Aboriginal family and the state: the conditions of history - By Sally Babidge

Reviews

Archaeology

Fash, Barbara W. The Copan SculptureMuseum: ancient Maya artistry in stucco andstone. viii, 207 pp., maps, figs, plates, illus.,bibliogr. London, Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 2011. £25.95 (paper)

The ancient Maya city of Copan, Honduras, wasdesignated a UNESCO World Heritage site in1980 and welcomes more than 150,000 visitorseach year. Copan is perhaps best known for itsornate stone sculpture carved from local tuff, avolcanic stone that is soft and porous whenfreshly cut yet hard and durable once exposedto the elements. The ancient Copan Mayarecognized the potential of tuff for architectureand sculpture, transforming this stone into ahigh-relief art form all their own. Today, therestored buildings in Copan’s Main Centre andsurrounding residential urban zones, elaboratesculptural façades, and evocative tropical settingenthrall the public. Yet, as curious fingers touchweathered stone, adventurous feet explore wornstairways, and tropical downpours renew thelush forest, the artistic and architectural creationsof the Maya are slowly deteriorating – a problemmany archaeological sites face. Researchers herehave produced a model for its solution,presented in the 2011 volume The CopanSculpture Museum: ancient Maya artistry in stuccoand stone by Barbara W. Fash.

The volume serves as both a Museumexhibition guidebook and an informal,personalized chronicle of the Copan SculptureMuseum’s creation. The Copan SculptureMuseum was created through the collaborationof President Rafael Leonardo Callejas and

subsequently President Carlos Roberto Reina ofthe Republic of Honduras, the InstitutoHondureño de Antropología e Historia, theAsociacíon Copàn, and the United States Agencyfor International Development (USAID). Theauthor describes how the Museum was plannedin 1990, designed and built from 1993 to 1996,and opened on 3 August 1996.

Angela Stassano, the Museum’s talentedHonduran architect, produced a brilliantlyeffective, low profile on-site design, which doesnot visually overwhelm neighbouring ruins. TheMuseum’s floors are designed to reflect the threelevels of the Maya cosmos. Visitors enter astylized serpent mouth gateway, walkingthrough a serpentine, humid, earthy, softlyilluminated tunnel that opens dramatically ontothe central exhibit, a complete reconstruction ofthe Rosalila Temple, whose photograph by BenFash (the author’s son) graces the book’s cover.This first floor symbolically represents theunderworld. Visitors ascend a ramp withstunning stylized skyband railings, progressingto the second floor, representing the Mayamiddle world, and then to the third floor, thecelestial realm. The Museum is orientated to thecardinal points representing the Maya’sworldview of the sun’s yearly progression. Thistheme is emphasized by the use of naturallighting from skylights and a centralcompluvium so that light moves with the sun’spath over the sculptures, constantly changingtheir illumination. The effect is stunning, and thebook’s descriptions capture it vividly.

The book’s introduction to the Museumis followed by a chapter on the history ofarchaeological investigation at Copan, with astrong emphasis on those projects that mostcontributed to the Museum’s exhibits. The text is

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 466-510© Royal Anthropological Institute 2012

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designed for visitors to read as they enjoy theMuseum, and the author employs a casual,conversational, and compelling narrative. It doesnot read as an academic volume, nor does itcontain the citations expected of more rigorousscholarship. The volume has a small format of9 ¥ 7 inches, facilitating its use by visitors, butis produced on high-gloss paper; thus, therelatively small-sized photographs are renderedin high quality.

Chapters are organized around the currentMuseum exhibits. Chapters 3-11 follow exhibits1-58, each contributing valuable descriptiveinformation on the sculptural exhibit’s excavationand reconstruction, often personalized by theauthor’s informal narrative. Exhibits begin with‘Honoring the founder’, focused on the stunningRosalila Temple (excavated by Ricardo Agurcia)and Altar Q, which depicts sixteen of Copan’srulers (named by Alfred Maudslay in 1886). Thebook then covers ‘Stelae’ (Stela P, 2, and A are onexhibit); ‘Underworld symbolism’, including theMotmot floor marker, Copan’s oldest in situ datedmonument; ‘Masterpieces of Copan sculpture’,highlighting the most outstanding examplesof the craftsman’s art; ‘Warfare and ritual’,presenting the captivating Structure 26 TempleMasks; ‘Fertility and cosmology’, with excellentexamples from the ballcourt façades; ‘Scribes andsculptors’, documenting Groups 9N-8 and9M-146, followed by ‘Nobles and residences’,displaying Group 10L-2’s sculpture, andregional sculptural motifs from Rio Amarillo andRastrojón. The last chapter, ‘Museum andcommunity’, outlines the impact that designingand building the Museum had on the localpopulation.

Barbara Fash laudably chronicles the creationof an important museum and entertaininglydescribes its current exhibits for readers,preserving and making available to the publicthe ancient Copan sculptor’s craft, an invaluablegift to future generations.

AnnCorinne Freter Ohio University

Scarre, Chris. Landscapes of Neolithic Brittany.xv, 326 pp., maps, figs, tables, illus., bibliogr.Oxford: Univ. Press, 2011. £75.00 (cloth)

Landscapes of Neolithic Brittany is an importantresource for anglophone archaeologists wishingto learn about current research and newapproaches to the Neolithic of Brittany. Brittanyis well known for its rich megalithic landscapeand boasts some of Europe’s oldest and largestmonuments, such as the Grand Menhir Brisé,

the stone rows at Carnac, and the Tumulus deSaint-Michel. Scarre is well positioned tointroduce readers to this archaeology, given hiscareer-long research on the prehistory ofwest-central France. In the book, Scarrediscusses the chronology, sequence, andinterrelationships of megalithic construction. Heconsiders the origins of monument-building inthe Mesolithic, the first standing stones and longmounds of the Early Neolithic, the passagegraves and stone rows of the Middle Neolithic,and the allées couvertes and lateral entrancetombs of the Late Neolithic. Domestic structures,such as the long houses of the Late Neolithic, arealso woven into his narrative. Throughout,Scarre situates the cultural phenomena ofNeolithic Brittany in a European context,sometimes because certain evidence does notsurvive well in Brittany (such as skeletal remains,because of the soil’s acidity), and sometimes tohelp us understand regional interactions. Aboveall, the book applies contemporary Anglo-Saxontheory – emphasizing landscape and materiality– to the Neolithic record of Brittany. Scarresituates megaliths and domestic structures intheir landscape through multiple lenses,including geographic information systems (GIS),paleoecology, geology, phenomenology, andsymbolism. He also explores the materiality ofmonuments – their colour, form, iconography,visibility, sourcing, and recycling – and how theirraw materials (stone slabs, rubble, clays)mirrored and transformed landscapes.

In chapter 1, Scarre reviews the geographyand history of scholarly interest in the Neolithicof Brittany. He discusses the ongoing tensionbetween research that views ancient Brittany as arecipient of cultural practices and as an innovator.He revisits this debate in chapter 10. In chapter 2,Scarre considers the landscape of Brittany from ahistorical perspective; he assesses the significanceof contemporary distributions of megaliths andthe relative paucity of Neolithic settlements interms of demography (both ancient andmodern). He suggests that the abundance ofmegaliths in Brittany may be more a reflection ofthe region’s economic underdevelopment thanan indicator of prehistoric economic success.Many factors have shaped their distribution,including rising sea levels, agriculture, andtheir systematic destruction by the earlyChristian church. Chapter 3 reviews theMesolithic-Neolithic transition and devotesparticular attention to the Mesolithic burialsat Téviec and Hoedic, which, as collectiveburials using stone slabs in their architecture,foreshadow later Neolithic practices. In chapter 4,

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Scarre examines the earliest Neolithic standingstones and low burial mounds or tertres. Hedemonstrates that menhirs, some of which evokeaxes and humans in their form, were notopportunistically erected from loose blocks, butextracted from bedrock. As in much of Europe,these standing stones were regularly reused inpassage graves and later tombs. Chapter 5

focuses on the Carnac landscape and thefascinating refitting work of Emmanuel Mensthat showed that all ten lines of stones of theKermario alignments were built at once, withconstruction proceeding westward. Chapter 6

focuses on passage graves and explores themeaning of the stones from which they wereconstructed and the landscapes in which theyare found. Chapter 7 attempts to understandBreton funerary practices, relying heavily onbetter-preserved sites to the east and south.Chapter 8 focuses on three cases of stone settingsand explores how materials and landscapes weredifferently engaged at these sites. In Chapter 9,Scarre develops the argument that the LateNeolithic longhouses were modelled after lateralentrance tombs and allées couvertes. Chapter 10

summarizes the book’s main themes. Here,Scarre notes that while the earliest standingstones are found in Iberia, the earliest chamberedtombs along the Atlantic façade are in Brittany.Given other evidence for Iberian-Bretoninteractions (variscite, crook-motifs), it is possiblethat Brittany was both innovator and recipient ofNeolithic cultural features.

At times, it seems the book is written forsomeone already familiar with the geographyand archaeology of Brittany. Many place namescannot be located on maps, certain object types(i.e. stone rings) are not illustrated or explained,and some photographs of monuments arelacking in scale (human or otherwise).

None the less, Landscapes of Neolithic Brittanyis readable and engaging. It refocusesarchaeological attention on history and place,and to the histories of places. It should be ofinterest to European prehistorians as well asscholars seeking insights into the landscape andmateriality of the ancient world.

Katina T. Lillios University of Iowa

Schiffer, Michael Brian. Behavioralarchaeology: principles and practice. x, 220

pp., figs, tables, bibliogr. London, Oakville:Equinox, 2010. $150.00 (cloth), $45.00

(paper)

Michael B. Schiffer is perhaps best known inBritish archaeological circles for his development

of a theory of site formation processes (SFPs),based on the taphonomic understanding ofexplicit cultural and environmental processeswhich affect the archaeological record. The aimof this volume is to set SFPs within the largercontext of behavioural archaeology (BA), andto draw all Schiffer’s writings on BA togetherin one volume. The intended audiences aregraduate students and ‘curious’ professionalarchaeologists. The results are interesting, butperhaps not for the reasons that the authoranticipated.

The text is divided into four main sections:‘Introduction’; ‘Inference and formationprocesses’; ‘Technology’; and finally ‘Newdirections’. A glance at the table of contentsreveals that the latter section is only partlySchiffer’s work, and three additional authorsassist him in trying to construct a ‘new’ BA, onethat, the reader is informed, can respond to itspostprocessual critics by engaging in themessuch as ritual and religion, landscapes, andsocial power. The ‘Introduction’ lays out theBinfordian legacy of BA – it’s an agnostic toolboxfor grappling with the relationships betweenpeople and artefacts, divorced from any specificsocial theory. Positivist in outlook, embracingboth ancient and modern material culture,through empirical generalizations andexperiments it seeks to establish ‘laws’ whichcan be applied to archaeological data of any ageto help reconstruct behaviours. Schiffer does notlike the rote application of fashionable socialtheories to artefacts, believing that they actuallyprevent the emergence of a science ofhuman-artefact behaviours.

‘Inference and formation processes’ dealswith some familiar concepts such as life-historiesof artefacts, behavioural chains of processes, andthe notions of cultural and natural SFPs whichcan distort the archaeological record. Despitethe emphasis on the technological and utilitarianaspects of material culture in the chosenexamples, and the absence of social or ritualconsiderations (which Schiffer acknowledges),there must be many European archaeologistswho have applied these tools, concerned not somuch with general ‘laws’ of behaviour, but tounderstand better the specific objects andarchaeological deposits they uncovered.

‘Technology’ is an autobiographical sectionwhere we learn about what could be describedas the author’s ‘electrical turn’. Stemming fromhis collection of portable radios Schiffer grewincreasingly interested during the 1990s inhistorical studies of technological change, andthe performance characteristics of competing

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technologies such as lighthouses, and earlygasoline and electric automobiles. Utilizing a‘performance matrix’ to compare uses ofgasoline and electric cars, Schiffer claimed thatthe demise of electric cars at the start of thetwentieth century in the United States wasbecause gasoline-fuelled cars were more suitablefor macho touring in the countryside. Despitesome colleague’s ‘gentle hints’ that he was indanger of losing his identity as an archaeologist,Schiffer pursued his investigation of more recenttechnologies, writing papers on technologyinventions and transfers, maintaining that his‘technology-transfer framework’ was asapplicable to Middle Palaeolithic stone tools as itwas to industrial printing.

‘New directions’ reveals the subsequentshock and surprise Schiffer felt at the rise of anextremely relativistic postprocessualism and theperceived attack on the scientific underpinningsof BA. By the mid-1990s, he argues, BA had todevelop new theories for addressing symbolicphenomena if it was to have any chanceof appealing to a younger generation ofarchaeologists. The final section of thebook therefore has the whiff of reincarnationabout it. BA is reborn as a toolkit that canisolate ceremonial trash, feasting bowls, andsacrificial deposits. Some of its tools, suchas life-history models and performancecharacteristic tables, can be given new life tofashion explanations of symbols, social power,and landscapes.

The scientistic foundations of BA ensurethat Schiffer and the associated authors attemptto ensnare all manner of human activitieswithin particular descriptors – for instance, acorrelon is an instance of relational knowledge –and the plethora of these throughout thebook does not make for an easy read.Nevertheless, Schiffer is to be commended forcondensing a career’s work between twocovers. Site formation processes, sensu strictu,will remain of fundamental assistance toarchaeological interpretation. For this reviewer,however, the kaleidoscopic socialities ofhuman beings are largely absent from thisbook, and the attempt to grasp the tow-barof the postprocessual juggernaut smacks ofdesperation.

This book is perhaps most interesting foroffering an autobiographical insight into one ofAmerica’s prominent archaeologists, and forhighlighting the discrepant philosophicalapproaches to understanding or creating thepast on either side of the Atlantic.

John Manley University of Sussex

Anthropology of architectureand space

Schefold, Reimar, Peter J.M. Nas,Gaudenz Domenig & Robert Wessing

(eds). Indonesian houses (vol. 2): survey ofvernacular architecture in western Indonesia. vi,716 pp., maps, figs, tables, illus., bibliogrs.Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008. €39.50 (paper)

Indonesian houses (volume 2) is the secondpublication of a long-term research projectsponsored by the Royal Netherlands Academy ofSciences. While the first volume (2003) wasconcerned with the relationship betweencontinuity and change in Indonesian vernaculararchitecture, volume 2 sets out to produce ‘asystematic survey of all relevant traditions anddevelopments of western Indonesianarchitecture’. The volume provides an impressiveand encyclopaedic summary of the researchconducted into western Indonesian vernacularhouse forms across the region. It draws on theexpertise of over twenty scholars, and is rich inarchitectural detail and technical description.

Readers unfamiliar with Indonesianarchitecture may have encountered similardwellings in Roxana Waterson’s The living house(1990). Striking features include almost allbuilding materials being taken from wood andother plants, the majority use of stilted buildings,and an impressive variety of gable roofs. Karodwelling roofs are sometimes topped withminiature houses, giving the impression of ahouse upon a house. Minangkabau houses fromwestern Sumatra are perhaps the most famousfor their concave saddleback roof ridges, oftencrowned with multiple spires. Ornamentationincludes a variety of wooden carvings, such as onKerinci longhouses, and bull- or horn-shapedgable finials on Karo and Kanekes houses.

This is an immense subject with hugepotential, but the range and impressive natureof these houses present the authors with someproblems, as does the question of how tobalance the relationship between anarchitectural and an anthropological approach tothis subject. The requirement for each author toprovide a morphological description for eachhouse form, prioritizing built structure at theexpense of inhabitation, is entirely necessary foran architectural volume, but detracts from thepotential for ‘lived’ accounts of these dwellings.Contradictions also arise through each authordeveloping his or her own personal analysiswithout any overarching theoretical or regional

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contextualization, resulting in somecontradictory accounts.

What is very clear is that the majority of thedwellings discussed were built at least seventyyears ago, often earlier, and that over the periodthe authors conducted their research, majorchanges have taken place. In some chapters, theethnography is largely drawn from secondarysources, and described in a generalizing way inan apparent search for the original ‘traditional’house of the region – ‘the Aceh house’, ‘theurban Betawi house’, or ‘the ground-levelRejang house’. At times, buildings are conflatedwith people, one author seeking out the‘missing links’ through which to ascertain the‘genetic relationship between houses’, forexample. Conversely, the tendency of locals toconflate people and kin with their dwellingsthrough practices such as naming of homes,collective building practices, use of space, andritual maintenance by shamans, as described bySchefold among the Mentawai, also provides afascinating reverse reflection of the Europeanacademic approach to the subject.

Despite its few shortcomings, the volume isan extremely valuable document of Indonesianhousing over a period of dramatic change. As anarchitectural document it is superb, especiallyvaluable given the deterioration and neglectof older buildings, their recent destructionby the tsunami and earthquakes, and thetransformations of inhabitants’ lives throughglobal practices such as migration and tourism.Vellinga, who addresses the impact of some ofthese events in his wonderful account ofMinangkabau architecture, reveals howaggressive promotion of the most visuallyimposing of local houses in this region, throughtourism and as status symbols of identity for thenew regionally powerful, result in a fossilizationof local architectural practices. There is theparadox that new houses are built to a ‘classictraditional’ form for the wealthy, albeit to‘modern standards’, yet less prosperous,extended kin groups now live separately inconcrete houses, while their former vernacularcommunal dwellings, deemed unhygienic andnot modern, have become empty, purposeless,and dilapidated. At the same time, otherregional dwellings which do not conform to theclassical style are ignored, even abandoned, sothat regional diversity and architectural andcultural dynamism are being erased.

Some authors’ research into secondarysources provides fascinating detail. Domenig, forexample, describes ceremonies from a centuryago through which the living trees used to

construct Karo dwellings had their ‘tree-life’removed, and their wood dedicated to the spiritof the house, bringing it into the realm ofhuman action. He also cites how orientation ofthe root end and the crown end of a tree werecritical to both construction and use of socialspace, both examples providing insights into thelink between local human-environment relationsand building and dwelling practices.

Through all the accounts that make up thisvolume, one overriding concern is the ongoingdilapidation and destruction of this architectureand its impact on local societies. This is not anexercise in salvage ethnography, but a bleaksumming up of events. One author cites how itwould cost a local ten years’ wages to build ahouse today in vernacular form, as they contendwith wood shortages and expensive traditionalmaterials. Other impacts derive from changingvalues linked to modernity, the growth of thenuclear family and individualism, increasedmigration, deforestation, illegal logging, othereffects of globalization, along with flooding andearthquakes. Much of the research in the volumecovers the period between 1970 and the 1990sand there are few post-tsunami accounts, despitethis being one of the worst-affected regions.Viaro notes how houses in Nias were veryseriously damaged. He regrets how cheapshelters replace old houses, while decorateddebris from buildings damaged by the tsunamiare being sold off to dealers or for tourists,commenting, ‘After a few years very little willremain to remember this old civilization’. Thisraises serious and poignant questions which aredifficult to answer, but the volume provides anexcellent source to begin to do so.

Stephanie Bunn University of St Andrews

Snead, James E., Clark L. Erickson &J. Andrew Darling (eds). Landscapes ofmovement: trails, paths, and roads inanthropological perspective. xviii, 364 pp.,maps, figs, tables, illus., bibliogr.Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 2009.£42.50 (cloth)

The theme of roads and movement has longinterested archaeologists and anthropologists,and publication of this volume, the first in aseries resulting from conference proceedingsorganized by Penn Museum, confirms that thistheme is fundamental in these disciplines andrequires their thoughtful attention.

The book’s contributors share the premisethat ‘trails, paths, and roads are themanifestation of human movement through the

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landscape and are central to an understandingof that movement at multiple scales’ (p. xv).They also had the collective goal of ‘developinga better understanding of infrastructure, social,political, and economic organization, culturalexpressions of patterned movement, and theways that trails, paths, and roads materializetraditional knowledge and engineering, worldview, memory, and identity’ (p. xv).

The volume reveals the meanings ofmovement along paths, trails, and roads inmany accounts and represents an interestingcollection of articles ranging from spatialunderstanding and economic significance ofroads to linguistic and oral analysis ofgeographical routes.

The opening chapter, ‘Making human space:the archaeology of trails, paths, and roads’, bythe editors of the volume, James Snead, ClarkErickson, and Andrew Darling, sets the tone ofthe volume and is presented as an overview ofstudies on the topic with specific focus onarchaeology.

The volume presents several case studies onresearch of ancestral knowledge and use of trailsand paths. T.J. Ferguson, G. Lennis Berlin, andLeigh J. Kuwanwisiwma offer us a case study ofthe Hopi and the cultural value attributed toancestral trails and work on identifying thesetrails, and James S. Snead takes us to theprecolumbian Pajarito Plateau to reveal its socialconstruction.

A fascinating cluster of research has beenproposed in the juxtaposition of archaeologyand language. In chapter 4, Andrew Darlingreveals how social space is created throughsongs containing geographical routes in centraland southern Arizona. Catherine Fowler presentsprojects and ethnographic work onreconstruction of trails in Southern Nevada andCalifornia (chap. 5). We are also offered anintriguing case study considering variousmeanings of the word ‘road’ in Maya languageand thought by Angela Keller in chapter 7 and achapter on narratives about journeys andremembering along the Missouri River (MaríaNieves Zedeño, Kacy Hollenbach, and CalvinGrinnell, chap. 6).

Several chapters focus on paths andmovement along them in ancient societies:Costa Rica (chap. 8, by Payson Sheets) and earlyBronze Age Northern Mesopotamia (chap. 9, byJason Ur). The significance of roads for everydaylife, as well as their agrarian and residentialaspects among the Bolivian Amazon, areexamined by Clarke L. Erickson (chap. 10) and byErickson and John L. Walker (chap. 11).

The volume presents a genuinely collectivelabour and is the commendable result of a grandendeavour. On the down side, I fear that forreaders in the UK, the content suggested by thetitle of the book, Landscapes of movement: trails,paths, and roads in anthropological perspective,with its emphasis on anthropology, might beslightly misleading in that archaeology andanthropology are separate disciplines in Britain.In addition, the wide range of contributors,unfortunately, does not translate into a broadgeographical scope, with only one case studyleading beyond the Americas. It once againmakes the title somewhat misleading, as thegeographical range of this book has not beenreflected in its title. It would also have beenuseful to have slightly expanded information oncontributors at the end of the book, in the formof short but more informative biographical notes.

Despite these minor criticisms, I wouldnevertheless wholeheartedly recommend thisbook to scholars who focus their work onmovement along roads, trails, paths, andmultiple aspects related to such movement. It isan appropriate book to be used for teachingstudents in archaeology, geography, andanthropology, and represents the right road onwhich these disciplines may move forward.

