimenta’s work cautions against too much of this admiration, pointing to the various conflicts of racial politics within these movements. Rightly, in my view, he calls for more research on the broader nationalist movement in Portuguese Africa, in particular the smaller groupings in Mozambique which emerged between the Lisbon coup and the transfer of power to Frelimo. These have been too easily dismissed (often by academics who should have shown greater critical distance), as mere puppets of colonialism. Pedro Aires Oliveira’s essay on the diplomacy of the so-called third (African) empire is an authoritative bibliographic study that concludes by proposing a future research agenda on the international relations surrounding

234

Reviews

Portuguese Africa. According to Oliveira this should involve a greater level of comparative study, particularly on how different empires respond to international pressures, as well as on the untangling of agency and process in decision-making. Such an agenda would certainly contribute to the fundamental debate about the extent of Portuguese imperial exceptionalism. The final chapter in this section is concerned with the role of missionaries. Here the book’s editor, Miguel Jerónimo, and Hugo Gonçalves Dores revisit a number of familiar themes with fresh eyes: for example, how are tensions between the missionaries’ role as imperial agent reconciled with religious imperatives against spoliation and abuse? What exactly is the ‘civilizing mission’ in this respect? And then there was the perennial Portuguese problem of those exasperating ‘British Protestants’ who subvert both faith and nation. The second part of the collection moves logically to a discussion of the economics of empire. But here too new approaches are evident. The concern is with economies in the plural rather than with the monolithic, centralist idea of a colonial ‘economy’ that underlay much of the pioneering work on the area (such as that of Richard Hammond). Here, the interest is with the state’s relationship with labour and property – in other words, with the lived experience of the colonized at ground level. Those British Protestants reappear in the first of the essays in this section in which Jerónimo, this time with José Pedro Monteiro, explores the colonial labour system and its foreign critics (notably the British ones) who were so unreasonable as to admire the worthiness of the theory while denouncing the barbarity of the practice. The theory saw work (even if forced) as in itself ‘civilizing’, a means to the construction of ‘new Brazils’ in Africa. The practice was indistinguishable from slavery. The proposal for future research here is on relationships between colonial officials on the ground and native elites – an agenda that might throw some new light on the nature of the ‘assimilation’ that supposedly underlay Portugal’s African vocation. Bárbara Direito’s focus in the following chapter is tighter: on one area of one colony (Inhambane in Mozambique). In this she challenges received wisdom about the continuation of subsistence agriculture in a supposedly under-populated and under-colonized region. Alexander Keese’s essay then examines the place (or more correctly the absence) of native elites in the late colonial state. Reflecting the theme of his 2007 book, Keese’s essay draws extensively on comparisons with French practice, though he ranges widely across lusophone Africa, including the ‘special cases’ (in terms of elite participation) of Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. The failure to co-opt these elites into the imperial project was, in Keese’s view, a lost opportunity for Portugal’s late colonialism. Finally in this section Victor Pereira considers the grandiose Development Plans of the late colonial state – as he notes, ‘in the New State plans multiplied’. There were four development plans (Planos de Fomento) between 1953 and 1974, the theoretical objective of which was to give reality to the notion of the empire as a pluri-continental Portuguese nation. In this, plainly, they were unsuccessful, but as Pereira points out, the plans played an important role in the extensive industrialization of Angola and Mozambique during the two decades in which they guided colonial economic development. Science as an instrument of colonial rule (though often an unreliable one from the imperialist’s point of view) forms the third section of the book. In her chapter ‘Empire of cocoa’ Marta Macedo discusses the inter-imperial dimension

