Life and Words Violence and The Descent

Book reviews
Economic/applied anthropology associated with different interpretations of

‘environment’, as well as the power of
environmental discourses in environmental
Carrier, James G. (ed.). Confronting management decision-making and the
environments: local understanding in a globalizing problem of translation of these discourses
world. viii, 198 pp., bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: between stakeholder groups.
AltaMira Press, 2004. $72.00 (cloth), $26.95 The next five chapters focus on specific
(paper) case examples that highlight how local
understandings of environments have changed
James Carrier’s edited volume on local because of specific environmental challenges
understandings of environmental issues is faced by local communities. For example,
a timely contribution to the burgeoning Macleod discusses issues of power and resource
literature on grassroots-level perceptions and allocation in a Caribbean community (chap. 1),
understandings of local environments, and can highlighting how the opening of an area in
be best described as an ‘anthropology of the the Dominican Republic to global tourism has
environment’. The book positions itself between created new sets of meanings and expectations
anthropological approaches and geographical among local villagers concerning their
representation of local perceptions of the surroundings. This chapter is particularly useful
environment, and focuses on a range of places in showing how people’s surroundings are both
and aspects of people’s surroundings from the construed and shaped by the imposition of
local to the global. Thus, the contributions use external powerful orientations and expectations,
examples from various locations (e.g. the and the dangers of treating as uniformly
Caribbean, European countries, Pakistan, ‘indigenous’ or ‘tribal’ what in fact represent a
Japan) both to disentangle the meaning of diversity of interests and orientations. This theme
‘environment’ for various stakeholder groups is taken further by Theodossopoulos’ analysis of
who are often in direct confrontation with each diverse views of the environment in the context
other over scarce resources (e.g. forests, fish) of an environmental dispute on a Greek island
and to analyse the impacts of local events (chap. 2). Here, beach tourism has had severe
(e.g. tourism, environmental protection) on implications for local biodiversity preservation
human-environment interpretations and and has led to a clash between external
understandings. conservationists’ views and villagers’
The book comprises nine chapters (including interpretations of sustainable environmental
preface and conclusions) that each discuss how management. Ensuing ‘discourses of power’
stakeholder groups understand and interpret exemplify that locals often do not communicate
their environments. James Carrier’s introductory their environmental views to the outside world
preface provides a challenging analysis of what effectively. This problem of translation of
the notion of ‘environment’ means to different environmental perceptions from the local to the
people, and highlights the often abstract nature national/global is also the theme of the next
of the term, the inherent ‘tribal understanding’ three chapters. Thus, MacDonald’s contribution
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

© Royal Anthropological Institute 2007
1024 Book reviews
on the global ecology and the politics of different understandings are not the exclusive
conservation in Northern Pakistan (chap. 3), possession of specific stakeholder groups
Kirby’s analysis of the interlinkages between (and that the notion of ‘local’ environmental
toxic pollution, illness, and discursive shifts in a knowledge may need further unpacking); (2)
Tokyo community (chap. 4), and Carrier’s that power is implicated in environmental
assessment of environmental conservation and discourses and knowledge construction and
institutional environments in Jamaica (chap. 5) dissemination, but that these discourses can
highlight a variety of interlinked issues, including change drastically based on sudden
the disenfranchising of people’s local knowledge environmental change and/or the imposition of
(often embedded in neo-colonial discourses) environmental views by ‘other’ actor groups; (3)
(Pakistan), changes in the views of locals about that changes in how locals construe their views
their environments after severe pollution events of the environment are almost always
(Japan), and how locals can acquire new embedded in processes of environmental
understandings of their environments through destruction or change both at the local and
the establishment of new institutions such as global scales.
national parks partly managed and funded by On the whole, therefore, this book is a very
external agencies and institutions (Jamaica). The useful contribution to the broader literature on
last two empirical chapters broaden out the human-environment interactions. Although most
discussion, with Berglund’s analysis of the role of the eight contributors to this edited volume
of national forests in the Finnish psyche (chap. are anthropologists, it will none the less be
6) and Milton’s UK-based analysis of the link useful for students and researchers from many
between direct action and environmental protest disciplines beyond anthropology, including, for
(chap. 7). While Berglund’s chapter highlights example, human geography, political ecology,
the importance of national resources (e.g. and environmental studies, as well as those with
forests) for national self-identity, she also a general interest in the social, cultural, and
emphasizes that these forests can serve local and political-economic aspects of local
personal interests as well as global ‘external’ environmental management and thinking. Most
influences. Milton, meanwhile, highlights importantly, it should also act as a trigger for
the importance of situating environmental policy-makers to re-think local approaches that
discourses in the changing context of a shift attempt to influence and guide
from local to national to global environmental human-environment interaction.
concerns, and how government regulations Geoff A. Wilson University of Plymouth
have attempted to adjust to these changing
understandings of environmental issues.
Unlike other edited books, which often lack Fr atkin, Elliot & Eric Abella Roth (eds).
a synthesizing, concluding chapter that brings As pastoralists settle: social, health, and economic
together the various strands of the discussion, in consequences of pastoral sedentarization in
Carrier’s edited volume Josiah Heyman provides Marsabit district, Kenya. x, 280 pp., maps, tables,
very apt concluding remarks about the common figs, illus., bibliogrs. London, New York: Kluwer
themes addressed in the book. Heyman Academic Publishers, 2005.
highlights how the book successfully joins a
long tradition of anthropological attention to The book is an edited volume that encompasses
people and environments, but also criticizes twenty years of the editors’ and other
anthropologists’ lack of engagement with issues contributors’ work on the changing
of environmental translation and discourses from human-environmental circumstances of
a local perspective. He rightly emphasizes how pastoralists in Marsabit district, northern Kenya,
the authors in this book combine the culturalist in general, and among the Rendille and Ariaal
and political ecology traditions to highlight how pastoralists in particular. It is rich in data from
different understandings of the environment are intense longitudinal research.
shaped by, and respond to, recent historical Marsabit district is interesting because it
changes in politics and economics and that manifests lowlands, highlands, is home to
different styles of environmental understanding several ethnic groups (e.g. Ariaal, Rendille,
embody specific power relations. Boran, Gabra, and Somali), and possesses many
Carrier’s book contributes specifically to three different patterns of settlement (e.g. mission
arenas of investigation: (1) that while we should towns, mountain, and arid land towns). The
contrast between ‘abstract’ versus ‘personal’ book’s focus is on elucidating the processes of
understandings of the environment, these sedentarization of these pastoralists, the history

Book reviews 1025
of the processes (e.g. chaps 1 and 2), reasons People in settled communities often have
why pastoralists settle (all chapters), increased access to education, especially for
consequences of sedentism on diet, nutrition, girls, and increased proximity to markets, jobs,
and health (chaps 7, 9, and 10), ecological effects and health care (chaps 5, 6, 12, and 13). For
(chap. 4), implications for women’s welfare instance, Roth and Ngugi (chap. 13) found that
(chap. 8), and economic consequences (chap. educated women have a lower risk of sexually
5), among others. Pastoralists have settled for a transmitted diseases. Alternatively, female
number of reasons, including political conflict, circumcision does not seem to diminish in
declining territory, and population growth, settled pastoralists relative to more nomadic
endogenous and exogenous, both of which have herders, but closer access to health care for
put pressure on the land and the resources. Add settled women reduces the risk of serious
recurring drought, prolonged food aid, and a complications from the procedure (chap. 12).
shift to commercial livestock production with its Settlement is associated with increasing
emphasis on beef and milk products and the socio-economic stratification, though the cause
results are escalating changes, both positive and and effect here is difficult to distinguish. Wealth
negative. One of the major points the book differentials are, however, associated with
makes is that sedentism is neither recent nor is it increasing commercialization of the pastoral
a foregone conclusion. It also provides a series economy. Large herdowners and landowners
of trade-offs for people. have advantages over small ones, which has
The cultural history of the region is described numerous implications. The process of wealth
in detail (chaps 2 and 3) with a nice description accumulation has repercussions for access to
of the flow of different peoples in and out of food resources (chaps 4 and 9), maintenance of
the region and where on the land they herded social capital (chap. 4), and privatization of the
and settled. There are circumstances in which land (chap. 7), among others.
sedentism has reversed or becomes split among Does settlement provide an adaptive strategy
households so that part of a household is settled for these populations? Well that depends – on
while another is not. For example, pastoralists in who is settled, where they are settled, and the
planned-scheme settlements were more likely to circumstances of settlement. The book falls short
rebuild livestock herds than other settled people in being inadequately edited. This takes away
(chap. 6). But the overall trend seems to be from the otherwise excellent content. However,
fewer movements of people and livestock and it is worth a good read none the less and is an
contraction of the home range, particularly in excellent data-rich reference for information on
the dry season (chap. 4). This is due to the the causes and effects of sedentarization among
influence of increased settlement and the fact pastoralists.
that the land is becoming more fragmented, Kathleen A. Galvin Colorado State University
resulting in a loss of ability to move across the
landscape, phenomena that have occurred in
pastoral rangelands around the world Ngai, Pun. Made in China: women factory
(see Kathleen A. Galvin et al. (eds), workers in a global workplace. xi, 227 pp., tables,
Fragmentation in semi-arid and arid landscapes: illus., bibliogr. London, Durham, N.C.: Duke
consequences for human and natural landscapes, Univ. Press/Hong Kong: Univ. Press, 2005. £14.95
2007). (paper)
One of the benefits of such a book on a set
of related topics is that it demonstrates the Made in China is a detailed and compelling
variability in not only causes but also outcomes account of factory work under Hu Jintao’s
of sedentarization for pastoralists. There are market socialism. It describes how rural women
many nuanced factors that can only be found learn to become dangomei (factory workers)
by writing about such a complex set of issues through a mixture of capitalist discipline and
among a group of people in the same region. state oppression. Meteor, the site of Pun Ngai’s
For example, Nathan and others find that fieldwork, is a micro-electronics company owned
sedentism often has a negative impact on by Hong Kong businessmen and located in the
childhood nutritional status (chaps 9 and 10) rich Nangshan district of Shenzhen, pullulating
and health of women (chaps 7 and 11). On the with skyscrapers, luxury hotels, and department
other hand, diet intake showed less seasonality stores which the workers can only gaze at from
among settled women than pastoral women, a distance when they return to the factory
but socio-economic status affected the diet of dormitories at night. Now deserted by
both groups (chap. 11). multinational capital, Shenzhen is a mixture of

1026 Book reviews
‘anarchism and heterotopias’ (p. 35) where the these factory daughters as defenceless vis-à-vis
new middle-class cohabits with petty capitalists, the patriarchal forces of market socialism. On the
state bureaucrats, and a multitude of migrant contrary, sometimes they seem to enjoy the lure
labourers. Through the governmental Shenzhen of city life through window shopping, Cantonese
Labour Service Control (LSC) and the private pop music, and flirting with the company
and informal labour market, these rural managers. On the shopfloor they are engaged in
workers find only temporary jobs and ‘minor genres of resistance’, slowing down
accommodation and are denied the production, writing petitions, joking and
status of both permanent workers and gossiping about the management, and
residents (hukou). challenging the industrial machine by ‘acting
In Meteor, ‘lazy’ and ‘peasant’ ‘socialist out’ their menstrual cramps, headaches, and
bodies’ are transformed into capitalist subjects other bodily pains. But it is in the private realm
through the disciplinary machine of of the dormitory that, according to the author,
multinational capital. Of the 500 employees of resistance becomes most evident. In their
Meteor, 75 per cent work on the production line, terrifying screams during their dreams the
90 per cent of whom are women. Work starts at workers ‘resumed the unity of their body and
8 a.m. and finishes at 6 p.m. (at 10 p.m. when their self’ (p. 186) and healed the pain of factory
overtime is taken into consideration). ‘Becoming labour. Made in China has two main strengths.
dangomei’ is a relenting and painful process of First, it extends the micro-sociology of the factory
sensory and emotional adaptation to the into the stratified and globalized spaces of
production line. Flashing lights indicate different Shenzhen and into broader individual trajectories
stages of the production process; popular of rural and urban divide. Secondly, it boldly
Cantonese music is played in-between shifts to embraces class analysis in the contemporary
clear the workers’ minds; plastic curtains are context of post-Mao China. It argues that under
sealed on the windows to prevent them form market socialism the flow of rural migrants into
being distracted by the outside world; English new urban areas gave rise not to a new Chinese
letters are posted on the walls to allow them to working class but to a hybrid formation, ‘half
decipher the meanings of the words printed on peasants and half proletariat’ (p. 193). But
the components to be assembled; illustrations of unfortunately Pun Ngai constructs class though a
the production tasks are scattered all over the personalized, individualized and subjective
line. In the semiconductor assembly room, narrative which eschews structural analysis. The
women with nimble fingers handle small dies, book suggests that the Chinese dangomei are
wires, and printed circuits using microscopes ‘floating people’ – suspended between the rural
and in artificial light and temperatures which and the urban, the modern and the backward,
give them chronic headaches, dizziness, and and the individualism of Western capitalism and
pains. the collectivism of Chinese socialism – and that
As in other Chinese industrial ethnographies in their exposure to multiple forms of oppression
(e.g. Ching Kwan Lee’s Gender and the South they are able to develop ‘a new cartography of
China miracle, 1998), locality and regionalism transgressions’ (p. 196). From the author’s vivid
reinforce gender divides within the workforce. and disheartening portrayal of the alienated
For instance, the monthly wages of Hong Kong existence of these dangomei subjects the reader
male managers are between 1,000 and 1,500 will be forgiven for questioning the effectiveness
yuan and the wages of line leaders, generally of their minor genres of resistance against the
from Canton, Chazhou, or Sichuan, are double ‘triple oppression’ of the state, the market, and
those of line workers from ‘backward provinces’ family life.
(as low as 300 yuan) and often as high as the Massimiliano Mollona, Goldsmiths College
wages of the supervisory staff. Kinship and
ethnicity are also central to the workers’
solidarity and informal organization on the Pink, Sar ah (ed.). Applications of anthropology:
shopfloor, where ethnic and kinship enclaves professional anthropology in the twenty-first
articulate in ‘honeycomb patterns’ (p. 56). century. viii, 244 pp., illus., bibliogrs. Oxford,
Paradoxically, these women workers escaped New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. $65.00
their role of family daughter and the patriarchal (cloth), $25.00 (paper)
hierarchy of the village, but ended up
reproducing the manager’s paternalistic vision of The title of this book is a significant variation on
dangomei as factory daughters and sexualized the older term ‘applied anthropology’,
bodies. Pun Ngai avoids the pitfall of portraying indicating that anthropology can have numerous

Book reviews 1027
forms of application to the world today. The and popularist programmes which may contain
chapters fall into different categories. Sarah some anthropological content. The transition is
Pink’s introduction and chapters 1 (by Susan not fully explained, and the heydays of the
Wright) and 2 (by David Mills) (part I) are famous Disappearing world films are only
historical and provide useful overviews of the cursorily described. Charlie Nairn’s film Ongka’s
gradual and often reluctant ways in which big moka, possibly one of the best known films
professional associations in the UK came to deal in the whole series, and still much used in
with the old issues of ‘pure’ versus ‘applied’ curricula in the USA, is not mentioned. Chapters
research and how to provide jobs for graduates, 9 and 10 are both absorbing ethnographic
partly by creating links with industry and accounts, immediately recognizable, like Hart’s
government bodies in the fields of personal chapter, as belonging to the twentieth-century
entrepreneurship. Part II contains a pair of traditions of anthropology carried forward into
studies arguing for particular viewpoints. Simon twenty-first-century contexts. Garry Marvin
Roberts (chap. 3) describes a range of projects (chap. 9) perceptively traces the unintended
he has carried out using ethnographic methods transmutations of his roles as an ethnographer
in which anthropological approaches have of fox-hunting, beginning from a position of
become a ‘brand’ of research that can be restricting his investigation into those who
‘consumed’ by business clients. Adam Drazin practised this form of hunting and proceeding to
takes an opposite tack (chap. 4). He advocates the point where he was invited by the
engagement with other research methods in the Countryside Alliance to discuss their case in the
arena of consumer consultancy, including context of their opposition to a government ban
laboratory-based research and multi-disciplinary on such hunting in Scotland. Marvin wryly notes
teamwork, in which the anthropologist may that his anthropological conclusion regarding
challenge the research brief and seek ways of the value of hunting, that is, that it helps to form
exchange with the subjects of the study. Drazin community relations and constitutes a part of
uses the well-worn commodity/gift distinction to cultural heritage, was in the end not considered
draw contrasts between his work in Romania very useful, perhaps because it did not address
and the UK. the issue of killing the fox! In the last chapter,
Part III is continuous with part II. Maia Green Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers provides a
(chap. 5), whose earlier work has been on perceptive account of her role as an expert court
Christianity in Africa (Tanzania), explains how witness regarding blood feud practices in
her involvement in social development research Albania and asylum cases of Albanian migrants
aimed at reducing ‘poverty’ entails a different to the UK. She notes, as we also have in our
framework from her ethnographic studies. Mils writings, the historical variability of these
Hills (chap. 6) describes his work for the UK practices of revenge and the baneful impact of
Ministry of Defence and the use of network war rapes perpetuated as a means of insulting
theory in the planning of warfare (the topic here the honour of women in Kosovo. Legal
seems related to an earlier time; now, surely, the procedures may not help here because a
focus must be more on terror and terrorism, see, disclosure of rape brings further shame and does
e.g., Strathern et al. (eds), Terror and violence, not guarantee ‘the success of an asylum claim’
2006). Elizabeth Hart (chap. 7) writes very (p. 220).
interestingly of her work on the National Health The chapters in this book are all well
Service in the UK, pointing out how nurses and executed and sprinkled through with references
cleaners in hospitals may fear to be blamed for to classic anthropological theorists of the
particular deaths in a way comparable to twentieth century. They also show the virtues of
accusations of witchcraft. By stressing the continuing the ethnographic traditions of
importance of social relations, Hart succeeds in qualitative participant observation as a method
genuinely applying anthropological insights into of inquiry and insight into problems. The focus
the problems of, for example, nurse retention in tends to be on the UK, albeit a UK shot through
hospitals. with global processes. An expansion of the
Part IV contains three rather diverse studies. volume’s theme of ‘applications’ into other
Paul Henley (chap. 8) writes of his work as countries, for example the USA or Australia, New
Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Zealand, and the Pacific, where innumerable
Anthropology at Manchester University. He contested themes of application abound, would
traces a history of change from the popularity of be very welcome (see, for example, the cases in
ethnographic films in the 1960s and the 1970s in P.J. Stewart and A. Strathern (eds), Anthropology
Britain to today’s emphasis on more journalistic and consultancy, the first volume in this Series of