Tanya Argounova-Low University of Aberdeen

van der Hoorn, Mélanie. Indispensableeyesores: an anthropology of undesiredbuildings. xii, 266 pp., illus., bibliogr. Oxford,New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. £45.00

(cloth)

‘How do people affect undesired architecture,and how does undesired architecture affectthem?’ This is the guiding question for Mélanievan der Hoorn’s ambitious and novelexamination of the complex, often contradictoryrelations that people cultivate with derelict orrejected buildings that populate theirlandscapes. The subject formed the kernel ofvan der Hoorn’s MA thesis and she furtherdeveloped and expanded her geographicalcoverage during doctoral studies in culturalanthropology at Utrecht University. Financialsupport allowed her to make field visits to all ofthe ‘eyesores’ discussed in the book in order todocument the sites, consult archives, meetvarious stakeholders, and conduct interviews.

The book is divided into eleven chapters, thefirst two forming a combined introduction to thetopic and to the theoretical framework. The nextsix chapters each present a case study of a

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European site, visiting in succession the gigantic,never-completed nineteen-storey carcass of amega-hotel in West Germany that sat derelict forover two decades; a badly damaged newspaperbuilding in war-torn Sarajevo; a completed, butnever-commissioned, nuclear power plant onthe Dutch-German border; a prefabricatedapartment block in former East Berlin; theforeboding Viennese Flaktürme (anti-aircrafttowers constructed during the Nazi occupation);and the abandoned grand Kulturhaus on theBaltic island of Usedom. Each of the selectedsites displays a different degree of materialintervention, and the studies move progressivelyfrom complete elimination in the case of theGerman mega-hotel, through various forms ofalteration and recuperation in the following fourcases, and finally to sheer abandonment in theexample of the Kulturhaus.

Van der Hoorn maintains that buildingsnecessarily have both a utilitarian function andrepresentational quality, so ‘the rejection of abuilding always oscillates between pragmaticclearance and pure iconoclasm’. Intervention ofany kind therefore spawns the taking up ofpositions among users, ordinary citizens, anddecision-makers and throws into relief therelations of power within a community. This,van der Hoorn conveys, is what makes rejectedbuildings important sites for anthropologicalresearch, and it is their ability to render abstracttensions tangible that makes them‘indispensable’. The buildings presentedthroughout the book are deemed ‘harmful’ bylocal communities, not only because some havebecome structurally unstable through years ofdereliction, but perhaps more importantlybecause the memories and narratives associatedwith them have strong psychological andemotional resonance. Narratives empowerpeople to engage with, explore, and, in a sense,enter into buildings and spaces that arefenced-off, boarded-up, and inaccessible, but yetremain part of their daily existence.

The recurring idea that rejected buildingspossess biographies (Appadurai) and agency(Gell) is further explored in chapters 9 and 10,where van der Hoorn investigates the ways thatpeople either ritualistically exorcize remains orrehabilitate eliminated eyesores throughreconstitution, replacement, or the creation ofcontemporary references. People engage in suchactivities ultimately to derive a greater sense ofcontrol and mediation over memory andpersonal experience connected with thebuildings and their (often menacing) histories.These two chapters feature buildings in

postsocialist locations including a four-and-a-halfkilometer-long National Socialist resort that scarsthe Baltic island of Rügen and severalarchitectural cases in Budapest. In the finalepilogue, the author revisits her arguments forthe ‘thing-ly influence’ (distinguished from‘thing-ly determinism’) that buildings have onus, this time calling upon Bruno Latour’sactor-network theory and illustrating with theexample of an eclectic and ever-transforming‘Eco-Cathedral’ in the Netherlands.

The book is published in Berghahn’s‘Remapping Cultural History’ series, promotingstudies on aspects of culture that areunderrepresented in scholarly research and thatchallenge conventional thinking. IndispensableEyesores undeniably fulfils these criteria. Itinvites the anthropology of space, place, andarchitecture to broaden its remit to includerejected sites and to consider the impact thesehave on social relations, memory-making, andcultural identity. But the book’s categorizationas a work of anthropology is somewhatcontentious. Van der Hoorn’s case studies lackethnographic depth, and the voices of individualusers, witnesses, and public officials from the(too) many locations are sprinkled sparselythrough the chapters. As a result, her analyses aresteered more by the adopted theory than thedata, and there is considerable repetition ofthemes and ideas. To my mind, the book wouldhave benefited from the inclusion of fewer, morepenetrating studies accompanied by a greaternumber of photographic illustrations, maps, andbuilding plans. It also would have profited fromreduced length and a more rigorously conceivedstructure.

Despite these shortcomings, van der Hoorn’sstudy makes a valuable contribution to ourunderstanding of the complex and lastingrelations we have with those things we reject.

Trevor H.J. Marchand School of Oriental andAfrican Studies

Biological and forensicanthropology

Larsen, Clark Spencer (ed.). A companion tobiological anthropology. xxv, 572 pp., maps,figs, tables, illus., bibliogrs. Oxford, Malden,Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. £110.00 (cloth)

This volume, the seventh of the ‘BlackwellCompanions to Anthropology’, fits well within

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the book series, and is interesting and wellwritten, yet in its own right it is somewhatunusual within the field. The goal of theBlackwell Companion series is to provide asurvey of the disciplines, and in this it hasoffered a relatively unique volume in biologicalanthropology.

A companion to biological anthropology hasthirty-one chapters, each written by a differentauthor (or authors), and every chapter addressesa particular element of the field of biological(or physical) anthropology. The range of topicsis admirably comprehensive, ranging acrosssuch subjects as bone biology, nutrition,brain evolution, ageing and development,early hominin evolution, primatology, skulland tooth biomechanics, and genetics. All ofthe authors are well-established researchersin the field, including several pre-eminentscholars.

This is not an introductory textbook, as thearticles employ sophisticated language andassume a level of knowledge for the reader.There are few illustrations and no marginaliaexplaining scientific terms. Yet these chaptersalso are clearly not written for other specialists,as they are broad overviews of the topics, andneither contain any specific investigations nortest any hypotheses. Rather, each chapterprovides a summary of the state of the art withineach of the many elements of biologicalanthropology, frequently framing the debatesand providing a brief but informative historicalcontext. The level of detail is generallyimpressive, particularly given the chapter lengthof 8,000-12,000 words, and is achieved by,almost without exception, concise writing thatavoids meandering digression or vigorouspursuit of a favoured position.

The writers themselves are admirablyrestrained in their discussion of contentiousdebates, and authors well known to supportvigorously one position or another providebroader perspectives than they have beenknown to offer previously. Given the strongpersonalities of some of the writers, this showsthe hallmark of a well-edited volume. This doesnot mean that all of the essays are perfectlybalanced, and in several cases non-consensuspositions receive perhaps more emphasisthan might be warranted in an objectivesummary, but this is generally rare, andalways subtle.

The first chapter, by Michael Little and RobertSussman, offers a very useful (if necessarilybrief) history of the discipline of biologicalanthropology. In many ways this is the most

important contribution of the volume. Biologicalanthropology has perhaps a more ethicallychequered past than almost any other scientificdiscipline, and the hangover from this past stillinforms the relationship between biologicalanthropologists and the other subdisciplineswithin broader anthropology. Although Littleand Sussman do not pull any punches whendescribing the morally repugnant elements ofthe past, they very usefully frame these elementswithin the broader goals of scientific inquiry intohuman variation and evolutionary history.Biological anthropology has only become amature scientific discipline within the last fiftyyears, and in many ways this is the most relevantperiod for understanding the current discipline.It would be a very useful exercise foranthropological researchers outside thebiological sub-discipline to read this section,in particular.

The remaining chapters are grouped intoconceptual categories (e.g. ‘The present and theliving’, ‘The past and the dead’, etc.), and thesechapters tend to be more technical, yet neveroutside the scope of the casual student ofphysical anthropology. Early chapters coverbroad introductory topics (evolution, systematicsand taxonomy, human genetics), while the latterchapters tend to become more narrow, and thisis one reason why the book might be usefullyread from start to finish by an informednon-specialist.

One interesting element of these essays isthe extent to which they include importanthistorical information about the topicaddressed. Frequently, students learn aboutthe current state of a field withoutunderstanding why particular issues aresubject to such intense debate. This type ofinformation can be hard for a student to accessin a summary form, but explication of howdifferent research groups arrived at theirpositions, and the history of debates, is oneof the strong advantages of having writerswho are long established and have watchedmany of these debates unfold during theircareers.

This is an ideal volume for the library of anydepartment of anthropology, as well as a usefulreference for the informed non-specialist. For anundergraduate looking for a clear description ofa single aspect of biological anthropology, or agraduate student trying to decide an area offocus, or anyone looking for a good source ofreferences in a field new to them, this volumewould be invaluable.

Brian Villmoare University College London

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Turnbull, Paul & Michael Pickering

(eds). The long way home: the meaning andvalues of repatriation. vii, 207 pp., bibliogrs.Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2010.£16.50 (paper)

The repatriation of any aspect of a culture is anemotive subject, whether it relates to artefacts orthe remains of its people. Whilst the sins of thefather need not be borne by the son, there is amoral and ethical responsibility to addressrestitution. It may take generations to resolveand the path may be painful and complex, butthe rights of indigenous peoples for the return oftheir stolen culture demands the attention ofmodern society.

This fourteen-chapter text arose from the‘Meanings and Values of Repatriation’conference held in Canberra in 2005. As anedited text originating from a conference, it isinevitable that there will be variability in styleand perhaps an anticipated degree ofdiscontinuity. However, this is not overtlyapparent as it is branded honestly as a‘collection of essays that has its origins inconversations’. The level of informality in somepapers makes them refreshing reading. The bookis divided into five sections: ‘Ancestors, notspecimens’, ‘Repatriation in law and police’,‘The ethics and cultural implications ofrepatriation’, ‘Repatriation and the history ofscientific collection of indigenous remains’, and‘Museums, indigenous peoples andrepatriation’.

All of the chapters are highly informativeand well written, with balanced perspectivesand a genuine intention to educate and informwithout assigning undue blame. Being aforensic anthropologist, I will admit freely thatI found the sections on skeletal repatriationmore interesting and relevant, but myconscience was pricked to remember that toattempt to view corporeal remains, isolatedfrom their holistic spiritual and culturalassociations, is tantamount to a theoreticalmirroring of the activities of my predecessors.It raised emotions of collective guilt as a Brit,a scientist, and a physical anthropologist fora past in which I played no part and itchallenged my views on my own culturalheritage. There is a palpable sadness for themany cultures, perhaps my own included,where there is no strong voice prepared tofight for the rights of its ancient dead, and thisraises the viable questions of when do werecognize that a culture is finally lost andthere is no one left to care, and how do we

know we have got it right when it comes torepatriation? Scientific training replays theword ‘provenance’ in my head and servesto remind that if science does not addressrigorous criteria, then perhaps we also run therisk of inappropriate and incorrect repatriation.The scientific validation of provenancing ismissing from this text and that is a shame –it is one of the few ways that science can repayits debt.

There is no lone voice in this text thateven remotely attempts to justify the originalevents, and this is not surprising, but if wewere to return to the time, then that voicemight have cited the lofty goals of scientificinvestigation. While perhaps there is no doubtthat the world of biological anthropologycame to understand some aspects of humanvariation through this plunder, the academicreturn for the betterment of the indigenouscommunities has been meagre in the extreme.The current justification for retention ofskeletal remains in museums echoes theseoriginal cries and we ignore them at ourperil. We run with the argument that withadvances in science, and genetic research inparticular, we can only imagine what we willbe able to elucidate from the very core of ourlong-dead cells. But genetic research servesonly to tell us about physicality and missesthe important fact that culture, heritage,and belonging are not about DNA butconcern the most fundamental core of humansociety – community. The split betweencultural and physical anthropology is brieflydiscussed and the wilderness years of thelatter are perhaps somewhat simplisticallyexplained through the shame of past behaviour,but the study of physical and biologicalanthropology continues to be viewed withdistrust in some communities. A concernexpressed is whether, if a person is foundto have less than half of his or her geneticmaterial expressed as being indigenous, thisnegates them from fully belonging to theculture and being recognized and accepted asa part of it. Of course, in terms of culturalanthropology, we would say no, but thefear surrounding the outcome of physicalanthropology is that science can be difficultto refute, especially when it closely mirrorslegislative ideals. The fear and distrustappear not to have disappeared but tohave evolved. The physical, spiritual, andmoral responsibilities of repatriation areimmense.

Sue Black University of Dundee

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Development and aid

Cornwall, Andrea (ed.). The participationreader. xx, 443 pp., figs, tables, bibliogrs.London, New York: Zed Books, 2011. £18.99

(paper)

Over the last couple of decades, the volume ofscholarly engagement with, and critique of,‘participation’ has increased exponentially. Tothe newcomer in particular (but to older handsas well), navigating a way through the vastnessof the literature can be a bewildering anddaunting task. Andrea Cornwall’s new readerthus represents a godsend.

Cornwall has drawn together some of themost influential, inspiring, and, occasionally,challenging writing on the principles andpractice of participation in development researchand action. The volume is arranged in fivesections. In the first, ‘What is participation?’ thereader is introduced to key definitions andframeworks for thinking about meanings andpractices of ‘participatory development’. Webegin with Sherry Arnstein’s seminal paper, firstpublished in 1969, on ‘Ladders of participation’;a concept that has remained central (withvarious modifications) in the subsequentliterature on participatory research. Two chaptersin this section in particular (Sarah White’s classicpaper and Pablo Alejandro Leals’s more recentpiece) provide very important critiques,challenging our understandings of participationand questioning the ways in which the concepthas become diluted and thus depoliticizedthrough co-option into mainstream developmentdiscourses.

The second section offers the reader a tasteof the great variety of participatory approachesand methods that have been applied in differentcontexts. Many of the chapters in this section areshort, based on extracts rather than full papers,which is helpful in allowing a greater range ofexamples to be brought to the table. Sectionsthree and four focus respectively onparticipatory development in relation tocommunity participation and governance,providing a range of fascinating examples.

Whereas both these sections deal essentiallywith externally initiated and facilitated‘participation’, the final part of the bookexplores examples of locally initiatedmobilization, insurgency, and political struggle.This is, perhaps, the most exciting and inspiringpart of the volume. By taking a far more radicaland politicized view of notions like democracy

than is currently fashionable in neoliberal circles,these chapters force the reader to confront andquestion some of the principles that lie at theheart of global power relations and the politicsof representation. By re-focusing on(de)politicization, and drawing on theories ofsubaltern actors and counter-publics, Johnston(and others in this section) oblige us to movebeyond the comfort zone of participation as acuddly ‘motherhood and apple pie’ notion.Resisting co-option is a key theme of severalpapers in this final section, and EvelinaDagnino’s contribution, which charts the‘perverse confluence’ of constructions ofcitizenship in both radical democratic andneoliberal discourses, makes a fittinglychallenging conclusion to the volume. Cornwalloffers no final discussion, attempting tosummarize the key points and debates thatemerge from this set of papers. In somerespects, this might be seen as a missedopportunity to draw together such an importantand eclectic collection. However, in otherrespects it is a strength: in keeping with theprinciples of participation, readers are notspoon-fed a ready-made set of conclusions, butare invited to navigate their own way throughthe material and make sense of it for themselves.

In her preface, Cornwall remarks on thedifficulty of choosing which articles to includeand which to leave out; an unenviable positionin many ways. On the whole, the choices shehas made are appropriate ones in my view.The papers range from early classics andcornerstones (such as those by Arnstein, OrlandoFals Borda, and Robert Chambers) to somebrilliant contemporary examples, includinglesser-known work. The one omission I wouldquestion is an extract from Bill Cooke and UmaKothari’s Participation: the new tyranny? (2001).While some of the arguments made in that bookare taken up and developed in the papers thatCornwall has included, it seems odd to leave outa text that has provoked such reaction anddebate for both practitioners and those studyingparticipatory development.

That one omission notwithstanding, Iwholeheartedly applaud Cornwall’s work inputting together this wonderful volume. I haveno doubt that it will be of enduring value toscholars, students, and practitioners ofdevelopment for many years to come. I hopethat it will also be accessible to some of those atthe other end: those who ‘participate’ in‘development’ in various ways, includingsubversion and resistance, as well as ‘softer’forms of participation. This reader represents

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both an important ‘marker’ of the keyparticipatory discourses and practices over thepast four decades, and a forward-looking takeon the possibilities of popular action forcontesting global political hegemonies. Everyonewith an interest in global power relations,inequalities, and development in the twenty-firstcentury should read it.

Kate Hampshire Durham University

Hagberg, Sten & Charlotta Widmark

(eds). Ethnographic practice and public aid:methods and meanings in developmentcooperation. 305 pp., figs, bibliogrs. Uppsala:Univ. Press, 2009. $77.50 (paper)

This book makes the case for the involvement ofanthropologists in aid. The contributors offer atour of the institutions prominent in the industry– aid-giving and -receiving governments, NGOs,and even large companies – as well as variouslocations in Europe, South America, South Asia,and Africa. Most of the authors have someconnection to Swedish InternationalDevelopment Co-operation (Sida), a donor thatemployed anthropologists as staff or consultantsearlier than most.

Olivier de Sardan conveys the value of givingenough time to the study of development beforerushing to judge. He gives us a taste of some ofhis findings in West Africa: the pervasivecorruption and disdain for users by civil servantshas been partly caused by the donors by-passingthe state. To change the professional culturesfound in state agencies, reform is needed fromthe inside rather than from top down imposedby donors. In support of reformers within thesystem, we should expose the everyday implicit‘practical norms’ that govern corruption,whether commissions for illicit services orstring-pulling, as well as the culture of impunity.I found de Sardan’s argument utterlyconvincing.

David Lewis makes a broader argumentabout the need for a historical perspective. He isnot the first to make it, but it is still worthreminding development scholars andpractitioners until they take some notice.Whether gathering life histories of organizations,or tracing the reasons for changing fashions, theideology and practices of development can bebetter understood through history. MarcusHedlund provides an example of this: as manyaid professionals have plunged into time-wastingmanagerialism and bureaucracy, socialmovements have been transformed into NGOs

while facilitation has become technicalized andinstrumental rather than the empowerment goalit was twenty years ago. Eva Tobisson reminds ofthe importance of taking account of the localcontext over time in describing how peopleexperience poverty. It cannot be understood inZanzibar unless you consider increases in theprice of land, introduction of seaweed farming,the rise and fall of tourism, and so on, which inmy view casts doubt on the value of theUNDP-assisted one-day consultation process todevelop Zanzibar’s first Poverty Reduction Plan(p. 145).

Reflexivity and the ethical position ofanthropologists is another strand of this volume.Rosalind Eyben’s position is revealing – havingmoved from civil servant to researcher at theInstitute for Development Studies – as she bringsinto stark relief how anthropologists are associalized as any other social actors. Herliminality is disconcerting for former colleagues,especially when she underscores her outsiderposition during a particular encounter by beingmore reflective than insiders are supposed to be(p. 91).

Jan Ovesen tells the most controversial story.In his assessment, a dam in Laos reduces poverty(pp. 276-8), and he defends the conclusions hemade during the 1990s that resettling some ofthe local population was worth it. But theconsequences of his reports remain open toquestion. As he points out, short-termconsultants have very little influence over largeagencies, and in this case none of hisrecommendations made a mark (pp. 266-8).Strangely, he does not see this as a compromise.This provides a contrast to Charlotta Widmark,who implies in her article on shortcuts thatanthropologists are blocked in explainingchange in holistic and participatory waysbecause aid is organized to map and countresults against intentions absurdly quickly. Toaccept a role as anthropological broker, then,you have to decide whether you share enoughof the ethical assumptions and the politics ofyour employers and whether the practicalconstraints are bearable for you or harmful forothers.

The arguments for more anthropologicalresearch of development are made clear by thiscollection: to enrich both developmentco-operation by shaking its certainties andanthropology in its exploration of politics,governance, and public space. This volumereminds us that good ethnographic researchrelies on probing in sufficient depth to explaincomplex connections in an intensely political

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industry, rather than helping planners tocompile wish-lists and reduce the social totechnical variables. What remains mysterious iswhat role anthropologists should have in aid,but that is, in my view, as it should be.

When anthropologists make it sound easy toparticipate in international development – or,worse, offer checklists, typologies, grids, andtools – that is when I feel uneasy. This book is,on the whole, reassuringly critical, questioning,and uncertain in its conclusions onanthropologists working in aid anddevelopment.

Emma Crewe School of Oriental andAfrican Studies

Sridhar, Devi. The battle against hunger:choice, circumstance, and the World Bank. xix,229 pp., figs, tables, bibliogr. Oxford: Univ.Press, 2008. £40.00 (cloth)

Three important questions lie at the heart of thisbook: (i) ‘How much should policy-makersconsider social structure when designingpolicy?’; (ii) ‘Why do policy-makers in the WorldBank in particular persist with discreditedmodels of intervention?’; and (iii) ‘How does theWorld Bank understand and address mal- andunder-nutrition – and, by implication, howshould we, the readers?’ Answering suchquestions requires knowledge of the socialaetiology of nutrition, the arts and crafts ofpolicy formulation and evaluation, and theentrails of the World Bank (WB). Thoughanthropologists have made valuablecontributions to each of these fields, Devi Sridharis one of very few with competences in all three.To bring the symbolic and epistemologicalsystems of disciplines together has profoundimplications for methods. The answers to herquestions require the sacrifice of the long-termparticipant observation associated withanthropology to an eclectic combination ofanalyses of discourse, of survey material, and ofmulti-sited ‘ethnographic interviews’ (p. 195).The empirical focus is on nutrition (marginalizedin both public health and social science, whileunder-nutrition is a long-running scandal inIndia); the policy in question is the WB’snutrition programme; its original site is TamilNadu, India; and the era is the late 1970s to thepresent.

Having framed her project in chapter 1,Sridhar then introduces us in the followingchapter to the histories of food and nutritioninterventions in India and Tamil Nadu, to caste

and party politics in Tamil Nadu, to the methodsfor – and controversies over – policy evaluation,and to the evolution of nutrition inside the WB.The novelty of this chapter lies in its emphasison individual agency in policy processes. Inchapter 3, in a fine deconstruction of ‘hunger’ asa development problem, Sridhar exposes thecivil war between depoliticized bio-medicalapproaches to nutrition, on the one hand, andsocial sciences, dominated by the politics ofcost-benefit calculations and economics, on theother. Chapter 4, which explores how nutritiondiffers from other expert sectors inside the WB,can be read to argue not that its specialproblems are due to being dominated byeconomists or operating with a policy template(for both are commonplace), but rather thatnutrition is both interstitial and marginal to thepower centres of policy-making.

