Review of Narrating the Future in Siberia: Childhood, Adolescence and Autobiography among Eveny by...

Book reviews

Childhood and old age

Degnen, Cathrine. Ageing selves and everydaylife in the north of England: years in themaking. x, 159 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr.Manchester: Univ. Press, 2012. £65.00 (cloth)

Despite the growing interest by anthropologistsin ageing and the elderly, there are relatively fewethnographic accounts of the life experiencesof older people. Adopting a broadlyphenomenological perspective, Degnen’ssensitive and thought-provoking ethnographyhas a moral as well as analytical valency andmakes a valuable contribution to this literature.Years in the making is the product of lengthyfieldwork undertaken in Dodworth, a villagesituated in South Yorkshire, in the north ofEngland.

In presenting her ethnographic account ofolder people in Dodworth, Degnen settles on afairly standard format. The book is divided intoseven chapters. In chapter 1 she introduces someof the major issues that have emerged insocial-scientific writing on old age during thelast two decades as well as the key themesdeveloped in later chapters: selfhood,subjectivity, temporality, and narrativity. Herfieldwork largely comprised interviews witholder residents as well as extended periods ofparticipant observation in both public andprivate settings. Chapter 2 dwells on Dodworthas a place where until recently mining wascentral to the socio-economic life of its people.Degnen quite rightly alerts us to the tendency ofreifying a model of ‘the isolated pit village’(p. 32). This study is different from earlier,well-known descriptions of mining communities

in at least three ways: first, mining no longerserves as a source of income in Dodworth;second, and partly as a result of pit closures, thetown is socially heterogeneous; and, third, thestereotypical image of women at home and menout at work is misplaced here. We are alsoreminded that the rapid, mid-twentieth-centurydecline of heavy industry in the north ofEngland and resultant high unemployment andsevere poverty feature prominently in the sharedhistories of older Dodworth folk.

In chapters 3-6, Degnen presents a detailedand compelling analysis of what she calls ‘theageing self’, as manifested by her researchparticipants, beginning with an exploration of‘temporal complexities’. She argues that whiletemporality looms large in the talk of herresearch participants, they are not ‘lost in thepast’ (p. 56), as social stereotyping might leadus to believe – a misunderstanding that leads toa damaging othering of older people, who areassumed to occupy a time detached from thepresent. Rather, Degnen discovered in them ‘asense of urgency and anxiety over timeliness,intergenerational and interpersonal tensions overrelationships to the past and to time, theimportance of fixed schedules in contrast with“empty time”, the salience of temporal markers’(p. 57): that is, a dynamic sense of temporalitylargely missing from earlier accounts of olderpeople. Much of the potency of the analysisdepends on the fine-grained texture of Degnen’sfieldwork, particularly her account of the ways inwhich people, both older and younger,construct ‘old age’ in their everyday practices.Drawing on Bourdieu, she argues that thisprocess of construction is grounded in ideas ofcomportment, and sustained by closemonitoring of the movements of individuals by

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 211-243© Royal Anthropological Institute 2015

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the group. What might be lacking in thisanalysis, however, is indicated in the distinctionmade by Goffman in his The presentation of selfin everyday life (1959) between signals(consciously) ‘given’ and (unconsciously) ‘givenoff’. I wonder just how much of the behaviourDegnen records might be play, in the sense thatit is a person’s conscious manipulation of asituation.

Degnen dwells at some length on the self.Drawing on the stories her research participantstell, she distinguishes usefully between what shecalls the ‘remembered self’ and the ‘inhabitedself’, both of which are embodied, sometimespainfully so. The former serves to draw ourattention to the significance of the self assomething with a life-history that can be drawndown during the course of everyday life. Theinhabited self is that which is experiencedimmediately and directly and which onesometimes recoils from. While some may balk atyet another dichotomous model of the self,Degnen’s approach does suggest a process ofself-construction that is dynamic and thereforeplausible. Her use of narrative in developing thistheory of the self is exemplary. And in manyways this is an exemplary ethnography, one thatmight perhaps stimulate and encourage othersto pay more attention to a diffuse category ofpeople whose lives we, as anthropologists, havetended to overlook.