1028 Book reviews
Studies in Applied Anthropology, 2005). as the panacea for sustainability. The other is
Applications of anthropology, however, establishes associated with participatory strategies for
a very effective and thoughtful benchmark in a development. This latter paradigm recognizes
developing field of writing in anthropology, and the hegemony of such linear thinking that blinds
deserves to become one of the central works in us to understandings that the world comprises
its field. It provides both a historical overview in many parallel cultural universes. This is more
the chapters by Sarah Pink and Susan Wright, than merely holding ‘indigenous cultures’ up to
and a broad sample of case studies by the other confront the ‘developed’ world with differences.
contributors. Perhaps the most satisfying of It is also, centrally, about the anthropological
these studies, for some readers, will be those perspective and its place in what is deemed as
that demonstrate the classic ethnographic values ‘scientific’, rational inquiry.
that run across the outdated and factitious The collection is introduced by the editor,
categorization of ‘pure’ versus ‘applied’ who provocatively argues that ‘relativity is
research. relative’ and contrasts the physical and the social
Andrew Strathern & Pamela J. Stewart scientists’ notions thereof. He argues for the
University of Pittsburgh importance of understanding the ‘other’, not
just to build more inclusive and participatory
(and thus more sustainable) processes and
Sillitoe, Paul (ed.). Local science vs global programmes, but also for countering the
science: approaches to indigenous knowledge in hegemonic processes of standardization
international development. xi, 288 pp., maps, figs, associated with globalization and the destruction
bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, of biodiversity – processes aimed at
2007. £80.00 (cloth) standardizing and simplifying. The various
contributions certainly do not advocate a set of
This collection is much more than a plea for dichotomies between indigenous and Western or
valuing ‘indigenous’ knowledge. It is a reasoned traditional and modern, but rather search for a
set of arguments to value those things that less hegemonic compromise. This involves the
cannot be measured; to recognize that not ‘fusion’ of different worldviews – not only
everything that can be counted counts and that between different cultures but also between
not everything that counts can be counted. The what have been termed the ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’
current concerns with the measurement of sciences; between objective, linear, dissociated,
outcomes in a whole variety of different fields competitive, rational ways of ordering the world
blind us to the ‘fact’ that measurement is about and subjective, circular, context-dependent,
management and control – over resources and co-operative ways of living in and with the
over people. The book is of much wider interest world. This is as important in the evolution of
than the apparently narrow focus on anthropology as it is in the evolution of
environmental anthropology and ethnobiology organizations to manage sustainable
that provides the framing perspective. futures – whether we are talking about the
Local science vs global science originates from shaping of the development assistance agenda,
the British Association’s Festival of Science at building good governance structures, or
Salford in 2003 and from the Decennial encouraging corporate responsibility as integral
Conference of the Association of Social to good business for companies’ investment
Anthropologists in Manchester in the same year. strategies, at home or abroad.
It attempts to break down some of the There are essays that focus more on the
stereotypical representations of ‘indigenous’ ‘ethnography’ of research institutions and on the
knowledge. It moves us ‘beyond science’ in our political and social dynamics of the context in
thinking about the future concerns for which they operate. Other essays focus on the
‘sustainable’ development and the elaboration debate between private acquisition and control of
of measurable indicators to achieve the intellectual property rights. This is resonant of the
millennium development goals. The various processes during colonial periods when common
contributions implicitly if not explicitly promote land was unilaterally expropriated as private
the search for opportunities that can transcend property (land-grabbing in eighteenth- and
the two dominant paradigms competing for nineteenth-century America, or as government
legitimacy. One is associated particularly with ‘forest reserves’ in places like India and Africa).
economistic, reductionist, and linear thinking Other essays focus on the role of maps and
and the ideology of relentless economic growth of ‘mapping’ to legitimate administrative
(now subtly re-labelled as ‘poverty alleviation’) control. These maps then become the main

Book reviews 1029
evidence to justify control. ‘The illegible (and students. The topics of these groups of essays
thus illegal?) cacophony of local property range from ethnography and social structure in
regulations and communal tenure’ gave way to New Guinea, political anthropology,
the official, standardized, administrative order. anthropological economics, and anthropological
Much attention has been given recently to these praxis to developing anthropology. The eighteen
imposed landscapes and the effects they have essays constitute an eclectic mix of Richard
had on different societies and cultures (see, Salisbury’s wide range of interests and expertise
among others, the works of David Mosse and and concentrate on his perception of the
Michael Scott). interplay between fieldwork, ethnography, and
Echoing Gadamer, Heckler makes the theory.
argument that it is impossible to pursue Most of his arguments and analyses are
knowledge without an interpretative horizon, based on the fieldwork he conducted in Papua
and her essay on the Piaroa in Venezuela argues New Guinea among the Siane of the New
for the recognition of a variety of ‘knowledge Guinea Highlands and the Tolai of the Gazelle
paradigms’ that need to be taken into account Peninsula of New Britain. He maintained that the
and their value negotiated in the pursuit of joint development of bad theories was the result of
and perhaps more sustainable solutions. bad fieldwork. Some of the methods of his own
Rhoades and Nazarea argue a slightly different field studies were impressively innovative. For
case in their discussion about ‘envisioning the instance, he studied kinship structure and village
future’ with two communities in an ecological organization through the eyes of a child that has
reserve in Equador. They argue that the future is to adapt to it. Yet ‘the dependence of the
envisaged very differently by scientists political on the economic persisted as a central
concerned to maintain biodiversity and villagers theme throughout Salisbury’s career’ (p. 95).
concerned with jobs, livelihoods, and However, though he regarded himself as an
relationships, where forests are seen as areas to economic anthropologist, he seemed never
exploit rather than areas to preserve. They also really to have grasped the fundamental
significantly argue that the scientists would difference between anthropology and
adopt a similar response to developments in economics, namely that the former is principally
their own backyards. inductive whereas economics insists on being a
Space precludes further elaboration of the deductive science. Salisbury refers to the phase
rich mix of approaches developed here, except to sequence macro-models that development
mention the important encounter with economists have been building and compares
mathematics in the final chapter by Sillitoe with them with the phase sequences micro-models
the question ‘can we count on numbers?’ – an that anthropologists have been constructing
important reminder that we cannot measure without seeming to realize that the economic
what is most valuable and that Western society models were based on rational ‘economic man’
may not prove to be the best adapted or most assumptions which anthropologists can never
advanced social formation in a sustainable accept. He was obviously unaware of the basic
future. assumptions of economic analysis which Frank
David Marsden European Investment Bank H. Knight, the founder of econometrics, spelled
out clearly in his critical review of Melville J.
Herskovits’s Economic anthropology when he said:
Silverman, Marilyn. Ethnography and ‘The principles of economy are known
development: the work of Richard F. Salisbury. vi, intuitively; it is not possible to discriminate the
398 pp., tables, bibliogr. Montréal: economic character of behaviour by sense
McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 2004. £38.95 (cloth) observations; and the anthropologist, sociologist
or historian seeking to discover or validate
This memorial volume in honour of Richard F. economic laws by inductive investigation has
Salisbury is produced by a group of his students embarked on a wild goose chase; economics is a
who were profoundly struck ‘with the breadth of purely deductive study’ (Melville Herskovits,
his knowledge, with his ability to move into other Economic anthropology, 1960, p. 512). It is a pity
disciplines, and to pursue issues laterally, into that Salisbury decided to venture into economics
adjacent theoretical areas’. Ethnography and in general and economic development in
development is a collection of eighteen of Richard particular, where he obviously lacked the
Salisbury’s interesting and often also provocative expertise he had in the field of anthropology.
essays. These essays are presented in six groups, This emerges clearly when he discusses the
each of which is introduced by one of his supply and use of shell money among the Tolai,

1030 Book reviews
where he displays his ignorance of economic The book has three parts. The first locates St
principles when he says: ‘My own calculations of Lucia in its historical and international contexts,
the rate of manufacture of new shell money paying special attention to the Mabouya Valley,
suggest that at a period somewhat before 1780 the focus of Slocum’s fieldwork early in the
enough shells could have been produced from 1990s. St Lucia’s sugar industry collapsed after
Tolai beaches without the need for overseas the Second World War and was replaced by
voyaging’ (p. 203). To consider that shells bananas grown by small-holders. Bananas were
readily available on local beaches could be traded through a single shipper, Geest, and their
considered as money clearly indicates his grading and sale were governed by a single
economic naïvety. The Tolai themselves did entity, the St Lucia Banana Growers Association
realize the economic principle that scarcity (SLBGA), dominated by the St Lucia government.
determines value and therefore chose as their The second part of the book describes the
currency specific small shells (nassa camelus) SLBGA system and growers’ perceptions of their
which were not available on the Gazelle work. The SLBGA closely followed advice from
Peninsula. To obtain these shells involved a Geest about market demand and sought to
lengthy and dangerous journey by sea that regulate growers to assure that their bananas
ensured the shell’s scarce value. These shells ‘in met Geest’s standards, enforced through a
fact possess all the attributes required of a multi-tier pricing system at buying depots. In
modern currency’ (A.L. Epstein, ‘Tambu, a spite of the extensive advice and demands of the
primitive shell money’, Discovery, 1963, p. 159). SLBGA, growers saw their lot as one of
Also somewhat surprisingly, Salisbury did not ‘freedom’. Commonly, growers took that to
link the low cocoa bean production he found on mean being one’s own boss, a definite
the basis of records noting bean deliveries to the improvement over the position of sugar
Tolai Cocoa Project Vunamami fermentary to the plantation workers and, before that, slaves.
practice that allowed sons to cultivate their The third part describes the Banana Salvation
fathers’ matrilineal lands to which they had no Committee (BSC), which led a protest
title. Salisbury’s inspiring analyses of political movement late in 1993 and early in 1994 to
processes, faction alignments, asymmetrical increase the prices that growers received for
marriage systems, descent theories, etc., etc., bananas and to decrease government control of
however, certainly provide a necessary insight the SLBGA. The movement organized several
into the understanding of socio-economic growers’ strikes, largely without achieving their
change processes which the majority of economic and political goals. In a postscript
economists still lack. It is in this context that his Slocum reports the sharp decline in small-scale
work undoubtedly makes an outstanding banana-growing by the late 1990s.
contribution to the understanding of In broad outline, Free trade and freedom will
socio-economic changes. Therefore, he will be familiar to those acquainted with the island
remain a star on the anthropological horizon, Caribbean. Slocum offers more than this broad
and his students who have put this interesting outline, however. Throughout the book, and
book together deserve our thanks. especially in her third section, she describes the
T. Scarlett Epstein University of Sussex ways in which St Lucians saw their world and
the global forces that affected them in terms of
‘the local’, in two senses: St Lucian history and
Slocum, Karla. Free trade and freedom: society; and the specific places in the island
neoliberalism, place, and nation in the Caribbean. where they lived. It is on this description that the
xviii, 253 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Ann book’s sub-title, Neoliberalism, place, and nation
Arbor: Univ. Michigan Press, 2006. £17.50 in the Caribbean, rests.
(paper) Slocum’s description of the BSC agitation
focuses on this topic. She reports how the BSC
The relationship between the local and the and the government cast each other in terms of
global is an established concern in their place in and claims on the country as a
anthropology. Free trade and freedom considers it whole, and thereby cast the country in novel
in terms of St Lucia, a small Caribbean ways. The BSC cast the government as
island-state, and its place in the globalizing dominated by an urban elite of monoglot
international banana market. The central English speakers, and themselves as a rural
question that Karla Slocum addresses is how peasant movement of creole speakers. The
banana-growers understood their government, and especially the Prime Minister,
political-economic situation. cast themselves as working tirelessly for the

Book reviews 1031
small growers, and the BSC as dominated by a a long literature review of Siberian studies,
self-interested and fairly well-off set of people. nomadism, property, and territoriality, and the
The book tells an interesting tale, but is not post-socialist market economy. These are all
entirely satisfactory. For one thing, Slocum undoubtedly critical readings for this particular
presents her understandings of St Lucians more study, but the writing becomes slightly dry and
than she does the evidence that would justify betrays the doctoral dissertation underlying it.
them and allow us to see what her points, often Nevertheless the book retains a high standard
abstract, look like in practice. Similarly, and of scholarly flair, and, more importantly, a flair
somewhat more unsettling, her discussion of the for wholesome and solid anthropology.
BSC episode relies almost entirely on what Stammler carried out his research doing
people said in public. For this description of anthropological fieldwork in a traditional way:
political rhetoric to be a persuasive he lived for a prolonged period in the reindeer
anthropological argument, we would need to camp and helped to herd reindeer. But the
learn how St Lucians acted on, or at least pretence of becoming a herder was unnecessary
interpreted, that rhetoric. – Stammler made sure that the herders knew of
In addition, Slocum argues that global forces his research and importance of it; this entailed
are inflected by and seen in terms of specific mutual respect for their respective work (p. 41).
places. At one level this is a truism: the market in Apart from providing us with very detailed
bananas appears in a certain way in St Lucia and historical and ethnographic background to
islanders interpret it in terms of their histories reindeer-herding in Yamal, the book captures the
and social and cultural resources. To say more Nenets reindeer-herders at the critical time when
than this, however, Slocum needs to consider at they are trying to grasp a new lesson in
greater length than she does what difference economics and learn how to run reindeer and
these inflections and interpretations make. Are business simultaneously.
they any more than local manifestations and Analysis of the Nenets case study is very
perceptions of forces over which St Lucians have significant in many respects. Reindeer-herding
no significant influence? If so, what do they tell practice in Yamal is exceptional in that even
us about these forces and the places that they during the Soviet years, when total
affect? collectivization swept away privately owned
As should be clear, in Free trade and freedom herds in other regions, it represented a mixture
Slocum raises important questions. These are of private and commonly owned stocks. After
about the ways in which global forces affect a the demise of the Soviet economic establishment
particular place, the ways in which they are the number of privately owned reindeer
shaped by that place, how they appear to increased even more. Stammler’s excellent
people there and how those people respond to analysis of this exceptional situation explains the
them. The tale of much of the Caribbean is not reasons for the sustainability of the
an encouraging one, and this book helps us to reindeer-herding practice on the whole.
understand another part of it. Stammler introduces us to the practice of
James G. Carrier Indiana and Oxford Brookes reindeer-herding, describes the specifics of this
Universities practice in Yamal, and goes through historical
milestones of the Soviet period. He then brings
us to the main points of his study: property and
Stammler, Florian. Reindeer nomads meet the the transition to the market economy. Here the
market: culture, property and globalization at the author’s purpose is to demonstrate the
‘end of the land’. xxvi, 379 pp., maps, tables, figs, connection between ‘the global and the local,
illus., bibliogr. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2005. €29.90 the community and the market sphere of the
(paper) economy’ (p. 283). This is where Stammler’s
analysis is at its best. Indeed, the examples
This book is another in the series of Halle Studies demonstrating this connection are very
in the Anthropology of Eurasia published by the illuminating: panty (velvet antlers) exported to
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. It is the South Asian market and gas extracted on the
also a very welcome addition to the gradually migration territories.
expanding collection of writing on anthropology Stammler closes his book with a
of Russian North and Siberia. disappointingly trite anti-essentialist approach to
The book offers a very detailed insight into culture, arguing that culture should be
the life of reindeer-herders in the Yamal-Nenets considered as a local and evolving phenomenon
district in the northwest of Siberia. It opens with (pp. 323-36). The reader is left with the feeling

1032 Book reviews
that Stammler has dealt with the notion of Japanese fantasy goods worldwide, which has
culture too hastily, and that his careful turned the play industry into the cornerstone of
demonstration of anti-essentialism got in the the Japanese economy in the last decade. A
way of revealing his understanding of the second characteristic of Japanese toys is that they
term fully. are endowed with what Allison calls
Stammler demonstrates remarkable ability to ‘techno-animism’, or a mixture of virtual and
engage fully in both the Russian and Nenets spiritual elements that generate intimate
languages. However, the glossary has an relationships with consumers. Allison traces this
unnecessarily extensive list of words used animist sensibility to Japanese folk traditions and
throughout the book. Looking through the list Shinto and Buddhist ideas that blur the
the principle for selecting the terms is unclear. boundaries between human and non-human
Some words do not specifically add to the beings. She reveals how, at the end of the
understanding of the overall themes or critical nineteenth century, to make sense of their
interpretation of the book, for example ‘adzhika fast-changing world (contrary to the standard
– Caucasian barbecue-sauce’ (p. xix). There is view that modernity leads to secularization), the
some inconsistency of transliteration here as Japanese turned to the vibrant world of spiritual
well: in some cases the main word is introduced beings. At the end of the twentieth century, the
in Russian, in other cases in English. prevalence of these native ideas about
Yet, apart from these minor shortcomings, spirituality turned toys into ‘enchanted
the book is an excellent read, particularly for commodities’ that could bring release from a
spcialists of Siberia and the Arctic. The main stressful, fractured modern society by facilitating
asset of this book is its very careful study of one access to imaginary worlds where new forms of
particular case of reindeer-herding practice in intimacy and friendship might be created.
the Russian north in historical perspective that is The book starts off with two historical
valuable for academics working on pastoralism chapters. Allison, firstly, gives an insightful
and nomadic studies. This is also a unique and account of the development of the Japanese toy
valuable study of post-Soviet economic industry and its role in the growth of the
anthropology. Therefore it can be recommended national economy between 1945 and 1960. She
to a large reading audience. offers some fascinating revelations, like the fact
Tanya Argounova-Low University of Aberdeen that the same tins that contained food rations
distributed by the US occupation army were
recycled into toys such as army jeeps that were
General exported to the US, where they became popular
with American children. This section is followed
by a detailed analysis of Japanese ideas about
Allison, Anne. Millennial monsters: Japanese technology by comparing two post-war
toys and the global imagination. xxii, 322 pp., Japanese fantasy creations, Godzilla (Gojira) and
illus., bibliogr. London, Berkeley: Univ. California AtomBoy (Tetsuwan Atomu), that blur the
Press, 2006. £15.95 (paper) distinction between humans and machines.
These engrossing historical case studies throw
In this captivating and highly informative book, new light on the complex notion of the self in
Anne Allison explores the worldwide popularity modern Japan. However, it is unfortunate that
of Japanese toys and youth media ranging from Allison’s analysis rarely goes beyond theoretical
manga, anime, and gameboy, to Power Pangers, discussions about (post)modernity. Apart from a
Tamagochi, and Pokémon. The book, based on brief mention of Bruno Latour’s work, the
multi-sited research in Japan and the US, sets out author, for example, fails to engage with the
to identify those properties inherent in play extended anthropological literature about
goods and the imaginary worlds they are material culture that has pioneered research into
associated with that render them attractive to the relationship between people and things.
young consumers. Allison argues that Japanese In the next chapter, which focuses on
play products are, firstly, typified by a growing feelings of loss, alienation, and isolation
‘polymorphous perversity’ that enables them to encountered by Japanese since the 1960s,
be continuously refashioned and spread across a Allison’s penchant for postmodern ideologies
variety of new forms. It is this fluidity that becomes even more pertinent. She depicts a
enables consumers to create and re-create rather gloomy picture of Japanese society,
endless varieties of imaginary worlds. It has also discussing themes such as the rise of violent
been at the base of the successful export of youth crime, urban terrorism enacted by religious

Book reviews 1033
sects, experiences of social alienation among imperialism generally associated with the spread
recluses who never leave their rooms (hikikomori), of meta-symbols of American culture and
nerds absorbed by the fantasy world of manga ‘Western’ modernity such as Coca-Cola,
and anime (otaku), and sexual harassment on McDonalds, and Disney. Unlike Disney, the
commuter trains (chikan). Although all these imaginary world of Pocket Monsters (Pokémon) is
phenomena are interesting and merit not anchored in a particular locale closed off
investigation, by listing them without providing from the rest of society and players are
much ethnographic or other evidence about their encouraged actively to customize and adapt play
ubiquity, Allison runs the danger not only of goods to a variety of contexts. This Japanese case
uncritically reproducing headlines articulated in study thus demonstrates the potential strengths
the Japanese media, but also of adding to the of new models of capitalism that successfully link
mountain of literature that mystifies or reifies fantasy and play with the global economy.
Japanese society abroad. Whereas earlier in the Inge Daniels University of Oxford
book Allison makes a case for the specificity of
Japanese modernity, in this section she draws on
theorists such as Marx, Benjamin, and Deleuze Buchanan, Donna A. Performing democracy:
without questioning their applicability to the Bulgarian music and musicians in transition. xxiv,
Japanese context. One is left wondering why the 519 pp., CD, bibliogr. London, Chicago: Univ.
rich anthropological and sociological literature Chicago Press, 2006. £47.50 (cloth), £19.00
about the complexity of contemporary Japanese (paper)
consumption practices (e.g. B. Moeran, A
Japanese advertising agency, 1997; J. Clammer, Donna Buchanan’s book is based on her
Contemporary urban Japan, 1997; M. Ito et al. intensive field research, which was conducted
(eds), Mobile phones in Japanese life, 2005) is between 1988 and 1996 in Bulgaria. Her research
completely disregarded. More so, since the was focused on professional musicians and folk
following four chapters are devoted to the ensembles and illustrates Bulgarian musical
consumption of different types of Japanese culture and development in comparison to the
entertainment products popular between 1993 socio-economic changes and the political
and 2000. An in-depth study of two Japanese TV processes in the country. The democratization
series, The mighty Power Rangers (chap. 4) and process was shaped and reinforced with a variety
Sailor moon (chap. 5), as well as two popular of music and dance performances, which were
play goods, Tamagochi (chap. 6) and Pokémon conducted at home and abroad. Buchanan
(chap. 7), leads Allison to conclude that the highlights that ‘[t]his is a book of changes ... as a
‘multi-partedness’ of Japanese play goods means of understanding the complex interaction
simultaneously embodies a range of anxieties of music, politics, and identity in Bulgarian
linked with modernity and offers a healing society during the last hundred years’ (p. 6). A
solution. It is through the endless transformation common theme throughout her interpretation is
of the bodies of heroes, and the intertwining the ‘fight’ of rural musical practices and cultural
between the bodily and the virtual, that novel performances to produce new performance
interpersonal relationships of friendship and styles in correspondence to current
intimacy (techno-intimacy) between play goods socio-economic changes. This condition created
and consumers are stimulated. an influential discourse about Bulgarian identity,
Allison is certainly at her best in these which was linked to cultural heritage and the
knowledgeable, enlightening discussions of promotion of music and dance cultures.
various examples of Japanese fantasy products. The book is divided into three parts. The first
However, her ethnographic data seem thin and section details the author’s research practices,
do not reveal much of the complexity and providing descriptive information on how she
contradictions that she must have encountered entered into the field site; her motives for doing
during her extended fieldwork. Despite these research in Bulgaria; and discussing ethical
caveats, this is a seminal book that offers matters, for instance how she employs
important, new insights about the dynamic pseudonyms and builds her ethnographic
interplay between the local and the global. Its narrative in a flexible perspective. Furthermore,
intelligence and originality come to the fore in she refers to the historiography of the musical
the final chapter, when Allison confronts the and cultural life in Bulgaria; the process of the
literature about globalization. She argues that the establishment of folk ensembles, which is linked
global circulation of Japanese play goods follows to national music, narodna muzika, and
a different trajectory from the cultural orchestras. Additionally, she pinpoints the