Chapter 5, the empirical core of the book,moves to the Tamil Nadu Integrated NutritionProgramme (aka TNIP), the embodiment of anarrow, technicist, sectoralized subfield ofnutrition championed by the WB. It surveys therole of TNIP in village life and the roles ofwomen as agents of change in the ‘community’.The communities in question are four castes andthree hamlets north of Chennai. ExaminingTNIP’s policy menu, Sridhar reveals seriousfailings in nutrition counselling and growthmonitoring, mediocre nutritional outcomes sincefood supplements are not targeted, and thepossibility of inappropriate assumptions lyingbehind the project, such as women beingignorant in matters of child feeding. The WBignores the roles of class and genderdiscrimination as major forces shapingnutritional outcomes and, despite their agency,the project exacerbates the marginalization ofpeople at the intersection of nutrition,patriarchy, and caste. Sridhar then turns to‘What works?’ and in a critical review ofsecondary literature scopes the alternatives of‘economic growth’, sanitation infrastructure, andhealth-care access, emphasizing the scantattention paid in all the policy texts to thestructure of rural society, especiallyexpenditure-poverty, gender discrimination, andinfectious disease. She shows that the elementsof the WB model – nutrition monitoring,supplementary feeding, and nutritioncounselling – are poorly effective, and that theWB has had this evidence for ages but that itpersists in advocating this model, first, becausein oversimplified evaluations it appears to becost-effective, and, second, because the WB isstuck in a path-dependent rut. She concludes

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that cash-transfers to women’s groups would bea more effective and empowering policy forpoor (low-caste) women than is the TNIP, butalso that a given policy may be overwhelmed bythe social structures in which it is implemented.

There is much to discuss in this book, and Ican raise just five points here. First, while amulti-disciplinary project necessarily requires anengagement with eclectic terms of art, thereasons for weaving between ‘structure’ and‘agency’, and the subtitle’s ‘circumstance’(which may include contingency as well asstructure) and ‘choice’ (more elastic than theagentic choices of village women, evenincluding the choices of the WB), are neverclarified. Structures and circumstances arenot stabilized in the narrative: caste, class,and patriarchy emerge but the structuresof the institutions through which policy isimplemented are opaque; the structure of workis alluded to but indirectly; and community is astrategically fuzzy concept. Second, while thereare spirited swipes at bio-medical theory andrational choice, the reader has to work hard hereto uncover theories of the causes of poornutrition: ‘poverty, colonial heritage,deforestation and gender inequality’ (p. 15);community sickness, ‘social disharmony, conflictand disintegration’ (p. 15); inappropriate childcare (p. 46); poor mothering and ignorance(p. 50). This matters because we need to knowwhy caste and not class or income poverty wasused as the prime stratifier in the empiricalchapter. Tamil politics is represented as castepolitics but not related to the politics of party orcaste in the villages. Third, while Sridhar is agood ambassador to anthropology for the fieldof health, her ambassadorial handling of thequantitative evidence for qualitatively trainedscholars of anthropology leaves much to bedesired. The sample of 300 households isnon-randomly selected (p. 111) with a varyingsampling fraction (p. 112), yet statistical tests areapplied and conclusions made as though thedata were random and representative; and someconclusions – for example, that there are nosignificant caste and gender differences innutritional status (p. 117) – refer only to thenon-random data, while the evidence tabulatedcertainly suggests complex differences in both.Fourth, many key texts in Sridhar’s fields are notreferred to, which leads her into a tendency toreinvent the wheel. Her conclusion that manywomen feel that ‘alcohol abuse [is] the singlemost important problem for women in India’(p. 151) is based on her village voices, plus just asingle reference in what appears to be a

newsletter – while India’s alcohol/addictionstudies are voluminous and contested. Fifth,Sridhar’s text has been astonishingly poorlyserved by Oxford University Press’s copy-editors:it includes shoddy referencing, typos, repeatedtext, and tables without sources.

But the essence is that Sridhar does deliveranswers to the three big questions framing thisbook, ones that are both useful and provocative.And the book is also well written and readable.

Barbara Harriss-White Wolfson College,Oxford Univiersity

Education, learning,and childhood

Brockliss, Laurence & Heather

Montgomery (eds). Childhood and violencein the Western tradition. xvi, 336 pp., tables,illus., bibliogrs. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010.£40.00 (cloth)

The subject matter of this book is the violenceendured by children at the hands of parentsand those acting in loco parentis – or, as thepublisher’s blurb puts it, ‘the covert ferocity atthe heart of adult/child relationships’. Theunderlying aim is to historicize ourunderstanding of abusive parenting byhighlighting changes in what was consideredacceptable behaviour over the last threemillennia. The definition of abuse is a broad one,involving violence, neglect, and exploitation, sothat the book covers child labour and childpoverty as well as physical cruelty. The editorsnote that society in the early twenty-first centuryis obsessed with child abuse, if the media andvarious government agencies are anything togo by. They hope to clarify matters bydistinguishing enduring beliefs in Europeancivilization about improper parenting (such asinvariably condemning infanticide) from morerecent constructs (notably rejecting the corporalpunishment of children). The assumption is thatin all periods there were boundaries betweenwhat was considered the legitimate and theillegitimate use of physical force. The editorssuggest, perhaps optimistically, that this shouldreassure child-care professionals, given thathowever cruel certain parental practices in thepast appear to us, there never was a period of‘anything goes’.

The editors are surely right to claim thatviolence and neglect are an ‘under-studied’ area

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in the history of childhood. It is also beyonddoubt that their approach to editing is highlyunusual. Instead of producing a discrete set ofessays, they have chosen to divide the materialinto six themes, with substantial commentary oftheir own linking the contributions fromspecialists: perhaps a quarter of the work waswritten by the editors. The risk of a collectionfrom thirty-four contributors is that it appears arandom assembly of detailed monographs. Canwe accept that the editors have overcome thischallenge by producing a ‘pointillist survey,a series of period specific vignettes writtenby experts and knitted together a coherentnarrative by the two editors, a historian andan anthropologist’ (p. x)? This reviewer waspersuaded. Besides the quality of the essays, theinput from the editors is consistently lively andwell informed. The reader can follow awide-ranging survey as it meanders across thecenturies, from antiquity to contemporaryBritain. Of the thirty-four contributors, half arehistorians, and only one an anthropologist(Heather Montgomery) – but as joint editor thelatter ends up with a pervasive influence overthe content.

The introduction covers some basics such asthe inevitable ‘what is a child?’ and recenthistoriography in the area. The six themescovered are: child sacrifice; infanticide,abandonment and abortion; physical cruelty andsocialization; child exploitation; violent children,youth enforcers, and juvenile delinquents; and,finally, coping strategies and exit routes. Muchof this will be familiar to specialists in the studyof childhood, though it is useful to have theresearch findings of leading scholars in oneplace. One might cite, for example,abandonment (Sally Crawford and AlysaLevene), child labour (Jane Humphries) andjuvenile delinquency (Heather Shore). The bookhas plenty of material of interest to socialscientists as well as historians, notably childsacrifice in the ancient world (FrancescaStavrakopoulu), children as carers (Saul Becker),and self-harm (Rosemary Peacocke). It is up todate in depicting children as actors in theirown right as well as victims of adult power.They might suffer beatings from parents,schoolteachers, and employers, but they candish it out themselves as school prefects, or, asLaurence Brockliss reveals, as rioters in Jesuitschools in seventeenth-century France. Theymight find themselves sacrificed by parents assoldiers in the First World War (Adrian Gregory),but in the middle of war zones they are alsoeager to play war games among themselves.

Nick Stargardt notes the bizarre tendency ofchildren on the losing side coping with theirfeelings of powerlessness and envy by vying toplay the winners: Jewish children in the Warsawghetto becoming Germans; Berlin childrenbecoming Russian soldiers in 1945. The overalleffect of reading the book is sobering, indiscovering what some children suffered in thepast. What does one make of poor Hans PhilipSchuh, aged 13, and given forty-six strokes andthen a further seventy-seven strokes in 1628 inWürzburg to beat a confession out of him oncharges of witchcraft (Lyndal Roper)? It is alsosalutary to be reminded that child poverty,suicide, and self-harming remain with us.

Colin Heywood University of Nottingham

Kipnis, Andrew B. Governing educationaldesire: culture, politics, and schooling in China.xi, 205 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr.London, Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2011.£18.00 (paper)

Following the rapid surge of Chineseinternational students, especially in the US andEurope, Chinese parents’ and youths’ craving foreducation has become a topic of global interestamong scholars, journalists, educationists, and‘national’ students. Andrew Kipnis’s timely bookgoes a long way to identify and explain coursesof what he poignantly describes as ‘educationaldesire’ in China and beyond. Building onlong-term anthropological field research inschools at different levels in Zouping county ofShandong province, Kipnis introduces to thereader the world of education in one of China’smost highly educated rural regions. Heapproaches the study of Chinese educationalhistory and contemporary practices through theFoucauldian perspective of governmentality, andconvincingly refutes the common assumptionthat practices of subjectification, discipline, andconduct of conduct essentially emerged fromWestern industrialized contexts and spread tothe East during the eras of colonialization andglobalization. Educational desires in China haveroots, Kipnis argues, in governing practices ofimperial China, with the examination systemas one of the most obvious examples of agoverning technology that has a historygoing back to premodern times, and onethat was clearly not adopted from Westernpractices.

However, Kipnis does not limit his study tothe cultural specificies of governing througheducation in the context of Zouping, or even

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China. The ‘local’ is a starting-point in the bookfor broader theoretical discussions of theintersection between three major concepts inthe social sciences: culture, governing, andemplacement. Therefore, the book issystematically organized into four interconnectedchapters moving ‘outwards’ from the local, tothe national, the East Asian, and finally theuniversalizable aspects of educational desires.

First, chapter 2 establishes Zouping county asa place of intense educational desires, reflectedas much in educational policies and practices asin private investments and popular engagementin the education of children. Kipnis rightly pointsout that although Zouping is not representativeof all of contemporary China, it does provide anexample of a type of educational intensity thatmay be found in varying degrees in manyChinese contexts (p. 56).

In chapter 3, Kipnis shows how localgoverning practices in Zouping areencompassed in the wider context of China’snational policies. While there are considerablevariations in local educational policyimplementations in China, a common feature isthe fact that policies do not necessarily producethe results that policy-makers envision. Thisbecomes particularly evident in the descriptionsof the government’s various attempts tomanipulate or direct popular educational desiresin certain directions: for instance, trying toconvince more people to aim at a vocationalrather than academic track.

Expanding the perspective on educationaldesires further, chapter 4 moves from thenational to the East Asian historical context. Thechapter discusses, for instance, how key aspectsof governing across East Asia during imperialtimes manifest themselves in contemporaryeducational practices, ranging from (the ideal of)exam-based meritocracy to memorizations ofConfucian classics and nurturing personal‘quality’ by means of practising handwriting.This leads to the final chapter, which firmlyplaces Chinese and East Asian educationaldesires in the context of globalized means ofgoverning, demonstrating that there are indeeduniversalizable aspects of the educational desiresidentified in the local case of Zouping. Kipnissuggests – and convincingly so – that becauseof its exceptional long and broad experiences ofgoverning by means of examination, assessment,and evaluation, not merely in education but alsoin other realms of society, for instance thebureaucracy, China is actually in some respectson the cutting edge of globally changingpatterns of governing.

The focus of the book is on the diverse local,national, regional, and global sources of intenseeducational desires, and the complex means bywhich they are governed. However, in the finalconclusion, Kipnis also briefly deliberates overpossible effects of these desires in the context ofChina, foreseeing, for instance, that structuralconstraints which are generated by the highlevels of educational desires will prevent anysubstantial change of especially themuch-debated examcentric aspect of theeducation system.

Governing educational desire is an importantbook which contributes significantly to theanthropology of education, as well as theanthropology of governing. Providing a wealthof vividly described empirical data, which arevery well integrated into complex theoreticaldiscussions about culture and governmentality,the book deserves to be read by scholars,students, and anybody else interested in Chineseeducation, society, or governmentality ingeneral.

Mette Halskov Hansen University of Oslo

History and politics

Babidge, Sally. Aboriginal family and the state:the conditions of history. xxi, 269 pp., maps,figs, tables, illus., bibliogr. Farnham,Burlington: Ashgate, 2010. £60.00 (cloth)

In the last twenty years, a number ofmonographs by Australian anthropologists havedescribed the development of Aboriginalsociality, politics, and identity in relation to theencompassing Australian nation-state and itsown changing political culture. Among the mostfrequently cited of these are, for example,Francesca Merlan’s Caging the rainbow (1998),Barry Morris’s Domesticating resistance (1989),and David Trigger’s Whitefella comin’ (1992).(I can only mention here the dozens ofunpublished Masters and doctoral theses thathave been submitted on the same topic atAustralian universities.) Sally Babidge’s book isan account of one group of Aboriginal families,those who identify as Gudjala, the language ofthe original Aboriginal inhabitants of ChartersTowers, a small town in north Queensland nearTownsville.

All of these works perforce advocate ananthropology in which historical analysis has toplay a major role ethnographically. Babidge’s

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subtitle, The conditions of history, is neverexplicitly glossed in the monograph itself. But itis clear that history, in terms of both theobjective account of Settler-Aboriginal contact innorth Queensland, and the Aboriginal people’sown historicity, their sense of their own survivaland transformation through time in the highlyasymmetrical field of Aboriginal-White relations,is the ground against which she is setting heranthropological analysis of the current forms ofAboriginal family and its social actions in northQueensland.

Central to Babidge’s ethnography is theeffect of the organizational and actionaldemands that have been placed on ruralAboriginal families since Settlement. Her historybegins with frontier violence and the dispersal ofAboriginal local groups in the early years ofSettlement, and continues through the periodwhereby Aboriginal people were subject topronounced regulation and later to thepressures of a state-sponsored policy ofassimilation around the 1950s. This wasfollowed, starting in the 1970s, by the advent ofpolicies that granted more autonomy toAboriginal citizens and the provision of politicaltools dedicated to the goal of Aboriginal‘self-determination’.

All this is a familiar story in Aboriginalhistorical ethnography by now. Babidge’scontribution is her focus on the way in whichspecific forms of Aboriginal family and familystatuses in the Charters Towers area wereengendered and elicited by the development ofvarious state and federal policies in Queenslandand Australia. Her work is an ethnographiccontribution to the description of the nowcommonly referred to Aboriginal ‘surnamedfamily group’, which has become a unit of bothdomestic economy and reproduction in theclassic sense, as well as a political unit ofAboriginal interaction with the state within avariety of statutory realms. This twofolddomestic and political function distinguishesthe extended Aboriginal family from mostnon-Aboriginal families in Australia.

The primary political function of this familythat Babidge focuses on stems from thedemands of the Native Title Act (1993), whichhas afforded an avenue for Aboriginalcommunities to apply for the recognition ofrights and interests in their traditional lands.Because of the severe dislocation wrought onthe Aboriginal populations in places such asnorth Queensland, the relations between thecurrent inhabitants of the area and theirancestors who were alive at the time of first

European contact is very poorly recorded andoften impossible to confirm. Coupled with thestate’s policies of hostility to Aboriginal culturaland social activity in the early colonial periodand a later twentieth century of assimilation,Aboriginal families have experienced profoundalteration in the cultural dimensions of theirlived experience in the last 150 years. Yet theNative Title Act demands that Aboriginalapplicants demonstrate a continuity ofconnection both to these putative ancestors andto their traditional laws and customs, demandsthat in this part of Australia cannot be easilymet. The extended Aboriginal family group,often identified in terms of its dominantsurname, has become the identifiable mode ofAboriginal organizational response to thisstatutory form of engagement with the state.

Babidge engages effectively with the maintheoretical frameworks that have emerged fromthe previous ethnographic accounts ofAboriginal-White interaction mentioned earlierand examines and assesses each one fairly andcompetently, so that the monograph will provevaluable for teaching purposes. Her ownposition is that formal engagements with thestate in the form of various structured meetings(which formed a large part of her ethnographicfield sites) ‘are so well known by the partiesinvolved that they are an integral element of theproduction of culture relevant to the state andAboriginal people’ (p. 191). Babidge’s insight isto see those occasions in which both state andAboriginal cultural formations equally elicit theirown forms of recognition out of engagementwith each other.

In sum, this is a richly detailed and astutelyanalysed piece of research into the current formsof Aboriginal cultural and social action in ruralAustralia.

James F. Weiner Australian National University

Kipnis, Andrew. China and postsocialistanthropology: theorizing power and societyafter Communism. vi, 256 pp., bibliogr.Norwalk, Conn.: EastBridge, 2008. $29.95

(paper)

Many anthropologists working in places whichpreviously had regimes that describedthemselves as ‘socialist’ have used the notion of‘postsocialism’ as a general periodization of thesocieties they study. While China’s historicaltrajectory is different from Eastern Europe andthe former Soviet Union in various ways, here aswell ‘postsocialism’ has been used frequently to

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characterize the era which in Chinese officialdiscourse started with the policies of ‘reform andopening’. It is commonly assumed that‘postsocialism’ refers to the transition from aplanned economy towards marketization. Butonly few anthropologists and other socialscientists have tried to further engage‘postsocialism’ on a critical and theoretical level.One main reason for this lack of reflection is thatmany social scientists, intentionally orinadvertently, maintain political and theoreticalconvictions similar to those that were at the coreof socialist governance, in particular a holisticconception of society and an unconditionalappraisal of politicization.

That is, slightly overstated, the gist ofAndrew Kipnis’s book China and postsocialistanthropology. Drawing on an extensive critiqueof the consequences of Marxism in theory andpractice, Kipnis outlines an anthropologicalappraisal of ‘postsocialism’. Most substantivechapters have been published previously injournals; revised and supplied with anintroduction and a conclusion, this book is atestimony to Kipnis’s sustained effort to makethe anthropology of China and theanthropology of postsocialism relevant forgeneral debates in anthropology andneighbouring disciplines.

In the introduction, Kipnis gives a broadsummary verdict on Marxism as a politicalmovement in the twentieth century, including adeath count, and emphasizes the parallels andconjunctions of socialist governance and Marxisttheorizing. The chapter sets the tone and thetask of the book: a critique of (post)socialismand (post-)Marxism and their consequences intheory and in political reality. This critique isbased not on the standard denunciation ofeconomistic and materialistic one-sidedness(which is, however, also summoned), but on thetendency of Marxism and socialism towardssocietal holism and politicization. In Kipnis’sargument, academic Marxism and real-existingsocialism share the same tendency to subsumehuman difference under social wholes (‘class’,‘the masses’, ‘capitalist society’, etc.) and toimagine the world as a struggle between friendsand foes. In the first part of the book, Kipnisdiscusses the consequences of these tendenciesin intellectual discussions and power relationsunder (post)socialism.

Chapter 2 discusses five ethnographies ofChina written in the 1980s and 1990s which dealwith post-Maoist power (two of them, by JudithFarquhar and Robert Weller, not so explicitly). Allfive anthropologists had to confront Maoism ‘as

a theoretical discourse that simultaneouslygoverned Chinese society, influencedAnthropology, and structured their own politicalimagination’. On this basis, they developedsophisticated conceptualizations of power, whichKipnis argues can be also made useful forgeneral anthropological debates on power.

Chapters 3 and 4 offer commentaries onpostsocialist and post-Marxian intellectualdebates, including the stand-off between ‘newliberals’ and ‘new leftists’ in the PRC and theworks of several post-Marxian theorists(Gibson-Graham, Laclau and Mouffe, andChakrabarty). Both in Chinese and Englishdebates, Kipnis finds particular flaws which showthat intellectuals have not learned from theerrors of Maoism: according to him, a logic offriend and foe, a general orientation towardssocial wholes, and an attitude of anti-empiricismcharacterize these debates.

In the second part of the book, Kipnisformulates alternative theoretical approaches.Chapter 5 proposes ‘good faith communicativereason’ instead of ‘politicized communicativereason’, while chapter 6 advocates ‘ethnographyof political potentials’ instead of‘over-politicization’. Reflecting on malebanqueting and female church-going in hisfieldwork site in Zouping (Shandong), Kipnisinterprets local Christianity as a ‘potentialgendered critique’, a critique which is a merepotential and yet not realized. The next chapterproposes a ‘neo-Durkheimian theory of politicaleconomy’ which rests on the distinctionbetween the dynamics of mechanic and organicsolidarity, and the different kinds of conflictwhich ensue. Kipnis claims that such a theorycan avoid the pitfalls of Marxism andneoliberalism, offering examples such as theconflicts between ‘experts’ (= organic solidarity)and ‘reds’ (= mechanic solidarity) in MaoistChina. The last substantive chapter is aboutglobal citizenship, which remains a blind spot inMarxian critiques of neoliberalism, according toKipnis. His ‘neo-Durkheimian perspective’, incontrast, explicitly focuses on (non-utopian andnon-holistic) politicization and also offers thepossibility of measured political advocacy.

Defenders of a continuing engagement withMarxist theory might argue that Kipnis does notaddress the intricacies of Marxian dialectics, butinstead the vulgar Marxism of Lenin and Mao.Kipnis, indeed, does not entertain the notionthat some pure version of Marxist theory couldbe detached from the political consequences ofwhat Lenin and Mao made of Marxist thought.In fact, he argues throughout that the flaws of

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over-politicization and societal holism apply notonly equally to both Marxism and Maoism, butalso to a lot of post-Marxian social theory.

Kipnis’s alternative proposals certainly do notrepresent a grand and seamless theoreticaledifice comparable to some in the Marxisttradition. Instead he offers medium-rangetheoretical propositions which are closely relatedto empirical research and which refrain fromtaking fast and radical political positions. Thisbook provides a stimulating example of whatethnographically based theories of postsocialismcould look like.

Hans Steinmüller London School of Economicsand Political Science

Knörr, Jacqueline & Wilson Trajano

Filho (eds). The powerful presence of thepast: integration and conflict along the UpperGuinea coast. xiv, 375 pp., maps, bibliogrs.Leiden: Brill, 2010. €75.00 (paper)

Five countries of the Upper Guinea coast(Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,and Senegal) have experienced rebellions sincethe 1980s. The region has attracted internationalattention on account of this apparent propensityfor revolt. Historical evidence suggests this isnothing new. Insurrections were on averagetwice as likely on slave ships from the upperWest African coast as on those from regions suchas the Niger Delta and Angola. What doesanthropology contribute to the analysis of thisapparent regional propensity for war? Thepresent volume sets out to examine the issue byposing contextual questions about modalities ofconflict and social integration within Upper WestAfrican coastal societies. The chapters (byanthropologists David Berliner, James Fairhead,Christian Højbjerg, William Murphy, Krijn Peters,Ramon Sarró, Susan Shepler, and ElizabethTonkin, and historians Stephen Ellis, BruceMouser, Peter Mark, and Jodi Tomàs, plus theeditors) are individually strong. Important newinsights are frequent. Among the highlights onthe anthropological side is a splendid essay byRamon Sarró showing that identity among theBaga of the coast of Guinea is at any one pointin time the product of temporally and spatiallyvariable processes of social incorporation andexclusion. This should be mandatory reading forany manipulator of a ‘large N’ conflict data setinclined to code ‘ethnicity’ as a single variable.