Peter Collins Durham University

Spittler, Gerd & Michael Bourdillon

(eds). African children at work: working andlearning in growing up for life. 352 pp., tables,illus., bibliogrs. Münster, Berlin: LIT Verlag,2012. €39.90 (paper)

This volume of edited papers makes animportant contribution to ongoing debatesconcerning child work. As the editors argue,despite much rhetoric about child labour, thereis a shortage of authoritative ethnographicstudies based on careful observation of childrenat work, and associated discussions withchildren, their parents, and employers.Contributing authors come from varieddisciplinary backgrounds (including sociologyand geography as well as anthropology), but inmost papers detailed ethnographic or historicaldata form the base for discussion. Focused onAfrican experiences, the volume offers significantinsights into the wider contexts and specificcircumstances in which young people makedecisions about work and learning and theirperceptions of how the decisions they make

shape their lives. The case studies, set withinvaluable introductory and concluding reviews bythe editors and an important contextualdiscussion by Lancy, range from Mali to Ghana,Sudan to South Africa, but with a predominanceof West African material.

The juxtaposition in many of the case studiesof observations about child work with reflectionson formal educational opportunities (andquality) is particularly enlightening. Spittler’slongitudinal study of the Kel Ewey Tuareg, forinstance, contrasts children’s substantialinformal learning through observation, imitation,and experimentation with the perceived ordealof sitting on benches in a coercive schoolenvironment. However, he also notes theincreasing popularity of formal educationassociated with the need for writtendocumentation in the caravan trade and Frenchlanguage skills for Saharan tourism enterprisesand development projects.

The competing demands and opportunitiesoffered by work and school bring new tensions,especially in West Africa, where the incidence offostering is widespread. The relationshipbetween fostering, schooling opportunities, andfamily-assigned work in this region has been thesubject of much debate: papers by Alber andMartin illustrate the complexities. In rural Benin,Alber observes a significant disconnect betweendiscourse and actual decisions regarding whichchildren go to school and which stay at home.While in some families foster children are kept athome to work and biological children are sent toschool in order to improve their life-chances, thevalue of keeping at least one biological childclose by as a support in old age is becomingincreasingly apparent to parents whoseeducated children in town rarely return home.Martin emphasizes the importance ofinvestigating individual foster arrangements,which are deeply embedded in kinship dynamicsand politics: the relationship between biologicaland foster parents is likely to have a directimpact on the work and schooling outcomes offoster children.

Children’s enjoyment of, and pride in, theirwork, a theme rarely encountered in the childwork literature, is observed by a number ofcontributors. Children are interested in adultaffairs and may thus join voluntarily in workactivities, as with girls learning pottery-makingin Côte d’Ivoire (Kohler), and the beautifullypresented cameo of Balama children at work(and play) in rural Mali (Polak). Children enjoythe social esteem achieved when particular tasksare accomplished, while adults often support

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children’s learning at their side, not least since it‘saves the extra workload that childcare andtuition otherwise would demand’ (Polak, p. 111).Katz (p. 234) similarly observes how childrenmay work playfully and play ‘workfully’, withwork and play ‘spliced and simultaneous’.However, her study also shows how theextended work required by a developmentproject can drain playfulness away.

Coping with changing political-economiccontexts is a recurrent theme across the volume.When formal education is of poor quality andassociated job opportunities become sparse,foundering expectations may well encouragechildren to leave home (Ofusu-Kusi and Mizen).Dougnon’s study in Mali, which emphasizeslocal migration traditions – migration aspilgrimage, dream, social aspiration – observesre-envisioning of the ‘wilderness’ as a place oflearning. Similarly, young Zimbabweans in aSouth African border town learn key life-skills(not least, assessing adult trustworthiness)through work, as they actively support eachother in a hostile environment (Mahati). Formigrant working children, literacy and learning atrade are crucial for asserting their rights to theimproved role in society they seek: organizationsof working children are now actively pursuingsuch goals (Liebel).

The volume offers much valuable reflectionon child work and learning, including somewelcome attention to gender issues. Girls, likeboys, are shown regularly to exercise agency,protecting themselves through alliances,learning new skills, and actively negotiatingworkloads. Translation occasionally leads toslight disruptions in the flow of argument inpapers originally written in French or German,but the benefits from thereby accessing a widerinternational literature are considerable.