1034 Book reviews
political changes in the country, giving a examines how this group manages to enhance
description of the socio-political conditions, from and promote narodna muzika transnationally.
Zhivkov’s regime and communism to democracy Furthermore, she indicates the success of the
and modernity, and she describes people’s volumes of Le Mystère des voix Bulgares, while
nostalgia for the former period. Bulgaria is she provides an analysis of women’s voices,
divided into six ethnographic regions singing, and the vocal technique as images of
differentiated by musical and cultural practices: ‘anthenticity’ and tradition (p. 368). In addition,
the regions of Shop, Pirin Makedoniya, Rodopa, she presents different performances of the song
Trakiya, Dobrudzha, and Severna Bulgariya ‘Dilmano, dilbero’ in comparison to Bulgarian
(p. 81). Buchanan illustrates the musical life in socio-cultural history and mentality, diverse
rural, urban, and minority communities; she concepts about past, present and future
describes the anthropogeography of the regions, socio-economic conditions, and she illustrates an
highlighting their topography and musical, exegesis of political change and transition by
linguistic, and cultural diversity. In this section interpreting the lyrics of the song. This song
there is a wealth of ethnographic material on played a vital role in the transition from rural
village musical life, and on the cultural village communities to urban-orientated socialist
performances, oral tradition, dance, music, and collectives (p. 425). Finally, there is a description
folk costumes of the different regions. There is a of the evolution of the market economy and
vivid distinction between the role of women in how music was industrialized. The book encloses
singing, and the role of men in playing musical an audio CD-Rom with Bulgarian folk music,
instruments. Consequently, Buchanan indicates lyrics, and pictures, and includes a glossary, a
which musical instruments are used in which discography, a coherent bibliography, and an
region, the kinds of dances that are performed, index. The book, which is notable for the
and the variations of them. author’s ethnographic research skills, will be of
The second section deals with the variation of use to researchers on Southeastern European
folk ensembles, their programmes, the way they musical practices and cultural performances.
work, their skills in representations, where they Christos Karagiannidis University of Sussex
are performed, and how they promote the
different regions in Bulgaria. In this section
Buchanan poses the questions of musical Buijs, Kees. Powers of blessing from the
representation and (self-)reflection, the notion of wilderness and from heaven: structure and
tradition, musical, and cultural heritage as transformation in the religion of Toraja in the
perceived by musicians, by people who were Mamasa area of South Sulawesi. vii, 262 pp.,
involved in those performances, and she notes illus., bibliogr. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2006.
the vital discourse about Bulgarian identity as
being (re)presented by those ‘agents’. According Kees Buijs’s ethnography recovers those ritual
to her informants’ narratives there is an essential traditions slipping out of practice and memory
need to balance older musical practices with new in the Mamasa district of South Sulawesi,
performance contexts (p. 231), and musicians Indonesia. Within its pages, we find something
characterize the whole process as a fascinating, to be sure – the spectacle of ritual
professionalization of narodna muzika (national life. Yet we also find something predictable and
music). In consequence, the notion of Bulgarian sedate – the sort of structural analysis of ritual
tradition is linked with musical and dance and cosmology that has largely fallen out of use
practices and customs (e.g. festive dancing in most precincts of contemporary
ceremonies during weddings) which are anthropology. We can be very grateful to Buijs
performed in the different regions inside the for his earnest, painstaking work in presenting a
country and abroad. Each of the different comprehensive account of a now absent ritual
ensembles promote their horo (dance) and order in the Mamasa region. Meanwhile, it is
muzika (music) as a representation of the intriguing to consider the way in which fading
Bulgarian nation and national identity. Buchanan cultural, ethnographic, and analytic traditions
presents lyrics of a few songs and tales to have become entwined in this book.
facilitate the comparison with current political Buijs lived and worked in the highland town
changes, and the process of how people of Mamasa from 1978 until 1983 and pursued
question Bulgarian identity and their anthropological training in Leiden in the 1990s.
socio-cultural legacy. Beginning in 2000, he was able to make several
In the third section of the book Buchanan two-month visits to Mamasa, during which time
refers to the birth of the Balkana group and she he conducted ethnographic interviews on

Book reviews 1035
Mamasa’s indigenous ritual tradition. Buijs never wilderness’ as a source of blessings, he argues
witnessed the rituals of focal concern to his that Mamasa’s pa’bisuan transformed into
dissertation, of which this book is a revised Sa’dan’s bua’kasalle. Nowhere does Buijs deeply
version: pa’bisuan (women’s prosperity rites, last engage local discourses on gender and
held around 1960, in which women, possessed environment, so the reader remains sceptical
by ‘spirits of the wilderness’, would climb, about his explanation of religious differences
screaming and naked, up a banyan tree) and and transformation among historically linked
bulu londong (men’s prosperity rites, held as communities designated as ‘Toraja’.
recently as 2000, which feature representations Kenneth M. George University of
of headhunting). He relies on first-hand accounts Wisconsin-Madison
from Mamasa’s elders for most of his
ethnographic reconstructions of the past; the
contemporary role of recalling (or forgetting) Clarke, Kamari Maxine & Debor ah A.
ritual tradition is of little concern to him. With Thomas (eds). Globalization and race:
social relations, history, and ethnographic transformations in the cultural production of
intersubjectivity thus bracketed from blackness. ix, 407 pp., bibliogr. London, Durham,
consideration, the study approaches ritual as N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2006. £64.00 (cloth),
spectacle, text, and system – as a language of £14.95 (paper)
religious ideas, if you will, the elements and
grammar of which must be compiled, arranged, The mutually sustaining relationship between
and philologically investigated before constructs of ‘race’ and ‘nation’ has been of
comparative study is taken up (a hallmark of interest to analysts, particularly in Europe and
ethnography on the Toraja until the Americas. Gilroy’s There ain’t no black in the
1980). Union Jack (1987) is a well-known example. But it
Buijs persuasively demonstrates the dualisms has also been recognized – at least since Gilroy’s
that organized Mamasa’s bygone ritual life (by later The black Atlantic (1993) – that ideas about
1980, almost all of the district’s inhabitants were race (and nation) are constituted in a much
Christian or Muslim): male and female, heaven broader frame of reference. Dikötter’s The
and wilderness, bulu londong and pa’bisuan, and discourse of race in modern China (1991) also
so on. There is much here, too, that conveys the reveals the impact of Western categories of race
richly metaphoric and pragmatic workings of on Chinese thinking about human diversity, and
ritual. historical studies of racial thinking in the era of
A comparative spirit animates much of Buijs’s raciological science cannot but encompass a
analysis, especially with respect to the structural broader canvas, even when the focus is explicitly
transformation of religions systems. His national, as in Stepan’s The idea of race in
comparative interests are commendable but his science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (1982). The
approach to comparative method and to constant global traffic of ideas and categories of
understanding transformation is unconvincing. race has recently been addressed by such as
‘Impulses for the direction of religious Livio Sansone (for Brazil) and J. Lorand Matory
transformation’, he argues, ‘are present in the (around the black Atlantic).
structure of religion’ (p. 7). For Buijs, then, The authors of Globalization and race
political, ideological, and historical forces do not continue this trend, eschewing methodological
significantly guide or find expression in religious nationalism and decentring discourses of race
change; and this implies that these forces have and nation. For them, more complex,
little place in comparative analysis. Further, he transnationalized concepts of race are emerging
takes as a working premise the common cultural – albeit still linked to older categories and still
Austronesian heritage of Indonesia’s non-state, with the power to divide and discriminate – in
embedded societies. For Buijs, ‘transformation’ is which consumption plays a key role, as does US
to be discovered in the comparison of local black culture. Biology remains an important
Austronesian religious systems; religious logics realm in which ideas about race are constituted,
persist but as locally and circumstantially but culture has become dominant, and although
expressed variations on a theme. Buijs chooses the nation has been unsettled as the primary
to compare the Toraja Mamasa rite of pa’bisuan frame of reference, ‘place’ remain vital in
with the Toraja Sa’dan rite known as bua’kasalle, thinking about race. Diaspora is a key concept
a grand ceremony of the ethnic communities to for many authors in this book, but it is a
the east of Mamasa. Discerning shifting religious diaspora fragmented by difference, rather than
understandings about a ‘transcendent unified by notions of common origin.

1036 Book reviews
The sub-title of the book is important, testament to exactly this. Hernández-Reguant’s

because this is a book about blackness rather than account of timba music in Cuba during the
race more generally. It is also, to a large extent, economic crisis of the ‘Special Period’ in the
about US constructs of blackness. Although only 1990s, is also quite nation-state-focused in its
three of the sixteen authors (of whom twelve are analysis of how the state became strongly
anthropologists and thirteen are based in the involved in commercializing popular culture,
USA) write specifically about the USA, another six thus mediating the apparently subversive nature
deal, at least in part, with how US ideas about of timba with its strong affirmation of blackness.
blackness impinge on Europe and the Caribbean. But she effectively shows how tourism and the
Brown, for example, looks at how black America global economy were central to the way timba
and Africa figured in ideas about black identity music developed.
and culture among post-war Liverpool-born An interesting and useful book that will
blacks, particularly via the black GIs who were undoubtedly appear on many reading lists, this
present during and after the Second World War. volume is welcome for its explicit aim of paying
Pabst looks at how Canadian blacks get close attention to global processes in the
incorporated into US constructs of blackness. construction of race. However, only some of the
Codrington examines how US rap has shaped chapters really deliver on that promise.
British black youth identities. Some chapters buck Peter Wade University of Manchester
this trend: Ifekunigwe examines Nigerian sex
workers in Italy, arguing that more recent
migrations need to be added to the accumulating Drobnick, Jim (ed.). The smell culture reader.
layers of the African diaspora; Farred focuses on xii, 442 pp., bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: Berg
how race re-emerges in the political discourses of Publishers, 2006. £34.95 (cloth), £19.99 (paper)
South African leaders Mandela and Mbeki;
Adams, Fikes, Godreau, Hernández-Reguant, and A fascinating compilation, The smell culture
Sawyer write about the Dominican Republic, reader lives up to its promise to provide an
Cape Verde, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Sweden, overview of ‘our most elusive sense’. Its thirty-six
respectively. But the (black) USA is a strong chapters, grouped into seven sections, cover a
presence in the book – not surprisingly, given the wide spectrum of olfaction-related issues.
power of the USA in shaping global patterns of Drobnick has added a clear and concise
the cultural production and consumption of introduction to the book, as well as brief
blackness. introductions to all the sections. These
Some chapters are not very effective in really introductions are crucial to understand the
dealing with globalization and multilateral structure of the book; the disciplinary
movements. Others stand out in this respect. backgrounds of the contributors vary widely,
Brown and Thomas, both with chapters that are and so do their writings. Some chapters are truly
closely linked to their recent books, are excellent classics in the study of smell, some are more
examples that grapple in subtle and insightful anecdotal, and others again may appear
ways with the transnational movement of ideas, somewhat quaint to non-specialists.
values, and people; both adopt a global frame The book does a good job in mapping some
that is very sensitive to the dangers to of the diversity of past and contemporary
local-global dualisms. Thomas’s analysis of practices of scent. It also gives a good
‘modern blackness’ looks at how lower-class impression of the shifting status of smell in
black Jamaican culture is constituted both in people’s sensorium: whereas in the early 1990s
opposition to and in intimate relation with one study reported smell to be the least valuable
dominant values, whether associated with of the senses, it is now the first and most
middle-class Jamaicans or the USA. Clarke’s popular sense people wish to indulge. The
chapter is on how blackness in the USA has insight that smell is culturally constructed is
become institutionally defined by commodified nowadays a commonplace in the anthropology
heritage and ‘roots’ which invoke ‘Africa’, but of the senses, and with the compilation
the global processes seem more one-way here: Drobnick aims to radicalize the constructionist
the construction of US black identity takes place position. Proposing the term ‘olfactocentrism’,
within the USA, albeit in relation to (an he invites the reader to consider how our
imagined?) Africa. Clarke’s fascinating vignette thoughts would change if all our perception
describing an encounter between US roots were by smell. It is not the only neologism that
tourists (members of the US Oyotunji African arises in the book, and in this, too, Drobnick
Village) and Nigerian immigration officials is a follows the practice of smell studies.

Book reviews 1037
The book opens strongly. Part I, promoted in perfume ads; and misogynist and
‘Odorphobia’, addresses cultural-specific emancipatory interpretations of an exhibition
intolerances toward smells. El-Khoury’s essay on featuring women’s worn underwear. Part VI,
the anxieties and practices of sanitization ‘Volatile art’, examines examples of olfactory
campaigns documents the search for creativity in Japanese court culture,
odourlessness in late eighteenth-century France; contemporary art, and digital media. Paterson
through the introduction of the sewer system, discusses attempts to convey smells through
the final victory over stench eventually led to the cinema and digital media, noting that the
reign of ‘olfactory silence’. Largey’s and realization of multi-sensory media has been
Watson’s classic sociology of odours is included hampered by technological limitations as well as
as well, with its insights on odours, social status, hostile attitudes against odoriferous intrusions.
and impression management. There is also an Part VII, ‘Sublime essences’, addresses mystical
interesting piece about olfactory-triggered panic olfactory phenomena, such as hellish scents and
attacks within Cambodian refugees, the result of the odour of sanctity, the scents that accompany
deliberate acts of intimidation and torture. religious practices in the Muslim-Arab world,
Part II, ‘Toposmia’, investigates the spatial and the olfactory after-death communications
location of odours and their relation to particular experienced by some Americans.
notions of place. It includes Porteous’s The book lacks a conclusion about what can
pioneering essay on ‘smellscapes’ and their be said in retrospect about smell studies. For
fragmentary character. Margolies presents an example, there seems to be a movement away
olfactory map of New York, arguing that smells from smell as physical sensation in the more
persist notwithstanding the rational grid of that classic articles, towards smell as political
city. Cohen graphically describes the smells of a construction in the more recent ones. Also, the
Bangkok lane, claiming that the inhabitants of choice of the contributions may give the
the slum are marked by an olfactory dualism: impression that Drobnick aims at establishing
they are oblivious to the smells emanating from the study of smell as a further specialization of
rubbish around them but sensitive to much the anthropology of the senses. Much can be
weaker human body odours. Rindisbacher’s said, however, for a more generalist approach
remarkable essay on the stench of Nazi emphasizing the multi-sensorial analysis of
concentration camps brings together accounts culture. In this regard, the term ‘olfactocentrism’
by both survivors and perpetrators. Power is raises questions about things we do not smell.
enacted upon and denounced through olfaction. What are the drawbacks of olfactory
The structure of part III, ‘Flaireurs’, is less determinism? How does smell distort if it is
clear. It approaches scent and identity, and taken as an isolated sense?
includes a chapter by Corbin on the new Roy Gigengack University of Oxford
calculus of olfactory pleasure, two accounts of
famous smellers such as Helen Keller, and
chapters on the odours of childhood and the Ellen, Roy. The categorical impulse: essays in
understanding of odour preferences. Part IV the anthropology of classifying behaviour. xiv,
addresses perfume from various perspectives. 233 pp., illus., figs, tables, bibliogr. Oxford, New
There is a short story by Proust, a piece from an York: Berghahn Books, 2006. $70.00 (cloth)
obsessed professional perfumer, and an
extensive perfume review. Gray reveals that in Along with Ralph Bulmer, Brent Berlin, and
Süskind’s novel Perfume the obsession does not Eugene Hunn, Roy Ellen is one of the pioneers in
lead to beauty or wisdom but to alienation and the development of ethnobiology. Although a
destruction. Despite scent seeming to be the crucial sub-discipline, standing at the interface
antithesis of reason, ‘enscentment’ produces the between the biological and social sciences,
same sort of manipulation and colonization as ethnobiology is very much of a marginal interest
enlightenment. to most cultural anthropologists. It is given no
Part V, ‘Scentsuality’, approaches issues mention at all (for example) in Ingold’s
around scent and sexuality. Stamelman traces compendium of anthropology, or in Michael
perfumes in an array of mythological and literary Herzfeld’s text on ‘Anthropology’, which quite
sources, and identifies themes of eroticism and misleadingly sets up a false dichotomy between
loss. Other pieces address the smell of females in our critical engagement of the world and our
Freud; the graphical descriptions of the odour of explanations of it. Ethnobiologists were never
male solitude in nineteenth-century anti- besotted with either textualism or
masturbation tracts; an analysis of ‘queer smells’ postmodernism, and always distanced