Excellent contributions by the historiansinclude an especially significant chapter byStephen Ellis on Liberian politics, since it

expands and modifies his widely discussedearlier arguments about violence and the occult.Space excludes further discussion of admirablecontributions by Wilson Trajano Filho, BruceMouser, Krin Peters, and others, but it is safe tosay that no anthropologist or historian interestedin modern Africa or armed conflict and violencewill want to be without this collection.

So why do I have a feeling that the sum isless than the (highly valuable) parts? Thehoped-for regional contextualization stubbornlyrefuses to take shape. In part, this is because theeditors run up a blind alley in pursuit of adubious distinction. The opening overviewclaims that previous literature on conflicts in theregion has over-emphasized societal at theexpense of cultural factors. No theorization ofthe relations between ‘society’ and ‘culture’ isoffered, nor do the editors substantiate theirassertion that the ‘societal’ work their volumeseeks to transcend is ‘monocausal’ in its focuson the state. Only one of the contributors(Christian Højbjerg, acknowledged for his adviceon the editorial overview) seems inclined toembrace this point of view; the others go theirown way, and one (James Fairhead) offers whatamounts to a robust critique of the editorialreading of previous literature. As a result,editorial ambition and actual content appear tobe somewhat at variance.

A second problem is that the editors havegiven insufficient thought to the regionalizationthey adopt. The book covers two major ecotypes(savanna and forest). According to the editors,commonalities among the societies of the UpperGuinea coastal region arise from two long-termcultural processes: the spread of Mande tradenetworks from the interior Upper Niger basintowards the coast; and the spread of Europeantrade (and colonial ambition) along the littoral.They fail to pay due attention, however, to athird important factor – the variable challenge offorest conversion. Much of the history of thesavanna section of the Upper Guinean coastregion centres on the lower reaches of riversdraining the highlands of Futa Jalon. Here, openterrain has supported open (i.e. highlyinterconnected) Islamic societies. But the coastalzone from Sierra Leone to Côte d’Ivoire is backedby humid tropical rainforest, within whichcommunities are much more localized andenclosed (not least by a politics of secrecy). Theforest was much less easily traversed and settled,and posed a specific set of challenges to thosegroups who attempted to tap its resources. Thetechnological and institutional means of forestconversion (including technologies and

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institutions of security) are a central theme inanthropological work on this portion of theUpper Guinea coast. Warren d’Azevedo saw thelinguistically diverse communities on either sideof a great boundary wilderness (the Gola Forest)as constituting a Central West Atlantic region,marked by possession of two sets of institutionsadapted to colonization of the forest frontier:conical clans and secret societies. Thischaracterization has stood the test of time, asattested by the fine paper by William Murphy(offered in d’Azevedo’s honour). But it meansthat for a fully satisfactory analysis of securityissues, forest-specific technological factors,institutional dynamics, and cognitive aspectsrequire interconnection.

It is perhaps significant that Murphy is theonly contributor to cite (and build on) a keypaper by d’Azevedo in which the institutionaldynamics of the conical clan in interaction withthe secret society are worked out in sociologicaldetail. By all means bring in regional culturaland linguistic influences, but this book,editorially at least, risks throwing away thecomparative advantage of anthropology in theanalysis of informal institutions. The recent forestwars in the region were about more thanidentity and discourse. The social organizationand political economy of forest frontier societyare inescapable issues for an anthropology ofconflict in Upper West Africa.

Paul Richards Wageningen University andResearch Centre

Little, Walter E. & Timothy Smith (eds).Mayas in postwar Guatemala: harvest ofviolence revisited. vii, 219 pp., maps, illus.,bibliogr. Tuscaloosa: Univ. Alabama Press,2009. $26.95 (paper)

Postwar Guatemala since the Peace Accords in1996 is a very different country than Guatemaladuring the 1980s when Harvest of violence (1988)was first published. The Guatemalan civil war andgenocide perpetrated against the Mayan Indiansare no longer the focal points of discussion. TheGuatemala of today is a place with pressingsocio-economic issues, and rife with crime suchas ‘kidnapping rings, drug trafficking, and youthgangs’ (p. 2). Politically, it is a confusing time,with support being garnered by ex-dictators suchas General Efraín Ríos Montt, a man responsiblefor some of the worst atrocities and massacresduring the civil war era; the involvement of theGuatemalan army in civil patrols against crime;and the advent of vigilante lynching mobs. It is

a time which may be characterized as trying tograsp the results of the ‘Truth Commission’, asimplementing the Peace Accords, as turning tonon-governmental agencies for socio-economicdevelopment, and as integrating insurgentsand counterinsurgents into the political system(p. 183).

Little and Smith’s collection presents aplethora of essays on contemporary Guatemalaand may be regarded as the most currentanthropological depiction of a variety ofcomplex topics regarding the country. It featuresdiscussions on: indigenous mobilization inSololá; the controversy of traditional religiouspractices in Verapaz; evangelical resistance to thepeace process; Guatemalan vendors and crime;women in unsafe neighbourhoods in GuatemalaCity; bilingual and bicultural education;intergenerational conflict and gangs in postwarGuatemala; the economy of humanitarianism inthe country; everyday politics in a K’iche’ village;redefining development and ethnicity inTotonicapán; neoliberal violence; andGuatemalan scholarship from 1988 to 2008. Byexamining the economic, political, and social,this book expands our knowledge about theMayas of Guatemala in this postwar periodby providing ontological insights aboutcontroversies and issues as only anthropologistscan: through long-term fieldwork.

There are noteworthy chapters aboutreligion, such as Abigail Adams’s discussion ofspirit mediums among the Q’eqchi’ Mayas andthe spiritual re-encounter revivalist movement. Inher chapter, Adams explains how the murder ofthe spirit medium Pop Caal in 2002 must beconsidered in relation to the controversy andintolerance evoked among other Mayas inrelation to spiritualist recovery in Alta Verapaz.Likewise, J. Jailey Philpot-Munson’s chapterabout the evangelicals of Nebaj demonstrateshow attitudes towards the civil war are not incongruence with the findings of the CatholicChurch’s Truth Commission and the UnitedNations in regard to the mass executions,disappearances, and numerous human rightsabuses. According to Philpot-Munson, Nebajevangelicals preach forgiveness for war crimesand are mostly opposed to the exhumation ofmass secret graves. What these two chaptersexplore are the tensions religion embodies formany Mayas, whether the controversy ofworshipping traditional mountain-valley spiritsor Pentecostalism in opposition to a humanrights perception of the civil war.

Another interesting chapter is by JenniferBurrell explaining gangs or maras in Todos

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Santos. As Burrell explains, mareros (gangmembers) in rural areas come from middle- toupper-income families who may be characterizedby hanging out on the street until late at night,drinking to excess, possibly taking drugs, andwearing their hair long. Gang activities in TodosSantos have led to strong reactions, including‘the imposition of curfews, attempted lynchings,the (re)activation of security committees thatclosely resemble in both character and range ofpowers the civil patrols of the war years, and,ultimately, murder’ (p. 101). Burrell underscoresthe murder of a gang member by exploring theactivities of gangs in Todos Santos and people’sreactions to them, while demonstrating the newviolence of repression in post-accord Guatemalaand the lack of opportunities for young people.A similar chapter is by Peter Benson and EdwardFischer, who elaborate on post-accord violencein the town of Tecpán, where Kaqchikel Mayaspredominate. Benson and Fischer discuss therumours about gangs and how a particularprotest against the town’s mayor becameviolent, as well as social suffering and socialinsecurity associated with neoliberalism and thestructural conditions of violence.

Lastly, I would like to highlight the chapterby David Stoll, in which he demonstrates howthe army versus the people paradigm may bemisguided, given Mayan views against guerrillainsurgents, the political popularity of theflagrant human rights violator General Efraín RíosMontt, and the uncanny support for ex-civildefence patrollers (patrullas de auto-defensa civil,PACs).

As a whole, the book portrays the socialintricacies of contemporary Guatemala as atapestry of crime, political violence, and thedilemmas of ethnic development. Itdemonstrates the impact of the past on thepresent, connecting the violence of the civil warperiod to aspects of contemporary violence.Mayas in postwar Guatemala is a majorcontribution to the anthropology of the country.

J.P. Linstroth Independent scholar

Ochs, Juliana. Security and suspicion: anethnography of everyday life in Israel. ix, 204

pp., illus., bibliogr. Philadelphia: Univ.Pennsylvania Press, 2011. £31.00 (cloth)

Juliana Ochs’s Security and suspicion is a criticalethnography of Jewish Israeli citizens’ everydayexperiences of national security. The bookprovides an intimate portrait of how herinformants internalize national discourses of

security and reproduce them through levels ofbodily practice, through their anxiety and fearsassociated with the Palestinian population, andthrough fantasies of threat and protection. Ochsshows how everyday practices perpetuate anormalization of the conflict and statesecuritization. Where previous ethnographies ofIsrael have focused on the militarization of Israelisociety through conscription and other officialforms of civil participation, this shows security‘as a politics that is often intangible and fleeting,inconsistent and intimate, taking form inimpressions and senses’ (p. 3).

The opening chapters argue that theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict has disciplined IsraeliJews to be a panoptical population, wheresecurity is everybody’s national responsibility.Chapter 2 introduces how Jewish Israelis havewell-articulated notions of security throughconstant exposure to security measures, securitylapses, or security threats. Through Ochs’s casestudy on the rebuilding of Café Hillel inJerusalem following a suicide attack, sheexamines how security works through symbolsand aesthetics. The speed with which thedetritus of the bombing is swept up and the caférebuilt comes to symbolize the perseverance ofthe Jewish Israeli people and the normalizationof conflict. Ochs argues that the state and itsimaginaries of safety and security become locallyenacted through such rebuilding practices.

In chapter 3, Ochs examines how Israelidiscourses of fear become privately negotiatedthrough the body. She describes a corporealpolitics that becomes not only a mode ofattachment to the state but also a constantlynegotiated form of connection to the family. Thisintimate relationship with fear as a continuouslycirculating entity fuels the perception of thePalestinian enemy other and the acceptance ofsecurity measures.

Suspicion as a technology of security isexplored in chapter 4. Israeli Jews’ suspicion isdescribed as going beyond a self-protectivestrategy to become a code of Israeli socialknowledge that delineates particular notions of‘threat’ and Palestinians. Developing the idea ofa panoptical population, Ochs describes herexperience of the almost ‘diagnostic system’ herinformants appeared to use to ‘identify’ terroristswhilst carrying out participant observation withthe Israeli Civil Guard. Ochs argues that this‘system’ was actually gut instinct that reflectedthe internalization of state discourses ofsuspicion, reifying the perceived threat ofaberrant Palestinians. One wonders how uniquethis is to Israelis and Israeli state discourse when

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one considers the fear and suspicion thatcirculated around the London Underground afterthe bombings in July 2005.

Unfortunately, Ochs does not reflect on howshe negotiated any such tension of embodyingsecurity. Because security guards and barrierspopulate so much of the urban landscape, onecannot avoid being conscious of it and indeed‘projecting security in the city’, to use the title ofchapter 5. Greater self-reflection and furtherexamination of her confrontation with securitywould have been welcome. This also might havemitigated her slightly neurotic portrayal ofJewish Israelis and their orientation towardssecurity in this chapter.

A politics of normalization is a themethroughout the book. In chapter 6, both statedirectives and the domestication of military lifeare seen to make the conflict appear sustainable.The home is presented as an opportunity todistance oneself mentally from the violentrealities of the conflict. Ochs argues that‘hypernormal interiors, seemingly well-intendedparental protection, and self-protective pursuitsof comfort’ are not productive ways ofconfronting the conflict as presented by herinformants, but in fact a means to ‘ignore it in away that enables a resignation to it’ (p. 137).

The Separation Wall is a physical symbol ofhow the Israeli state has attempted to dislocatePalestinians and violence in the OccupiedTerritories from the Israeli consciousness. Thefinal chapter links tours of the Separation Wall tothe Israeli national tradition of connecting withthe land and Jewish historical narratives throughhiking. Tours of the Wall are about experiencingand understanding security. Fantasies of thestate can be tangibly experienced as bounded,safe, coherent and controlled, by bearingwitness to the Separation Wall. This final chapternicely brings together the intersubjectiverelationship between observable nationalsecurity discourses and the internalized JewishIsraeli orientation towards security.

Security and suspicion makes a significantcontribution to our understanding of thecultural and social life of security and politics inthe twenty-first century. Through a rich andnuanced ethnography, Ochs captures the veryreal fears and anxieties of Jewish Israelis living inconflict. The book provides a profound record ofhow Jewish Israelis have internalized the binariesof ‘us’ and ‘them’ that have come about as aresult of state projects of securitization and theirintimate exposure to violence.

Andrew Gee Defence Science andTechnology Laboratory

Legal anthropology

Heald, Suzette. Law and war in rural Kenya.DVD/PAL, colour, 64 minutes. London: RoyalAnthropological Institute, 2010. £50.00

Suzette Heald’s Law and war in ruralKenya examines the role of the Iritongo in theBukira East region of Kenya. The Iritongo isa traditional type of communal meeting foundin many countries in East Africa wherebyindividuals come together to self-police andhandle communal disturbances. In themid-1990s, the increase of cattle-raiding andthe increasing violence of these raids rattledBukira East, and to help solve the problem,citizens banded together and reinstated theIritongo as a means of organizing citizens,shaping public will, and sanctioning vigilante,non-state violence against cattle-raiders. In thefilm, we see community members recount howthey, in the words of one person, ‘brought it[the Irititongo] up to date’ by increasingtransparency, keeping meeting minutes, andmaking it more accessible for those who are notritual elders to play a role. The same characterparallels this change to a shift in roofing: just aspeople now roof their houses with iron ratherthan grass to make them stronger, so, too,people changed the Iritongo to make it a viablemeans of solving their problems. The filmmakerand people in the film credit the revival of theIritongo with playing a crucial role in thediminishment of the violence, a necessaryprecursor to economic development in thetown.

The film, after presenting this background,proceeds to investigate the state of events tenyears after the resurgence of the Iritongo.Violence has returned to the area, with anincrease in gun crime and violent theft. Theseproblems are more acute in parts of Bukira Eastwhere the Iritongo no longer meets. Just assignificantly, where the Iritongo still functions,we hear criticism of it from individuals whoclaim that it has become corrupt. One man, thefather of men the Iritongo considers thieves,claims that the Iritongo took his cattle andburned his house, threatening further violenceuntil he paid them. Others highlight itsinefficiency. In one example, suspected thievesescaped Iritongo-imposed captivity simplybecause the man in charge watching them wasdrunk.

Unlike other documentaries which follow atraditional narrative arc, using a conflict and its

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ultimate resolution to drive the narrative, thisfilm is more observational. It presents us with asituation, but we leave without knowing theresolution of the upturn in violence and theIritongo’s effectiveness in meeting this newchallenge. This approach to the materialproves effective. By resisting the compulsionfalsely to conflate a conflict for cinematicpurposes, the film seems more realistic andnatural.

Although this film adopts an observationalstyle, it depicts a number of important socialprocesses, making it a valuable tool forclassroom educators seeking to find a creativeway to depict these issues. It raises issues aboutthe acceptability of violence and the ways inwhich violence becomes sanctioned. Onecharacter explains that ‘the Iritongo was thegovernment. It was the authority in thecommunity’. In the absence of a strong centralgovernment in a nation-state still underfifty years old, various forms of non-statepolicing undoubtedly will flourish, and thisfilm provides a close examination of thisphenomenon. Similarly, it provides interestingexamples of legal pluralism and how citizenscreate non-state institutions when the stateseems unable to solve a pressing problem.Furthermore, while it is not the focus, it depictsthe changing role of kinship in an area wherethe technical rationalities of bureaucraticgovernance are becoming more popular. Forexample, in highlighting the changes made tothe Iritongo, one character asserts that ‘in thiscommittee we ignored kinship. We didn’t say,“This is my son” ’.

Although an engaging, educational film, itcould have used a little more data about thepractical details of the Iritongo. It is not untiltwenty-two minutes in that we see an Iritongoin practice, and even by the end of the film,it is unclear precisely what distinguishes theIritongo from alternative meeting forms.Moreover, the film also seems to lose focustowards the end. The last fifteen minutes arecentred on the Inchama, an alternative to theIritongo and a meeting of tribal elders that isless transparent, but the differences betweenthese two forms are never fully elucidated. Evenwith these flaws, however, the film does anexcellent job of portraying one way in whichresidents of Bukira East tried to solve theproblems of violence and theft, and it would bean excellent tool for scholars teaching classeson Kenya, violence, kinship, and non-stateinstitutions.

Noam Osband University of Pennsylvania

Niezen, Ronald. Public justice and theanthropology of law. xiv, 254 pp., bibliogr.Cambridge: Univ. Press, 2010. £45.00 (cloth),£16.99 (paper)

This fascinating and unusual book carriesethnographic unboundedness to extremesbecause its subjects, ‘the public’ and ‘publicopinion’, are intangible entities existing ‘largelyin the imagination’ (p. 26) of those seeking toappeal to them. When campaigning activistsfrom the James Bay Cree, Kalahari Bushmen, orSamburu seek to garner sympathy and supportfrom these ‘unknown consumers of information’(p. 28), their intended audiences are thereforeevery bit as ineffable as the deities propitiatedthrough the religious rituals that their stagedcultural performances often invoke.

Niezen’s analysis is broad in scope, and notall the important issues he raises can be pursuedhere. He traces the recognition of public opinion– as mass empowerment or popular tyranny –back to eighteenth-century Britain, while inrevolutionary France it became the ultimatesource of moral, judicial, and political guidance.It was, however, slower to emerge ininternational contexts. There was ‘no grass rootslobbying to the fledgling League of Nations’ (p.10) (not entirely true; see the efforts of ChrystalMacmillan’s International Congress of Women),and only after the Second World War did publicopinion gain purchase. Global ‘publics’ werefirst made possible by the printing press, railway,and telegraph, and greatly facilitated by lateradvances in transport and electroniccommunication. (Niezen does not engage fullywith the latter; he mentions use of the Internetand video, but the index has only one entryunder ‘blog’ and none for ‘Twitter’.)

Publics, Niezen memorably declares, ‘havethe qualities of a typical ... teenager’ (p. 50).They are persuadable and credulous (hence thepower of corporate media); self-interested evenwhen altruistic (compare Didier Fassin’sargument on the hierarchical nature ofhumanitarianism); hypocritical in focusing onfaraway causes rather than their own doorsteps;curious, yet with short attention spans(‘compassion fatigue’); emotionally responsive;indignant about perceived unfairness; prone toform ‘-isms’ linked to identity (feminism, p. 49);and evangelically fervent about universal ideals.

But how do public understandings of andattitudes towards the complexities ofinternational law actually arise? ‘[W]hat implicitideas about culture ... are motivating publicjudgments’ (p. 13)? Given the adolescent

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character of public opinion and its preference forthe photogenic, it is no surprise that chronicaspects of social exclusion – the dependency ofrefugees and asylum-seekers after the initialcatastrophe of displacement – risk beingoverlooked. More fundamentally, the processualnotions of culture held by social scientistscontrast starkly with the essentialized modelsdeployed by cultural lobbyists, NGOs, and UNagencies. Their ‘applied legal sociology’ (p. 21)has politico-legal rather than scholarly motives,of course, which is why it draws upon publiclyshaped concepts rather than paradigms fromacademia. Even so, it is surprising, given hisfrequent references to one such concept,‘indigenous peoples’, that Niezen does notmention the intense debates sparked off withinanthropology by Adam Kuper’s critique (‘Thereturn of the native’, Current Anthropology 44,2003, 389-402.)

UN agencies, too, need public opinion tolegitimize their aims and activities. Indeed,‘[p]art of the explanation of the near-universallegitimacy of human rights follows from theimportance of public appeal as a mechanism ofrights compliance’ (p. 7). Niezen coins the term‘conceptual diplomacy’ for the processeswhereby, after the exposure of gross civilwrongs or the conclusions of civil wars, a kind of‘intellectual disarmament’ (p. 18) is achievedprior to the desired (re-)creation of positivelyvalued identities and senses of self. Hence thosesynecdoches of contemporary life, Truth andReconciliation Commissions, which require statesnot only to acknowledge publicly their own guiltbut also, by theatrical, quasi-legal means, toactively reshape the opinions of their citizens ‘inline with the moral universals of human rights’(p. 180). Consequently, the growing influence of‘victims’ and ‘indigenous peoples’ does notsignal a decline in the significance of the state;rather, states become ‘the principal moralentities answerable to human rights standards’(p. 23), albeit that their admissions of their ownpast failings, by means of symbolic ‘apologies’,are ‘often performed reluctantly, throughclenched teeth’ (p. 24).

Despite this final caveat and his insistenceupon the limitations of the Truth andReconciliation Commission paradigm, Niezen’sportrayal of states’ roles in these matters seemsrelatively optimistic. Others, approaching thequestion from different angles, are less sanguine.For example, John and Jean Comaroff argue thatthe rights, interests, and identities with whichNiezen is concerned may even risk beingcriminalized in contexts where security has

become ‘the state function par excellence’ (F. vonBenda-Beckman, K. von Benda-Beckmann & J.Eckert (eds), Rules of law and laws of ruling: onthe governance of law, 2009, p. 54, originalemphasis). It seems that attempts to secure andmaintain public legitimacy on the part ofcontemporary ships of state are constantly at riskof foundering in the choppy waters at theconfluence of these two political currents.

Anthony Good University of Edinburgh

Medical anthropology

Andersson Trovalla, Ulrika. Medicine foruncertain futures: a Nigerian city in the wake ofa crisis. 214 pp., illus., bibliogr. Uppsala:Uppsala Univ., 2011. SEK 240 (paper)

This is a truly fascinating thesis (yes, it is a thesis– it passed in May 2011 and has no index). It isalso a picaresque ‘novel’ centring on themovements, intermittently over a period of someten years, of ‘Jibril’ through the very troubledtown of Jos in northern Nigeria. ‘Jibril’ is seen bymany as a spirit (iska, but not a dan iska, acommon pejorative term Dr Andersson Trovalladoes not mention), but he is usually depictedhere walking through the streets in the author’scompany. He presents himself as a ‘healer’, butconspicuously is unable either to heal himself orto avoid travails in his dealings with ‘his’ union,the Nigerian Union of Medical HerbalPractitioners (Plateau State branch). We actuallylearn very little about him (not even his realname) or indeed about those around him: even‘the professor’ at the University of Jos, despitean important role in the ‘novel’, remainsanonymous. (Why? To protect whom?) There isa sustained air of unreality: such mundane dataas finances or indeed the contents of Jibril’smedicaments (if they exist?) are absent; some ofthe things that are surely just ‘lies’, but stayunexamined. Fantasy, photos/photocopies, andparanoia intermingle.

