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Law in a Cynical Society? Opinion and Law in the 1980's Dale Gibson and Janet K. Baldwin, eds. Calgary: Carswell Legal Publications, 1985, pp. xviii, 464

Initially, one might note certain shortcomings in the set of crucial variables. One surprising omission is the mobility of ethnic elites (open/blocked), given their strong emphasis on blocked mobility as a stimulus to linguistic mobilization. On the other hand, one can question the inclusion of the variable, democratic capitalist/communist. The one article from a classic communist state never even mentions the character of the political regime as a factor in the absence of language conflict in China, emphasizing instead the overwhelming size of the Han "race" (93.3%) alone to account for the unquestioned acceptance of its language as the official language. Similarly, one can challenge the centralized/federal variable on the basis of the case studies. While they initially maintain that language conflict is less likely in centralized states, the evidence suggests that solutions are generally to be found in decentralist directions. In short, the identification of crucial variables remains in need of further refinement. Individually, the case studies present, for the most part, interesting and informative analyses of the various countries. One particularly strong point is the fact that these studies examine societies which have not been dealt with extensively in the literature, such as Malaysia, Algeria and Spain. The articles on those countries, as well as those on Canada and Finland are particularly interesting and useful in reflecting upon the variables and issues raised in the introduction. On the whole, there is at best selective attention to these purported key variables, thereby seriously hampering the theory-building potential of this volume. In the final chapter, Beer offers a synthesis of the previous literature and the present cases in an effort to develop a theory of linguistic mobilization. He emphasizes the importance of different regional rates of modernization, a variation of relative deprivation involving ethnic elites, and the penetration of the world economy to previously economically deprived regions to explain linguistic mobilization. Notably absent from this model is the role of historical and geographical circumstances (Machiavelli's fortuna), which repeatedly appear as factors in linguistic mobilization (Lebanon), or as constraints to language conflict (Finland). In addition, one can question the underlying assumption of the ready availability of ethnic masses for linguistic mobilization. Such caveats aside, this is a useful model to focus future research in the area of linguistic conflict. More problematic is the question of identifying the conditions for successful language policy. Not too surprisingly, the lesson emerges that success is case-specific—a generous minority language policy works well in Finland and provokes riots, in Malaysia. There is, however, relatively little attention throughout the volume to identifying the impact of language policy on national unity, or how one assesses success other than by the absence of dramatic evidence of failure. Consequently, this book falls somewhat short of its rather ambitious objective. Nevertheless, there is much of profit to ponder in this volume, and for that reason it is a welcome addition to the literature.