1038 Book reviews
themselves from crude positivism, a concept cognition, the essays nevertheless are fairly
nowadays employed by cultural anthropologists wide-ranging and cover many important topics
as a term of abuse, even though they themselves and issues. Four of these are worth noting, as
tend to embrace the radical empiricism and they may be of interest to cultural
anti-realism of the positivists! anthropologists.
This present text is an important and very First, there is an interesting discussion, for
worthwhile collection of Roy Ellen’s essays and example, of Nuaulu zoological classifications,
reflections on ethnobiology, specifically focusing particularly relating to the cuscus, a marsupial
on ethnobiological classifications and on mammal, and the cassowary, both of which
classifying behaviour. Written over the past thirty are of crucial importance to these
years or so, they represent a seminal and swidden-cultivators. Against the emphasis on
enduring contribution to anthropological formal taxonomies, Ellen demonstrates that the
knowledge. It is, however, a pity that the Nuaulu mode of classification is inherently
collection leaves out Ellen’s essays on Nuaulu variable, flexible, and dynamic, often
hunting strategies and on modes of subsistence, overlapping, and thus can be understood only if
as well as his critique of romantic ecology ‘What placed within a situational context – whether
Black Elk left unsaid’, which is a very useful cultural, social, technical, or ecological.
teaching text. Classifying behaviour is thus a dynamic process
Some ten essays comprise the collection, all and inherently contextual, essentially an
written in a readable, engaging style, and expression of human-environment interactions.
embracing the virtues that Ellen generously This leads Ellen to question the rigid separation
attributes to the late Ralph Bulmer, namely a of general-purpose classifications, expressed in
scrupulous attention to ethnographic detail formal taxonomies, and special-purpose
(with Ellen this specifically relates to the Nuaulu, classifications, which relate either to pragmatic
swidden-cultivators living in the rainforests of usage (as medicine or food, for example) or to
South Central Seram); a respect for the the symbolic significance of animal (or plant)
knowledge of individual informants; an categories. But Ellen nevertheless emphasizes the
insistence that classifying behaviour, and cultural crucial importance of the categories that relate
practices generally, must be embedded in their to the biotic domain – expressing as they do
wider social and ecological contexts; and, finally, the inherent discontinuities of the natural
a respectful but critical attitude towards world – for they form the basis or ‘benchmark’
universalist-evolutionary paradigms. This is an for wider semiotic schemas and cultural
approach that is quite different from the paradigms.
dismissive attitude of many cultural Second, drawing on the distinction between
anthropologists and postmodernists. Ellen the processes of analysis (separation, difference,
certainly does not feel it necessary to disparage part-of) and synthesis (aggregation, unity,
and denigrate the scientific endeavours of kind-of) – as interdependent cognitive processes
biologists, psychologists, and social scientists – Ellen gives an interesting account of human
more generally. In fact, as he writes in the body parts (anatomical classifications) and how
introduction – written especially for the such classifications relate to cultural ideas and
collection – what he has always attempted to do artefacts, particularly to social and symbolic
is to build ‘bridges’ between the social classifications.
constructionists (like Mary Douglas) and those Third, in a seminal discussion of the concept
who emphasize a cognitivist and universalist of ‘fetishism’ – expressed in early
approach to ethnobiological classifications (like anthropological studies of religion, in Marxist
Brent Berlin). In bridging this divide, Ellen seeks theory, and in psychological and psychoanalytic
to develop a more embedded and processual studies – Ellen attempts to show that such
approach to the understanding of classifying cultural paradigms are not so much
behaviour. His central focus is, then, on the pathological, dysfunctional, and deviant, nor do
relationship between cognition and culture, they express some ‘primitive’ mode of thought,
bringing together cognitive studies, which tend but rather they can be understood by relating
to emphasize the universal aspects of cognitive them to universal, underlying cognitive
processes and cultural anthropology with its processes. These specifically include: the general
focus on cultural beliefs, or what Ellen, following propensity of humans to express complex ideas
Durkheim, calls ‘collective representations’. and relationships as ‘things’, to thus reify ideas
Although the collection has a specific focus, through a process of concretization; the general
on the relationship between culture and tendency of humans to animate things, and thus

Book reviews 1039
to apprehend and represent the world in impulse – thus involves the possession of innate
anthropomorphic terms; and, finally, the general cognitive skills, but it also concerns our ability,
human tendency to conflate, especially in a as Ellen cogently puts it, ‘to organize our
ritual context, the signifier (an artefact or organic perceptions through culture (aided by language)
being) with the signified (some spiritual agent). based on models drawn from somatic
Thus Ellen explores the interplay between the experience, and from social and perceptual
three cultural traditions which have utilized the experience of the material world’ (p. 29). Thus,
concept of ‘fetishism’ and these three universal although eschewing philosophical issues, Ellen
cognitive mechanisms, emphasizing that stands firmly in the tradition of historical or
although individual perception and cognition emergent materialism. In fact, he quotes Engels
and cultural schemas and ‘representations’ are to suggest that although our categories may be
clearly distinct, and ought not to be conflated, socially constructed, they still refer to a real
their relationship is always one of ‘mutual world.
embeddedness’ (p. 186). The early chapters of the book, along with
Finally, the importance of a ‘contextual’ Ellen’s important introduction to the recent
approach is also reflected in Ellen’s essay on the volume Ethnobiology and the science of
‘cognitive geometry of nature’. Reacting against humankind (JRAI Special Issue, 2006), give a clear
the claim of the cultural idealists and and refreshing overview of the sub-discipline, as
postmodernists that nature is simply a ‘social well as affirming ethnobiology’s crucial role in
construct’ and acknowledging that the concept the continuing development of anthropology as
of ‘nature’ is by no means universal, Ellen a multi-discipline. An anthropology interpreted
emphasizes that our conceptions of the natural not as a form of semiotics or as a purely literary
world vary historically and ethnographically. enterprise, but as the historical science of
Thus there are multiple ways in which nature humankind.
may be interpreted and used in specific cultural Brian Morris Goldsmiths College
settings. But Ellen suggests that underlying our
conceptions of nature there are three basic
cognitive dispositions which are widely Hobart, Angela & Bruce Kapferer (eds).
recognized. These relate to the idea that nature Aesthetics in performance: formations of symbolic
is an inventory or collection of different kinds of construction and experience. ix, 239 pp., figs,
‘things’ or ‘natural kinds’, which are expressed illus., bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: Berghahn
as basic categories – the concept of ‘nature’ is Books, 2005. £50.00 (cloth)
not in itself a basic category; the notion of
nature as a topological space that is distinct, and This edited volume contains essays devoted to
separate from human concerns; and, finally, the aesthetic forms and dynamics found in
nature conceived as an inner essence or force. performances. It is a result of a workshop held at
But Ellen, like Maurice Bloch and Tim Ingold, the Cross-Cultural Centre Ascona in 2001. In
downplays the linguistic model of culture and terms of wider scholarship, many of the essays in
affirms that language only mediates – and then this volume either see performance as deriving
only rather inadequately – between these three its meaning and potency from outside the
underlying cognitive dispositions and the diverse symbolic (e.g. in the political or class orders) or
cultural conceptions of nature. And he view the aestheticized symbolic as ideologically
emphasizes the contextual, variable, and obfuscating ‘real’, objective realities, as in
contingent ways in which these various cultural materialistic theories. As the editors argue,
schemas and paradigms are utilized. He thus symbolic forms and processes in themselves
completely repudiates the exoticism of much have agency in the sense that aesthetic processes
cultural anthropology which sets up a false both condition their composition and have an
dichotomy between so-called ‘Western’ thought interventional capacity (this is why they are used
(equated with Cartesian metaphysics) and the in shamanistic performances or healing rites, for
thought of forest peoples living in some remote example). Performance is also more than action
part of the world. or practice in that the participants in
The book is sub-titled ‘essays in the performance are thoroughly conscious of their
anthropology of classifying behaviour’, and for actions as a performance to be witnessed or
Ellen the process of classifying inherently participated in as such. What is important,
connects culture, psychology, and the however, is that performance is not ‘merely’ an
perceptual discontinuities of the concrete world. enactment or the materialization of a
Our propensity to classify – the categorical pre-existing schema or text because while there

1040 Book reviews
may be a text, performance is also a how circus animals were perceived as part and
non-reducible emergent phenomenon, a yet not as part of ‘nature’ in Britain of the 1970s.
symbolic formation sui generis. Thus the text is There is much to commend in this volume
created through the performance and only (although the essays differ in their theoretical
available through it rather than pre-existing it. sophistication, empirical foundations, and
The book comprises eleven chapters, and as appeal to anthropologists). First, it contains a
the editors explain, it moves from particular fascinating array of cases where the aesthetic
aesthetic and ritual forms to the problematics of dimensions of different performances are
everyday life (in worship and healing) and analysed. Second, the opening essay by the
through to the aesthetic organization of secular editors does an excellent job of introducing the
public events (camival, political gatherings, and main issues and placing them in the wider
the circus). In the first essay the editors, Kapferer context of scholarship. And, third, many of the
and Hobart, outline the aesthetic dimensions of essays are accompanied by illustrations and
performance, argue that symbolic forms photographs that enhance and exemplify the
themselves have agency, and introduce the arguments found in the texts.
essays. In a piece called ‘Making grown men To conclude, I recommend this collected
weep’, Beeman offers a very strong analysis of volume for scholars interested in ritual,
how the acoustic dimensions of singing literally performance, and aesthetics.
move people by evoking a variety of emotions. Eyal Ben-Ari Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Next, Shulman’s ‘The buzz of the gods and the
click of delight’ represents an analysis of how
music and poetry lead to psycho-physical Howell, Signe. The kinning of foreigners:
changes in listeners through a focus on an transnational adoption in a global perspective. xvi,
Indian text written in the thirteenth century. In 255 pp., tables, Illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New
‘Songs of love, images of memory’, Kersenboom York: Berghahn Books, 2006. £75.00 (cloth)
uses a Telegu song to explore the experiential
and sensory dimensions of performance. Bastin, The last few years have seen an efflorescence in
in ‘The Hindu temple and the aesthetics of the the anthropology of adoption. Along with the
imaginary’, makes a case for understanding how no-longer-new reproductive technologies,
the divinity is very much part of the very adoption now appears to be in the vanguard of
architecture of holy places in India. In ‘Where the ‘new kinship’ that emerged after the
divine horsemen ride’, Friedson offers a Schneiderian doldrums of the 1980s. At first
fascinating analysis of trance, music, song, and glance this seems odd, for as Signe Howell notes
clapping as they form the core performative in the opening chapters of The kinning of
elements of trance. Kapferer uses his piece foreigners, adoption languished as a footnote to
‘Sorcery and the beautiful’ to offer the most kinship theory for decades. This book is intended
insightful contribution of the volume, devoted to as a corrective, and as such it provides the
how the poetics, music, song, dance, mime, reader with a salutary overview of what has
drama, or the plastic arts are part of the process happened to the institution of adoption since it
by which Sinhala healing rituals become became enmeshed with the flow of people and
effective. Hobart offers us ‘Transformation and ideas now taken as emblematic of a globalized
aesthetics in Balinese masked performance’ to world.
explore how the compositional elements of such The book makes several important
a performance allow it to re-make the Balinese interventions. The most valuable of these is the
world and extend their consciousness to way in which Howell tracks the impact of what
life-revitalizing aspects of human existence. she calls the ‘psy’ disciplines on the adoption
DaMatta returns to his long-term preoccupation process in industrial countries, and on adoption
with ‘A concise reflection on the Brazilian legislation itself. This was a set of dots that
carnival’ to analyse the aesthetics of such rites of needed to be connected up, and Howell has
reversal by showing its fleetingness and constant placed herself in an excellent position to do it.
decentring of social order. Handelman’s As she notes, the ‘psy’ perspective is
‘Bureaucratic logic, bureaucratic aesthetics’ uses fundamentally predicated on the notion of the
two public events in Israel to explore the possessive individual, who is none the less
fascinating subject of the aesthetic ‘feel’ of affected from an early age by the ‘stimuli’ of his
practice. The final essay by Carmeli, or her surroundings. It is this perspective, with
‘Compassion for animals, indifference to its underlying premise that a child possesses a
humans’, again is a strong piece focusing on set of interests independently of a constellation

Book reviews 1041
of kin, that informs the ‘best interests of the origin, or health status. In the US, both state and
child’ aspect of much contemporary adoption private adoptions can be contracted, and
law. Particularly in the second half of the book, adopters are routinely permitted to select all
Howell points to the fact that many donor sorts of attributes in their children. That Norway
countries – especially those whose local regulates its adoptions and the United States
adoption and fosterage practices emphasize doesn’t should come as a surprise to no one.
‘house welfare’ rather than ‘child welfare’ – find And that Howell manages not only to be
these legal provisions baffling at best, surprised but scandalized by American adoption
imperialistic at worst. practices suggests a reluctance to engage with
Also notable is the account of exchange the possibility that transnational adoption might
through which Howell renders transnational be driven by market principles.
adoption. She presents a model in which The book’s strengths, therefore, lie in its
children move from developing countries to examination of adoption ideologies rather than
industrial ones, while legislation moves in the the economic relations that underpin them. This
opposite direction. The legislation presents the is a worthwhile enterprise in itself. The kinning of
appearance of a monolithic ‘Western’ foreigners represents a thought-provoking
perspective on transnational adoption that is contribution to the burgeoning literature on
then imposed upon donor countries, but Howell adoption, and will be a valuable resource for any
pursues the underlying question of whether who are currently working in this area, or in the
there is even a consensus on what adopted fields of kinship or transnationalism in general.
children need and deserve in the receiving Melissa Demian University of Kent
countries. There is not, of course. The shifting
ground of the ‘psy’ authorities, the ongoing
interpretation of law, and the differing attitudes Kurotani, Sawa. Home away from home:
of these countries towards the transnational Japanese corporate wives in the United States. xi,
adoption market all contribute to the 241 pp., tables, bibliogr. London, Durham, N.C.:
labyrinthine process undertaken by prospective Duke Univ. Press, 2006. £14.95 (paper)
adoptive parents to constitute a ‘family’.
In using the word ‘market’ to describe Sawa Kurotani’s book might also have been
transnational adoption, Howell’s otherwise sub-titled ‘Japanese incorporated wives’, for the
illuminating discussion falls short. By positing subjects of her ethnographic study are women
the transnational adoption exchange as one of whose main task, on accompanying their
children for laws, Howell makes an intriguing husbands on job assignments to the US, is to
theoretical move but also one that sidesteps the maintain ‘domestic bliss’ and thus the
uncomfortable fact that, like other resources, reproductive capacity of their husbands during
children are flowing from poor countries to rich their life abroad. This expectation is held
ones, and money in the form of agency fees and collectively by the Japanese corporations as
donations to orphanages is flowing in the employers, husbands, and the wives themselves,
opposite direction. Further, these children are who consequently aspire to high standards of
the products of anonymous and invisible domestic perfection. One of Kurotani’s main
persons: the one perspective Howell does not concerns is to explore what kind of female
provide or even acknowledge is that of the subjectivities emerge from this situation, and
women who relinquish their children, a glaring how the women’s sense of self is shaped within
absence in an otherwise comprehensive the context of corporate demands, Japanese
account. While there is some discussion of what ideologies of homemaking and motherhood, the
it means to involve money in a transaction that community of other wives, and their
also involves the creation of a family, this section transnational situation in the United States.
of the book is under-analysed. This is Kurotani’s book addresses a significant gap in
unfortunate, not least because it would help to the discussions of globalization, namely what
shed light on why the two receiving countries could be called the ‘domestic underbelly of
on which Howell focuses her discussion, Norway global capitalism’. This has so far mainly been
and the United States, approach transnational discussed in relation to female migrants from
adoption in profoundly different ways. poor countries, such as domestic workers,
Transnational adoption in Norway proceeds childcarers, and others who form part of the
solely through state apparatuses and does not ‘global care chain’. This study highlights, for a
permit prospective adopters to specify rather more privileged group, that the
preferences as to their child’s sex, age, national operations of Japanese subsidiaries in the United

1042 Book reviews
States are substantially enabled by the other American parents and neighbours, but
co-optation of the wives of those who are sent contacts are rather sparse and are not much
on a kaigai chuuzai, a posting abroad. Just how elaborated upon; neither are the thoughts that
crucial the women’s support is becomes evident the women may have regarding American
in cases where the male employee departs for society more generally. Thus, the perspective of
the US alone, and, without his wife’s support, is the study appears to some extent confined to
considered at great risk of becoming ill, having the living rooms where the women’s gatherings
an affair, behaving unwisely, or failing his take place.
assignment altogether. Given the lack of attention afforded to
In a fine-grained ethnographic study, privileged migrants, and women’s roles in the
Kurotani explores what it means for these corporate assignments described here in
women to, as they put it, ‘play their part’. particular, Kurotani’s study is a timely and
Befriending informal groups of Japanese important contribution to an emerging field.
corporate wives in three US cities – one in This holds even more so since rather lofty,
Greater New York, one in the North Carolina speculative studies on a supposed ‘global
research triangle, and a place called ‘Centerville’ capitalist class’ do not include qualitative
in the Midwest – she joins the women for their ethnographic material on the people who may
daytime activities and details their homemaking be part of it. Therefore, in order to highlight
practices, which are carefully geared to links between globalization and domesticity, the
reproduce, as much as possible, a properly living rooms of Japanese expatriate wives in the
‘Japanese’ home abroad. Kurotani eschews any US may be as good a place to start as any.
simplifying approach with regard to how these Anne-Meike Fechter University of Sussex
women may be constrained in their personal life
choices through their capacities as wives and
mothers; instead, she is interested in how the Meyer, Birgit & Annelies Moors (eds).
women inhabit the position of the corporate Religion, media, and the public sphere. vii, 325 pp.,
wife in the US. One key element, it seems, is the illus., bibliogrs. Bloomington: Indiana Univ.
notion of ‘play’, as the women refer to their Press, 2006. £65.00 (cloth), £24.95 (paper)
regular gatherings in each other’s homes, which
provide some relief from domestic chores and, This dense and provocative book is a series of
to some extent, childcare. At the same time, (mostly) professorial papers from a conference
these meetings also constitute means of mutual that took place in 2001. It provides a wide range
support and conduits of information, and thus of evidence from the 1990s of a demonstrably
indirectly benefit the women’s families, and complex conceptual relationship between the
ultimately the corporate employers. Kurotani three elements of the title. The book is
draws an emphatic picture of some of the interdisciplinary, with a strong anthropological
women’s personalities, and sketches how they presence. Although the editors denigrate
respond individually to their ‘long vacation’ – as anthropology’s past contribution to media
they rather euphemistically refer to their time in analysis (unfairly, to my mind), their book
the US. provides ample proof of anthropology’s
Kurotani is not interested merely in how continuing importance to the understanding of
aspects of ‘Japaneseness’ are re-created abroad, media in society and its role in transforming and
however, but also in how these may be reproducing values.
challenged and negotiated through the The collection is divided into three sections.
women’s transnational experience. If anywhere, The first concerns the mediation of religion and
this is perhaps where this study falls short, as its new publics. The case studies include
one does not get a strong sense of how such accounts of cassettes of popular sermons in
transnationality features in their lives. While the Cairo (Hirschkind), Evangelical television stations
children attend American schools, their home and print media in Rio de Janeiro (Birman), an
lives are as much as possible continued in orthodox Jewish publishing house in London
Japanese style, including the provisioning of (Stolow), and a Sephardic radio station in Israel
foodstuffs from Japanese supermarkets. (Lehmann and Siebzehner). The second section
Although their location in the US indirectly examines public religion and the politics of
underwrites much of the families’ everyday lives, difference. The subjects are debates about family
evidence of how this may prompt the women to law in Palestine (Moors), public morality in Mali
challenge their roles remains rather understated. (Schulz), issues of transparency in Indonesian
We are told that the women are interacting with journalism (Spyer), rights claims in South Africa

Book reviews 1043
(Hackett), and indigenous control of media in misunderstanding’ between ‘split publics’