Gina Porter Durham University

Ulturgasheva, Olga. Narrating the future inSiberia: childhood, adolescence andautobiography among the Eveny. xii, 191 pp.,map, table, illus., figs, bibliogr. Oxford, NewYork: Berghahn Books, 2012. £43.00 (cloth)

This book is important in a number of ways:firstly, because it gives reason for hope,providing a positive counter-balance toanthropological literature that describes life fornative peoples in this region – the far north ofSiberia – in terms of a discourse of either culturalextinction or ‘futurelessness’ (P. Vitebsky,‘Withdrawing from the land: social and spiritualcrisis in the indigenous Russian Arctic’, in

Postsocialism: ideas, ideologies, and practices inEurasia (ed.) C.M. Hann, 2002). The bookexplains how extreme postsocialist crisis,following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in1991, has led, among the Eveny reindeer herdingpopulation, to the withdrawal of state subsidy, adecline in transport connections andinfrastructural support, economic breakdown,and a growing sense of despair andabandonment. However, despite this depressingoutlook, the narrative testimonies collected here,concerning young people’s ideas about andrepresentations of their future lives, portray ayouthful defiance and active determination tobring about self-organizing change andimprovement for personal, familial, andcommunity benefit.

Secondly, the book is important because ofremarkable ethnographic analysis that explainsyoung people’s future autobiographies in termsof a specifically Eveny spatio-temporal logic.Using in-depth case studies of particular youngpeople who have grown up mostly in either thesedentary village or the nomadic locations of theforest environment, the book outlines thevarious spatial possibilities and different,gendered ways of becoming an Eveny person. Atthe same time, it explores the culturalparticularities of the temporal frameworks forpotential action, which are given by the schemafor movement of a herding and huntinglife-world. From this perspective, it becomesclear that the brave assertions of young peopleabout their future success, which depends ontravelling far away, to the modern city, and thepredicted salvation that their success will deliverto their families and communities, take the sameform as mythical narratives about Eveny culturalheroes. In times of extreme crisis, these culturalheroes are seen to leave their people, risk theirown lives to seek help in the outside world, and,eventually, after a dramatic struggle, manage toreturn, bringing back the means to save thecommunity. The narratives about the future ofEveny youth can be understood, then, asmythical endeavours, that is, extraordinaryefforts that are attempts to rescue their people ata time of extreme crisis. In contemporary times,therefore, when crisis takes the form ofpostsocialist transformation and associateddespair, this ethnography of young people’sheroic efforts to bring into being a differentfuture marks an important contribution not onlyto the anthropology of this region, but also tothe anthropology of postsocialism. Withoutdoubt, the book will become a widely readethnography in both of these fields of

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specialization, but it should also be read as animportant addition to the growing body of workon the anthropology of childhood and youth.

Ulturgasheva is inspired by Christina Toren’smethodological innovation in the anthropologyof childhood (Making sense of hierarchy, 1990), inwhich data gathered from long-term participantobservation research are supplemented by dataderived from specific tasks designed to elicit thesense children and young people make of therelations defining adult sociality. Ulturgashevaasks children and young people to write essaysabout their future lives, and it is her contentanalysis of these essays that proves so fruitful toher analysis of the everyday lives of Eveny people.The work is distinctive with respect to the analysisof narrative form partly because Ulturgashevarefuses to treat narrative as subsequent to theevents of which these are supposed to be theretrospective account. Rather, she approaches thenarrative accounts given by youths as constitutiveactions, explanations of what is possible or whatmust be brought into being that actually bringabout what they try to imagine. Remarkable hereis the way that Ulturgasheva relates theconstitutive power of narrative to anethnographic concept among the Eveny ofdjuluchen – or foreshadowing – such that aperson, perhaps a hunter or herder, who plans ajourney immediately imparts to the destination atrace, a forward-moving shadow, a part of his/herspirit, as if to prepare the way. Ulturgasheva goesso far as to suggest that the research processitself, in which she elicited these future-orientatedaccounts from Eveny youth, activated a djuluchenprocess such that what the young people aspiredto had then to be brought into being, making ofher research informants the culture heroes of thefuture. This is a strong argument, and anintriguing one. Only twenty-eight adolescentswere interviewed, so it would be important toknow what became of the other adolescentswhose accounts of their future were not sought.Of those interviewed, Ulturgasheva found,on her return to the field several years later, thatall the young people had made significantprogress in terms of the future trajectory theyhad imagined for themselves, but this thenraises the question of how it is that some youngpeople fail to make their ideas about the futuremanifest. What about those young peoplecondemned to a condition of stagnation andhopelessness in the village, haunted by theghosts of the Gulag past? How will their futuresunfold, and what part will the research processplay in those futures?

