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486 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 printed on it and recited a verse suitable to the letter and the occasion=). Community members helped farmers who were ill or whose crop had failed, and neighbours pulled together to campaign for local improvements, such as school districts, telephone and medical service, post offices, and railway facilities. As Rennie rightly points out, the UFA rested on the bedrock of local community co-operation. From this base they expanded their vision to a broader critique of society in which they saw themselves as producers of the necessities of life who were exploited for the benefit of bigbusiness interests. The author also explores the limits of community. There were ideological differences between the radicals, who wanted a complete overhaul of the capitalist system and favoured a farmer/labour alliance to achieve this goal, and the liberals, who believed in the merits of competitive capitalism and were disinclined to unite with organized labour. Aboriginals were largely excluded (the agrarian myth assumed that non-farmers wasted land), though there was some Métis participation in UFA locals. Blacks and Asians were not welcome, but a successful effort was made to reach out to nonAnglo -Saxon European immigrants. There was a certain amount of tension between grain growers and livestock raisers, co-operatives and retail merchants, but on the whole, differences were overcome. Women were mobilized and co-operated with their male partners to advance the UFA program. In return, men supported the women=s agenda, including homestead and voting rights. The weakest part of the book is the chapter on education, particularly the analysis of farm movement organs such as the Grain Growers= Guide. Arch Dale, whose superb cartoons enliven the pages of the book, is not mentioned in the text. Nor is there any discussion of how his images, at once lacerating and humorous, and other propagandistic devices helped to build the movement culture. Such an analysis could only have strengthened an already convincing argument, for, in the end, the author accomplishes what he set out to do, and demonstrates that the UFA was not just an economic interest group, but also a movement culture. (JAMES PITSULA) Milena Doleñelová-Velingerová and Oldri…h Král, editors. The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China_s May Fourth Project Harvard University Press. xviii, 356. US $45.00 Five years after the collapse of communism in Central Europe, China scholars gathered to rethink the legacy of the May Fourth Movement at Charles University in Prague. The idea of re-evaluating cultural change after the failure of political revolution links the Prague conference (and this volume) to the May Fourth Movement itself: the events of 1919 cannot be understood except as a critique of the failed republican revolution of 1911. humanities 487 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 When the hope of changing institutions is dashed, it is a most opportune time to investigate the habits of mind which account for the tenacity of old prejudices in the midst of a radical commitment to a new world. For the scholars who contributed the essays in this volume, rethinking culture is augmented by an explicit wish to pay tribute to Jaroslav Prusek, the leader of sinological studies in the former Czechoslovakia. Beyond the fact that both editors of this volume were students of Prusek, there is the added poignancy of rescuing a critical mind who remained productive in the worst years of the autocratic regime that collapsed in 1989. Jaroslav Prusek managed to produce significant scholarship on Chinese literature in spite of restrictions that faced intellectuals in Central Europe. His pivotal essay on >Subjectivism and Individualism in Modern Chinese Literature= may be seen as a framework for this volume, which seeks to counter a teleological reading of history. Building upon Prusek_s insights, these essays argue that the past is not a univocal tale leading to the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and beyond it, to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. Prusek had sought to flesh out the antecedents of individualism at a time when it was still anathema to the official doctrine of...

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