Australia (Ginsburg). This section is the most (Politics after television, 2001, pp. 24–6). Given
heterogeneous, and the engagements with legal this material, the contributors might have
issues of representation and mediation are pushed their case further, to provide alternative
especially stimulating. The final section examines frames of reference. We are given a rich diversity
how religion enters the domain of entertainment of regions and media in terms of counter-publics
and catalyses a realignment of discourses and and pluralisms, but ultimately the collection
interest groups. Case studies include commercial shies away from finding an alternative to the
sponsorship in Ramadan television programming public sphere, although some contributors hint
in Egypt (Armbrust), the theological star of a at more elaborated conceptual frameworks in
popular television chat show in Turkey (Öncü), their full-length books. Ultimately, the strength
auratic presence on Indian television (Dasgupta), of this collection is in its detailed case studies,
the relationship of Hindi films to Hindu and in the questions it raises about mediation,
nationalism (Dwyer), and Pentecostal videos in appropriation, and transformation in society in
South Africa. The thematic sphere of this section general. It will be extremely welcome to anyone
is less clearly defined than the others, and some teaching and researching communication and
chapters deal with issues explored in the first the contemporary life of symbols, whether in
section. Like the other contributions, they relation to religion, media, or culture, within
challenge expectations of neat or predictable anthropology and cognate disciplines.
media effects. Felicia Hughes-Freeland University of Wales
Refreshingly eclectic as a group, the chapters Swansea
also demonstrate eclecticism within allegedly
global systems, for religion refers to global
religions, except in Ginsburg’s account of Ó Cadhla, Stiofán. Civilizing Ireland:
Aboriginal ‘indigenous movements’. Most Ordnance Survey 1824-1842, ethnography,
chapters have a solid foundation in empirical cartography, translation. viii, 280 pp., bibliogr.
research, and demonstrate that anthropological Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007. £47.50
approaches to media have an important role to (cloth), £20.00 (paper)
offset some of the more general theorizing
which casts the world in a Western mould and This book focuses on what can be loosely
fails to recognize the heterogeneity of described as the ethnographic activities of the
(post)modernity. The diversity within religions Ordnance Survey in Ireland during the second
will not surprise most anthropologists, but it is quarter of the nineteenth century. During this
reassuring to see so much evidence of local period the survey accomplished the mapping of
variation despite shared technology and Ireland at the scale of six-inches-to-one-mile,
globalization-speak. This variation is further with a resultant coverage of the island in 1,900
enhanced by the effective visual materials in map sheets. This was its primary task and is
many chapters. Secularization is revealed to be especially significant in an Irish context as it
part of a see-saw operation. The logic of provides a detailed record of the landscape on
(post)modernity and the Baudrillardic the eve of the Great Famine, when rural
simulacrum are challenged by the evidence that population was at its maximum. Widely
mediation, rather than being the nemesis of the regarded as an immense organizational and
real, remains grounded in the ongoing effect of technical achievement, the project was none the
social relations. Its is a tangible world which less the subject of considerable controversy,
encompasses technology, instead of being both at the time and in later years. Much of the
dematerialized by it. debate has been about its cultural baggage,
The book returns us to issues first explored in most notably in how the survey handled the
the excellent collection edited by Hoover and interpretation and spelling of place-names and,
Lundby (Rethinking media, religion and culture, more generally, the linguistic clash between an
1997). But instead of an ‘interrelated web within advancing English and a retreating Irish. Aware
society’, the unifying theme is now Habermas’s of these sensitivities, the survey employed Irish
‘public sphere’, and all the chapters are about language speakers as fieldworkers to undertake
the ‘public presence of mediated religion’ (p. 3). enquiries on local usages. Their findings were
There have been many critiques of the normative recorded in ‘name-books’ and in the letters they
homogenization of the public sphere concept, sent to headquarters in Dublin. Other surveyors
such as Rajagopal’s argument that media also collected a broader category of statistical
reproduce ‘a structured set of and antiquarian information about the areas

1044 Book reviews
they were mapping. For a decade in the 1830s, palimpsestic narrative of imperialism” and its
under the inspiration of the local director, subtext or referent, the subjugated knowledge’
Captain Thomas Larcom, the survey considered (p. 6). Ó Cadhla’s work is thus placed within a
publishing written descriptions, in the form of theoretical and critical setting in which the
parish memoirs, to accompany and elaborate on actions of the Ordnance Survey are seen as
their maps. This initiative soon foundered, with being part of a colonial superstructure.
only one memoir published, and much of the Approving of the dictum of E. Estyn Evans, a
initial framework (in outline ‘hard and logical’ pioneer of Irish folklife studies, that ‘to depend
according to the survey’s meticulous biographer, on documentary evidence alone is to see Ireland
Professor John Andrews) became buried in what through the eyes of her conquerors’, Ó Cadhla
Andrews succinctly calls ‘a shapeless mass of goes on to substantiate his claim that as a result
antiquarian tissue’ (A paper landscape, 1975, ‘the past is re-presented and “the Irish” are other
p. 159). to themselves’ (p. 8).
Though little appeared in print at the time, The themes and ideas being reviewed in this
much material was collected for this abandoned book are clearly interesting and relevant to any
scheme, particularly for areas in Ulster. interpretation of the role of Britain in early and
Fortunately preserved in the Royal Irish mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. However,
Academy, these records have been published readers may find the book wordy and in places
and edited in recent decades by the Institute of more a polemic than a systematic treatment.
Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. Incomplete referencing and rather too many
Another recent initiative, still in progress, has minor factual imprecisions add to the
been the editing and publication on a county shortcomings. Readers unfamiliar with the
basis of the letters written by the survey’s roving subject matter may wish to reconnoitre the topic
cultural specialists. The primary material of the first via chapter 4, ‘Topography ancient and
survey’s non-mapping activities is thus being modern’, in Andrews’s Paper landscape. This
made more widely available. At the same time, well-expressed and reliable overview provides
the early years of the survey itself have been the kind of basic orientation that is lacking, yet
subject to considerable scholarly scrutiny. The still needed, in Civilizing Ireland.
above-mentioned comprehensive study of the Arnold Horner University College Dublin
nineteenth-century survey by John Andrews, A
paper landscape, remains unrivalled. But to it can
now be added the work of Gillian Doherty on Robben, Antonius C. G. M. (ed.). Death,
the memoir project (The Irish Ordnance Survey: mourning, and burial: a cross-cultural reader. x,
history, culture and memory, 2004), and a 322 pp., fig., bibliogrs. Oxford: Blackwell
growing body of studies seeking to ‘read’, and Publishing, 2004. £60.00 (cloth), £19.99 (paper)
perhaps deconstruct, not just the survey and its
maps but also its wider historical context (e.g. Generations of anthropologists have tried, from
Mary Hamer in Textual Practice 3 (1989), a number of distinct analytic perspectives, to
184–201). Beyond the confines of academic work, advance our understanding of the ways in which
the cultural challenges of the early years of the humans conceptualize death and respond to its
survey have caught the imagination of the brute presence in their lives. From Van Gennep’s
playwright Brian Friel in his widely acclaimed turn-of-the-twentieth-century observations on
play Translations (1980). the tripartite structure of death rites to Nancy
Now Stiofán Ó Cadhla offers his own Scheper-Hughes’s provocative account of death
wide-ranging contribution focusing on the prose without grieving among impoverished Brazilian
generated by and for the survey. According to mothers, anthropologists writing about death
him, ‘The extant memoirs ... provide a unique have offered powerful insights into its social,
example of both the ethnographic aspects of the psychological, and political underpinnings in a
survey and the evolutionary colonialist discourse range of societies. The present volume, an
informing its conceptualization and practice in excellent collection of twenty-three previously
the field’ (p. 20). published texts on various aspects of death in
Across seven chapters, Ó Cadhla wrestles Western and non-Western societies, includes
with ethnography, cartography, and translation some of the most important writings along
– themes which he considers focus on the these lines.
cultural, spatial, and symbolic dimensions of life. There are two key strengths to this
He adds that this combination is used ‘to locate ‘cross-cultural reader’: one is the quality of the
and contextualize what Spivak calls “the chapters, for the text includes a bevy of highly

Book reviews 1045
important, conceptually fresh writings, ranging universalist, and yet the thought involved, the
from seminal and still relevant texts such as nature of the insights on hand, is not necessarily
Robert Hertz’s ‘A contribution to the study of more profound.
the collective representation of death’ to more Robben, the volume’s editor, has organized
modern classics such as Renato Rosaldo’s ‘Grief the assortment well, placing the essays within
and a headhunter’s rage’, to an excerpt from six parts: conceptualizations of death; death and
Scheper-Hughes’s ethnography ‘Death without dying; uncommon death; grief and mourning;
weeping.’ The second strength lies in the mortuary rituals; and remembrance and
diversity of the writings at hand: questions of regeneration. He introduces the entire volume
death, grief, mourning, burial, remembrance, with an essay that situates the readings within
and mortuary rituals are explored from a an informed context, noting along the way how
number of perspectives – social structuralist, future anthropological studies of death might
political economic, psychocultural, comparative, proceed. Of note, he argues, quite legitimately,
historical. Most of the authors are that the anthropology of death ‘can develop
anthropologists, but also included are a few further into at least six directions, namely
signal historical (Ariès’s ‘The hour of our death’) critique, comparison, self-reflexivity,
and psychological musings (Ernest Becker’s ‘The objectification, death-centeredness, and
terror of death’ and Robert Jay Lifton and Eric dialogue’. As should be now evident, several of
Olson’s ‘Symbolic immortality’). On the the texts are abridged versions of the original
anthropological side, earlier, foundational publications, but the omissions do not really
statements by Van Gennep, Malinowski, detract from the conceptual force of the
Evans-Pritchard, Radcliffe-Browne, Lienhardt, and originals. All told, Death, mourning, and burial
Fabian coincide with more recent treatments. makes for a superb, one-of-a-kind source book
Many of the latter draw on in-depth for courses on death and funeral rites from an
ethnographic research to advance their anthropological perspective, and for any social
arguments. Ellen Badone, Anne S. Strauss and scientists interested in reading into such matters.
María Cátedra consider aspects of dying and Robert Desjarlais Sarah Lawrence College
death in, respectively, Brittany, France, Northern
Cheyenne society, and the Asturias region of
northern Spian. In similar terms, Loring M. vom Bruck, Gabriele & Barbar a
Danforth examines metaphors of mediation Bodenhorn (eds). The anthropology of names
evident in Greek funeral laments; Beth Conklin and naming. xii, 290 pp., tables, bibliogr.
details the cultural logic of the mortuary Cambridge: Univ. Press, 2006. £45.00 (cloth)
cannibalism once practised by Wari people of
the Brazilian Amazon; Hikaru Suzuki sheds light This collection of thoughtful essays offers an
on the economic and socio-political dimensions anthropologically grounded discussion of how
of modern Japanese mortuary rituals; and names are bestowed, changed, shared, coveted,
Jonathan Parry inquires into the approaches of rejected, used, and sometimes abused in a wide
death practised by Aghori ascetics. range of ethnographic contexts. It provides an
Other chapters address issues of direct excellent array of case studies, from high-ranking
relevance to modern Western societies. Margaret Yemeni Imams to African American slaves who
Lock considers the impact of Western medical must not only relinquish their given names but
technology on definitions of death, life, and also answer to demeaning or absurd monikers,
personhood in North American and Japan. and many illustrative examples in between. The
Katherine Verdery considers why the corpses of essays examine the salience of names at life-cycle
political leaders can often work as potent, moments that vary culturally and include birth,
multivalent symbols. And Antonius C.G.M. puberty, marriage, illness, and death. Each
Robben documents the pained responses to underscores that names are best understood for
political violence, disappearance, and reburial in how they play a critical role in shaping dynamics
the wake of Argentina’s Dirty War. The above of gender, sexuality, religion, power, place, birth,
glosses indicate the range of tropics covered in death, and the body. The volume illustrates how,
the book, and suggest that the anthropology of as sites of struggle, names are never free of the
death is a decidedly mutifarious field indeed. In politics that shape them, and naming is often
reading all of the chapters chronologically – in the terrain where social dynamics are mediated
terms of their original dates of publication, that and transformed. This relationship between
is – one finds the analytic prisms becoming name and person/place is one of sign and
increasingly more precise, variegated, less referent that plays out in everyday discourse,

1046 Book reviews
historical narrative, and material culture in both While the chapters flow nicely as arranged,
small-scale and urban societies. explicit section headings that group the essays
The chapters cohere around key issues thematically could highlight the collection’s
outlined by vom Bruck and Bodenhorn in their contributions more substantively. For instance,
introduction, including how names may be using key topics identified in the introduction –
more than arbitrary signs; how names are especially gender, religion, or power – to order
linked to various dimensions of personhood; the essays would make the book more readily
and the symbolic and expressive dimensions of accessible to readers with specific interests. In its
this social process. The editors draw on both current configuration, chapters that discuss
cultural and linguistic anthropological theory to names in urban regions of the United States,
outline their thematic areas of study, as do South Africa, and Yemen bookend studies based
several of the contributors. The body is a in small-scale societies in Papua New Guinea,
special point of focus throughout the book; Madagascar, Amazonia, Alaska, and Mongolia.
indeed, some of the most compelling Ultimately the book offers a far more complex
ethnographic discussion centres on the often and nuanced approach than a comparison of
overshadowed connection between the semiotic naming in small- versus large-scale societies, and
and the material. Such a sub-disciplinary an organization that transcends such a divide
bridge, which happens infrequently, is a most might better serve the collection. This minor
welcome part of this rigorous examination of point does not, however, detract from the overall
the philosophical, semiotic, and political merit of this timely collection. In an era when
underpinnings of names that guides us from names act simultaneously as markers of identity
antiquity and into the present. Rather than and tools of surveillance, this edited volume
group the chapters thematically, the editors provides much material for thought and
have arranged them such that adjacent ones comparison on the regional significance of
articulate topically. Editor commentary prefaces names. Indeed, this welcome set of essays will
every chapter and helps to situate each vis-á-vis be of interest to both cultural and linguistic
others. These interludes are especially helpful anthropologists in search of a deeper answer to
when reading the entire volume and the age-old question of what is in a name.
contemplating different incarnations of the Shalini Shankar Northwestern University
book’s central themes.
Identity is a focus that unites the collection’s
diverse ethnographic settings and sociolinguistic Whitehouse, Harvey & Robert N.
customs, and the essays approach this concept McCauley (eds). Mind and religion:
through complex, grounded analyses of naming psychological and cognitive foundations of
practices. Chapters by Linda Layne, Andre religiosity. xxx, 248 pp., figs, tables, bibliogrs.
Iteanu, Barbara Bodenhorn, and Carolyn Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2005. £19.99
Humphrey examine the societal implications of (paper)
who deserves a name, when one receives a
name, and the implications of not being named All thirteen contributors to this edited book
altogether. Maurice Bloch’s and Michael focus on evaluating Harvey Whitehouse’s
Lambek’s chapters analyse the philosophical ‘modes of religiosity’ theory, which assumes that
underpinnings of naming and modes of address there are two fundamental types of religious
as they occur among the living and deceased in systems. First, there are ‘doctrinal’ systems
different regions of Madagascar, while Stephen involving institutionalized leadership roles,
Hugh-Jones offers insights on these subjects elaborately organized and written-down
from Northwest Amazonia. Susan Benson theologies, and predictable and repetitive rituals.
historicizes contemporary African American Second, there are ‘imagistic’ systems involving
names by examining slavery-era West African leadership by inspired and charismatic
naming practices, the atrocities of naming individuals, and rituals that are exciting,
prevalent in the Atlantic slave trade, and recent unpredictable, and not frequently repeated. Each
strategies to reclaim name choice and bestowal. mode is assumed to exploit a different set of
The ways in which names are etched on bodies cognitive processes in the minds of those to
and landscapes in papers by Gabriele vom Bruck whom religious concepts and teachings are
and Thomas Blom Hansen speak to questions of transmitted. For example, the repetitive rituals of
gender, race, class, and place. Together, the the doctrinal mode are expected to elicit
chapters cover an impressive breadth and scope processes enabling explicit memory, while the
of perspectives on names and naming. infrequent but arousing rituals of the imagistic

Book reviews 1047
mode are expected to involve episodic memory. exegetical reflection about that ritual. Results
In theory, if we can recognize the mode of a supported the prediction: subjects who had
particular religious system, then we should be stronger emotional responses to the ritual were
able to make accurate predictions about the likely to attribute meaning to a greater number
types of cognitive processes involved in the of ritual actions, and to draw more analogies
evolution and maintenance of that while expressing this meaning. This chapter is
system. certainly one of the book’s high points, as it
The book is divided into three sections. The presents interesting results that are relevant to
first deals with theoretical considerations, the the debates at hand. Moreover, reading the
second with testing the theory and the third descriptions of the rituals involved in these
with the theory’s wider applications. In the first creatively designed experiments is in itself highly
section, Robert A. Hinde and Mathew Day each entertaining.
contribute (in separate chapters) broad and In the final section of the book, Ilkka
somewhat loosely organized discussions of Pyysiäinen discusses religious conversion in
theoretical considerations about Whitehouse’s terms of the constructs of the doctrinal and
work. E. Thomas Lawson offers a more targeted imagistic modes, while Jesper Sørensen
commentary on cultural transmission in the considers the role of charismatic authority in the
context of the modes theory, including a brief establishment of religious movements, as well as
review of experimental research on this topic, the cognitive effects of ritual, and perceptions
and Todd Tremlin sketches a dual-process about the purpose and meaning of ritual.
(rational and experiential) model of religious Finally, D. Jason Sloane analyses the
thought. Finally, Pascal Boyer’s chapter in the reoccurrence of free-will problems in religious
section, in which he reviews his own ‘standard systems cross-culturally, and Whitehouse himself
model’ of religious thought and critiques concludes with a response to the other
Whitehouse in light of this model, is particularly contributors’ comments on his work.
outstanding. More than any other contributor, In summary, the main weakness of this book
Boyer successfully applies the logic of is that while many contributors comment on the
evolutionary psychology in order to distinguish need for empirical tests of the modes of
the cognitive adaptations that produce religiosity religiosity theory, only one chapter actually
from aspects of religion that arise as by-products presents original data. Nevertheless, for anyone
of these adaptations. In this regard his analysis interested in Whitehouse’s work, this book
of Whitehouse is especially illuminating, for provides an excellent set of commentaries, and
example when he discusses the doctrinal mode for those interested in cognitive approaches to
as a correlate of cognitive by-products such as religion more generally, it offers a good
guilds and literacy. overview.
Several first-section contributors emphasize Michael E. Price Brunel University
the need for research that tests the predictions of
the modes theory, and the book’s second
section takes this issue to heart. Justin Barrett Material culture and archaeolgy
draws up a list of twelve hypotheses derived
from the theory that are most in need of
empirical testing. Such lists are helpful in terms Brown, David H. Santería enthroned: art,
of clarifying the criteria for falsification of the ritual, and innovation in an Afro-Cuban religion.
theory’s predictions, and may inspire others to xx, 413 pp., figs, plates, illus., bibliogr. London,
conduct the suggested research. However, Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2003. £27.00
empirical research is more easily said than done, (paper)
and it would be reassuring if this section
contained more chapters that actually presented Santería enthroned is a long-awaited work; an
data. In fact, only one chapter in this section erudite, massive, and luxurious volume, drawing
(and in the whole book) contains original together anthropology, history, material culture
empirical research: Rebekah A. Richert, Harvey and visual culture in an extremely sophisticated
Whitehouse, and Emma Stewart describe a pair way. Brown brings a fresh look in a field that too
of experiments in which university students easily falls in repetitive debates on origins,
participated in ritual-like activities. These authenticity, and the ‘invention of tradition’.
experiments were designed to test the modes One of the main contributions that Brown is
theory’s prediction that rituals eliciting stronger making is to put images at the centre of his
emotional reactions will motivate more elaborate argument. This is not just an art history of