In short, as an ethnography of checkable,scientific ‘fact’, the thesis has its limitations, butas an insight into the magical realism of thoseon the street in perhaps the most mixed-up ofNigerian towns, it is a rewarding read – notdissimilar to Philip de Boeck’s account ofKinshasa or Achille Mbembe’s ‘post-colony’. It isa far cry from the lives of, say, Nigerian peasantfarmers or conventional Muslims in the bigHausa cities; it is the sort of messy syncretist’s

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world that Boko Haram despise, and woulddiscipline if they could. But it is exactly theextra-exotic scene that many an anthropologistnow loves to depict for a Euro-Americanreadership. It is becoming a genre given weight(as befits a thesis) by such old names as JohnDewey, G.H. Mead, and C.S. Peirce, yet alsoenlivened by modernist landscape theorists likeTim Ingold and Chris Tilley. Thus, once more,‘natives’ are explained by our ‘Northern’models. And we are not even allowed to seekout these individual ‘natives’ to listen to themourselves because they have to be ‘protected’(p. 7) by pseudonyms. But because they allasked to be ‘recognized’, the author none theless lists their real names (but not, apparently,the ‘professor’s’).

It is an excellent idea to pick out one groupof ordinary people – not a single street or townquarter but a small, distinct trade union – inorder to carry out a tightly focused urbanethnography. With ‘urban’ sites in Nigeria nowholding 50 per cent of the population andgrowing on average at 4 per cent a year, andwith so high a percentage of urban migrantsbeing jobless and under-educated, these newtownscapes are of serious significance. Jos, ascurrently the key hotspot for Christian versusMuslim conflict, has been the object of anumber of recent theses, both by scholars withinNigeria and by outsiders. This study stands outfrom others I have read this past year by notbeing about vengeful violence or the changingeconomies of Jos or even the politics thatexacerbate conflicts, but by being about theeffects on some poor entrepreneurs of living inthe midst of flux and uncertainty, in a state ofpermanent ‘emergency’.

I am not sure how ‘true’ it all is (how often,for example, was Dr Andersson Trovalla’s legbeing ‘pulled’ by her friends?), or indeed howfar any social scientist, Nigerian or foreign, willbe able to use the impressions offered here.Self-proclaimed ‘healers’ are professionalcon-men/women – to be successful, they haveto believe their own ‘lies’ (or half-lies), but, inmy limited experience, only up to a point. DrAndersson Trovalla, despite her focus on healers,does not really explore this as a ‘professionaldeformation’. I am not suggesting that we needmore words on the ‘placebo effect’, but it wouldhave been good to have a sense of how otherJasawa, Berom, Igbo, and Yoruba saw all thesedistressed healers who were seeking to sellothers something as elusive as well-being. But asit is, this text has the makings of a greatNollywood script. For example, in recent weeks,

even the old trope of victims’ flesh being sold asfresh meat on the streets of Jos has come upagain (colonial rules forbade meat sold withoutthe skin attached). Thus Jos is an ongoing horrorstory, from which Dr Andersson Trovalla hascleverly excerpted a valuable tale.

Murray Last University College London

Edwards, Jeanette, Penny Harvey &Peter Wade (eds). Technologized images,technologized bodies. viii, 262 pp., illus.,bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books,2010. £55.00 (cloth)

This edited volume examines the relevance ofethnography to the ‘interconnections betweentechnologized bodies and technologizedimages’. This positioning is reflected in thechapters that follow – exploring how images ofthe body are rendered in specific ways bydifferent professional discourses, not entirelyowned by the ‘scientist’, ‘engineer’ or‘psychiatrist’ that produces them, butincorporated into the person’s sense of self as‘subjects’, ‘patients’, and ‘research participants’.

Technological images of bodies can, at times,provide stability to shifting, chaotic, andchanging identities. The collection is particularlyattentive to the types of ‘gaze’ that emerge withscience, medicine, and technologicaldevelopments. The introduction provides acomprehensive history of ‘scopic regimes’,switching from art to photography to theinfluence of biological sciences as transformativevisualization practices. The editors (JeanetteEdwards, Penny Harvey, and Peter Wade) explaintheir intentions with the volume, in which theyset out to

explore the relationship between culturalapprehensions of the body, and the waysin which the body is mediated, imagedand imagined, at a time whenvisualization and communicationstechnologies have combined to provokenew awareness of the body and of theself, new regimes of power andknowledge, new possibilities for theenhancement of human life, and newfears for its degradation and destruction(p. 2).

This intellectual treatment and complexnarration are further enhanced by the ways inwhich the editors follow the mobility of scopicconcepts exploring regimes of power, identity,and the self.

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In some ways, the introduction feltdisconnected from the specific ethnographiccases that followed, yet this made sense in lightof the ambition of the work (this is an innovativeanthropological project) as theories of vision andthe body are grounded within ethnography.

The chapter by Simon Cohn beautifullyillustrates the complexities of image, vision,body, and science in the practices of psychiatry.Here Cohn explores how brain-scan informationis viewed, approached, and utilized differently byscientists and patients. Cohn’s argumentopposes the ‘standard critique of medicalscience’ as a process of seeing medical scienceas a practice of conflict between patients andmedical practitioners whose research andpractices inevitably objectify patients and theirillnesses. Instead, Cohn reports how brain-scans(given to psychiatric patients for volunteering fora medical study) allow for an inversion of thestandard critique.

Moreover, Ana Viseu and Lucy Suchman’sthought-provoking chapter on wearabletechnologies shows the problems of fixing theirdomain of study, as the researchers with whomthey interact are also in the process of having todefine and frame their practices. For example,there is still debate about what exactlyconstitutes a wearable computer. Should thearea include or exclude technologies such asmobile phones or personal digital assistants(PDAs)? This problem of finding a footing is notan aside, but crucial to the way in which theresearchers are able to promote a viable ‘uniquearea of scientific research’ (p. 163). Wearablecomputers are ‘intimately tied to the body,autonomously functioning and perfectlyinterconnected’, which the authors claim‘materialize and make visible values characteristicof contemporary Western societies since themid-twentieth century, including a desire formobility, combined with continuousconnectivity, personalization and control’(p. 163). Viseu and Suchman examine theunderlying assumptions that motivate computerscientists to develop wearable computer devices.For them, the body is itself imagined asincomplete. Moreover, the aim is to be‘connected’ to multiple surfaces, not as anoperator (pressing buttons or calling upinformation via a screen). Wearable devices offerthe prospect of a device-human-integrated body,where flesh and machine are merged. Moreover,experts in this field believe that wearable deviceswill be able to predict the actions of the user,and therefore they are presented as a‘technological companion’, ‘an extension of the

self’, or a ‘second skin’ (p. 164). These, then, aretechnologies that are not merely interacted with,but which could potentially anticipate or predictthe person’s intentions – a kind of marketingwearable device.

The sense that visuals of the body are morethan mere objectified representations isillustrated in Michal Nahman’s chapter, ‘Embryosare our baby’. Here we have a different kind ofchapter, exploring ova and embryos in a privateIVF clinic in Israel. This chapter explores thedesire to procreate amongst Jews, noting thatthe desire to reproduce as a woman (with orwithout a partner) should be considered in thecontext of the historical and culturalcomplexities that percolate with individualexperiences – processes between clinicians,technologies, and women are dependent onimages that are a specific kind of ‘Jewishvisualizing of Messianic time’ (p. 191).

Anthropologically, this is a timely,challenging, and important collection of essaysfor anyone interested in technologies of visionand bodies and provides novel material for studyin the anthropology of science, technology, andmedicine.

Kathleen Richardson University College London

Zigon, Jarrett. HIV is God’s blessing:rehabilitating morality in neoliberal Russia. viii,258 pp., bibliogr. London, Berkeley: Univ.California Press, 2011. £16.95 (paper)

Jarrett Zigon has used the experience of formerdrug-users in Russia to examine the process bywhich a person can create anew his or her moralpersonhood, the way of becoming a good andhealthy person and reconnecting with one’ssocial world. His informants are the staff,volunteers, and past and present residents at theMill, an Orthodox Church-run retreat on theoutskirts of St Petersburg. Zigon describes andanalyses the process through which the residentsarrive at, live through, and follow their time atthe Mill, as well as the ideologies and influencesthat have contributed to the programme takingits current form. In so doing, he has in effectprovided a detailed illustration of how identity isbuilt, or rebuilt, with both the active and passiveacquiescence of its subjects.

Zigon undertakes a thorough examination ofall the potential influences on the creation of themoral self, considering, for example, Westerntherapeutic, Soviet and Orthodox Christianpractices of working on the self in sufficient butnot distracting detail. He shows that the Mill’s

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programme of self-building draws not only onconcepts but also on specific practices fromeach. The book contains a good balancebetween theoretical explorations and detailed,sympathetic ethnographic evidence of the livesof the people living the processes that he seeksto dissect.

The striking title is perhaps a littlemisleading, on two counts. Although many ofZigon’s informants are HIV positive, in practicethe work barely touches on this aspect of theirexperience, and when it does so it is only inrelation to their drug-use. The focus of the book,the Mill (the rehabilitation programme) and theOrthodox Church (which runs the programme,and from whence the quotation originates), isforemost on the participants as users and hencesinners. Second, the Mill’s staff – at least inZigon’s telling – are far from being as harsh oras de-sensitized as this slightly sensationalphrase suggests. But it does point to the joltrequired to bring heroin addicts to start thenecessary ‘work on themselves’ that is thematerial for Zigon’s well-argued examination ofthe (re-)creation of moral persons.

Zigon insists that, through creating‘responsibilized subjects’ in this way, theOrthodox Church unintentionally enables formerusers to negotiate and successfully functionwithin the structures of neoliberal governance,‘the very sociopolitical regime [it is] intended tolimit’. It is taken as read that the socio-politicalsystem of early twenty-first-century Russia isneoliberal and hence generalizable, and one thatOrthodoxy seeks to limit. The evidence feels alittle stretched. But, admirably, Zigon touchesbut does not linger on the post-Soviet nature ofthis society; this is not a work that relies on thewell-trodden path of anthropological reflectionon a socio-political and economic structure thatcollapsed twenty years ago. He shows howSoviet concepts form one of many influences onthe Mill’s therapeutic approach, but leaves theSoviet Union in its appropriately contextualizedand relative place as but one aspect of the livesof the Mill’s inhabitants.

The author’s position is, like that of manyanthropologists, ambiguous: he is not a formerdrug user and hence resident, but neither is hestaff. He is therefore able to access otherwiserestricted spaces, and participate in the informalconversations with residents which becomestilted in the presence of staff. This accessenables him to highlight that rehabilitationoccurs as much in the unstructured, ‘normal’informal interactions between residents –smoking cigarettes, looking at photos – as in the

more directed processes through which the Millstructures its residents’ lives. It is clear, however,that there are limits to the extent to which hisdrug-user informants share their thoughts withhim, recognizing his outsider status. It istherefore impressive that Zigon’s work iscarefully balanced between the OrthodoxChurch’s approach to changing persons, andthose persons’ perspectives on the processesthrough which they are consciously andunconsciously remaking their selves and theirworlds as healthy, and social, individuals.

Kathryn Tomlinson Independent scholar

Music and performance

Condry, Ian. Hip-hop Japan: rap and the pathsof cultural globalization. x, 249 pp., figs, illus.,bibliogr. London, Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ.Press, 2007. £14.99 (paper)

From New York to Rio, from Nairobi to Tokyo,hip-hop, more than any other musical genre oryouth culture, has permeated nations, cultures,and languages worldwide. Essential to thecontributions by anthropologists and hip-hopscholars on the globalization of hip-hop is IanCondry’s Hip-hop Japan: rap and the paths ofcultural globalization. In this depiction of howJapanese youth nationalize the American hip-hopimport, Condry questions disciplinarydichotomies such as global/local within a uniquecontemporary ethnographic approach that seeksto place ‘performance’ as a key actor in theconstruction of culture.

Condry demonstrates alternative ‘paths’towards globalization reminiscent of ArjunAppadurai’s global ‘flows’ (Modernity at large,1996). However, instead of focusing ontop-down flows such as major mediacorporations (financescapes or mediascapes)alongside bottom-up currents (ethnoscapes andideoscapes), he presents globalization andlocalization through the interaction of ‘paths’that network culture industries, mediacorporations, active fans, and hip-hop artists.Condry’s paths are organized into themespresented as a successive chronological series ofchapters: (1) racial mimicking and authenticity;(2) battling artists who generate a local history;(3) performances that take place through liveconcerts and recording studios; (4) fandom andconsumerism; (5) language and linguisticpolitics; (6) gender representation; and (7) the

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marketing of hip-hop. Although Condry assessesthe four-element model of hip-hop inclusive ofbreak dance, aerosol art, and turntablism, hefocuses on rap because of its explicit relationshipto language and cultural identity; it alsohappens to be the most marketed element ofhip-hop. These two factors bring to lightCondry’s strongest analyses about the act ofrapping itself, the performance of rhymes andthe dichotomy between English and Japaneserepertoire that determine an artist’s audience asa site for the construction and critique ofJapanese-ness.

Condry’s analysis of how American hip-hopis appropriated and reproduced within alocalized Japanese context, yielding ‘blackface’audiences for ‘yellow b-boy’ performers(pp. 35-41), alongside a historical overview ofnationalized Japanese hip-hop history from 1984

to 2000 (pp. 67-9, 82-4), provides ethnographicgems for hip-hop historians. Anthropologically,the greatest contribution of Hip-hop Japan isCondry’s concept of ‘genba globalization’.Theorized as a response to Roland Robertson’sglocalization (‘Glocalization: time-space andhomogeneity-heterogeneity’, in Globalmodernities (eds) M. Featherstone, S. Lash & R.Robertson, 25-44, 1995) and George Ritzer’sgrobalization (The globalization of nothing, 2004)combined with Louisa Schein’s analysis ofmodernity and performance (‘Performingmodernity’, Cultural Anthropology 14, 1999,361-95), ‘genba globalization’ is the ‘actualizationof a global Japan’. Condry’s focus is not the‘culture of a people’ or the ‘culture of a place’;rather, it is ‘culture as it is performed’ (p. 18).Genba as a ‘place where something actuallyhappens, appears, or is made’ seemsanthropologically most significant because theterm originates from within the culture itself(pp. 89, 94). Condry’s dissection of this termdemonstrates the assessment of his subject’sown interpretation while attending to his ownscholarly responsibility to interrogate it.

Condry separates genba performances intotwo distinct types that take place in specificlocations. These consist of live performancesat nightclubs and enacted performancesmanifested in the recording studio. AlthoughCondry’s presentation of genba globalization isthe strong point of his ethnography and offersan enlightening analysis of the anthropology ofperformance, it lacks depth in distinguishingbetween these performance sites. Condry insiststhat bottom-up actors such as fans (consumers)and top-down participants such as record labels(investors) intertwine with artists to produce

Japanese identity contained by the act ofperforming. However, the reader is left desiringa deeper distinction with regard to the creation,ownership, sale, distribution, and motivationalforces of the intellectual property that is amusical performance. Condry’s focus onperformance at the nightclub and the recordingstudio as one and the same skews the fact thatthese are two very distinct types of recitals.Where one site yields a service (live concert), theother constructs a product (album or single).

The chapters where Condry appears lessconclusive are those dedicated to fandom,women, and market agents. Fans are viewed asconsumers, a position which, in my view, is toostatic. Although Condry presents us withcharacter profiles of hip-hop fans such as otaku,defined as the ‘fanatic fan’ (pp. 124-6), he leaveslittle room for alternative roles fans may play,such as promoters or even anti-consumers whenpirating artists’ repertoires. He presents womenas the oddity or novelty in hip-hop, whichcoincides with their representation on a globalscale. However, Condry limits himself todescription rather than analysis as to why this isthe case, thereby nearly removing women fromhis genba globalization process altogether. Hedoes, however, question how women areconfined to a role of ‘approachable intimacy’that he terms ‘cutismo’ – a phrase meaningchildlike, innocent, gentle, simple, and weak(p. 170). Therefore feminine power depends onweakness reminiscent of the Hello Kitty cartooncharacter’s mouth-less passivity. The stigma thatrequires Japanese female rappers to radiatechildish innocence and vulnerability, andfurthermore idealizes such an image for femaleobservers, is strikingly opposite to the historicaldevelopment of women in American hip-hop,where most female rappers enter the ‘scene’, orAmerican version of genba, as tomboys, onlylater to become hyper-sexualized. Lastly, Condrydemonstrates how, unlike record companies’obsession with profit motives, many hip-hopartists are motivated by concerns of maintainingartistic integrity. He proposes that ‘keeping itreal’ has had greater influence in theglobalization/localization of hip-hop in Japanthan mere marketability (p. 187). Condry’sextensive analysis of market agents, however,seems unbalanced. While diligently mapping therole of the record labels’ investments anddistribution of recorded units, he omits anydiscussion of profitability from liveperformances.

As much as Hip-hop Japan presents a uniquemethod of studying globalization as a series of

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distinct ‘paths’, it alludes to some importantissues that remain unexplored. Yet Condry’swillingness to remain inconclusive meritsrecognition, and by acknowledging that theconcept of genba globalization may not providean alternative for the study of oppositional forcesin globalization, he allows for greaterdisciplinary applicability (pp. 217-19). He does,however, certainly offer insight into theanthropology of performance – after all thegenba is where all the action is.

Melisa Riviere University of Minnesota

Goodman, Jane E. Berber culture on the worldstage: from village to video. xiii, 239 pp., illus.,bibliogr. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press,2006. $65.00 (cloth), $23.95 (paper)

Since Bourdieu’s ethnographic participantobservation among the Kabyles, only a few maleanthropologists have been able to venture intoKabylian society and provide first-handanthropological and sociological accounts onthe region. Jane Goodman has defied this trendnot only by breaking the dominant maletradition of colonial ethnological andpostcolonial ethnographic works, but also, as afemale anthropologist, by providing originalethnographic data on present-day Kabyle Berbercommunities in Algeria and France. In Berberculture on the world stage, Goodman displays adeep grasp of the historical dynamics and local,national, as well as global political and socialtransformations of Kabyle culture and music. Shealso shows a unique understanding of Kabyliansociety, language, and music. Goodman’stheoretical contribution to the anthropology ofNorth Africa in general and Berbers in particularis reflected in the way she describes and analysesthe dynamics between local and global factorsthat influence the production and circulation ofKabylian culture. Accordingly, she travels backand forth between Kabylian villages and Frenchstages to show how Kabylian music is createdand circulated locally and globally in ‘circuits’,‘texts’, and ‘performances’.

Using a reflexive anthropological approach,Goodman frames her study through Jean-LoupAmselle’s branchements (branchinginterconnections) to show how Kabyle songsbecome part of dynamic global networks oftextual exchanges that are difficult to censor andcontain. The branching interconnections turntraditional texts and artefacts into novel circuitsthrough the ‘accelerative force’ and ‘accelerativemoments’ of an emerging global Berber cultural

movement. One of the powerful moments of thebook is when Goodman shows the historicaldynamics of this movement going back to theearly days of Algerian nationalism. This historicityof cultural change is clearly shown through thenumerous branching interconnections ofKabylian musical production that are traced backto traditional social contexts such as Berberweddings in Kabylian villages and reproducedand interpreted in different forms in other localAlgerian and global international contexts whereGoodman herself takes part as a musician. Usinga number of examples to demonstrate theseinterconnections, Goodman focuses largely onmusical texts produced by the poet BenMohamed and appropriated by the singer Idir.She analyses their themes and images anddemonstrates how they get transformed intonew ‘ideological spheres’ and ‘vehicles forcultural critique’.

Berber culture on the world stage is dividedinto an introduction and three main sectionstitled ‘Circuits’, ‘Texts’, and ‘Performances’. Theintroduction gives a historical background to theBerber culture and contextualizes the social andpolitical environment in which Berber identity isproduced, in a period ranging between thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. Goodmanpositions the ethnographic work in the contextof the ideological competition between Islamicmovement and Berber cultural movement,without ignoring the colonial vulgate(Berber/Kabyle myth). By highlighting these localand global historical trajectories, Goodmanascertains that Kabyle culture is gaininginternational meanings through new artisticforms of production on the global stages ofmusic. ‘Circuits’ revolves around Idir’s song ‘Avava inouva’ (Oh my father), which, viaaccelerated force, has been turned into aglobally known Kabyle cultural artefact. ‘Texts’looks at how the traditional cultural artefact isappropriated and entextualized for a differentaudience and stage. Goodman raises thequestion of author and intellectual property asthe cultural text moves back and forth betweenlocal and global stages. Accordingly she pointsout the different discourses, ideologies, andpractices linked to traditional and modern,secular and religious, Berber and Arab/Islamistpractices of branching interconnections.‘Performances’, the final section, is aboutKabyles’ attitudes towards the theatricalperformances of their culture both in Algeria andin France. In addition it discusses women’svoices and roles in this production and stagingof Kabyle music. Goodman notes this role is

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ambivalent because although men like Idir andothers acknowledge women’s authorship ofBerber texts, they fail to add their names to theirintellectual property, thereby erasing theirnames as equal authors of Kabyle culture.

Goodman argues that songs like Idir’s areforms of cultural memory that have enabledKabyles to engage in reflexive self-assessmentthrough an ‘internal gaze’ on local and globalcontexts, stages, and musical markets. As anethnographic study of Kabylian culture andmusic, Berber culture on the world stage is uniquein its analysis of cultural texts framed in historicaland sociological contexts. As a subject,performer, and ethnographer, Goodman showscomplex anthropological attributes where she isengaged in the interpretation and reproductionof these texts through recording and singing.Berber culture on the world stage is a valuablesource for students and scholars ofanthropology, North African studies, andethnomusicology. It is as important tounderstanding Kabylian society as Bourdieu’sThe Algerians (1962). Undergraduate andgraduate students will find it accessible andclear. North African specialists will engage withGoodman’s argument about Berber culture andmusic in its local and global production,especially as Berber communities in North Africaare affected daily by the waves of politicalchanges that have swept these countries in thelast year.