235

Reviews

to cash crop cultivation and the transfer of Portugal’s ‘scientific’ methods of cocoa production from São Tomé and Príncipe, at a time when the islands were the world’s largest producers, to German – and later British-mandated – Cameroon. (Strangely, Macedo does not cite Catherine Higgs’s 2012 work on cocoa cultivation and labour practices in Africa at this time, The Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery and Colonial Africa, though it is referenced elsewhere in the collection). The rest of this section consists of intriguing essays by Frederico Agoas on the contested and fraught introduction of the potentially subversive social sciences to the curriculum of the Escola Superior Colonial in the final decades of empire, and by Cláudia Castelo on the use (and misuse) by the late colonial state of scientific – particularly geographic – research. Culture, very broadly defined, is the focus of the final section of the book, which generally adopts the discourses of postcolonial analysis. The concern here is with gender, fiction and patterns of consumption of cultural artefacts in the colonies. As in the case of science, cultural dissemination often proved a double-sided weapon of colonial domination. This ambiguity is evident in the chapter by Nuno Domingos on the cultural crucible that was twentiethcentury Lourenço Marques (an interesting and unexpected detail: in 1949 the city had eighteen cinemas). Domingos explores the complex sociocultural relationships, not just between races but among social strata within the races. Two chapters by Filipa Lowndes Vicente emphasize the ambivalent uses to which culture could be put. In her essay on photography and colonialism she observes that the technical development of photography largely paralleled the vector of ‘new imperialist’ expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She makes an important distinction between photography in a colonial context and ‘colonial photography’. The latter is about the assertion of power, but the former could often subvert that purpose. In this essay as in her second, on gender and colonialism, Vicente draws heavily on comparisons and parallels with British India. Her consideration of gender is based on the work of two British women authors and their writings on Portuguese India. The essay is rich in observation – such as the status of these two writers as ‘double colonizers’ in respect not just of India but also ‘subaltern’ Portugal. She also notes an essential difference between French and British women’s writing on the colonial experience: the former ‘exoticize’ and romanticize the tropical backdrop to empire; the latter tend to concern themselves with the day-to-day detail of colonial life. Margarida Calafate Ribeiro offers a more general view of the nature and purposes of colonial literature, though one perhaps too densely populated by an over-abundance of examples. For the colonized, literature forms a central part of the nationalist narrative (whether in the verse of Amílcar Cabral or the prose of Luís Bernardo Honwana. In respect of the colonizer, she cites Edward Said’s observation that colonial literature is an active part of the construction, definition and clarification of European colonial identity. Finally, Ricardo Roque offers a postcolonialist analysis of a somewhat leftfield topic: the collection and export of native skulls to museums in colonial metropoles. His concern is with the notations and narratives attached to this macabre trade and the underlying power relationships involved. Much of his essay is concerned not with Portuguese activities but with Australian practice in Papua New Guinea (though he does consider the collection of Timorese skulls held in Coimbra). Overall, then, this is an excellent collection. It is characterized by both range of topic and depth of analysis. Its methodologies and perspectives are

236

Reviews

varied. Yet as a whole it coheres as a unified contribution to an ever-developing research agenda on what remains an absolutely fundamental element of the Portuguese past.

A Concordata de Salazar/Salazar’s Concordat, Rita Almeida de Carvalho (2013) Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores and Temas e Debates, 642 pp., ISBN: 9789896442132, Paperback, 17.90 Paula Borges Santos, Universidade Nova de Lisboa In this book, Rita Almeida de Carvalho draws on the research she undertook in preparing her doctoral thesis analysing the concordat between the Holy See and the Portuguese State of 7 May 1940 – specifically the negotiating process and the nature of the topics governed by it. It is not the first time this topic has been dealt with by Portuguese historiography. In 1997 Manuel Braga da Cruz published an article in Análise Social entitled ‘The negotiations for the Concordat and the Missionary Agreement of 1940’, in which he considered the antecedents of such agreements and identified the main difficulties that arose during the negotiating sessions between the Portuguese government and the Holy See. In the same year, Carvalho laid out the first tentative results of her research in História, under the title ‘Salazar and the Concordat with the Holy See’. Some years later Bruno Cardoso Reis published his work, Salazar and the Vatican (ICS, 2006), a painstaking investigation into the process of negotiating these accords. Drawing on the approaches of both history and international relations he considered the diplomatic relationships established between Portugal and the Vatican, focusing on the formulation of Portuguese foreign policy leading to that relationship, with regard to the pressures upon it due to the national and international political context. Despite the differences in scope of these studies, the authors all drew essentially on two public archives in Portugal: the HistoricalDiplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Oliveira Salazar Archive, kept in the Portuguese National Archive. By comparison with the studies mentioned above, the main novelty of Carvalho’s new work is the fact that she builds up the history of the negotiations leading to the concordat by drawing on previously unexplored primary sources, particularly the papers of the Apostolic Nunciate of Lisbon and of the Holy Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, available in the Secret Vatican Archives. The author links this exercise with another objective: to establish comparisons between the formulation of the Portuguese concordat and of similar texts agreed with Italy (1929) and Spain (1953). She sets out to identify the specificities of the Portuguese case, to characterize the policy of the Holy See towards the political regimes of these three countries, and to make a contribution towards defining the nature of the relationship between these states and the Catholic Church (p. 19). To this end she structures her book in seven sections,