1048 Book reviews
Santería, describing the iconography of altars; terms, we can see the use of elaborate and
the author is also interested in showing how the luxurious clothing, furniture, and Catholic images
active relation between religious objects and that look ‘European’ to the outsider less in terms
images and practitioners transforms religious of iconographic authenticity to Santería’s African
practice and discourse. Images here are not just roots than as indexes of powers. The Orichá
examples of myths, but agents in shrines, the ‘thrones’, are seats of power, and as
transformations of Santería. such, their constitutive elments are indexes of
The central issue of the book is changes and power, not just authentic African objects. If
innovations in Afro-Cuban religions. The choice power in Cuba was indexed in ceramic, elaborate
of words is not casual: Brown is talking not just embroideries, satin robes, and baroque furniture
about creolization, transculturation, or mixture, and images, it made sense that these indexes of
but also about innovation and change, the power became indexes of the Orichás in the
formation of something new and thrones. This creole taste is perfectly faithful to
unprecedented: a historical process. the spirit of Santería’s African forebears while
For that purpose, Brown makes a careful and changing its visual and material culture at the
well-documented historical account of the same time. Being indexes of power, this creole
formation of what nowadays has come to be and baroque material and visual culture also
identified with Santería in Cuba. Since colonial influenced changes and innovations in the ritual
times, a recurrent topic in this incipient cultural and the cosmology of Santería.
formation is ‘royalty’: the figures of the festival On the other hand, the increasing influence
kings and queens of the cabildos, and their of people who look at religion like Brown
ambiguous relation with established authority, in originally did – as an American intellectual
a complex negotiation of power relations. The looking for ‘origins’ – has produced a reaction
theme of ‘royalty’ is still very much present in to this creole aesthetic, a revival of ‘Pure African’
contemporary Santería: aristocratic discourses of rituals and material culture. None the less this
spiritual ancestrality are central to the anti-syncretistic movement operates with the
transmission of authority and power. And yet same mechanisms that Santería has always used:
these narratives are punctuated by constant assessing the ‘new’ as ‘older’ than the ‘old’,
change and transformation in practice. Santería closer to the royal root. In this masterful volume,
has always changed precisely by reassessing its Brown has skilfully shown how innovation and
regal ancestrality, the ‘new’ is always defined in tradition are, in many ways, reversible terms.
terms of being ‘older’ than the ‘old’, more Roger Sansi Goldsmiths College
traditional and more authentic, more regal. In
this sense, Santería is faithful to the dialectics of
ritual and kingship in Yoruba religion, as Levinson, Stephen C. & Pierre Jaisson
described, for example, in Andrew Apter’s Black (eds). Evolution and culture. xvii, 296 pp., figs,
critics and kings (1992). illus., bibliogrs. London, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
In the second part of the book, Brown Press, 2006. £48.95 (cloth), £22.95 (paper)
addresses royal iconography in modern Santería
altars and what he calls the ‘creole taste’. Central What is culture? Is it a truly human
to his argument is the question that surprised phenomenon? If so, when did it evolve and
Brown when he was first exposed to Santería what was the main evolutionary mechanism that
rituals and altars: the use of what he identified triggered it? These issues are addressed in this
back then as ‘European’ images and material book, which is loosely based on the proceedings
culture. His informants, in their turn, were of the Fyssen symposium on ‘evolution and
surprised by this identification: what for Brown culture’ that was held in 1999. It comprises a
was ‘European’ was ‘Cuban’ for them, or simply collection of thirteen chapters written by
common images and objects from their past, contributors from the fields of physical and
from their history. The soperas, soup tureens that evolutionary anthropology, cultural
contain the aché, the sacred power of the gods or anthropology, ethology, psycholinguistics,
orichás, have replaced the African calabashes, like evolutionary biology, primate behaviour, brain
Catholic saints have replaced African images. For research, and evolutionary psychology. The book
the practitioners of Santería, this is not a is divided into two central themes: the
contradiction or a loss in authenticity: the sopera emergence of culture in evolution; and brain,
is not only a functional replacement but it also cognition, and evolution. The former focuses on
adds an index of power, soperas being status the place of culture in the greater evolutionary
symbols in post-colonial Cuba. In the same scheme. A central issue is therefore the place of

Book reviews 1049
both human and non-human culture in modern before language and that foundation of the
evolutionary theory. Levinson (chap. 1) provides latter lies in an arithmetic relationship between
a stimulating discussion on the role of real numbers and integers. Premack and Hauser
mechanisms such as kin selection, group conclude this volume with a chapter which
selection, and sexual selection in hominid addresses the ultimate question as to why
evolution, and more specifically in relation to animals do not have culture. They state that ‘the
cultural evolution. In chapter 3, Foley addresses function of human culture is to clarify what
the issue of the emergence of culture with a people value, what they take seriously in their
particular emphasis on hominid cognitive daily lives, what they will fight for and use to
evolution, in relation to the evolution of exclude or include others in their groups’. They
technological advancements such as tool-making believe no aspect in animal behaviour comes
traditions. In chapter 4, Boehm addresses the close to this aspect of human culture.
interface between social, cultural, and All in all, this volume provides a fascinating
evolutionary mechanisms during the later stages account of cultural evolution. However, the
of human evolution. In chapter 5, Boyd and contributors’ accounts in fact tackle a wide array
Richerson assess the issue of the evolution of of loosely related topics which reflect the
human co-operative systems in relation to interdisciplinary nature of the symposium.
theories that explain human cultural group Consequently, the reader must be aware that
selection and moralistic reciprocity. Dennett this is for the most part a highly theoretical
(chap. 6) discusses cultural transmission volume and that the audience is likely to be
mechanisms in the context of both genetic and academics who are interested in this subject. At
non-genetic transmission theories. In the the same time, the somewhat convoluted
following chapter, Sperber calls for a account of some of the contributors reflects the
reconceptualization of the study of cultural complexity of the issue at hand. Thus, Tomasello
evolution and suggests that scientists should concludes his chapter with the claim that
develop a naturalistic approach to culture by
examining cognitive causal chains of events in a any adequate theory of human cognition
manner that is somewhat similar to the methods must provide some reasonable account of
and rationale applied in the field of medical the processes of sociogenesis in historical
epidemiology. and ontogenetic time that intervened
The second part of the book examines the between the human genotype and the
relationship between the evolution of culture human phenotype. This is quite simply
and evolution of cognition. It opens with uniquely human material and symbolic
Dunbar’s chapter on brain cognition and the artifacts, which in turn have created an
evolution of culture (chap. 8), which is followed evolutionarily unique cultural niche for
by Singer’s assessment (chap. 9) of the human cognitive ontogeny, which in turn
neurobiological aspects of cultural evolution. In has created an evolutionarily new form of
chapter 10, Tomasello juxtaposes the coevolution cognition that relies on intersubjective and
of the biological, social, and cognitive aspects perspectival cognitive representations.
that led to the unique evolution of human
Did the course of cultural evolution involve a
culture. He proposes that culture evolved by a
tangled complex chain of unique historical
‘ratchet-effect’ mechanism in a manner such that
events? Or is it possible to pinpoint the ultimate
each change is irreversible and hence is a
evolutionary mechanism that triggered it? It is
progress towards a more sophisticated and
left for readers to decide.
complex system. Tomasello argues that the
Ron Pinhasi Roehamptan University
cognitive adaptation of anatomically modern
humans accounts for the differences between
modern human and primate cognition. The next
two chapters examine a rather specific set of Stanish, Charles & Brian S. Bauer (eds).
theories which are to some extent tangential to Archaeological research on the Islands of the Sun
the study of cultural evolution. In chapter 11 and Moon, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia: final results from
Hauser examines the evolution of moral systems the Proyecto Tiksi Kjarka. xv, 224 pp. maps, figs,
and the aspects of co-operation and inhibitions tables, illus., bibliogr. Los Angeles: Cotsen Inst.
in human and primate development and Archaeology at UCLA, 2004. £24.00 (paper)
learning, and in chapter 12 Gallistel, Gelman,
and Cordes propose a theory that the system of In Archaeological research on the Islands of the Sun
arithmetic reasoning with real numbers evolved and Moon, Charles Stanish and Brian Bauer have

1050 Book reviews
tactfully assembled key results of an impressive inhabitants and solar cult, and roads lined with
project of archaeological research in an ritual platforms facilitated pilgrimage by
important region of the central South American connecting the south end of the site near the
Andes. The project was conducted in 1994-6 mainland to the Titikala.
under the auspices of the National Science Succeeding chapters detail results of
Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for excavations at specific sites on the islands of the
Anthropological Research, the Field Museum of Sun and Moon. Chapter 3 describes results of
Natural History, and other public and private excavation at four Inca sites in the Titikala
institutions. sanctuary area: one a likely residence for
The volume includes everything one would sanctuary attendants; the Chincana, a conjoined
hope for in a monograph: clear writing, ample temple, residence for chosen women, and
data, logical organization in their presentation, storehouse; Kasapata, a probable place for
and many illustrations and photos. In six ceremony and festival; and the Titikala sanctuary
chapters and one appendix, the volume itself, a documented place for burying offerings
successfully outlines the contributions of prior that, excavations confirmed, have been
research in the Lake Titicaca region of Bolivia, extensively looted. Chapter 4 describes
in relation to the objectives and results of excavations on Tikani, a ridge northwest of and
research of the Tiksi Kjarka project that is visible from Titikala. Research confirmed that two
summarized here. structures on the ridge that frame the June
The primary goals of their project, as stated Solstice sunset, as seen from Titikala, indeed
in the opening chapter, were (1) to evaluate the served as solstice markers.
accuracy of historical documents regarding Inca Matthew Seddon’s chapter 5 is a volume
occupation of the islands in AD 1400-1533, and gem. A summary of his dissertation at University
(2) to determine whether their significance for of Chicago, it presents results of excavation at
the Inca developed from earlier cultural Chucaripupata, the site near Titikala that served
traditions. Sixteenth-century chroniclers as ritual centre during the Tiwanaku period.
indicated that the islands were among the most These excavations confirm occupation near the
important pilgrimage sites for the Inca and that sacred rock during the Upper Formative, and
they housed major temple complexes tended by that the area was considered sacred as part of
priests, resettled colonists, and ‘chosen women’ the Tiwanaku state, if not earlier. Excavations
who dedicated their lives to the sun and moon also demonstrate dynamic transformations at
cults. Indeed, Inca myth claimed that Lake Chucaripupata as its interaction with Tiwanaku
Titicaca was a place of cosmic origins, and that intensified over time, eventually concretized in
the sun first arose behind a sacred rock, the an elaborate platform complex associated with
Titikala, perched on the north side of the Island ceramic wares for ritual consumption and a
of the Sun. formal storage complex for food and ritual
After a brief introduction to the islands, paraphernalia. These results correspond nicely to
previous research about them, and project goals evidence for similar transformations at Tiwanaku
in chapter 1, Stanish and Bauer summarize and other affiliated settlements.
results of their archaeological investigation of Chapter 6 presents results of excavation in
settlement history on the Island of the Sun. They the elaborate complex of Iñak Uyu on the
find that the island was inhabited by the Late Island of the Moon, eight kilometres to the
Archaic period (circa 2000 BC), and that during southeast. Historically documented as housing a
the Upper Formative (500 BC-AD 500), temple, priests, and chosen women dedicated
settlement became complex and a ritual site may to a parallel moon cult, Iñak Uyu includes
have been established near the sacred rock. some of the best-preserved monumental ruins
Complexity increased during the Tiwanaku in the Andes. Excavations confirmed the ritual
period (AD 500-1100), as a regional political importance of the site and island for the Inca,
centre was established on the south side of the and reveal suggestive evidence that it may have
island and a ritual centre on the north, near the been a ritual focus for the Tiwanaku
sacred rock. The island and sacred rock waned in as well.
importance during the Altiplano Period (AD Stanish and Bauer’s excellent monograph
1100-1400), but re-emerged as pilgrimage loci complements their more general co-authored
under the Inca. Elaborate monumental volume synthesizing this research, Ritual and
complexes were constructed near Titikala, pilgrimage in the ancient Andes (2001). While I
farming settlements took advantage of prime recommend the latter to those interested in a
agricultural land to support the island’s broad understanding of the islands and their

Book reviews 1051
past significance, I highly recommend the understanding the world. Cultures that may
present monograph as a companion that details appear distinct are often revealed as connected
the results of an important archaeological by technologies and systems of circulating
project in the highland Andes. goods and images, obliging the ethnographer to
John Janusek Vanderbilt University question received ideas about ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Abu-Lughod’s response to the problem is to
practise a mobile and multi-sited ethnography of
Social anthropology people’s lives, regarding television as but one
aspect of the fields she is exploring. With such a
method, the circulation of ‘cultural meanings,
Abu-Lughod, Lila. Dramas of nationhood: the objects and identities’ come into view, as well as
politics of television in Egypt. xvii, 319 pp., illus., the connections between different sites (p. 20).
bibliogr. London, Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, Pre-eminent among the connections revealed is
2004. £15.50 (paper) the national character of television, or the
promotion of particular ideas of the nation on
Modern media have a deceptive simplicity. They the medium.
are technological innovations and have taken Abu-Lughod examines the dramatic Egyptian
shape in a historical context where capitalism television serials of the 1990s, especially the
and democracy are the dominant economic and popular and high-quality productions shown
political forces, and as with any other during the Ramadan months, and rerun later.
technology, communications media are regarded Her main aim in the book is to examine national
as instrumental to the prevailing forces. television’s efforts to stitch audiences together;
Moreover, in modern societies, a widespread her analysis reveals that it is inherently a political
belief has taken hold that promoting effort, negotiating numerous internal divisions of
communication diminishes the possibility of religion, location, gender, and class.
misunderstanding and even of inequality. She provides an extremely rich and detailed
But neither capitalism nor democracy is a chronicle of the major serials in the context of
simple thing; they both have multiple tendencies their production, as well as an examination of
that interact and complicate each other, or, as the tensions between Nasserite secularism and
Lila Abu-Lughod puts it, ‘the vectors of emergent Islamism amongst the intellectuals
modernity crisscross’ (p. 132). And promoting responsible for producing these serials. Although
communications may of course trigger conflict Abu-Lughod has chosen not to make the issues
just as easily as it may inspire peace; if people of secularism and religious nationalism central to
understand each other’s intentions better, there her book, the ‘dramas of nationhood’ and ‘the
is no guarantee what the outcome will be. politics of television in Egypt’ are fought out
Communication technologies are indeed more specifically over these issues than they are
instruments, of corporations and of public or over new capitalist aesthetics and modes of
state agencies, but their consequences are not consumption, or styles of authenticity in subject
exhausted by their instrumentality. People are formation, although these other issues are
liable to put them to unpredictable uses; this examined in her book as well.
openness is one of the reasons why they find Drawing on densely textured ethnography
mass media attractive. The results, when one performed over more than a decade, with
inquires into the meaning and effects of audiences ranging from urban viewers to
something like television, is a complicated and villagers in Upper Egypt, Abu-Lughod asks how
non-coherent series of acts, events, and mass media may be participating in the
intentions. reconfiguration of religion in Egypt, and whether
For an anthropologist, however, television religion can be understood without reference to
can provide a useful means of opening up the nation-state. These are hardly academic
methodological debates about models of culture questions in Egypt, of course, as the 1981
and ethnographic fieldwork. The prevalence of assassination of Anwar Sadat by Islamists
television helps to point out that ‘culture’ is dramatically underscored. Strangely,
never a given but has always been mediated, Abu-Lughod points out, until 1993, there was no
and has always relied on situated, material treatment of Islamic identity on Egyptian
instruments and practices, to fabricate outcomes television, owing to the influence of Nasser’s
that are contingent on a given historical and secular developmentalism.
political context. This implies that ‘culture’ Thereafter, Abu-Lughod discerns three
ceases to be the privileged gateway for strategies on the part of Egyptian television for

1052 Book reviews
dealing with religious extremism: discrediting inter-ethnic civil war between its politically
terrorists; modelling Coptic-Muslim unity; and, dominant Sinhalese majority and
somewhat serendipitously, offering ‘traditional’ separatist-minded Tamil minority, and of
rural values as an alternative to Islamism. deep-seated intra-communal tensions between
Implicitly, one of the strategies involved creating its urban elites and an underemployed rural
a distinction between good and bad Muslims, population that culminated, in 1988-90, in a
between authentic religion and ignorant, bloody civil war between the Sri Lankan
backward religion – the latter being represented government and the communist-nationalist JVP
by the fundamentalists. In the process, the (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, or People’s
Egyptian state has shifted quite far from its Liberation Front). This sad history doubly
original Nasserite moorings, and now attracts exposed to violence the communities that
criticism for appeasing Islamists, Abu-Lughod Argenti-Pillen studied: first, because the tactics
points out. used by both sides in the government-JVP war
This book will prove a deep reservoir of frequently resulted in male neighbours killing or
insights and information for those looking to betraying each other; and, second, because the
understand the cultural nuances of villages became reservoirs of army recruits for
modernization in Egypt. What emerges the Sri Lankan government’s long war with
unmistakably is that an object that appears to be Tamil separatists. Unsurprisingly, this extended
part of popular culture is deeply involved in exposure to war attracted the attention of social
national pedagogy, and thus is thoroughly scientists and mental health professionals
political in character: associated with those transnational NGOs that
specialize in alleviating or ‘treating’ chronic
The urgency with which television serials violence as some kind of pathology. It is the
are trying to shore up a national identity is dangerous interaction between these
surely related to the weakening of that communities and this transnational violence
strong sense of the nation that had been industry that lies at the core of this book.
produced a few decades ago ... If Egypt is As earlier publications reveal, Argenti-Pillen
one of those places where, as [Ulf] has long taken an ethnographic interest in the
Hannerz puts it, ‘the national may have community of transnational mental health
become more hollow than it was,’ it is also professionals – epitomized by the International
the place where the political regime in Society for Traumatic Stress Studies – that
power and the mass media instruments at globally distribute a discourse about violence
its disposal are working quite hard to fill in that tends to see conflicts like Sri Lanka’s in
that hollowness. (p. 160) terms of a single pathology: post-traumatic
stress disorder (or PTSD). PTSD, a diagnostic
Abu-Lughod demonstrates in this rich and
category originally created in the 1970s to treat
compelling book how television works to ‘fill in
returning Vietnam veterans, is a powerful
that hollowness’ of the nation.
explanatory tool for two, interrelated reasons.
Arvind Rajagopal Woodrow Wilson International
First, its aetiology suggests that violence like that
Center for Scholars
found in Sri Lanka is self-generating. That is, in
theory, since violence begets PTSD, and PTSD
damages people in ways that predispose them
Argenti-Pillen, Ale x. Masking terror: how to commit more violence, what results is an
women contain violence in southern Sri Lanka. xiii, always upwardly spiralling cycle of violence that,
240 pp., figs, illus., bibliogr. Philadelphia: Univ. without intervention by PTSD counsellors, will
Pennsylvania Press, 2003. £35.00 (cloth) never end. Second, given this, the political cause
of violence is theoretically irrelevant to its
Alex Argenti-Pillen has crafted an excellent study PTSD-driven continuance and, hence, to its
of violence and its containment in a number of treatment – a feature which renders what
Sinhalese ‘rural slum’ communities in Sri Lanka. Argenti-Pillen calls ‘the discourse on trauma’
What may rankle some (though not me) is her useful in transnational contexts where any
carefully researched ethnographic argument that discussion of national or geopolitical politics
Western-style mental health efforts to alleviate might be suspect by the powers that be.
the consequences of violence there actually may Argenti-Pillen, for her part, is doubly critical
be doing more harm than good. Sri Lanka, of of the discourse on trauma. First, she is rightly
course, has experienced more than twenty years suspicious of the way trauma discourses
of civil agony, the result both of a bitter depoliticize the violence they would alleviate,

Book reviews 1053
pointing out that a more likely source of the ‘fearless’ woman seemed ‘empowered’ and
‘dehumanizing’ mindset that trauma experts were, thus, the ones selected to be trained as
attribute to PTSD are the explicitly local PTSD counsellors so that they, in turn,
dehumanizing counter-insurgency tactics (such could ‘empower’ other woman by liberating
as ‘hooding’ and torture) taught by Western them, too, from the ‘denial’ in their talk of
experts to non-Western counter-insurgency yakshas and their gaze. To Argenti-Pillen, then,
forces. Second, and more central, Argenti-Pillen this strange alliance between ‘the discourse on
claims that the discourse on trauma ignores, and trauma’ and ‘fearless woman’ in the dismantling
is eroding, how Sinhalese communities already of the violence-containing discourses of
contain violence. According to Argenti-Pillen’s southern Sri Lanka is a nightmare waiting, or
detailed ethnography, the woman of the ‘rural already beginning, to happen. This is a chilling
slums’ she studied ‘traditionally’ limited violence thesis one hopes is not true. But Argenti-Pillen’s
by recourse to a gendered discourse about book is so superbly researched and carefully
non-Buddhist spirits (or yaksha), and their ‘gaze argued, I think we can ill afford to dismiss
of the wild’, that short-circuited the cycle of her fear.
male violence. According to this discourse, Mark Whitaker University of South Carolina
woman experience diseases ‘of the terrified
heart’ caused by the yakshas’ ‘gaze of the wild’
that can be alleviated only by ‘cleansing rituals’ Boissevain, Jeremy. H –al Kirkop: a village in
– some domestic, some (such as the well-known Malta. xv, 200 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr.
tovil) involving much of the local community. Malta: Midsea Books, 2006. (paper)
These rituals work, first, by identifying and
isolating the always-local enemy responsible for Jeremy Boissevain is something of an institution
making one vulnerable to the gaze of the wild; in Malta. He is known mainly for his work on the
second, by ‘re-sealing’ the borders between practice and politics of the ever-popular feasts,
families that generally keep the gaze at bay. and his Saints and fireworks (1965, subsequent
During the civil war this ‘gaze of the wild’ editions) has in some way or another been
discourse thus short-circuited the potential for assimilated by a wide range of people. In
an upwardly spiralling cycle of violence by international scholarship, his key moment was of
limiting revenge to the single male individuals course Friends of friends (1974), which contained
responsible for given acts of violence. As the kernel of his seminal theoretical work on
evidence of this, Argenti-Pillen points to an networks. In Malta, however, it is saints and
all-male body count and the continued politics that count, followed closely by his more
co-residence of victim and perpetrator families recent research on tourism and environmentalist
after the war. movements.
But the war also produced a local It is therefore hardly surprising that leading
counter-discourse. Some woman who lost Maltese publishers Midsea have decided to go
husbands or sons to the violence became ahead with a third edition of his H –al Kirkop (first
‘fearless’, claiming they – like many young men published in the Case Studies in Cultural
and soldiers – no longer believed in yakshas or Anthropology series in 1969 as Hal-Farrug), a
their gaze (or even that humans had now classical ‘politics, religion, kinship, and
become so bad that yakshas were now afraid of economy’ – in this case in that order –
them). Such ‘fearless’ woman, no longer bound ethnography of a small village in the south of
by the complex sociolinguistic rules of the the island. There are several reasons why the
discourse on the wild, could ignore the book is still relevant (and therefore worth
boundaries put in place by its cleaning rituals, buying) today.
and could thus feel, and teach their children, a First, it is relevant as the milestone of
generalized hatred of their enemies more in line ‘Maltese’ anthropology it most certainly is.
with the modernized discourses on violence When the book was written, social science was
found, according to Argenti-Pillen, in still in an embryonic stage at the University of
mainstream Sri Lankan party politics with their Malta, and then only in the shape of a sociology
talk of ‘communist insurgents’ and ‘Tamil of secularization heavily patronized by the
terrorists’ as inherently disposable categories of Catholic Church. Following Boissevain’s
people. The potential for violence to become pioneering lectures in the 1970s and 1980s, social
more ‘modernist’ and unlimited for children anthropology was established as an official
raised by such mothers is obvious to degree-awarding university programme in the
Argenti-Pillen. But to Western-style PTSD experts, early 1990s. For the burgeoning number of