Aomar Boum University of Arizona

Jankowsky, Richard C. Stambeli: music,trance, and alterity in Tunisia. xiv, 237 pp.,map, figs, tables, illus., bibliogr., CD.London, Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2011.£18.00 (paper)

Stambeli, Richard C. Jankowsky’s ethnographicand historiographic study of this Tunisianmusical tradition, is a welcome contribution tothe scholarship on a North African country thatis infrequently the subject of such nuanced andextended treatment. Jankowsky’s ethnographicresearch is situated amongst a network ofmusicians linked to the Dabar Barnu householdin central Tunis and was conducted over thecourse of nearly two years beginning in 2001,with brief periods of follow-up researchcompleted in 2005 and 2009. Drawing broadlyon historical, ethnomusicological, andanthropological sources, Jankowsky hascomposed a study that offers not onlymeticulous analysis of the components of this

distinctive musical genre and trance healingtradition, but also a sophisticated theoreticalengagement with the socio-historical contextthat fostered its emergence.

Jankowsky tracks the advent of st·ambelı tothe early eighteenth century, when thetrans-Saharan slave trade deposited sub-SaharanAfricans into Tunisian fields, households, andHusaynid palaces. In a process that Jankowskydescribes as leading ‘from displacement toplacelessness to emplacement’, st·ambelıprovided therapeutic catharsis for African slavesas they were simultaneously integrated intoTunisian society and marginalized in a networkof communal houses that fomented around acomplex aggregation of musical practices,spiritual beliefs, religious rituals, and aestheticpossibilities. Over the course of approximatelythree centuries, this performative matrix hasprovided a venue for healing, belonging, andmeaning for practitioners as well as for variousmarginalized populations in Tunisia, includingslave descendants, Jews, and women.

Of central concern to Jankowsky is theposition of the Dar Barnu household and thest·ambelı tradition at the start of the twenty-firstcentury. Assuming the dual role of ethnographerand musical apprentice of the tradition,Jankowsky strives to engage with st·ambelı ‘on itsown terms’, seeking within the music thequestions that animate his research and analyses.This ‘domain of encounter’ is one of three thatstructure the book, each orientated to keyoppositions: historically, between African slavesand Tunisian denizens; cosmologically, betweenhumans and spirits; and, ethnographically,between researcher and musicians. Undergirdingeach of these oppositions are the scalarreiterations of an emic/etic dichotomy, whetherarticulated through linguistic components(foreign vs non-foreign), an analysis of thediverse machinations of the cosmologicalpantheon (North African vs sub-Saharanentities), or, in terms of the politics ofperformance (local vs global markets). While thisprovides a productive heuristic for analysis,Jankowsky only marginally succeeds indemonstrating the extent to which suchstructural concerns are central to the musiciansand practitioners themselves, whose voices, withthe exception of master musician Baba Majıd,are rarely present in the text.

One of the book’s stronger offerings lies in itspotential to contribute to debates concerningthe transcontinental dimensions of Africancultural history. St·ambelı as a cultural formextends an instructive lesson on how circulations

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of people, knowledge, and practice need notinvolve a colonial metropole for activation.And if it is from within the musical form itselfthat the st·ambelı tradition is most effectivelyunderstood, then the provision of an audio CDserves this conversation well. The CD features sixtracks and provides a sampling of the musicalaesthetics of Dar Barnu st·ambelı, while anassociated website offers images, videos, andscholarly articles detailing the ‘hybridity’ of theseaesthetics. The open accessibility of the websitecould further invigorate the transcontinentalconversation that the st·ambelı traditionexemplifies, while also assisting those readerswho find Jankowsky’s analysis of musicalaesthetics to be too technical. Even with theprovision of these supplements, some readersmay wish for additional instruction.

Given the emergent significance of Tunisia asa bellwether for the region, readers may turn tothis book for relevant socio-political andgeo-cultural indicators. Although these readersmay find insight into the current configuration ofthe Tunisian public sphere, Jankowsky’s researchand writing predate the onset of events leadingto the Arab Spring. To what degree minoritypopulations such as the practitioners of st·ambelımight find greater performative and expressivepotential in the political landscape of the ‘NewTunisia’ remains to be seen; an outcome which,in combination with an account of how thatpotential was qualified under the Ben ‘Aliregime, could provide Jankowsky with thematerial for a substantive epilogue. Nevertheless,the book should serve as a valuable resourceto scholars of ethnomusicology in Africa, theMiddle East, and beyond. Ultimately, anyonewith an interest in this fascinating country shallbenefit from Jankowsky’s rigorous attention tothe dynamics of alterity (e.g. racial, theological)as expressed through the spirits, saints, andpractitioners of the st·ambelı ritual musictradition.

Rodney Collins Georgetown University

Religion

Day, Abby. Believing in belonging: belief andsocial identity in the modern world. vi, 230 pp.,table, bibliogr. Oxford: Univ. Press, 2011.£55.00 (cloth)

‘I believe in One God ...’, traditional anglophoneChristians are taught to declare in the Creed –

normally in unison as a congregation. ‘Webelieve ...’ was the original fourth-centuryversion, but the first-person singular credo cameto be accepted as stressing the individual’srelationship to the transcendent. Since assertionsabout belief are unverifiable, social scientistshave tended to treat it in a gingerly fashion,preferring to focus on doctrine, representations,and behaviour, including ritual. In an ingeniousmove to resolve the dilemma, Abby Day, aCanadian by birth now working in theanthropology department at the University ofSussex, has developed ideas from Durkheim,J.L. Austin, and others to formulate the term‘performative belief’, which is ‘not pre-formedbut a lived, embodied performance, broughtinto being through action and where the objectof worship is not an entity such as a god or a“society”, but the experience of belonging’(p. 194). She challenges current theories thatnew forms of spirituality are growing that are‘subjective and experiential’ (p. 197).

After an introductory overview of the pasttreatment of ‘belief’ in anthropology andsociology, Day introduces us to her field study in2003-4 of some seventy people aged between 14

and 83 living in towns and villages in northernEngland. Much of the book consists ofcommentary on transcripts of interviews withthese (pseudonymized) interlocutors, which sheintentionally conducted without introducing thetopic of religion directly. She presents theinterviewees as representing the ‘mainstream’ ofa society where churchgoing has declinedsteeply but beliefs in fate and ghosts seem to bewidespread. These passages are interspersedwith reflections on the results of the 2001 UnitedKingdom census, which included a question onreligion, and with brief citations of ethnographicfindings from other regions.

Day is persuasive when she analyses whatshe calls ‘performative belief rituals’ (p. 126) à laGoffman, and when she underlines theimportance of family and friends, includingloved ones who are dead, as the basis formost of her English interlocutors’ sense oftranscendence. The good news for socialcohesion is that, to judge from her sample,young people in England have a strong feelingof moral obligation towards their circles of kinand friends. The bad news is that this personalcommitment does not extend much outside theimmediate circle. English Christianity seems tobe becoming to some extent an ethnonationallabel among working-class whites, especiallywith regard to the supposed threat of Islam toan inherited and essentialized Christian ‘culture’.

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This tendency, with its disturbing politicalimplications, is offset by the willingness of heryounger interviewees to profess respect for otherpeople’s beliefs, whereas open racism is morecommon among the older ones.

I confess to some doubt about the method ofinquiry adopted by Day. Beginning everyinterview, as she did, with the question ‘Whatdo you believe in?’ seems a tactic to put theinterviewee off-guard rather than to inspire trust.It is no doubt true that the Siberians describedby Piers Vitebsky (cited by Day, p. 103) say thatthey experience the presence of deceasedrelatives collectively rather than individually; butthe Englishman’s belief, like his home, is hiscastle. Personal religious beliefs are not quite assensitive a topic as sexuality, but are surely bestapproached in a more oblique way. Anotherinterviewer might have elicited very different‘belief narratives’. Day’s sample of interlocutorsgives no hint of the widespread support given inBritain to Christian charities, or of the continuedprevalence of religious funerals in an otherwisewidely de-churched nation, or of commitment tosecular forms of associative life that can arguablybe seen as surrogates for religion. And it is oddto read an avowed exercise in comparativeanthropology, taking northern England as a casestudy, which includes only one Muslim in itssample of interlocutors.

Yet the test of such a book’s success must bewhether it leaves a mark in the reader’s mind.Day’s diagnosis of a residual Christian identity inpresent-day mainstream Britain – given littleclose attention by other scholars – is certainlystriking. I am not sure that she has beensuccessful in her bold project to reinstate ‘belief’(contra Rodney Needham and Malcolm Ruel) asa key ‘etic’ term in anthropology. It may well bethat stronger intellectual progress will be madeby holding words such as ‘belief’ at arm’slength, as what Michael Jackson (in The palm atthe end of the mind, 2009) calls ‘shop-wornterms’. However, Abby Day’s tightly organizedinterpretative model will provoke fruitful debate.

Jonathan Benthall University College London

Faller, Helen M. Nation, language, Islam:Tatarstan’s sovereignty movement. xiv, 333 pp.,maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Budapest, NewYork: CEU Press, 2011. £40.00 (cloth)

The break-up of the Soviet Union led to theemergence of many new or not so new nationsand various struggles for sovereignty. The varietyin the experience of being a Soviet citizen was

for years overlooked owing to the political andideological controversies of the Cold War. Sincethe 1990s, research has brought to the surfacethis diversity, shedding light on the differencesand similarities in the application of the SovietNationality Policy. Faller contributes to thistradition, drawing attention to Tatarstan and therole of language in the sovereignty movement(1990-2000). Her work is the result of a goodknowledge of Russian and Tatar languages, along period of fieldwork in Kazan and other fieldsites in Tatarstan and in Russia, and acombination of research methods (includingparticipant observation at schools, newspapers’archives, interviews, and surveys).

The book examines the ways in whichlanguage in the hands of nation-builders(intellectuals, educators, teachers, activists),combined with a struggle for Tatarstan’ssovereignty, becomes a central instrument innation-building. The innovation in Faller’s case isthat the latter is considered in a context wherebilingualism was well established. Language isstudied through the ideological presuppositionsof textbooks, and its use by different groups ofpeople defined in terms of gender, age, andclass and in various public and private settings.Use of language in the media and its culturalproduction – in Mong songs, for example(Tatarstan’s national musical genre) – are alsodiscussed. What Faller’s work offers is a clearillustration that the role of language innation-building is not as homogeneous as manyWestern theorists, focusing mainly on abourgeois, male, Western public, have implied.

Faller makes clear that the history ofTatarstan (chap. 1) since the fifteenth centurycontributed to the ways in which language inmodern Tatarstan became an indication of ethnicidentities that had been marginalized in theSoviet years in rural areas, whereas urbancentres had been dominated by the Russianlanguage. Perestroika started to legitimize theTatar language in the public sphere as a mediumof the spirit of change (chap. 2). The connectionof language to ethnicity and culture was notnew: it stemmed from a long Enlightenmenttradition and the cultural evolutionism ofMarxist-Leninist ideology. These traditions areclearly illustrated in the choice of scripts indifferent periods of Tatarstan’s history (chap. 3),which always reflected ideological agendas.

The denial of sovereignty to Tatarstan byPutin since the 2000s left its nation-builders witha poignant question: how do you form a nationin the absence of statehood (chap. 4)? Faller’sethnography shows how, in Tatarstan’s case,

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cultural categories (like family and gender roles,social networks, religion) and their expression inTatar language were used to underminemarginalization of Tatar-speakers and promotetheir emergence in the public sphere, which, asFaller argues, gradually became domesticated.

To this end, Faller believes that from the1990s, Tatar nation-builders and ideologuestried to repossess Kazan (chap. 5), the capitalof the nation, through ambitious plans forbeautification. But the repossession also tookplace in terms of language, by using Tatar inplaces considered throughout the Soviet years aspublic and, thus, forbidden to Tatar-speakers.This exclusion, strengthened by Soviet racialstereotypes, started to be overcome in thepost-Soviet years by the development of a feelingof intimacy that stemmed from the uninhibitedpractice of the Tatar language (chap. 6). One ofthe places within which national intimacy isexpressed is through Mong songs, which,as Faller shows in what is perhaps the mostethnographically orientated chapter (chap. 7),are understood in different ways depending onthe personal and social profile of each listener.At the same time, they are also considered as asymbol of Tatarstan’s common legacy.

In her final chapter (chap. 8), Faller discusseshow, after the fall of the Soviet Union, thepublics through which the experience of being aTatar is lived, perceived, and expressed, notalways in congruous ways, were multiplied.Language for years played a dividing rolebetween the Soviet citizens of Tatarstan(Russian/Tatar-speakers/publics). Nowadays,apart from language, an additional category hasalso been introduced to play this role. Althoughnot new, its public expression turned Islam intoone of the most prominent differentiatingcategories, and this in turn created newpossibilities for the experience of being a Tatar.The future will show how both language andreligion could become vehicles of Tatarnationalism and how they will affect Russia’smulticulturalism.

Eleni Sideri University of Thessaly

Marshall, Ruth. Political spiritualities: thePentecostal revolution in Nigeria. x, 349 pp.,bibliogr. London, Chicago: Univ. ChicagoPress, 2009. £45.00 (cloth), £16.50 (paper)

Political spiritualities reflects Ruth Marshall’slong-standing engagement with PentecostalChristianity in Nigeria over more than fifteenyears. Her work coincides with the growing

popularity of Born-Again Christianity, particularlyin southern Nigeria, as well as with changes inthe Born-Again movement itself – from the first,anti-materialist churches of the 1980s to thesecond-wave prosperity churches of the 1990s.She relates these changes and the Born-Againexpansion to the history of Christianity in Nigeriaand situates them within the present-daypolitical economy. While the concept ofBorn-Again underscores the importance ofnatality, of a new beginning and break with thecompromised politics of illicit wealth, violence,and inequality associated with the contemporaryNigerian state, Marshall examines how ‘theBorn-Again project both questions this historyand participates in its ongoing elaboration’. Sheshows how the moral disorder and economicdifficulties facing ordinary Nigerians in the wakeof the oil boom years of the 1970s led some toseek an alternative religious-political orderduring the first wave of the PentecostalMovement in southwestern Nigeria. Born-Againleaders questioned orthodox Christian churches’association with the reigning political elite andtraditional, albeit reformed, religious practices.Born-Again church members were treated inkind as many were expelled from mainlinechurches, thus confirming their conviction of therighteousness of the Born-Again movement.Marshall also astutely makes a connectionbetween Born-Agains’ discontent with thefailures of development and its association ofprogress (or olaju, as discussed by J.D.Y. Peel[‘Olaju: a Yoruba concept of development’,Journal of Development Studies 14, 1978, 139-65]),Christian mission conversion, and Westerneducation. They do not reject this trajectory –indeed, first-wave Born-Agains’ concern withbeing public and egalitarian echoes earliermissionary concerns with the Bible being opento all, unlike the secret, hidden quality of Yorubareligious knowledge. Rather, they see theirefforts as underscoring the need for new,non-secular, ways of ordering society so as toreap development’s benefits.

In the six chapters, conclusion, and appendixwhich constitute this volume, the authorexhaustively discusses the meaning and politicalcontext of Pentecostal practice – past andpresent – in Nigeria in theoretically rich andethnographically informed ways. Marshallexamines the ruptures which have characterizedChristianity in Nigeria’s past and present as wellas how postcolonial political disorder, economicdecline, and an associated moral disarray havecontributed to Born-Again converts’ sense ofcontributing to social renewal. None the less,

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the theological solution to these problems haschanged, with an ‘economy of miracles’represented by the faith and prosperity doctrineprevailing by the mid-1990s. This shift reflectsthe connection of Nigerian Born-Again leaderswith Pentecostal Christianity in the US and itspractitioners’ use of media technologies, whichemphasize a blurring of local and global spaces.These connections also stress the importance ofindividual prayer, the witnessing of miracles, andsigns of divine grace, which enables Born-Againconverts legitimately to free themselves fromconstraining social obligations – from family,friends, and neighbours. Yet despite thesepersonal transformations and associatedcritiques of the prevailing political economicorder, belief in the possibility of occult powers ofunknown others has contributed to uncertaintyand violence. Thus ‘Born-Again’ Christianity aspresently practised in Nigeria is deeplyambivalent about the miraculous wealth whichis both admired and suspected as having occultorigins, which is paralleled in members’ views ofthe problematic behaviour of Nigerian politiciansand, at times, of Born-Again church leaders.

Finally, Marshall considers how the expansionof Born-Again churches in the south correspondsto the establishment of the Islamic reformistgroups in north Nigeria, which has contributedto increasing tensions between Christians andMuslims. Despite the violence that thesetensions have generated and the glaring contrastbetween the ostentatious prosperity of someBorn-Again church leaders and the extremepoverty of many Nigerian church members,Marshall concludes that Born-Again Christianityoffers hope of justice and transformation incontemporary Nigeria.

Magisterial is the term that comes to mindwhen summarizing the scope and depth of thisvolume, yet it is not flawless. While Marshall isnot exceptional in her use of language,sentences such as ‘Without the old externalsupports, evangelicalism had to beself-referentially veridical’ (p. 55) make one longfor George Orwell’s five rules of writing.However, another aspect of the author’sarguments is more seriously troubling. Marshallbegins the book by airing her dissatisfaction withsocial-scientific analysis of religion: ‘The first andmost challenging question is thus how to clearan analytical space in which we might be able tounderstand practices and forms of life that areotherwise impossible to recognize from thestandpoint of the secular vocabularies institutedin public debates and underwriting socialscientific knowledge’ (p. 3). This dismissal of

secular social-scientific analysis undermines thestudy of religion, which, as others have shown,may include an empathetic ear for religion aswell as a critical anthropological approach. Itleads to Marshall’s declaimer, preceding themoving testimony of Grace Ihere presented inthe volume’s appendix, that ‘I have intentionallyrefused to make any analysis of this testimony,preferring to let her speak for herself: its radicalexcess of meaning defies all reduction’.Fortunately, this refusal of social analysis has notbeen applied to the body of her text.

Elisha P. Renne University of Michigan

Sex and gender

Inhorn, Marcia C., Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, Helene Goldberg &Maruska la Cour Mosegaard (eds).Reconceiving the second sex: men, masculinity,and reproduction. vi, 392 pp., illus., bibliogrs.Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2009.£47.50 (cloth), £19.95 (paper)

Existing anthropological theory treatsreproduction as the source of women’s powerand also, at the same time, as an obstacle totheir advancement in public life. Such literature,perhaps inadvertedly, portrays men as the‘second sex’ in reproduction. Whilstanthropologists acknowledge men’s sexuality,we tend to view men as disengaged fromreproduction, and to see their power as lyingelsewhere in social life. This exceptionally well-edited collection of fourteen stimulating essaysattempts to redress this imbalance, by analysingmen’s complex, varied, and ever-changingreproductive lives. The ethnographic focus is onEurope, the Americas, the Middle East, and to alesser extent also Asia. Unfortunately none of theessays address African experiences.

The collection is divided into four logicallystructured sections, with the first examiningbroader theoretical developments. All fourchapters in this section transcend thestereotypical association of men withpromiscuous sexuality and uncontrolled fertility,and instead portray men as ‘multifacetedreproductive subjects’. Gutman outlines theanalytical challenge as discerning when and howmen combine sexuality and reproduction. Herehe points to shortcomings in scholarlyunderstandings, such as the conspicuousabsence of love, and women’s influence on

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men’s reproductive behaviour. Moore discussesthe iconography of sperm in reproductivesciences, showing how technologies haverendered sperm more predictable. She notesthat concerns about a global decline in spermcounts mirror cultural anxieties aboutmasculinity. Two chapters by Dudgeon andInhorn present a detailed overview of existingliterature, showing how international policiesand programmes have begun to focus on men’sreproductive health and on men’s influence onmaternal and child health. For example, men’sdesires for fatherhood militate against fertilitylimitation, and in most countries men ratifyabortion laws. Unfortunately these two chaptersare reproduced from earlier articles and ignoresome of the most recent literature. Moreover,they stop short of considering how moreabstract anthropological theories of genderconfront masculinity.

The second section examines men’s role asconceptors and family planners, and how menseek to influence reproductive decision-makingprocesses. Oaks contemplates social factorsinvolved in future technologies, with reference toa fictive marketing campaign of the ‘male pill’.His discussion highlights the perception thatmasculine bodies are more difficult tomedicalize. Hanh discusses the coexistence ofhigh contraceptive prevalence in Vietnam withone of the highest abortion rates in the world.He sees this situation as an outcome of thestate’s two-child policy and of conflict betweenolder ideas of patrilineal descent and newerdiscourses of women’s rights. Despite men’sintention to have smaller families, they arereluctant to use condoms or to undergovasectomies. Yen draws on participantobservation in Southwest China, where men alsoprioritize their own reproductive developmentover that of young women. Elderly men readilyintegrate birth cadres, tasked with transformingthe reproductive practices of minorities, into thetop of village hierarchies.

The third section explores men’s experiencesof infertility and assisted reproduction.According to Goldberg, Israeli men conflateinfertility with impotence. Tjørnhøj-Thomsenexamines men’s responses to childlessness inDenmark, showing that fatherhood does notnecessarily involve genetic connection withoffspring. Inhorn highlights the eagerness ofEgyptian and Lebanese men to use newreproductive technologies. In cases of infertility,men share in the suffering of their wives, andreadily use procedures such as testicularbiopsies, which have only limited success.

The final section considers fatherhood andmen’s participation in childbirth. According toIvry, Israeli men regularly attend childbirtheducation courses. They compare the childbirthexperiences of their wives with their own physicalinjuries as soldiers, and encourage women toadopt medicalized forms of childbirth. Populardiscourses in the United States also promote thecentrality of fathers in the lives of their children.Han claims that men bind with the expected childin important ways, and also engage in ‘bellytalk’. A similar trend is apparent among RarámuriIndians in Mexico, where men’s involvement inbirth and child-rearing has strengthened spousalbonds. Mosegaard explores Danish gay men’sroles as ‘primary parents’, ‘donor dads’, ‘dayfathers’, and ‘part-time caregivers’. She suggeststhat these experiences both challenge andreproduce older ideas of masculinity.

Reconceiving the second sex points to thelimitations of interventions in the field ofreproduction that target only women and opensnew anthropological vistas. However, at placesthe collection sacrifices ethnographic depth. Yetthere are only limited attempts at comparativegeneralization, and the book could havebenefited from a concluding chapter, drawingtogether different insights. Many chapters alsopaint a somewhat over-optimistic picture,ignoring men’s engagement in domesticviolence and child abandonment. Despite theseshortcomings, the collection offers an excellentstarting-point for a potentially rewardingintellectual endeavour.