Gillian Evans University of Manchester

Communication technology

Bessire, Lucas & Daniel Fisher (eds). Radiofields: anthropology and wireless sound in the21st century. vii, 286 pp., illus., tables,bibliogrs. New York: Univ. Press, 2012. £18.99

(paper)

Radio has been recognized as a stimulatingsubject of research by a handful ofinterdisciplinary and regionally focused volumes,but Radio fields represents a concentrated effortto insert an anthropological voice into thesediscussions. As the editors note in theirsubstantial introduction, radio is ubiquitousaround the globe, relatively inexpensive wherepoverty restricts access to other mass media, andhighly adaptable to new media environmentswhere digital and Internet audio is holding sway.And yet, as they also point out, ‘the explosion ofanthropological scholarship on television [and]film’ (p. 10) has overshadowed the world’s mostwidespread electronic medium. Across twelvechapters and drawing on research in tendifferent countries, Radio fields sets an agendanot only for the anthropological study of radio,but also for some emergent issues inanthropological theory.

Although the editors identify five conceptual‘axes’ that organize the chapters (includingnation, community, and transnationalism), forthe sake of brevity I use two of my own:voice/sound and infrastructure. Although all ofthe chapters feature both of these conceptualconcerns, they can be grouped according to theweight they give to each of them. Voice/sound isa central concern in the chapters by Kunreutheron democratization in Nepal, Fisher on the socialand technical dimensions of voice on Aboriginalradio, Schulz on Muslim women’s contributionto religious broadcasting in Mali, Stephen ontestimonials on indigenous community radios inMexico, Hinkson on the Warlpiri public sphere inAustralia, Kosnick on immigrant representationon Germany’s public-service radio, and Blantonon Appalachian radio prayers. Infrastructure,including the materiality of broadcasting,features particularly prominently in the chaptersby Kaplan on radio engineers in Israel, Juris onthe material aesthetic of free radio in Mexico,Bessire on two-way radio among Ayero-speakingpeople, and Tacchi on radio in British domesticspaces occupied by increasingly diverse forms ofmediated audio. The chapter by Vidali-Spitulnikon language, phenomenology, andepistemology and the afterword by Ginsburg

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most obviously traverse a number of interests inthe volume as a whole.

The chapters by Kunreuther and Tacchiprovide particularly fine examples of themes inthe anthropology of radio. Kunreuther drawsinspiration from previous studies on music andvocalized sound, but makes ‘vocalanthropology’ speak to those whose researchfocuses on the culture of democracy. She doesso by attending to voice’s double use in bothscholarship and daily life as a metaphor foridentity and representation and as voiced sound.A concept of ‘the figure of the voice’ plays acentral role in her chapter in order to capturethe social life of the material sounds producedby human speech and the modes of selfhoodthought to be central to democratic politicalagency. Through a subtle analysis of FM radiostations operating from Kathmandu, Kunreutherdiscusses their role in constituting thedemocratic project and their simultaneousimplication in non-democratic structures whileattempting to represent all ‘voices’ on the radio.Tacchi, on the other hand, builds on the notionof affordances in exploring the materialpossibilities of media. She calls thecontemporary British domestic spaces ‘the(i)home’, in recognition of new mediated audioin those spaces, including digital radio,streaming MP3s, and podcasts. The socialperception of what counts as radio has shifted,she observes, but the contempory mediatedaudio has some of the same affordances as radiosound had twenty years ago. A comparisonbetween this contemporary moment and herethnographic research in the 1990s offers anintriguing comment on the recurrent nostalgiathat radio seems to evoke in Britain. The adultinterviewees then and the young intervieweestwenty years later all reminisced about the radioas a feature of their childhood and teenageyears.