237

Reviews

the last three of which serve as a conclusion, though they are not presented as such. We shall look at each of these seven sections in turn. In the first section, Carvalho deals with the relationship established between the military/political forces and the religious authorities during the Military Dictatorship in Portugal (1926–33). She concludes there was a convergence between the civil authorities and the Catholic Church during this period, and uses documentary sources from the Vatican to shine a light on the reactions of the religious authorities to legislation published during that period affecting the legal position of the Church in Portugal. She provides useful information about the discussions and reactions within the Roman Curia and the Portuguese Episcopate to the so-called ‘decree of juridical status’ (decreto da personalidade jurídica) (Decree no. 11887, of 15 July 1926), which gave legal recognition to various corporations and institutions involved in religious activities. In the second section, the author studies the relations between the Portuguese state and the Catholic Church at the time of the constitutional settlement that created the New State (1933). By examining the reactions to the draft constitution (1932) and to the definitive constitutional text (p. 94, 100–03), Carvalho argues that despite differences about what the constitution established, the prevailing atmosphere was one in which it was ‘increasingly evident’ that there was ‘a good understanding between the Church and the government’ (p. 104). To support this assertion, she cites examples of various legal diplomas, published between 1935 and 1939, which, she argues, correspond to an ‘attempt to re-Christianize Portuguese society’ on the part of the legislators. This atmosphere, she argues, would have favoured the establishment of the concordat in 1940 (pp. 113–14). In the third section, Carvalho presents the first drafts of the concordat text and the Holy See’s initial plans, as well as reconstructing the main steps involved in the formal concordat negotiations up to its adoption. Here she notes that although negotiations with the Holy See did not begin until 1937, Salazar had attempted to negotiate a concordat some years earlier, first to coincide with the plebiscite that approved the constitution of 1933, and then with the opening of the National Assembly in 1935 (pp. 129, 144). Regarding the complexity of the negotiations, she stresses that Salazar wanted to make the signing of the concordat dependent upon the simultaneous establishment of a missionary agreement (pp. 191–92, 197–207). Among the other contentious issues the author highlights the recognition of the Catholic Action organization, which was repeatedly raised in discussions. However, she notes that the climate of negotiation was also affected by a problem unrelated to the content of the accords, namely the expropriation of a building belonging to the Nunciate, only partially used by the Vatican’s diplomatic service, under the Lisbon Urbanization and Expansion Plan, in connection with the Commemoration of the Discoveries scheduled for 1940 (pp. 219–30). She provides a detailed portrait of those who conducted the negotiations for the government side (pp. 152–63), though without doing the same for the Vatican negotiators – which would have been interesting, since the reader understands there were political and religious differences between the protagonists, but lacks sufficient information to characterize them adequately. In the fourth section, the longest in the book, the author compares different drafts of the concordat, prepared and discussed by the Portuguese and papal religious authorities and by the Portuguese government both before and after the opening of formal negotiations. In this way she captures the

238

Reviews

evolution of the different articles making up the concordat. Regarding some aspects of the concordat, she summarizes the formulations that appeared in the Italian and Spanish concordats, and in some cases examples from other countries too. This is particularly the case with two questions, namely Catholic Action (pp. 394–98) and the regulation of marriage (pp. 469–73). In the three final sections, which are less descriptive and more interpretative, the author draws some conclusions about the place of the concordats in the relations between the Holy See and those countries under authoritarian, totalitarian or fascist regimes between the wars, and gives her view of the political significance of the Portuguese concordat of 1940. Basing herself on international studies, she considers that, on the one hand, the move to agree concordats at that period was ‘an attempt to save at all costs the freedoms of the Catholic Church in troubled times’, which was connected to the Holy See’s need to strengthen its international position in defence of ‘Christian civilization’ and combat ‘the advance of communism’ (pp. 585–86). On the other hand, she agrees that the Holy See accepted the protection of authoritarian states and endorsed the ‘fascistic wave’ that was crossing Europe, given that the concordats ‘helped the dictators to perpetuate their regimes’, specifically by establishing the ‘withdrawal of the right of Catholics to organize politically’ (pp. 587–88, 596). This last argument, which the author deduces from the attitude towards Catholic Action that was adopted in various concordats, is open to criticism. In fact, in the different concordats cited by Carvalho the possibility of political intervention by Catholics is not excluded. The articles that refer to the scope of intervention open to the branches of Catholic Action indicate only that the organization should declare itself not to be involved in political activity, so as not to come into conflict with the aim of political demobilization that the different dictatorial states were nurturing – not only in relation to Catholics, but to all groups whose political existence and activities could rival their own political project. It should be added that the pontifical logic that supported the creation of Catholic Action aimed only at superseding the model of Christian intervention in society by way of confessional political parties, and never put in question the individual liberty of political action for Catholics active in its structures. Finally, Carvalho concludes the 1940 concordat was of little value to the Catholic Church in Portugal, and was mainly ‘a propaganda exercise’ by Salazar, subservient to the interests of the state and aimed principally at securing approval for the Missionary Accord (pp. 595–605, 622). However, there is no empirical support for this idea in the research presented, perhaps because the author does not examine the Missionary Accord. In a work that examines and describes so abundantly the documents of the Secret Vatican Archives it is strange that Carvalho should at no point discuss the critical use that could be made of the primary diplomatic sources. The factual and chronological narrative that the author prefers, without balancing it against an interpretive analysis, particularly in the first four sections of the book, diminishes the interest of the work, and does not help the reader, whether a generalist or specialist, to draw any new conclusions. For example, the author gives important details highlighting the role of Óscar Carmona, briefly Minister of Foreign Affairs and leader of the government, and later president of the Republic (pp. 58–60, 72), which allows a revaluation of the weight that historiography has traditionally attributed to Salazar in defining the relationship between Church and state between 1928 and 1933, but she not does emphasize this. Also relevant for characterizing the options taken