Isak Niehaus Brunel University

Tengan, Ty P. Kawika. Native men remade:gender and nation in contemporary Hawai‘i.xvi, 277 pp., illus., bibliogr. London, Durham,N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2009. £50.00 (cloth),£12.99 (paper)

The four men on the cover of this importantbook – handsome, proud, engaged in manlyactivities – look like they have stepped out ofa picture of Hawai‘i by John Webber drawnduring Captain Cook’s final voyage (1776-80).They are not, however, a survival from thosedistant times. They are a re-creation and aself-creation, and this account – a Work of theGods in the contemporary Pacific – tells of howthe search for cultural identity, spiritualguidance, and political sovereignty and thereconnecting with other Polynesian andindigenous peoples with shared histories unifiedHawai‘i’s lost kanaka maoli (men of the land)

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and gave them back their mana. Theory andpractice, history and ethnography have rarelybeen integrated as well as they are in Tengan’swork. The central project of Native men remadeis ‘to describe and theorize the ways in whichindividuals create meaningful identities inrelation to larger political forces, and how theseidentities are themselves productive of newsocial practices and relations’, with a particularinterest in the formations of masculine andindigenous subjectivities as they develop withina historical context in which race, class, gender,colonial domination, and the commodificationsof global tourism have played major roles. Asregards the latter, it is now a commonplace tosay that tourism ‘feminized’ the Hawaiian imagethrough the tourist icon of the hula girl, butuntil now, no one has substantially addressedthe concomitant problem – the image of theHawaiian man, or rather the lack thereof. To lookat the Hawaiian drawings of Webber is to see amasculine warrior society – how did these menbecome invisible? And what can be done to dealwith the consequences of cultural invisibility – afeeling of disconnection, disempowerment, andsometimes emasculation among indigenousHawaiian men? But here lurks another challenge,for in Hawai‘i’s multicultural present, what is‘the’ indigenous Hawaiian man, and how areisland men to be brought together to generatenew identities? What is needed, according toTengan, is a reintroduction of ritual and memorythat integrate present with past, provide a senseof continuity and integration, and draw on theDurkheimian dynamic of religious practice asproductive of collective representations in orderto weld self and society, and to restore andremake Hawaiian identity and masculinity.

An instrument of the process and the focusof Tengan’s work is a group called the Hale Mua,or the Men’s House, a grass-roots culturalorganization for men, dedicated to the teaching,learning, and practising of Hawaiian traditionsand histories along with public performancesand re-enactments based on the island of Maui,one of numerous groups now active throughoutthe islands. Tengan describes the way in whichthose who enter the Hale Mua embark on ajourney of social rebirth and re-embodiment inwhich material culture production, ritualspace-making, and physical training, includingexercise, dance, and the martial arts, becomemodes of remaking masculinity and identity,facilitating self-transformation and rebuildingcommunity. Through chanting and historicalre-enactments, the past is remade andexperienced on the participants’ terms, not

through the veil that for so long separated theHawaiian people from their history. Throughoutthe work, masculine voices so long unheardspeak eloquently and movingly of the lack ofself-knowledge and esteem that comes with theloss of traditional cultural practices, of aprofound sense of dispossession in neo-colonialHawai‘i, and of the hurt caused by bitterness,grievances, and enmities that have arisen in theHawaiian community over two hundred years,but which remained unresolved. But this is nounrelieved lament of loss, for Tengan shows howthe Hale Mua and groups like it, by restoringknowledge of the past and reviving traditionalpractice in a modern setting, have helped to healthe rifts in the Hawaiian community, haveprovided a cultural platform for new sorts ofsocial and political action connected to Hawaiianrights and sovereignty, have reasserted culturalnationalism, and have restored Hawaiian men toisland life, confounding the dominant colonialnarrative of the disappearing/ed native.

Tengan’s beautifully observed and writtenethnography gives a compelling sense of ‘beingthere’ and passing through the Hale Mua, andthe ethnographic narrative is set within thewider context of Hawaiian and colonial historyand the associated academic debates aroundthese complex subjects, which he presents withexceptional clarity. This excellent study morethan achieves its objective of seeking to ‘createa space in which various theories andmethodologies of indigeneity and anthropologyarticulate new forms of knowledge andunderstanding of sociocultural process’. Tengandescribes himself as an ‘Oiwi’ or indigenousanthropologist, which he is, but I would say thathe is the kind of anthropologist we all need tobe now. After ceremonies and speechesconnected with Hawaiian men’s groups, it iscustomary to call for a clapping of the hands tohonour the talk. This fine book deserves thesame accolade – Pa’i ka lima!

Kaori O’Connor University College London

Social anthropology

Friedson, Steven M. Remains of ritual:northern gods in a southern land. xvi, 254 pp.,illus., musical notation, figs, bibliogr.London, Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2009.£38.00 (cloth), £15.00 (paper)

Every good ethnographer has Ancient Marinermoments: after a transformative experience in a

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faraway place, the urge to grab an unsuspectingpasser-by and say, ‘You gotta listen to my fieldnotes!’ Friedson tells his tale in exalted prosethat verges on poetry. Among the coastal Ewe ofsoutheastern Ghana, adepts of the Breketeversion of Vodu are possessed by northern ‘kola’gods. For southern Ghanaians in general, thenorth is an exotic, backward area whoseinhabitants nevertheless possess paranormalritual powers; northern Muslims have beensupplying talismans to the south for centuries.Northerners reciprocate, buying in Accra ‘masks’and ‘fetishes’ produced abundantly for sale totourists and hotels and taking them home tomake shrines of them. In the Upper West regionwhere the founder of Brekete acquired hispantheon of gods, he did not choose to do sobut, according to legend, was chosen by themto carry them south. Once enshrined in thesouth, however, these northern gods werethoroughly Ewe-ized and are no more northernthan Peruvian shamanism remains Peruvian inConnecticut.

The physical form of the kola gods is that offetishes, consisting of ‘plants and medicinesmade thick with the blood of animals’ (p. 88),housed in a covering made from a large wildtuber. Friedson insists on their thingness: theyare of the earth, not symbols or representationsof, or means of access to, spirits or meaningslocated elsewhere. In the outpouring of sacrificeand libation, they become sites of gods in ‘afourfold mirror-play of earth, sky, mortals anddivinities’. To explain this, Friedson resorts toHeidegger’s Dasein, ‘being-there’. He rejects allsociological and psychological determinisms thatexplain human behaviour by explaining it away,substituting an alien opinion for the experience,for ‘being-there’, in constant tension with‘being-away’, being possessed by a ‘divinehorseman’, constant leave-taking, ‘every arrival adeparture’ (p. 187). The gods are not justmemories, ‘they are there in the telling of whatwas left behind, the remains of ritual carriedforward in this book’ (original emphasis).Reader, you would have to have been there.

Not long ago, purists were insisting that‘participant observation’ could be one or theother but not both. For Friedson, participation isthe only true observation, and he dwells on itsphysicality. He describes his own painfulreactions to sacrifice, which in Brekete practice isdeliberately ‘personal’, making special use of thehead, eyes, tongue, and lungs as well as copiousamounts of the blood of animals, including cats.In Brekete, the gods are realized in music anddance, when the rhythm is just right, although,

as in other branches of Vodu, not all adepts arepossessed; those who are become capable ofextraordinary exertions, although they neitherknow what is happening nor remember itafterwards. Friedson, a musicologist anddrummer, emphasizes his difficulties in getting itright. In all this, he makes it clear that the Eweexperience of the body, of life and death, and ofthe gods, though approachable, is different fromyours and mine. Although we are all globalizednow, we all have cell phones and watch CNN,cultural differences are real and are experiencedphysically.

This is an important point, though Friedsonmakes too much of it. Teetering on the edge of afamiliar dichotomy, he cites Senghor on danceand Tempels on force vitale in opposition toEuropean analytical minds (we are offeredglimpses of Hegel and Descartes) on the way toasserting that ‘trance dancing privileges thebody as the site of a gathering of mortals andthe divine’ (p. 11). No doubt, but sociology mayalso add to our understanding of Vodu, which isa practice of the marginal, especially of women.Those who know and participate in Breketeinclude the old woman fishmonger, the elderlynight watchman, the kindergarten teacher, andthe onion-seller, but not ‘the new manager atthe local Agricultural Development Bank’ (pp.2-3). The real trouble, surely, is that nobody’sway of being-in-the-world can be fully capturedby psychology, sociology, or any other‘scientific’ approach; that’s why we havenovelists and poets. The great merit of this bookis that it expresses beautifully and graphicallythe being-there and being-away of ethnographicexperience, as well as giving us vivid glimpses ofEwe life. Pictures in full colour add greatly to ourown experience.

Wyatt MacGaffey Haverford College

Kawano, Satsuki. Nature’s embrace: Japan’saging urbanites and new death rites. ix, 220

pp., illus., bibliogr. Honolulu: Univ. Hawai’iPress, 2010. £47.00 (cloth)

Recent years have seen a burgeoning ofacademic interest in the diversification of deathrites in Japan, and in particular in deviationsfrom the perceived social norm of maintaining afamily grave which is inherited by the successorof a household (ie), and which contains thecremated remains of all the ancestors of thathousehold. Again according to perceived socialnorms, the duty of care for those ancestors (alsovenerated within the home in a Buddhist altar)

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falls on the successor to the household and hiswife. Funerary practices and the care of theancestors in Japan have thus been seen asintimately linked to the household system. In thiscontext, new funerary practices have attractedmuch academic attention: some examples arethe eternal memorial graves provided by anumber of temples throughout Japan in whichremains are memorialized on an individual basisfor a period of up to thirty-three years, afterwhich they are transferred to a collective gravefor which memorial services continue to beprovided by the temple (M. Rowe, ‘Gravechanges: scattering ashes in contemporaryJapan’, 2003; ‘Stickers for nails: the ongoingtransformation of roles, rites, and symbols inJapanese funerals’, 2004 – both in JapaneseJournal of Religious Studies); tree burial (Rowe2003; S. Boret, Tree burial in Japan: culturalinnovation, environment and death, forthcoming);and ash-scattering, which is discussed byKawano in the volume reviewed here, and alsoby Rowe (2003).

One recurring theme in many of thesediscussions is the argument that recentinnovations in funerary practice offeringalternatives to the household grave systemreflect transformations in family structure, and inthe relations of individuals and households inJapan, with a trend towards individualizationand the de-centring of social bonds based onthe household. Kawano’s book takes up thisdebate with reference to the case ofash-scattering, in particular as practised by thegrave-free promotion society.

In a departure from previous writing on thetopic, Kawano argues that the new funerarypractices are not necessarily evidence of a moveaway from a household-based kinship system,but may be better interpreted as a response to aparticular set of demographic challenges facedby what she terms the ‘transitional cohorts’ inJapan. She points out that the generation whoreached old age around the 1990s, whenalternative funerary arrangements began to gainpopularity, were born at a time when the birthrate in Japan was high, and therefore tended tohave many siblings. In the context of thehousehold system in Japan, where only onechild can succeed to a household (and to thehousehold grave), that meant that there was aproliferation of new households, headed bynon-inheriting children. However, thisgenerational cohort themselves tended to havefew children, leading to a situation where theyfaced a potential succession problem: a familywith only daughters, for example, could have a

problem finding a successor, given thepreference for a successor to be an eldest son.Although it has been fairly common in the pastfor a daughter’s husband to be adopted assuccessor to a household, these adoptedson-in-laws were generally younger sons in theirnative household – and in the context of fallingbirth rates there are few of these available.

The importance of this for changing funerarypractices is that household graves are inheritedby the successor to the household. Those whoare not successors in the current generation ofthe elderly must therefore establish their ownhousehold grave, or make alternativearrangements. To acquire a new householdgrave site in an established cemetery involvesconsiderable expense (if it is possible at all,given the shortage of space in cemeteries) andalso the ability to demonstrate that there will bea successor to care for it – which may in itself beproblematic.

Kawano argues that this particular set ofcircumstances has created special pressures onthis transitional cohort to find alternativearrangements to the household-based kinshipand mortuary system, but that these existalongside the persistence of the householdbased system, and, paradoxically, can be seen assupporting evidence for the continuingimportance of the household system whichallocates grave rights to only one successor. Shesupports this with survey material from herfieldwork showing that if a household grave anda successor exist, the likelihood is that the gravewill be maintained and that the deceased’sremains will be interred there. This in turn raisessome important questions: how are these newfunerary practices likely to change in the future,as Japan’s demographic profile continues tochange? And what are the broader implicationsfor debates concerning the importance of thehousehold in contemporary Japan?

Kawano does not suggest that demographicfactors provide a total explanation forinnovations in death rites: she also argues foralternative ‘scripts’ concerning death incontemporary Japan, and insists on theimportance of the agency and variedmotivations of those making choices concerningfunerary arrangements. Space does not permit afull consideration of the arguments she presents,but, overall, this book provides a complex andnuanced examination of the interaction betweendemographic change, individual choice, and thedevelopment of alternative discourses forunderstanding and negotiating the relationshipbetween the dead and the living in

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contemporary Japan, supported by some veryrich ethnography. It is a valuable contribution toour understanding of funerary practices in Japanand of the changing role of the household inJapanese society, and I would recommend ithighly to anyone with an interest in these areas,or in the anthropological study of death moregenerally.

Louella Matsunaga Oxford Brookes University

Kjaerulff, Jens. Internet and change: ananthropology of knowledge and flexible work.199 pp., bibliogr. Højbjerg: InterventionPress, 2010. €30.50 (paper)

Working from home is a practice familiar tomany anthropologists. Several aspects of ourwork can be conducted as easily from home asthey can from an office, often saving time andresources. The Internet makes this an ever moreviable option, not just for anthropologists butfor a constantly widening circle of professions.Internet and change examines some of the effectsof this Internet-facilitated teleworking. In doingso, it has feet in two camps: one regarding theInternet and its cultural impact (on some aspectsof some societies at least), the other regardingthe anthropology of the workplace in general.

Kjaerulff views work ‘in the sense of acultural domain with a particular history’ (p. 84)as a ‘tradition of knowledge’ as per FrederikBarth, and he self-consciously acknowledges thatBarth is the dominant theorist drawn upon inthe book. In this, Kjaerulff does not focus somuch on specific occupations, but onemployment itself as a facet of Danish (and,more widely, European) cultural practice and atradition commensurable with the traditions ofknowledge considered by Fredrik Barth (Balineseworlds, 1993). Part of chapter 4 (‘Unfoldingevents, knowledge and traditions’) and much ofchapter 5 (‘Work as a tradition of knowledge’)are given over to a digest of Barth’s later work,supplemented with discussions of Cato Wadel,Berger and Luckmann, Otto and Pedersen, aswell as Goffman and others.

From the ethnographic side, Kjaerulffconducted fieldwork from 1999-2000 based inthe Danish village of Fibsted which featured asmall community of teleworkers who, whileworking in isolation from each other for much ofthe time, came together once a week as the‘Wednesday Lunch Group’. The bulk of thefield data presented concerns these weeklygatherings and extended interviews with threeparticular members of the group, alongside a

questionnaire-led survey administered across thewhole village, and focus groups at an ITcompany.

There is an irony in the book regarding theInternet and space/place. Kjaerulff rightly pointsout that Daniel Miller and Don Slater’s TheInternet: an ethnographic approach (2000) –while a landmark study – is limited to using‘place’ (i.e. Trinidad) as the key point ofreference for its study of Internet use, whereas‘people’ might be more appropriate or fruitfulfor the diasporic imagined communities whichthe Internet can facilitate. Nevertheless, Kjaerulffhad to physically base himself in a place(Fibsted) in order to carry out his study. Whilemuch of the telework carried out in the villagewas ‘informal’ – that is, not built intoemployment contracts as such – one ofKjaerulff’s main informants worked for an ITcompany with a culture of formal teleworking.The informant in question eventually reverted tomore ‘normal’ working as he was unable tomanage the tensions between his workingcontract, Danish employment law (withstrictures regarding weekly working hours), hisown professionalism, and, not least, life athome. He cites the ambient nature of theInternet, the intrusion of work-relatedcorrespondence into personal time, and thehabit of some other teleworkers of sendingemails late in the evening to ‘prove’ how muchthey were working (perhaps this could belabelled ‘tele-presenteeism’) as reasons why thatculture of full-time teleworking becameunsuitable for him. Here, email is analysed as a‘medium of representation’ but one which isweak and constrained by company policy whichappears to discourage individuality in emails,limiting them just to ‘facts’ and a rather coldobjectification of their recipients.

In attending meetings of the WednesdayLunch Group, Kjaerulff was struck by how littleof the conversation concerned work (p. 36).This did not surprise me, as these meetings –although defined by work – were about a breakfrom work. Whilst many features of the studycan legitimately be generalized to otherEuropean teleworking communities, others aremore narrowly Danish (e.g. those involvingemployment law) and in some ways even tightlyspecific to the village studied – the villagestraddled two administrative districts, one ofwhich had a progressive policy of supplyingresidents with better Internet connections.

As well as providing a useful ethnography ofan interesting and rapidly changing period inhistory, Internet and change will be of most

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interest to those working in the anthropology ofthe workplace, although those whose workinvolves computer-mediated communication willfind insights too. It touches on aspects ofpolitics/social policy in places, but anyone withan interest in Barth might find food for thoughtin Kjaerulff’s applications.

Nick Swann University of Wales, Newport

Sekine, Yasumasa. Pollution, untouchability andHarijans. xxvi, 390 pp., map, tables, figs,illus., bibliogr. Jaipur: Rawat Publications,2011. Rs 995 (cloth)

Both consensus and disjunction theories of thecaste system offer an inadequate account of thevalues of the ‘ex-untouchables’, according toSekine. In this book he does much more thanargue that these castes hold contradictoryattitudes simultaneously. He appreciates thedisjunctionists for their recognition of the weightof power but dismisses any suggestion of aseparate culture at the bottom of Indian society.Such an idea can only be a product of theobserver’s disapproval of the high castes. Worsestill, in Sekine’s view, are consensus theorists likeDumont and Moffatt. Their emphasis on theuniqueness of a holistic Indian cultural systembased on the shared values of purity andimpurity undermines any claims anthropologymay make to universalism.

Sekine considers that the central value sharedby all castes, in his 1980s non-Brahman Tamilvillage near Madurai, was not purity/impuritybut the ideology of pollution, often wronglyequated with impurity. Impurity is alwaysnegative. Pollution is ambiguous, replete with‘the menace of death’ yet generative of life. It isnot the opposite of purity and has no antonym.For the villagers, the power of pollution wasparticularly strongly located at the boundaryamong the ‘ex-Untouchable’ or Dalit castes(surprisingly, Sekine still refers to them asHarijans). The Tamil word tittu is normally onlyever used for pollution though the authoradmits that some local terms (e.g. cuttam) canbe used contextually, either for pollution orimpurity. Pollution is a liminal, egalitarianintrusion of other-worldly threat to theconventional social order and is hot with power.It is an incident rather than an innate attribute.Acceptance of pollution is a sacrificial act, asseen in female puberty rituals, where the girl ispolluted yet auspicious. Menstruation, too, is asacrificial process for re-creation of life. Impurity,by contrast, is never auspicious. Faeces and urine

are impure not polluting, for they were neveralive and offer no potential for life.

All the villagers struggle to mediate thesetwo contrasting ideologies of purity/impurityand pollution, expressed in the struggle ofSanskritized gods to stabilize the productivepower generated by bloodthirsty goddesses. Likemost Indian villages, Kinnimangalam is notdominated by Brahmans, or other ‘twice-born’castes, hence not by their value systems. Thesigns are that pollution ideology is graduallylosing out as Brahmanical ideas become apan-Indian idiom for respectability.‘Ex-untouchables’ are increasingly despised asimpure, rather than dreaded as polluted.

Consensus theorists like Moffatt have arguedthat replication of high-caste patterns indicatesthat Dalits share Brahmanical values of purityand impurity. Sekine argues, on the contrary,that, viewed ‘from below’, much of whatappears to be replication is often purely prudentor strategic. Failure to be activist egalitariansdoes not mean that Scheduled Castes shareupper-caste values. They are simply normalhuman beings seeking ‘self-aggrandisement’,not merely self-esteem, but the ‘productive’enhancement of the self. Any group based onthe margins of society would behave similarly.Much of their cultural difference is the productof discrimination or the result of a realisticawareness of the sources of power. Paraiyarsrank the dominant, but non-twice-born, caste ofKallars higher than the Sanskritized castes in thevillage. On occasion, they observe vegetarianismas an outward idiom of respect, but this doesnot imply any inward belief that meat-eatingmakes them impure. Their practice of endogamyis similarly not a mere replication of upper-castehierarchical purity concerns. Women are theproductive ‘flower’ of the lineage and hence tobe retained within the group. Hypergamy is nomore acceptable than hypogamy.

Sekine struggles to walk the tightrope of amiddle path that is sensitive to interpretationsfrom ‘the boundary’ yet which avoids thesuperiority of a ‘transcendent’ viewpoint. We areall in a ‘dirty position’, he says. To representothers can also be a form of violence. He regardshis location as a Japanese anthropologist ashomologous with that of the non-dominantmiddle castes in a South Indian village. They arecomplicit in oppression. How can he avoid beingcomplicit in (Western) objectification of others?

This book is filled with detail, and itsarguments are densely complex. In my view,some pruning would have made it easier toread. It would be sad if this means it does not

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receive the international attention it deserves, forit wrestles with a whole range of importantissues. It is meticulously, exhaustivelyethnographic and deeply engaged.Mary Searle-Chatterjee Centre for Applied South

Asian Studies

Social theory

Lambek, Michael (ed.). Ordinary ethics:anthropology, language, and action. xvii, 458

pp., figs, bibliogr. New York: Fordham Univ.Press, 2010. £29.95 (paper)

This important and timely reader emerges fromthe growing community of interest which isfurther developing the conversation betweenanthropology and philosophy. This projecthas been likened to a bridge being builtsimultaneously from both sides of a river. Inhis introduction, Michael Lambek refers tophilosopher J.L. Austin’s request for ‘fieldwork inphilosophy’. Webb Keane further highlights theunique mandate enjoyed by anthropology,which is ‘to encounter people in the midst ofthings’. This provides a unique opportunity tothink about ethical experience as an irreduciblecomponent of the politics and pragmatics ofeveryday life. Hence the title, Ordinary ethics.

The twenty papers contained within offer aseries of reflections on the place of ethics inhuman life and the ways in which attention tothe ethical can enrich anthropological theoryand deepen ethnographic analyses. The papersare grouped around seven broad themes:‘Theoretical frameworks’; ‘The ethics ofspeaking’; ‘Responsibility and agency’;‘Punishment and personal dignity’; ‘Ethics andformability’; ‘Ethical subjects – character andpractice’; and ‘Ethical life – encounters withhistory, religion and the political’.