Radio fields is poised to inspire furtherresearch by showing how the anthropologicalstudy of radio can help to address and evenrecast some theoretical concerns in thediscipline. The interest in voice and soundextends into political and economic topics byconsidering the uses and significations of voicein democracy, indigeneity, (trans)nationalism,and marketization. Such extensions can make afresh contribution to efforts to capture thesensuous and affective dimensions of politicaland economic life. The interest in infrastructure,on the other hand, places broadcasting along-side other essential technologies and resources,nicely conveyed in Juris’s chapter, in which

airwaves are likened to water and land byMexican activists. Add to all this theinvitation to reconsider the visualistbias of much media anthropology, and theprospects for new insights look very brightindeed.

Harri Englund University of Cambridge

Jeffrey, Robin & Assa Doron. The greatIndian phone book: how cheap mobile phoneschange business, politics and daily life. xxxiv,293 pp., maps, plates, bibliogr. London:C. Hurst & Co. Ltd, 2013. £24.99 (cloth)

The mobile phone is arguably one of the mostsocially transforming technologies the world hasever seen. Particularly in lower-incomepopulations, where landline phones often barelypenetrated and where literacy levels haveremained low, the possibilities that mobiletelephony has opened up, and the potential foroverturning social and economic orthodoxies,are (in theory at least) unprecedented. Notsurprisingly, then, anthropologists and othersocial scientists have sought to understand whatmobile phones mean and how they have beenput to work in different parts of the world,transforming, and being transformed by, socialrelations. Some wonderful ethnographic workhas emerged, from Horst and Miller’scompelling account of cell phones and thephenomenon of ‘link up’ in Jamaica (H. Horst &D. Miller, The cell phone: an anthropology ofcommunication, 2006) to the fascinating Japanesephenomenon of keitai or cell-phone novels (Y.Nishimura, ‘Japanese keitai novels and ideologiesof literacy’, in Digital discourse: language in thenew media (eds) C. Thurlow & K. Mroczek, 2011),and many more.

The great Indian phone book makes a superbcontribution to this growing literature. Jeffreyand Doron have set themselves no small task: todocument in one volume the impact that mobilephones have had on more or less all aspects ofsocial, economic, political, and cultural life in ahugely diverse country of over 1.2 billion people.They try to achieve this by linking detailedethnographic accounts, based on their ownfieldwork (e.g. among the ‘boatmen’ ofBanaras), to the work of other academicresearchers and journalists (e.g. on fisher-peoplein Kerala) and wider social, economic, andpolitical trends. The result is a highly readableand enjoyable gallop through a mind-spinningnumber of ways in which the mobile phone hastouched, and in many cases revolutionized, thelives of people in India.

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The book is divided into three main sections.The first, ‘Controlling’, provides an insightfulhistorical account of communication in colonialand postcolonial India. Through the telegraphsystem to the railway network and the relativelyslow spread of landline phones, the key messageis that communication is always political. Againsta backdrop of heavily controlled communication,mobile phones have been hugely democratizing.For the first time, it is possible (in theory andoften in practice) for an ‘ordinary person’ tospeak directly to those in powerful political andeconomic positions (as the imaginary openingvignette explores). It has also become possiblefor the previously disempowered to organizepolitically: something that the authors argue(later in the book) has radically changed India’spolitical landscape. The second section,‘Connecting’, seeks to understand how, withinthe last decade, mobile phones have found theirway into the hands of the vast majority of India’shuge and dispersed population, apparentlyleapfrogging boundaries of class, caste, andother hierarchies. We also learn about the formaland informal economies that have opened uparound the marketing and servicing of phones.The third, and largest, section, ‘Consuming’,explores how people in India are using phones,and how almost every aspect of life in thesub-continent has been profoundly shaped bythese practices. The four chapters explore manythemes, from the complex and sometimescounter-intuitive implications for smallbusinesses, to the potential for unsettling anddisrupting gender and generational relationswithin households, to issues of pornography,crime, surveillance, and terrorism.