239

Reviews

1. The doctoral work was undertaken at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, under the supervision of António Firmino da Costa and Luís Capucha.

at various moments by the Church and the state itself is the perception that different historical actors had of the position of the clergy in Portugal. At a time when Portuguese historiography, along with other social sciences, such as sociology, and even jurisprudence, has produced many studies of the relations between the state and the Catholic Church for the period from 1926 to 1974, with concrete analysis of the concordat of 1940, it is unclear why Carvalho does not discuss these contributions that could make her own contribution richer and more complex. Her decision to list some of these works in the bibliography, or to comment on two theses, one by Fernando Rosas and the other by Manuel Braga da Cruz, in which the authors characterize the relationship between Church and state under the Salazar dictatorship in general terms, is no substitute for that discussion. It would have been appropriate, for example, for the author to position herself with respect to the research by Bruno Cardoso Reis, mentioned above, particularly because her research and the new sources that she brings to public attention confirm the results of that earlier study, and in a certain way show that the sources that have already documented the Portuguese position in the negotiations are substantially accurate and complete in that regard. The preference she shows for drawing on a non-Portuguese bibliography for her analysis is interesting, and assists in providing elements for future comparative studies on the question. However, this is not yet a comparative study. For that, it would have been necessary for this work to characterize the realities in Italy and Spain in the same way that it approaches the study of the Portuguese case.

Parceiros em Rede: Estratégias Territorializadas para o Desenvolvimento Local nas Áreas do Emprego e Formação/Network Partners: Territorialized Strategies for Local Development in Employment and Training, João Emílio Alves (2012) Oporto: Fronteira do Caos, 250 pp., ISBN: 9789898070975, Paperback, 14.30 José Luís Casanova, CIES, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa – ISCTE-IUL It is important to note right from the beginning that this text is the product of a doctoral thesis in sociology.1 This means that we are dealing with a scientific research, and an academically controlled work. In this case, it is also an exercise of great social relevance. The book starts with a preface by Luís Capucha, a Portuguese specialist in poverty and public policies, who engages in a socio-economic, political and scientific contextualization of the subject proposed by João Emílio Alves, synthesizing some of the main contemporary questions within social policy. Then the author exposes his own views in the context of his work. With the slowing down of economic growth and the increase of regional and international competition, many […] local economies are

240

Reviews

confronting new and serious problems. One of these problems has to do with growing and expanding unemployment, associated with […] rising job precariousness […], the increase of the poverty index […] and the worsening of social exclusion, in some countries where these phenomena would be understated some years before, in the frame of the capitalist economic growth model generalized in Western economies. Facing these new problems and considering the lower capacities of intervention and regulation in national economies, the search for local responses […] has developed new alternatives and intervention dynamics integrating other and innovative responses, many initiated by diverse social actors, in partnerships of different characteristics and dimensions. Organized in networks these partnerships are constituted by public and private entities, exploring new solutions for the emergent problems, and visible in the local initiatives and projects targeting the promotion of local employment. (pp. 19–20) The context explained, the author then refers to his goal: It’s our interest to understand how far these local partnerships have been built as efficient networks of knowledge, discussion and resolution of problems related to employment and professional training, rehearsing and achieving strategies and initiatives on the local level, complementing national and European employment policy and other social policies, taking the Social Network Programme (Programa Rede Social) as a case-study. (p. 22) The Social Network Programme has, indeed, been considered a paradigm for active social policies and network partnerships on fighting poverty and social exclusion in Portugal in recent years. From this global pretension derive specific objectives, primarily to identify and characterize some processes and patterns of implementation of the Social Network Programme, to evaluate the results of the Social Network Programme according to initial expectations of the actors involved in the project and to understand if the objectives of this programme are being carried out. The author proceeds with a revision of the sociological reflection and of the available information on networks and partnerships, in particular under the theme of local development, poverty, social exclusion and active social policies (that foster engagement in active involvement whether from people or from institutions), the role and centrality of local politics in social development processes, essentially in the areas of employment and professional training, and on the establishment, characteristics and evolution of the Social Network Programme. To fulfil his objectives the author assembles diverse methods, techniques and sources of information, mainly: • • • •