Major threads that persist throughoutinclude: the close relation between ritual andethics; the central importance of language, notsimply in specifically framing the ethical, but inthe way that it creates the common mentalworld we inhabit; the distinction between ethicsand morals; issues of obligation, responsibility,and intentionality; and how, in the crucible ofthe everyday contemporary world, individuals,families, and communities establish ethicalpositions, resolve ethical dilemmas, and createthemselves as ethical subjects.

Key theorists past, recent, and contemporaryare referenced. Aristotle has primacy. He locates

ethics as a dimension of action rather than anaspect of thought. In doing so, he legitimates, asit were, the project under consideration. He isexplicit: the virtues that are the dispositionalground of ethical agency do not reside inhuman beings by nature but can and must becultivated only in, and through, practice. Herecognizes that doing the right thing is not easy,even assuming one knows what the right thingis. Specific readings highlight this to be apressing present reality: for example,businesspeople striving to be just as well assuccessful in Sri Lanka; or families coming toterms with marriage across the Hindu/Muslimsectarian divide in present-day Delhi.

Hannah Arendt has focused attention on therole of judgement in both public and privatebehaviour and upon the notion of personalresponsibility that depends on a particular kindof thinking and critical subject who is able toattend to a problematic situation and make apersonal judgement about it. This is explored topowerful effect in a paper by Steven V. Catonexamining the outrages carried out against Iraqiprisoners by US forces behind the walls of AbuGhraib.

Foucault is pointedly referenced in a numberof papers which explore his thought beyond theHistory of sexuality vol. 2 (The use of pleasure),where resistance to power has become anemergent possibility. Within the imaginary that isopened up, the opportunity, indeed thenecessity, of transgression is highlighted. Insidethis theme, powerful ethnographic detail from,variously, studies of the neuro-diversity autismmovement in the US (Paul Antze), the dilemmasfaced by sex industry workers in London (SophieDay), and the nascent queer community in India(Naisargi N. Dave) is used to explore aspectsof the ethical challenges facing outsidercommunities, drawing upon such conceptsas Nussbaum’s ‘empathy’, and Levinas’s callfor radical openness ‘to the alterity of theOther’.

Building the bridge from the anthropologicaltheory side of the river, James Laidlaw citesEvans-Pritchard’s classic ethnographies of theZande and the Nuer as offering opposingexamples of ethical approaches to theproduction and distribution of agency. His paper‘Agency and responsibility: perhaps you canhave too much of a good thing’, offers awide-ranging survey that starts with a contrastbetween ‘practice theory’ and Actor NetworkTheory, and culminates, via a rumination ondistributed responsibility as exemplified by theself-imposed withdrawal of Stanley Kubrick’s

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film A Clockwork Orange, in a reflection on therecent rise of injuries, faults, and accountabilitiesthat can only be disclosed (and henceexperienced) through the deployment ofstatistical analysis.

Ordinary ethics is an important and welcomeaddition to the growing literature building thebridge between anthropology and philosophy.The ethnographic sweep is considerable in bothrange and detail. The theoretical ground coveredis extensive. The syntheses attempted andachieved are worthwhile and should provedurable.

Dominic Martin University of Cambridge

Latour, Bruno & Vincent Antonin

Lépinay. The science of passionate interests:an introduction to Gabriel Tarde’s Economicanthropology. 100 pp., Chicago: PricklyParadigm Press, 2010. £9.00 (paper)

Gabriel Tarde was an unflinching adept of whatEverett Hughes has termed ‘theoretical fantasy’(‘Tarde’s Psychologie économique: an unknownclassic by a forgotten sociologist’, The AmericanJournal of Sociology 66, 1961, 553-9). In thefourth chapter of his massive opus Psychologieéconomique (1902, 26-9), Tarde pauses briefly toconsider quite seriously the potential long-termtrends in international political economy ... if theearth were flat! His surprising conclusions I leaveto the interested reader. In The science ofpassionate interests, Bruno Latour and VincentAntonin Lépinay consider a slightly lessimplausible counterfactual: what if Tarde’sPsychologie économique had been taken up bypractical and theoretical followers and hadshaped the history of political economy, whileKarl Marx’s Das Kapital fell into oblivion, only tobe rediscovered today by sceptical or amazedreaders? This ‘little essay in historical fiction’(p. 1) gives an inkling of how Tarde’s forgottenopus might be read today if – as has in facthappened with Das Kapital – it had benefitedfrom generations of admiring commentators tosmooth out its rough edges, extend its conceptsthrough new theoretical language, andretrospectively highlight its prescience. In theprocess, Latour and Lépinay have succeeded inthat most anthropological of tasks, namely tomake strange what we thought we knew: about‘political economy’, first of all, and moregenerally about ‘everything that has happenedto us in the past two hundred years and that wehave far too hastily summarized under the nameof “capitalism” ’ (p. 5).

This orientation explains why, while the bookoffers a thought-provoking introduction to thesubstance and concerns of the century-oldtreatise in economic sociology, its aim is notprimarily to give a critical contextualization ofthe book or of Tarde’s work more generally.While the authors contrast Tarde to Polanyi,Bourdieu, Marx, or Adam Smith, and connecthim to Darwin, Leibniz, Sahlins, or Deleuze, theirintroduction is not seeking to ‘situate’ andthereby tame the majestic weirdness of Tarde’sPsychologie économique, but, on the contrary, tohighlight the ‘strangeness of a book which willallow [the reader] to gain a new grasp oneconomics’ (p. 67).

And Tarde’s ‘economic psychology’certainly proves to be productively strange.Part I of Latour and Lépinay’s book, entitled‘It is because the economy is subjective that itis quantifiable’, outlines the Tardean challengeto the economic science of his day, and inparticular his heretical proposal to decouplequantification from objectivity and distance.Tarde sees economic notions of value asmetonymic of the more general phenomenonof ‘interpsychological’ give and take of‘passionate interests’ (pp. 7-13, 24). In thisrespect, the authors argue, Tarde went muchfurther than later attempts to ‘embed’ theeconomy in the social, or to add ‘extra-economic’ factors as modifiers upon the rational,calculating individual: everything in Tarde’seconomy is ‘extra-economic’ (p. 24), passionate,irrational, (inter-)subjective. And economicsmust, paradoxically, become more quantitativeand more scientific by getting closer to, notfurther away from, these passionate interests(pp. 20-32).

Having disposed of the ‘discipline’ (p. 32)of economics, the second part of the booktraces Tarde’s substantive re-theorization ofthe economy itself. In elucidating hiscounterintuitive account of capital and labour(for Tarde, ‘conversation’ is an essentialproduction factor, and the essence of capitallies in the ‘inventions’ of which material objectsare but an auxiliary, albeit useful, outcome –pp. 46-56), the authors show convincingly thatwhat looks like a strange ‘idealism’ when readthrough the old dichotomy of infrastructure andsuperstructure seems strikingly prescient in theredistributed material-semiotic world ofhardware and software, biotechnology and viralmarketing. The authors trace Tarde’s similarlycounterintuitive way of ‘naturalizing’ theeconomy while ‘socializing’ nature (pp. 42-6): inTarde’s political economy as in his version of

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Darwinism, the immanent hope of symbiosisreplaces the transcendent law of improvementthrough ‘vital conflict’.

This theme forms the centrepiece of thethird part of the book, ‘Economics withoutprovidence’, in which the authors contrastTarde’s approach to political economy with theprovidentialism inherent in both liberal ‘laissezfaire’ – with its crypto-religious belief in theInvisible Hand (pp. 71-4) – and the all-too-visiblehand of state socialism (pp. 74-9). By contrast toboth of these beliefs in a transcendentharmonization, Tarde is presented here as an‘agnostic’ (pp. 5, 81). Not a postmodern apostleof chaos, but a cautious proponent of theimmanent powers of harmonization presentin every entity’s artifices and interventions.The book’s final sentence sums up thesimultaneously methodological, ontological, andethical/political import of Tarde’s economicanthropology, as rendered by Latour andLépinay: ‘[I]t is from the free play of passionateinterests that [Tarde] expects morequantification, which is to say more socialconnections, to “card chaos into a world” ’(p. 87).

The formulation also gives a sense of howmuch the Tarde we encounter today owes to thecurrent of thought characterized as ActorNetwork Theory – just as anthropology studentsin the 1990s encountered Marx through practicetheory. ‘No one seems to have chosen Tarde ashis sociological ancestor’, wrote Everett Hughesin the 1961 article cited at the start of this review,adding, ‘I recommend him as at least an unclewho is generous with his ideas’. Four decadeslater, Bruno Latour claimed Tarde as thegrandfather of ANT (‘Gabriel Tarde and the endof the social’, in The social in question: newbearings in history and the social sciences (ed.)P. Joyce, 117-32, 2002). It will fall to readers todecide, in the light of this captivating andprovocative little book, whether the real,spherical world would have been a betterplace, and political economy a better science,had Tarde’s unbroken lineage, rather thanMarx’s, presided over the twentieth century.Either way, the great merit of Latour andLépinay’s introduction is to give us a glimpseof that conceptual generosity, at a timewhen anthropology and the social sciencesmore generally are greatly in need of new‘theoretical fantasies’ to help unsettle thevocabulary of contemporary political economy,from ‘global capitalism’ through to‘neoliberalism’.

Matei Candea Durham University

Urban anthropology

Biron, Rebecca E. (ed.). City/art: the urbanscene in Latin America. x, 274 pp., maps, illus.,bibliogr. London, Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ.Press, 2009. £59.00 (cloth), £14.99 (paper)

This edited collection gathers an eclectic,multidisciplinary range of scholars andpractitioners (cultural and literary critics,anthropologists, an architect, a philosopher) tocontemplate dimensions of contemporary urbanlife in Latin America. The book adds to the surgeof recent literature on urbanism inspired partlyby intensifying urbanization and the emergenceof megacities. Its authors examine huge,sprawling metropolises such as Rio de Janeiro,Mexico City, and São Paulo, and other urbancentres (Brasília, Santiago de Chile, Montevideo,Havana – even Miami) that define in variousways the dense, dynamic cultural texture of‘Latin America’ today.

Analysing cities through a single urbanplanning or social science lens might limitrecognition of vital yet less obvious forcesshaping the city as it is lived and experienced byits inhabitants. Contrasting such approaches, theessays aim – as editor Rebecca Biron states – topresent the cities foremost as ‘sites of creativity’(p. 2), thereby allowing an ‘affectiveunderstanding of the lived city’ (p. 3). As such,the book investigates diverse ‘arts’, from officialand commercial modes of expression (urbanplans, formally staged performances, shoppingmalls) to more popular ones (performance art,graffiti) reckoned to reflect but also inform the‘urban scene’ in today’s Latin America. Therefrain running through the collection is thetension contained within the region’s primarycities between the city as a real, concrete,physical entity and the abstract city as imagined,fictionalized, or idealized.

Moving across Latin America, the collectionsituates the reader right in the heart (and,arguably, in the soul) of the various citiesexplored. The book is divided into three parts,each of which encompasses a small cluster ofessays grouped thematically. In part I, ‘Urbandesigns’, cultural studies guru Nestor GarcíaCanclini critiques basic definitions of a city thathave been used in urban studies, privileginginstead how Mexico City residents perceive andexperience their city. Adrián Gorelik teases outthe contradictions within porteños’ views ofBuenos Aires, and their ambivalence about being(Latin) Americans. James Holston contributes

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another of his well-known commentaries on themodernist apotheosis Brasília, the country’scapital, a concrete manifestation of nationalistideology whose designers believed it possibleactually to mould the social order through urbanorganization and architecture. Holston explainshow city residents defy this official map throughtheir inscription within the city of alternativepaths of movement and meaning.

Part II, ‘Street signs’, begins with acompelling essay by Nelly Richard, whoexamines the performance art – street paintings,performances, videos – of Lotty Rosenfeld,whose work cracks open official stories of historyand the functioning body politic to expose itsunderside of disorder and violence. MarcySchwartz juxtaposes New York City subwaygraffiti with a short story by Julio Cortázar in areflection on how both expressive formscombine urban space, writing, and visual art.José Quiroga authors another fruitful aestheticcomparison, this time of Joan Didion’s essay onthe Cuna exile community in Miami and BrianDe Palma’s well-known film Scarface,underlining Miami’s place as a critical urban‘Latin American’ centre whose essence can beunderstood with reference to alternating themesof foreignness and belonging. Anna Kaminskyalso draws from a range of contemporary literarytexts to offer her observations on the meaning ofJewishness in Buenos Aires as this identity isinformed by migration flows and networks.

Movements of people, goods, and imagesare also the focus of part III, ‘Traffic’, whichexamines the interaction of flows and exchangesof capital and culture in the region. HugoAchugar looks at the quite surreal transformationof a Montevideo prison into a downtown mall tomake a point about erasures of memories ofmaterial violence and their replacement by otherkinds of consumptive violence. Rio de Janeiro isthe centre of George Yúdice’s comparison oftwo projects for urban revitalization, one atop-down plan for a Guggenheim museum, andanother the popular movement of GrupoCultural Afro-Reggae, which Yúdice argues ismore effective in addressing chronic ills of racismand social and economic disparities. The finalessay of the collection is a proposal written byNelson Brissac Peixoto, who enlists plasticDeleuzian metaphors to look at the broaderimplications of the phenomenon of the LatinAmerican megacity.

This is a fascinating, if rather fragmented,book. This fragmentedness is intentional, and isdue in part to the multidisciplinary, open-endedorientation of the collection. Essays are written in

the typical ‘post-’ language of currentaesthetic/cultural criticism. This may make thebook hard going for readers unfamiliar with suchmodes of analysis or interpretation. Yet for theseand other readers, the book challenges us toapproach and understand the complexity of‘Latin American’ cities in new, productive, andinspiring ways.

Kristin Norget McGill University

Dürr, Eveline & Rivke Jaffe (eds). Urbanpollution: cultural meanings, social practices.viii, 209 pp., figs, illus., bibliogrs. Oxford,New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. £40.00

(cloth)

Pollution, almost by definition, is difficult tohandle, literally and conceptually. Theboundaries between its forms, states, and scalesare often blurred; from litter, to smog orprotozoa in drinking water, pollution can beencountered at the scale of a kilometre or downto the level of a micron. As the proportion of theworld’s population living in cities increases, sodoes the impact of pollution on the urbanenvironment, making public policy the focus forwork on environmental degradation, ‘risk’, andthe management of scarce resources. Yet as Jaffeand Dürr observe in the introduction to thisvolume, attention to the perception of theenvironment and pollution in cities has beenslight, even as anxieties about pollution subtlyshape the everyday lives of most city-dwellers.

This edited volume of eight ethnographicpapers takes Mary Douglas’s work on pollutionand concepts of purity and order as itsstarting-point. Cultural notions of pollutionbring into focus the forms of discrimination,segregation, and social hierarchy that structureurban space. The papers vary in style, length,and ethnographic context, from New Zealandand Fiji to Central Europe and India. In Dürr’sand Lüthi’s chapters, material pollution seems tothreaten the status of people at the top of thesocial hierarchy. Lüthi offers a detailed ifconventional account of the constant daily workin upper-caste houses in South India doneagainst the constant ingress of dirt andlower-caste/class people. Dürr shows how thecomplexity of postcolonial nation-building inrecently multicultural New Zealand is expressedthrough narratives about ‘tidy Kiwis’ and ‘dirtyAsians’, as Victorian racialized discourses onsanitation are refigured in contemporarydiscussion of the environment. These themesreappear in Trnka’s account of Indo-Fijians in

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Fiji’s capital, Suva. Even as the city struggleswith political instability and economic crises,Suva is figured by its residents as a ‘clean’ spaceof urban modernity in opposition to the wild,‘backward’, dirty ‘jungle’.

Mixing with ‘other’ lower-class people in thepublic spaces of Cairo is no less fraught for theupper-middle-class women in Anouk DeKoning’s richly ethnographic account. Theirinability to control the symbolically pollutinggaze of lower-class male ‘others’ makes forspatially segregated lives, where elite forms ofdress and distinction can be maintained. Similarforms of distinction are played out in Treiber’saccount of the clientele of ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’bars in Amsara.

In the final three papers, framings ofpollution in public policy are contested throughactivism. Kerényi describes how in Budapest,environmentalism, once one of the few spacesfor possible opposition to Hungary’s Communistgovernment, is now fragmented around differentissues. Rolshoven provides an overview ratherthan ethnography of the increasingly tightlycontrolled nature of Europe’s public spaces,where people are more likely to be removedthan rubbish in an attempt to maintain notionsof order, safety, and cleanliness. Similarly, inScott, Shaw, and Bava’s account of regenerationin New Zealand, ‘liveability’ is debated byresidents and authorities through differentlyclassed, professionalized, and gendereddiscourses around cleanliness and order.

Together these papers represent awide-ranging account of social relations in urbansettings, framed by the people living them interms of pollution. In this respect, they remaintrue to the principle of Mary Douglas’s work,but do not really extend it. Consequently, asDavison notes in the afterword, many ‘chaptershandle the semiotic subtlety with greaterdexterity than they do material subtlety’ (p. 199),an imbalance curiously also identified in theintroduction. The introduction itself tantalizinglyhints at ethnographic accounts of the relationalmateriality of pollution to come, referring viaLaw’s and Latour’s work to the techniquesthrough which entities become polluted orpolluting, raising the possibility of the ‘agency’of pollution itself. As Davison notes in theafterword, ‘Urban pollution [is] shot throughwith powerful physical agencies, such as thereproductive vigour of E. coli, the toxicpersistence of mercury or the warmth of ablanket of carbon dioxide’ (p. 199). Thesetheoretical approaches have been productivelyembraced by geographers, but, despite being

flagged, are barely addressed in theseethnographic contributions. Similarly, while thisvolume contributes usefully to environmentalanthropology by addressing the urbanenvironment (which has been largely rural-,forestry-, and fisher-focused), it would have beenuseful to know more about what the authorsconsidered to be specifically urban about theirenvironments.

Despite these criticisms, this volume offers arange of useful accounts of cultural constructionof pollution, deployed as an idiom in theordering and negotiating of social relations in arange of urban settings. The illustration of howassertions of pollution are racialized, gendered,and classed, and the range of debates in whichpollution is deployed as a discursive as well asmaterial form, usefully broaden the frame ofurban and environmental anthropology.

Cressida Jervis Read University College London

Mathews, Gordon. Ghetto at the center of theworld: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong. xi, 241

pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. London, Chicago:Univ. Chicago Press, 2011. £12.50 (paper)

Gordon Mathews describes Chungking Mansionsas ‘perhaps the most globalized building in theworld’ (p. 7). The ramshackle tower block, adilapidated seventeen storeys of cut-pricebusinesses and cheap guest-houses in Kowloon,in the heart of Hong Kong’s tourist district, ‘isthe haunt of South Asian merchants, Africanentrepreneurs, Indian temporary workers,African and South Asian asylum seekers, andpenurious travellers from across the globe’(p. 2). This place, and the markets in Kolkata,Lagos, and Dar es Salaam with which it is tightlylinked, provides the ethnographic context forGhetto at the center of the world, an innovativeexploration of the lived realities of globalizingmarkets and transnational economic networks.

Chungking Mansions matters, Mathewssuggests, because it provides an example ofglobalization as it is experienced by the majorityof the world’s people. Mathews labels this‘low-end globalization’: ‘the transnational flowof people and goods involving relatively smallamounts of capital and informal, sometimessemi-legal or illegal, transactions commonlyassociated with “the developing world” ’ (pp.19-20). This is not the careful branding, high-riseoffices, or corporate lawyers of companies likeSony, Coca Cola, and McDonald’s. Instead,Mathews follows a Nigerian trader as he buys asuitcase full of second-hand mobile phones from

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an Indian shop-owner in Chungking Mansions,aware at every moment that an exchange ratefluctuation or a capricious customs official couldrender his trip an economic disaster. In thisethnographically rich account, the authorinsightfully reveals the complex motivations ofthose who travel to Chungking Mansions,describing the calculations made by a Kenyantrader as she chooses fabric for shirts to be madein China and sold in East Africa, and outlininghow an asylum-seeking Nepalese man learns tonegotiate the bureaucratic complexities of theHong Kong office of the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees.

Ghetto at the center of the world is animportant book, for a number of reasons. Firstly,Mathews’s account stands in contrast to muchof the existing anthropological literature on thelived realities of globalization, which focuses onthe impact of global economic networks on veryparticular people in very particular places. Incontrast, Mathews examines a site of globalinterconnection, demonstrating that this place offluid populations and fleeting interactions is not,to borrow Marc Augé’s terminology, a non-place(Non-places: introduction to an anthropology ofsupermodernity, 1995), but a node of complexinternational entanglements.

Secondly, an examination of ChungkingMansions allows for a nuanced account of thecomplexities of the relationship between‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds. Mathewsdescribes Chungking Mansions as

a building of the periphery within a cityof the core, a city located between thedeveloping world’s manufacturing huband its poorest nether regions. It is aghetto of middle-class striving within acity of wealthier middle-class striving,viewing its denizens with fear and scornyet letting business as usual be the law ofthe day (p. 215).

The book challenges much theorizingconcerning global capitalism, particularly theidea that capital moves from the core to theperiphery, where cheap labour allows cheaperfactories. In Chungking Mansions, Mathewssuggests, ‘we see the opposite trend: notproducers moving from the core to thesemi-periphery, but traders moving from theextreme periphery to the semi-periphery to buycast-off, knock-off, or copy goods from the core’(p. 209).

An additional strength of the book isMathews’s elegant juxtaposition of theuniversal and the particular. The author makesclear, on the one hand, that this story, ofglobal markets, inflexible borders, and radicaldivides between the very rich and the very poor,is not merely the story of Chungking Mansions.He suggests that similar accounts could berecorded in places such as Yuexiu district,Guangzhou, or in Brixton, London, or Flushing,New York. Yet, on the other hand, importantparticularities are never downplayed: forexample, Mathews skilfully traces theconsequences of Hong Kong’s unusualimmigration laws and examines the after-effectsof colonialism, the limited impact of the 1997

transfer of power, and the growing importanceof the Chinese mainland as a manufacturinghub.

This book will appeal to a broad audienceand will be excellent for undergraduateteaching: the accounts Mathews provides arecaptivating, his argument is sophisticated andprovocative but never unnecessarily complex,and, while the book is clearly in conversationwith existing anthropological literature, thisengagement is subtle. In summary, this bookprovides a fascinating account of a particularplace and makes a significant contribution to theongoing anthropological discussion on the livedexperiences of globalization.

Ruth E. Toulson University of Wyoming

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