1054 Book reviews
students (including foreign ones) studying us how our discipline has changed, the author
anthropology in Malta today, H –al Kirkop is a confesses his guilt at living in a comfortable
must-read, encouraging students to think about house rather than a mud-hut.
the dynamics, changes, and politics of Maltese Since the 1960s, a number of the implicit
society. The section on festa politics is theoretical assumptions of the book have been
particularly useful and, read in conjunction with reassessed – in part by Boissevain himself in his
Jon P. Mitchell’s Ambivalent Europeans (2002), later writings. Its empirical ethnographic solidity
invites methodological and analytical and lucid style, however, endure. Almost forty
comparison. In this sense, the volume is possibly years on, H–al Kirkop still makes a good read.
the best example of Boissevain’s sustained and Mark-Anthony Falzon University of Malta
ongoing research in Malta.
Second, the volume includes two epilogues,
the first written in 1979 for the second edition, Cannell, Fenella (ed.). The anthropology of
and a more substantial thirty-page-long one for Christianity. ix, 373 pp., bibliogr. London,
this latest edition. The book can therefore be read Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2007. £64.00
as an updated account of village politics, and (cloth), £14.99 (paper)
national politics from a village perspective, in
Malta. Boissevain documents the changing In her introduction to this fine collection of
streetscapes, demographics, and formal essays on the anthropology of Christianity,
structures of H–al Kirkop diligently enough, but his Fenella Cannell notes that, given anthropology’s
descriptions tend to be static and matter-of-fact, determined secularism, Christianity has become
seldom engaging or analytical, and do not add anthropology’s ‘repressed’. Not only have there
much to the understanding of contemporary been few ethnographic studies of Christianity,
Maltese society. It is all too clear that the but until recently, and even now, the role of
epilogues, unlike the main text, are based on Christianity in the development of
visits to rather than prolonged stays in the village. anthropological theory has received little critical
As a result, Boissevain’s analogy between the attention. Cannell hopes that her anthology will
village core today and an ‘inset preserved in help remedy this situation. And no doubt it will.
amber’ (p. 172) works rather too well. The ten essays treat the reception and
The book will also be of interest to scholars manifestation of Christianity in Highland Bolivia
interested in approaching – for constructive, (Olivia Harris), South India (Cecilia Busby, David
deconstructive, or reconstructive reasons – the Mosse), the Philippines (Cannell), Fiji (Christina
ideal of an anthropology of the Mediterranean. Toren), Biak in Irian Jaya (Danilyn Rutherford), in
Despite fleeting glimpses of ‘Mediterranean Melanesia generally (Harvey Whitehouse), in
man’ (including one in the 2005 epilogue, by Sumba, Indonesia (Webb Keane), and among
which date one would expect the exorcism evangelicals in Sweden (Simon Coleman), the
would have been complete), Boissevain is Piro of Peru (Peter Gow), and Seventy-Day
generally cautious and relies on observation Adventists in Madagascar (Eva Keller). The
rather than spurious categorizations for his authors approach their subjects from different
analyses. points of view, thereby opening up a range of
Above all, the book is rich in ethnographic possible approaches to the study of Christianity.
fine-grain which speaks volumes about Malta in Though Cannell stresses the repressed role of
the 1960s as well as what it meant to be an Christianity in anthropology, neither she nor the
anthropologist then. There is a picture, for other contributors explore explicitly the effect of
instance, of Boissevain’s daughter sitting on a Christianity on how they (or other
doorstep with a group of local children. She is anthropologists) formulate their findings. Their
the only one wearing shoes, which reminds us regard tends to be unidirectional rather than
partly of the privileged position of the critically self-reflexive, and, as such, it confirms,
fieldworker, partly that barefootedness, after unwittingly perhaps, the anxiety that Christianity
decades of efforts to the contrary by social purportedly arouses in the secular
reformers, was still common in rural areas in the anthropologist. Nor do they direct their attention
1960s and carried important class connotations. to the effect of peripheral christianities on – for
The bitter church-state struggles of the time lack of a better term – the centres of Christianity.
reach us not least in little snippets such as The essays focus mostly on such
Boissevain’s children learning to make rude conventional issues as the relationship between
noises whenever the name of Dom Mintoff (the Protestantism and modernity – Weber’s, but not
socialist leader) was mentioned. And, to remind Marx’s ghost, haunts many of them – conflicts

Book reviews 1055
between orthodoxy and local (syncretistic) and Scripture. Cannell focuses on reading and
understanding, conversion and consequent writing practices among the Bicol. Though their
reconfigurations of experience, and stress on the performance of a passion play may be identified
inner life in Protestantism. Through their with submission to Catholic doctrine, it is also
sensitivity to the telling detail, however, they framed within a symbolic exchange system with
challenge the usual take on these issues. To give a ‘traditional’ father figure of shamanistic
one example: convention does not always import. Keane, who has written extensively on
produce the dramatic reorganization of inner the materiality of words, stresses their role in
experience that Christian theology assumes. ‘the religious construction of subjects and
Indeed, the Piro are so indifferent to it, according subjectivities’. He argues that insofar as words
to Gow, that they seem to have forgotten when can be decontextualized, as in prayer and
they became Christians. chants, they appear to stand beyond a particular
Though the contributors are aware of the time and place, giving them a special status.
definitional challenge their research poses, However, I would argue that, aside from
‘Christianity’ generally and ‘Catholicism’ and context-specific prayers, the effectiveness of
‘Protestantism’ as reference points in their other more formal prayers might depend on
ethnographies are often treated with insufficient precisely their pragmatic capacity (to call up, for
elaboration and differentiation. This is example, a deity).
particularly true of ‘Protestantism’, in which The power of words assumed by many of the
distinctions, say, between evangelical and ‘christianities’ may be embarrassingly mundane
mainstream Calvinist Protestantism or between in desired effect. Coleman insists (contra Susan
Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism are not Harding) that for the prosperity-oriented Word of
always as well defined as the contributors’ Life Pentacostals the sensuous and spiritual
exceptionally fine descriptions of local Christian quality of words cannot be divorced, for words
expression demand. In part, this arises from a in their religious context are thought to be
bias toward the converted rather than the effective in the construction of both the material
missionaries and their particular theologies. In world and the born-again person.
part it results from a failure to work out the Though the contributors are sometimes
missionaries’ on-the-ground hermeneutical caught in stale debates as between the rise of
assumptions. Protestantism and modernity, their essays are
Several of the contributors are, however, conceptually refreshing. They certainly set a high
sensitive to the effect of missionary style and standard for the advent of an anthropology of
belief on local christianities, but they have Christianity.
looked mainly to the historical record rather than Vincent Crapanzano City University of New York
to contemporary missionary activity. Mosse Graduate Center
contrasts the approach of the early Jesuit
missionaries, who were tolerant of (the
incorporations of saints in) spirit possession Comaroff, Jean & John L. Comaroff
practices in South India, to that of the French (eds). Law and disorder in the postcolony. x, 357
Jesuits who returned after the Jesuit expulsion in pp., illus., bibliogrs. London, Chicago: Univ.
the eighteenth century and whose commitment Chicago Press, 2006. £44.50 (cloth), £18.00
to personal agency rendered their attitude (paper)
toward saints and spirits far more severe.
Rutherford contrasts nineteenth-century Dutch Despite the proliferation of legal practices and
Pietists’ and Biaks’ conceptions of Word and claims, many places in the world are also
Scripture. The Biaks appear to have transposed marked by a simultaneous increase in disorder
their understanding of the korwar (an ‘idol’ in and violence. Such processes seem to be
missionary understanding) and its power to the particularly marked in those areas often referred
Bible, the written word, from within a to as the ‘postcolony’. Democratization in Latin
kinship-enforced view that attributed particular America has gone hand in hand with a rise in
power to what was foreign (‘absent’) but could violent crime. Similarly, majority rule and a new
be possessed. Rather than bringing about inner constitution in South Africa have existed
conversion, the Bible became ‘a heathen’ thing alongside increased anxieties over criminality.
and the underlying cultural orientations of the Such apparent paradoxes raise important
Biaks remained unchanged. questions at a time when more law and order is
Other contributors also draw attention to the often seen as the panacea for situations as varied
standing of the word (not necessarily the Word) as civil war in Iraq and urban street crime in

1056 Book reviews
Europe. The seemingly contradictory relationship have tried to deal with witches, and asks whether
between law and disorder is the central issue we can ever expect the law to contain the fear
addressed in this edited collection. and ambiguities of witchcraft. Roitman examines
The editors stress, however, that the paradox the economic networks that cross the Chad Basin
of more law seeming to create more disorder is and argues that the people of the region make a
no paradox at all. For, as they argue in their clear distinction between illegal activities and licit
thought-provoking introduction, ‘law and practices, as unregulated forms of economic
lawlessness are conditions of each other’s activity produce their own forms of governance.
possibility’. At one level, legality is made In their own chapter, which focuses on the South
possible by an often hidden resort to violence African Police Museum, the co-editors argue that
and legality in other times and other places. At anxieties over seemingly increased criminality
another level, violent crime often mimics legal produce a form of melodrama at the heart of the
form, creating parallel modes of governance. state, as theatre and coercion, fantasy and
Law and violence, order and disorder are always rationality merge. Finally, in a largely theoretical
entangled and mutually implicated in one chapter, Mbembe asks how the very ‘idea of
another. Crucially, the editors also link these politics takes place in a confrontation with
processes to the spread of ‘neoliberal’ politics death’.
and economics, an often vague concept, but Whereas all the chapters may focus on the
which here is linked, at least in part, to the postcolony, the editors point out, and rightly so,
outsourcing of the coercive, social and economic that postcolony is not unique in its particular
functions often associated with the state. The mixture of legal festishim and violent disorder,
result is a fragmentation of sovereignty, where but merely running ahead of itself. The rest of the
the line between legitimacy and illegitimacy, world is not far behind. Whilst all the chapters
legality and illegality, public and private may not always hang coherently together (few
becomes increasingly tenuous. As the editors edited collections do), individually and as a
argue, such practices take on a global scale, as whole they provide some thought-provoking
‘zones of prosperity and order feed off and insights into the ways in which law and disorder,
perpetuate zones of scarcity and violence’. In criminality and justice feed into one another, and
this process the contradictions of the global serve as stark warning to those who would see
political economy are displaced into the corrupt legality as all-conquering.
economies and legal systems of the postcolony. Tobias Kelly University of Edinburgh
The individual chapters range from the
ethnographically poignant to the theoretically
complex. They are made up of a mixture of Das, Veena. Life and words: violence and the
reflections on long-term fieldwork and relatively descent into the ordinary. xiv, 281 pp., bibliogr.
more recent research by leading political London, Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2007.
anthropologists. Morris examines the tension £12.95 (paper)
between notions of political and intimate
violence produced by the South African state’s Veena Das is one of the most important scholars
increasing reliance on the family as the ground of to open up our understanding on questions of
its power. Caldeira argues that despite the relative violence, social suffering, and subjectivity and to
democratization of Brazil, the institutions of consider what it means to produce testimony to
public order have been systematically unable or these events. Life and words is to be celebrated as
unwilling to guarantee security and civil rights for a book that brings together Das’s lifework, a
all, resulting in a situation where, for many of the collection of essays woven around an
young urban poor, notions of justice and rights exploration of how the extreme violence of
are disconnected. Scheper-Hughes provides an critical events can descend into ordinary life.
evocative, although ultimately pessimistic, Das’s analysis stems from the experiences of her
account of protests over the take-over of one informants, mainly survivors of the 1947 Partition
small Brazilian town by an alliance between local of India and the 1984 massacres of Sikhs in New
elites and an armed gang. In her chapter on the Delhi after the assassination of Prime Minister
violence that ripped through the Moluccas Indira Gandhi. In his foreword to the book,
Islands between 1999 and 2002, Spyer argues Stanley Cavell explains that Das’s drawing on
against ‘explanatory backdrops’, in favour of an philosophical work throughout, in particular
examination of its ‘ambiance’ and Wittgenstein, is because her address to the
‘atmospherics’. Geschiere compares how the survivors, like that of Wittgenstein’s to the
South African and Cameroonian legal systems human other, revolves around the study of pain.

Book reviews 1057
In this beautiful and subtle interweaving of be understood in terms of growing from the
the story of the nation, the community, and the heterogeneity of everyday relations. The lesson is
individual, Das begins with the notion of the to understand the everyday life of particular
social contract as the sexual contract. She argues localities of violence if one is to understand how
that the figure of the abducted women that feelings of hate and anger can become
circulated in political debates soon after Partition translated into actual acts of killing.
allowed the state to mark a state of exception, a The state is highly implicated throughout, the
disorder from the normal exchange of women. most chilling example being of the burning of
This produced a foundational moment, enabling the Pradhan and his sons crying out for water
the authorization of a social contract between while the police officer protects the violent
men as grounded in a sexual contract in which crowd that have been led by local politicians,
women were to be returned by the ‘right’ men. shouting that anyone who dared to come out
Women suffer multiple violence in that not only and interfere with the law would be shot dead.
are their voices silenced in official discourses, but However, Das also shows the magic of the state
they are also made passive witnesses of the that is grounded in the routines of everyday lives
disorder of partition and their bodies are when, for instance, the survivors also looked to
appropriated to inscribe a gendered sovereignty. the state, and the law, as a resource for seeking
In addressing social suffering, Das asks how justice. She uses the concept of the signature of
did women mourn the loss of self and the the state to capture the double aspect of the
world? She notes a zone of silence. Instead state as a form of regulation that oscillates
women used the metaphor of ‘drinking the between a rational and a magical mode of
poison’ and ‘keeping it within’, hence protecting being, and suggests that this is underpinned by
themselves and enabling them to assimilate their the illegibility of the state, the unreadability of its
experiences into their everyday life. Das explores rules and regulations, and allows for the
the shifting temporal structures of family and kin possibility of hope.
and how women’s own formations of their A sense of hope most strongly emerges,
subject positions can mean that they are able to however, from how survivors respond to the
lay their claims back on the very cultures that violence through a descent into the everyday in
had subjugated them by repairing relations and which life is a possibility because it can be
thus reinhabitting the world. removed from the circulation of words,
Seeing the stories of the survivors as in the producing boundaries between saying and
constant process of being produced, Das is showing. The ethnographic challenge that Das’s
concerned with the work of time. For instance, in exemplary book sets to anthropologists, then, is
the patience of women in biding their time, time how to uncover the forms and formations of
is an agent that ‘works’ on relationships, such violence in the ordinary when it might
allowing them to be rewritten and reinterpreted. reveal itself through gestures, in silence, in
Time also appears in Das’s analysis of the rumours, or when words are animated by other
rumour, which produces themes of nationalism, voices and there is often a distinction between
masculinity, fear and hatred, self and other, what is being told and what is being shown.
victim and perpetrator in critical events. She Alpa Shah Goldsmiths College
argues that rumour can produce events, making
certain facets of the past which might have
otherwise stayed inert come alive in the very act Friedman, Sar a L. Intimate politics: marriage,
of telling so that continuity can be achieved the market, and state power in southeastern China.
between events which might seem unconnected. xvi, 344 pp., maps, table, illus., bibliogr.
With this approach, Das traces the continuities London, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
between the Partition of India, Sikh militancy in 2006. £32.95 (cloth)
Punjab, and the related counter-insurgencies, in
particular the 1984 action around the Amritsar The coastal Huidong region in China’s
Golden Temple, the assassination of Indira southeastern Fujian province has long been
Gandhi by her Sikh security guards, and the renowned for customs of delayed conjugal
subsequent authorization of the horrific violence residency, same-sex intimate relations that
against Sikhs. complement – and oftentimes rival – normative
Some of Das’s best analysis emerges from kinship, ‘exotic’ female attire like elaborate
mapping violence in particular localities. She headpieces, and atypical gender divisions of
shows how the location, embodiment, and labour where women specialize in tough manual
actualization of violence against the Sikhs must work. These practices distinguished these rural

1058 Book reviews
Han communities from other Han – the majority pnua relationships, have altered significantly.
ethnic group in China – which in effect created While older women recounted lifelong dui pnua,
an anomalous positioning that aligned Huidong perhaps counting eight in total, who cared for
residents with ethnic minority others, hence each other through important life-cycle events
‘backwards’ and ‘feudal’. In socialist China these like weddings, childbirth, and by tomb-sweeping
embodied practices of work, dress, and after death, young women today counted social
post-marital residency have become crucial sites worth and desirability by having scores of dui
for state-sponsored civilizing and modernizing pnua attending events and partaking in gift and
interventions. With these practices labelled as money exchange.
feudal and oppressive and requiring liberation, Friedman argues that the state campaigns to
state actors implemented socialist ideals and alter intimate practices such as conjugal
mass campaigns of opening and reform – yet residency and underage arranged marriages
with questionable success. were only partially successful, and were unable
Intimate politics explores the ambivalent to eliminate many basic aspects of the perceived
relationships between Huidong people – ‘feudal’ system simply because the local customs
especially women – and the power of civilizing continued to be preferable and practically more
and modernizing state discourse throughout the suitable to the women up until the 1990s.
socialist period up until the post-Mao market Although locals dutifully appropriated
reform era. The dynamics and political authoritative reform and civilizing language,
entanglements of socialist civilizing agendas they failed to be fully persuaded internally and
with women’s embodied struggles and socially.
reappropriations are conceptually termed The discourse of young women who dressed
‘intimate politics’, and are explored in chapters traditionally in the post-Mao era engendered
about changing marital and labour practices, powerful social divisions regarding the degree of
and changing attire styles. Friedman explores modernity of the Chinese nation in terms of
varied analytical avenues and ethnographies ‘quality’, ‘culture’, and being ‘spiritually
towards understanding the dynamics between civilized’. The state thereby sought to produce
socialist state-sponsored campaigns to produce a national conformity and make Han citizenship
socialist modern and civilized Chinese nation uniformly modern, opposed to the ‘feudal’
and local diverging intimate practices regarding Huidong’s marital and attire practices. Yet the
marriage, love, and same-sex bonds outside trope of Huidong women wearing traditional
normative kinship. These customs included attire was appropriated into money-making
underage arranged marriages, delayed conjugal initiatives like tourist sites, as an exotic primitive
residency – older informants recounted fleeing local identity to market and consume. In turn,
back through the night and delaying the move debates on Huidong authenticity that drew on
for years until their first childbirth – as well as ideals and memories of local identity, tradition,
women’s same-sex intimate bonds, termed dui and history generated new divides and social
pnua (‘companions’, p. 139), and the related distinction that further complicated the
‘evil’ of collective suicides among such state-sponsored initiative towards Han
companions. conformity and national unity.
Pervasive state discourses and mass In a refreshingly complex and detail-
campaigns starting in the early 1950s attempted orientated writing mode that sets a new and
to redefine labour in the context of gender higher standard in Chinese anthropology,
liberation and freedom from feudal oppression, Friedman applies an unusually rich ethnographic
and introduced new discursive meanings to flavour to her discussion by including old
traditional gendered division of labour where villagers’ retrospective narratives and life stories,
men fished and women took responsibility for official political documents and literature, and
agricultural, household, and manual labour. local traditional and propaganda folk songs and
Gradually, female labour mobilization locally, protest poetry, which proved so crucial in a
alongside general modernizing changes, region long plagued by illiteracy.
modified existing practices and meanings of Intimate politics presents a sophisticated and
labour as skilled and valued. In turn, theoretically engaging argument regarding the
stone-carving industries and urban labour complex relationships between state power,
migration emerged, with the effect that embodied individual practices of marriage and
increased mixed-sex socializing, changed intimacy, and late-socialist modernity in
standards of intimacy, romance, married life, and contemporary China. It should be essential
conjugal residency, as well as the meaning of dui reading for anyone interested in China, socialist