Content analysis of official documentation (legislation, technical reports); Online consultation of Internet sites of local administration; Statistics published by official organizations; Local surveys applied by some Local Social Action Boards (Conselhos Locais de Acção Social);

241

Reviews

• • • •

Interviews with informed observers; Complementary studies developed by local project teams; Direct (ground) observation; An original survey and some interviews focused on those responsible for the coordination of the Social Network Programme (professionals and local administration directors, as informed protagonists of the organizations that promote the networking of local partnerships) in the territories that joined the programme.

This last source of data will constitute the main basis for the analysis presented in the book. The application of the survey occurred in 2006–07, and from 274 administrative departments in Portugal the author gathered 189 questionnaires (69 per cent of the total). About 80 per cent of the responses are from professionals who are responsible for the programme, mostly sociologists and social service professionals. The questions proposed in the questionnaire include the following topics: • Local partnership: institution and characterization; • Implementation of the Social Network Programme in the administrative department: strategic planning and documents produced (social prediagnosis, social diagnosis, social development plan, and action plan); • Employment and professional training in the frame of the Social Network Programme; • Relation of the local partnership with other planning processes and instruments on national, regional and local levels; • The operation of the partnership: establishment, composition and participation dynamics of the structures of the partnership (Local Social Action Board and Executive Nucleus); • Social development within the borders of the partnership: contributions, practices and innovation; • Evaluation of local partnerships: models and practices; • Outcomes of the local partnership; • The future of the Social Network Programme on the national and local levels – strong and weak features of the programme: continuity and expectations. The analysis of the results of this survey allowed the construction of a typology of the projects in the areas of employment and professional training (p. 146), and the identification of seven cases of greater success throughout Portugal. In order to explore some questions that the extensive research did not reach, and to have a deeper understanding of the conditions of production and success in the implementation of the programme in the areas of employment and professional training (pp. 149, 153), the author developed some interviews with the heads of the programme in those seven successful local administration departments, as special case studies. The questions presented in the interviews were focused on the themes that follow: • The design and processes of the implementation of the Social Network Programme; • Recursive dynamics of the development of the programme; • Outcomes of the local partnership;

242

Reviews

• Structuring projects: sustainability and social change in the areas of employment and professional training. The analysis of the collected data shows that, although these projects’ scope is ‘essentially of a small scale […] many of them more “social” than “economic”, corresponding to very specific solutions […] and, sometimes, of difficult sustainability’, they are ‘a sign of proactivity from local agents’ (p. 196). The author then concludes the book with a synthesis of the global outcomes of the research, and an outline of some questions to explore in future studies; a systematization of suggestions for the sustainability of local partnerships; and a presentation of some elements for the elaboration of an evaluation (and self-evaluation) system and guide for local professionals, for monitoring and assessment of their partnerships. In his own words, the outcomes of the Social Network Programme ‘are already significant, at least in some areas of intervention, including the domains of employment and professional training’ (p. 201), but there remains the requirement of further attention on ‘the financing of the projects already defined in plans of action’, the ‘necessary technical support’ and the consolidation of a ‘culture of partnership’ (pp. 205–06). As Luís Capucha says in the preface, one of the main virtues of this work is that ‘it shows how employment and social networks are not decided exclusively in the circuits of the powerful in politics and economics’ (p. 17). And, overall, this is a fruitful work from an experienced researcher on local development problems that incorporates reflection, information and social value, a rigorous and meticulous text, broad bibliographical references, which represent a fundamental input for an assessment of the Social Network Programme in Portugal, and also an important contribution to the development of the programme and for the debate on network partnerships, social innovation and active social policies.

243

Copyright of Portuguese Journal of Social Science is the property of Intellect Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.