Review by Choice Review
Wells's detailed, definitive study focuses on California's central coast strawberry industry, and shows how political and social forces are affecting labor structures. Wells, an anthropologist, knows her subject; she spent more than a dozen years in the field, concentrating on the areas of North Monterey, Salinas, and the Pajaro Valley. Her study demonstrates that both the traditional and Marxist view of sharecropping as a feudal institution is misleading. Wells argues instead that sharecropping in modified forms has become popular in the strawberry fields as a method to control labor and retain skilled and reliable workers in times of political and trade-union challenges to the hegemony of strawberry growers. She portrays a workforce of Mexican, Japanese, and Euramerican growers, with the majority of the workers Mexican. Class relations generally follow racial lines, with whites topping the pyramid, followed by Japanese growers. Wells does an excellent job in describing the impact of global events, laws, court rulings, and union activity on the industry and on social relations. However, her description of local politics, the rise of many local Mexican American elected officials, and their impact on labor and social relations is inadequate, as is her attention to racism. The work is written in academic jargon, but has an excellent bibliography and is heavily footnoted. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. Acu^D na California State University, Northridge
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