Book reviews 1059
societies, and new ways of thinking gender and different groups of men who participate in these
kinship. churches of women. There is also a comparison
Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen London School of of the varying perspectives of men and women
Economics and Political Science on conversion, and how concepts of spirit
possession influence their understanding. The
penultimate chapter examines the emergence of
Hodgson, Dorothy L. The church of women: a ‘Maasai Catholicism’ and its broader impact on
gendered encounters between Maasai and Massai gender relations. In her conclusion,
missionaries. xvii, 307 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. Hodgson reiterates that the story of
Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2005. $24.95 evangelization is a story of encounter between
(paper) individuals, communities, and cultures against a
backdrop of changing social and economic
This book has two principal merits: it offers a circumstances. It is also a story that is incomplete
wonderfully nuanced account of Christian without attention to the different ways in which
missionary activity in Africa, with a strong focus men and women experience and express their
on the centrality of gender to the encounter old and new religion. All in all, the book makes a
between Africans and Western missionaries. In cogent case for more anthropological studies of
this carefully written and engaging work, missions, then and now.
anthropologist Dorothy Hodgson asks why so Rosalind I.J. Hackett University of Tennessee
many more women than men have converted to
Christianity in East Africa – even when this was
not part of the missionary agenda. Her agenda is Kahn, Hilary E. Seeing and being seen: the
to interrogate how gender has shaped the Q’eqchi’ Maya of Livingston, Guatemala and
encounters between missionaries and the beyond. xi, 242 pp., map, illus., bibliogr. Austin:
Maasai, and in particular how the political and Univ. Texas Press, 2007. £12.99 (paper)
economic disenfranchisement of Maasai women
has shaped their religious experiences, identity, Hilary Kahn’s fascinating and decidedly reflexive
and practice. ethnography of the Q’eqchi’ Maya explores the
Hodgson describes herself as an cultural uses of visual metaphors in the context
anthropologist with experience in development of inter-ethnic relations in Guatemala. The book
issues, and whose earlier work centred on is based on fieldwork in the Caribbean coastal
gender and social change, but as a scholar town of Livingston, where she encountered the
whose secular feminist assumptions initially intersection of indigenous Maya, Garifuna
prevented her from seeing the significance of (Afro-Amerindian), and Ladino (mestizo)
spiritual to other forms of power. The more that populations. It examines Q’eqchi’ identity
she came to understand that spiritual power was politics, ritual, cosmology, consumption, and
central to Maasai women’s sense of themselves, selfhood through the lens of local ideas about
the more she realized that she was going to have power and the moral connotations of visibility.
to factor spirituality into her analyses of culture, The rich ethnography makes a significant
power, and history. This book is the fruit of that contribution to the study of indigenous people
realization. It is based upon her work among the in Latin America and visual anthropology.
Maasai of Tanzania, and in particular a Catholic Kahn’s attention to colonial history and
missionary community known as the Spiritans, regional Maya migrations challenges the
who had been trying to evangelize Maasai men tendency to associate indigenous people with a
for over fifty years. continuous presence in a specific (and often
The various chapters of the book provide rural) place. In Kahn’s study we see not only the
different perspectives on gender, power, and the cultural adaptation of Maya farmers in an urban
missionary encounter through a historical area, but more importantly we are given a vivid
reconstruction of Maasai religious beliefs and picture of how the Q’eqchi’ envision themselves
practices before the advent of the missionaries, vis-à-vis various ‘others’ in Livingston, ranging
followed by the early history of the Spiritans and from Garifuna neighbours, former German
an analysis of three missionaries in particular, landowners, to the increasing influx of tourists.
then an interesting comparison of evolving Kahn’s historical perspective makes her argument
evangelization strategies and gendered about power and sight particularly interesting.
outcomes. The gender dynamics of three She draws parallels between ancient Maya
‘churches of women’ are also explored, and a regimes, colonial authorities, foreign landowners,
whole chapter is devoted to the experiences of the state, and mountain spirits in suggesting that

1060 Book reviews
all of these sources draw their power and that makes such extensive and productive use of
significance from their common status as recorded interviews.
‘unseen’ outsiders. Kahn is thus able to present a One example is Kahn’s interpretation of
historical ethnography that convincingly links ‘outsider’ symbolism in the Q’eqchi’ Deer Dance
ancient Maya regimes of authority to what she in Chapter 6. She suggests that various characters
calls ‘the Q’eqchi’ imaginary’ she studied in the in the dance represent ideas ranging from
1990s. Both historically and today the external foreignness, colonialism, and disrespect to
gaze of ‘invisible overseers’ is associated with neoliberal economics, slave labour, and ‘potential
control and ownership. Whether spiritual deities resistance to foreign producers and consumers’
or German landowners, Q’eqchi’ notions of (p. 99). Here explicit connections between
‘morality-in-place’ demand that respect be paid Kahn’s analysis and her informants’
to these various unseen owners, which Kahn interpretations are noticeably absent. One
argues are collapsed together in the Q’eqchi’ wonders if these conclusions are based only on
imaginary. the anthropologist’s observations and
The book gives considerable attention to the assumptions or in part on Q’eqchi’
theoretical implications of Kahn’s methods. By interpretations. There is little evidence that
teaching Maya informants how to use video abstractions like ‘resistance’ or ‘neoliberal
cameras, she introduces a collaborative economics’ fit neatly with or are even relevant to
video-making project to create what she calls a Q’eqchi’ ideas. Kahn later points out that
form of ethnographic vérité in which the ‘dialogic and hybrid’ Q’eqchi’ worldviews
anthropologist and the Q’eqchi’ together contradict the dichotomies in evangelical
became ‘catalysts for the expression of invisible categorizations. This leads to the question of why
culture’ (p. 184). Kahn suggests that, in addition Q’eqchi’ ritual symbols should then match the
to recording and revisiting events, the video author’s seemingly abstract categories. This
project revealed to her local ideas about sight example illustrates the problem in Kahn’s claim
and (in)visibility. Her work provides an example that the Q’eqchi’ are responsible for her methods
of how visual anthropology can be expanded to and theories. Regardless of how much affection
encompass more than just ethnographic film or obligation an ethnographer feels toward
and photography or the study of material informants, blurring the boundaries between
objects. Q’eqchi’ visual metaphors, according to ‘self’ and ‘other’ in ethnographic writing risks
Kahn, reveal much about indigenous notions of assuming even greater claims to authority than
morality, selfhood, and relations with various the early generations of ethnographers criticized
local and unseen ‘others’. She concludes that in anthropology’s literary turn. In this book Kahn
applying visual theory to aspects of non-visual goes to great lengths to situate herself personally
culture allows anthropologists to explore less in the context of Livingston and Q’eqchi’ family
tangible, internalized relationships. The author’s life. What is lacking in some chapters (though not
use of photography in the book is also effective, all) is a reflexivity that distinguishes the author’s
as triptych images of Q’eqchi’ informants are voice from those of the Q’eqchi’, rather than one
placed within the text without accompanying that assumes too much shared ground between
explanations. the two.
Kahn joins the scores of social scientists in Kahn’s book is a useful resource for scholars
recent decades who argue that identities should interested in Guatemala and inter-ethnic
be seen as processes in motion rather than fixed, relations and identities in Latin America more
finished products. She repeatedly challenges generally. It also provides a useful case study for
Western dichotomies of subject/object, internal/ courses looking to expand the scope of visual
external, foreign/familiar as ‘bounded sites of anthropology.
knowledge’ that do not fit with Q’eqchi’ ideas Casey High Goldsmiths College
(p. 11). She takes a decidedly reflexive approach,
celebrating her subjective ‘entanglement’ in
theories discussed in the book (p. 12). This Stephen, Lynn. Zapotec women: gender, class,
statement is problematic as well as indicative of and ethnicity in globalized Oaxaca (2nd edition).
the book’s central shortcoming. Despite overt xvii, 387 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr.
claims of reflexivity and numerous examples of London, Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2005.
the author’s position as a liberal American critical £15.95 (paper)
of colonialism, it is difficult at times to distinguish
between the voices of the ethnographer and the Lynn Stephen’s monograph Zapotec women:
Q’eqchi’. This is particularly surprising for a text gender, class, and ethnicity in globalized Oaxaca is

Book reviews 1061
not only a revised and updated version of the the integration of their distinctive weavings into
work done in the 1980s; it is also a rethinking of national and even international markets,
the paradigmatic base for feminist, ethnic, and Zapotecs promoted a wider regional identity than
social movement studies. This is no easy task other indigenous groups as they strengthened
since it requires bringing her into a renewed their market niche. Stephen deftly weaves into
encounter with the friends who were her her own multiplex picture of Zapotecs’ portraits
collaborators twenty years before the changes in drawn from historical and ethnographic sources,
their and her own perspectives. It involves an defying the temptation to essentialize or
ongoing dialogue as well with colleagues who naturalize the subject of her inquiry. In the span
were developing what was still a fledgeling field of her own acquaintance and participation with
of women’s studies in Stephen’s first field the people from the 1980s to the first decade of
session. the third millennium, she identifies a greater
In the interim, two major changes in the differentiation in class, although labour relations
global economy have engaged Zapotec weavers of domination and subordination are still
and cultivators. The first was the so-called mediated and controlled by local leaders in
‘reform’ of the land reform act brought about customary patterns. Her description and analysis
during Salinas’s presidency in 1992, and the of the expression of identity in Teotiteco daily
second was the approval of the North American production, ceremonial, and political life reveals a
Free Trade Agreement in 1994. Both these acts complexity responding to the conflicting
ratified by the Mexican Congress changed the demands of their lives.
relations of peasant cultivators with the state, Central to the integration of social sectors in
first by allowing the privatization of communal Teotitlan is the cargo system of office-holders in
lands and second by setting small plot civil and religious posts. Although ties between
cultivators in direct competition with North the civil and religious hierarchy were broken in
American government-subsidized, large-scale the decades soon after the Revolution, Stephen
producers. These shifts also triggered the shows how the cross-cutting networks of kinship
uprising of indigenous cultivators and artisans and compadrazgo (ritual co-parents of child)
to the south in the state of Chiapas, and constructed primarily by women reinforce the
necessitated the large-scale migration not only integrity of community. One of the more
of Zapotecs but of all indigenous people to the interesting analyses is that of the guelaguetza, or
United States. ritual exchanges of labour and goods, which
Stephen analyses the impact of these events provides another layer of reciprocal network
in terms of gender, class, and ethnic relations. reinforcing the security of the community. These
Her book demonstrates how well-grounded exchanges, expressed in dances as well as goods
ethnology, using quantitative material, updated and services, occur during celebrations that
with new capital inputs and gains along with reaffirm all of the social relations that go into
extensive interviews with the same and new their production.
actors, enables the ethnographer to interpret With this edition of Zapotec ethnography,
processes of change in more than metaphorical Stephen advances a theoretical model that
terms. At a time when anthropology has been allows us to see the configuration of class,
focused on interpretative and postmodern gender, and racial-cultural attributes in their
approaches that emphasize reflexivity and material embodiment. She does not reject the
discursive elements of fieldwork encounters, it is class categories that she defined in 1990, but,
good to find an ethnography that brings the rather, uses them as a bricoleur to find new
larger global forces into local perspectives. relational aspects. Class relations, she
Stephen has steered a firm course, engaging her emphasizes, do not rely solely on forms of
subjects in an exploration of their experienced property ownership, but also depend on
world within and beyond the community. This relations of domination and control in the labour
course enables us to compare change over time process. Drawing on Kearney’s notion of class
and in different settings in order to appraise the structuring subject positions within
variables of gender, ethnicity, and class that are differentiated fields of value and power, she
central to her study. discusses the additional layers of foreign textile
The modernist expectations cultivated by wholesalers, importers, and designers that now
indigenist anthropology in the decades after the constitute the merchant class who profit from
1910 Revolution that predicted the disintegration the expropriation of the labour of Teotitecos.
of Zapotec identity have been disclaimed by the With her interviews of some of the same women
rise of pan-indigenous movements. Along with whom she interviewed in the 1980s, she gives

1062 Book reviews
flesh and blood to the changing fields of process of a defunct politico-religious elite
consciousness. These, along with the stories of caught up in a ‘Tocquevillian shift’ from a
children who are part of the migration waves to theocratic Imamate to a quasi-secular republican
cities and beyond to the United States, provide regime occasioned by the 1962 Revolution in
us with the many layers of meaning in this north Yemen. Indeed, the book is an
globalizing world. ethnographic portrayal of the socio-political
Given the multiplicity of changes in their adjustments to a post-revolution context
world, the retention of kinship and ethnic undertaken by a group of sadah families selected
identities becomes a miraculous construction, on the basis of the author’s acquaintance.
now even more heavily reliant on women’s Accordingly, the author’s ethnographic locus is
reproductive work than in the 1980s. Women’s on the biographical or experiential itinerary of a
need to overcome space adds to the significance cohort of high-ranking sadah (sing. sayyid) who
of rituals that tie generations to the hometowns. held government posts in the Imamate. Her
Reading Stephen’s book, I could appreciate the thematic entry-point into their life-world is
reasons why the guelaguetza figured so through their strategic use of ‘historicized
importantly in the rebellion of the teachers in memory’, which is ritually invoked through the
the spring of 2006 when urban Oaxacans performance of taqlid (i.e. the recourse to the
refused to enter into the government-sponsored religious orthodoxies of the Zaydi creedal
guelaguetzas that were to attract tourists and repertoire), as a guide in their adjustment to a
danced with their own sympathizers to their condition of social status demotion and political
own traditional tunes, and for their own ends. adversity, the practice of which, according to the
Zapotec women can serve as a textbook in author, is a form of ‘moral rearmament’ that
methodology as well as an ethnographic helps them ‘transcend an ambivalent placement
summary, and because of its straightforward between a scorned past and a future of
writing and representation of real people, it uncertain fulfillment’ (p. 18).
would be welcome in graduate as well as The book’s focus on the Zaydi sadah fills a
undergraduate courses. gap in the ethnographic literature on Yemen,
June Nash City University of New York which has hitherto privileged the Sunni sadah in
the eastern province of Hadramawt. The sadah
occupy the summit of the traditional social
vom Bruck, Gabriele. Islam, memory, and status hierarchy in Yemen. While chapter 1
morality in Yemen: ruling families in transition. xix, usefully describes the genealogical and other
348 pp., map, figs, illus., bibliogr. Basingstoke: particularities of the Zaydi sadah, it does not
Palgrave, 2005. £14.99 (paper) articulate the differences with the Sunni sadah
that would elucidate both their contrastive
By sheer coincidence, the historical conjuncture specificities and the latent political tension with
in which this book was published as well as the the Yemeni state. Some of the intrinsic
timing of its review provide one, if not the main, differences include the following: the sadah from
criterion for its assessment. The book’s both sects claim descent from the Prophet –
publication occurred soon after an uneasy however, the Zaydi sadah claim descent
ceasefire was agreed upon (spring 2005) specifically, if not exclusively, from the progeny
between the Yemeni state and a group of rebels of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima and his
from the Yemeni Shi’a sect (Zaydi) located in the son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib, the martyred fourth
northern province of Sa’ada. This was caliph; the Zaydi sadah’s doctrinal commitment
subsequent to several months of armed clashes to khuruj, i.e. rising against an unjust ruler, finds
initiated by a Zaydi cleric’s invocation of one of no equivalent among the Sunni sadah, whose
the sect’s doctrinal imperatives, namely ‘to political attitude is one of quietism; the Zaydi
ordain right and forbid wrong’, which obliges its sadah distinguished themselves by a cult-like
adherents to oppose injustice either through dedication to religious learning, while the Sunni
discursive means or through arms. sadah are distinguished by their ascribed
The political ramifications of the text, in supernatural powers; and, finally, the Zaydi
terms of the extent to which it elucidates the sadah are affiliated to a particular form of
socio-ideological underpinnings of the conflict, political regime, the Imamate, over which they
cannot be avoided in spite of the author’s stated are the hereditary rulers, while the Sunni sadah
abstention from discussing ‘recent political claimed no regime preference or any pretension
history’, and her privileging instead the ‘impact to state power.
on individual subjectivity’ of the adjustment

Book reviews 1063
Subsequently, part one of the book sets the It would appear that the sadah’s quest for
stage through a tantalizingly brief historical ‘alternatives ways of being a Zaydi and a sayyid
overview of the rise and fall of the sadah elite which are compatible with both [one’s]
and the Imamate, which is followed up with an self-image and official ideology’ remains
‘anatomy’ of the structuring protocols of the inconclusive. Indeed, one sayyid laments the
sadah’s social milieu. Part two consists of an absence of political rehabilitation: ‘Even if you
illustrative case on the mechanism of memory lived abroad and changed your ideas about the
formation through the evocation of ‘fragments Imamate, it will not be forgotten that you come
of childhood life stories’ as the incubator of from a certain family. You will always remain a
adulthood socio-political sensibilities; and more reactionary’ (p. 230). While this view may not be
interestingly a discussion of kinship among representative of Zaydi adherents in general,
sadah, in which the sharing of substance from a given the elite background of the author’s
common progenitor is not a sufficient condition, informants, recent political events would seem
but must be actualized through the pursuit of to confirm the persistence of a deep political
knowledge as the determinant of who is an resentment, on one side, and of a chronic
authentic sadah and therefore deserving of social political suspicion, on the other. This is
acknowledgement through formal inclusion in exacerbated by the selective, if not ambivalent,
the genealogies of the ‘houses of learning’. Part Zaydi doctrinal revision undertaken by some
three illustrates how the sadah straddled the sadah scholars regarding the legitimate bases of
tensions between the ethical injunctions and rule and the role of khuruj, all too briefly
behavioural constraints of the taqlid, and the reviewed in the penultimate chapter, and the
exigencies to conform politically in the state’s continued practice of a zero-sum-game
post-revolution context and the cultural politics. The author’s optimism regarding
expectations of a modern consumer economy. Yemen’s ‘capacity to forge an inclusive national
Part four is in effect an assessment of the sadah’s identity that is coupled with impartiality in the
attempt at political accommodation and social public realm’ (p. 254) may not be widely shared.
integration in the post-revolution context. Serge D. Elie University of Sussex


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Book reviews

Economic/applied anthropology associated with different interpretations of

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

The sub-title of the book is important, testament to exactly this. Hernández-Reguant’s

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

(Hackett), and indigenous control of media in misunderstanding’ between ‘split publics’

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 1023-1063

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