Throughout the book, and particularly in thethird section, a huge amount of ground iscovered and the picture that emerges isnecessarily complex and incomplete. At times, Ifelt rather frustrated at having to move soquickly from topic to topic without quiteenough time and space to digest each. But thisis a choice the authors made explicitly: in thepreface they note that each of the chapterswould merit a book in itself. I hope they (and/orothers) respond by going this step further: Iwould love to read a full-length ethnographicaccount of the ways that phones have been usedto de-stabilize social and economic relationsamong Banaras boatmen and their family, forexample. Along similar lines, it might be saidthat the book offers little by way of noveltheoretical insight. Again, a rather more detailedaccount of any one phenomenon might havelent itself better to such theoretical development.

Having said all that, this is a great book –engagingly written and fascinating in itsbreadth, ethnographic insight, and historicaldepth. It squeezes a huge amount from its 293

pages of text and makes you want to knowmore!

Kate Hampshire Durham University

Environment, ecology,and animals

Dransart, Penelope (ed.). Living beings:perspectives on interspecies engagements. xvi,213 pp., illus., bibliogrs. London:Bloomsbury, 2013. £21.99 (paper)

The 2011 Association of Social AnthropologistsAnnual Conference, titled ‘Vital Powers andPolitics: Human Interactions with Living Things’,took place at the height of the ‘multispeciesturn’ in anthropology. The resulting editedvolume seeks to engage with contemporarydebates in post-human anthropologyconcerning materiality, ontology, perspective,and agency. However, it can perhaps better beread as a reconsideration of the centrality ofanthropos in multispecies assemblages, ratherthan a rethinking of interspecies engagements.

Each of the chapters offers a sensitiveexploration of the ways in which perspectives onother living beings affect and shape the livesand experiences of humans, with the majorityof them focusing on spiritual engagementswith both real and imagined natures. In Boss’s(chap. 3) examination of a thirteenth-centuryphilosopher’s Great Chain of Being, forexample, fauna and flora appear as a means bywhich to glimpse the nature of God. InBen-David’s (chap. 8) analysis of Israeli familysafaris in East Africa, watching andphotographing wildlife is conceived of as anantidote to the malaise of modern materialismand alienation from self and community.Similarly, for Grossman-Horesh’s (chap. 5)interlocutors at sacred song circles in a yogacentre in Tel Aviv, modern urban environmentsare perceived as lacking in inspiration forspiritual experiences, and a Costa Ricanrainforest provides a (largely metaphorical)substitute. The search for spiritual connectionthrough and with nature in an increasinglydisenchanted world thus emerges as one of thecentral themes of the volume.

Farrer’s chapter (9) is noteworthy for theoriginality with which it engages with Deleuze

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and Guattari’s becoming-animal formulation inan exploration of the Chinese martial art ofChow Gar. He emphasizes that ‘becoming’ isneither representation nor mimicry, and focuseson the somatic mode of attention necessary indeveloping esoteric skills. It may, however, havebeen helpful to have more detail on the ways inwhich observation and self-experimentationmanifest in practices of becoming-PrayingMantis. Similarly, Cockburn’s chapter (10), whichaims to reconsider the concept of language inorder to account for the peculiarities ofinterspecies communication, may have benefitedfrom a lengthier discussion of the scientists’ ownassertion that a new intermediary ‘pan/humanculture’ developed in their great ape languageprojects. That is to say, there was potential inboth chapters to develop further the concept ofengagement.

The collaborative chapter (7) by Brown andconceptual artist Alana Jelinek concernsWestern philosophy’s struggle to contend withother subjectivities; its horror of the Other,which can only be minimalized when the Otheris assimilated into the Self – a conceptualdilemma at the heart of the Deleuzian-inspired‘ontological turn’ (E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Zenoand the art of anthropology: of lies, beliefs,paradoxes, and other truths’, Common Knowl-edge 17: 1, 2011). The receding horizon, in whichone’s proximity to the Other takes on newsignificance, without necessarily bringing onecloser to the Other’s perspective, is perhapsbest captured by Sartre’s concept of the‘analogon’, deployed in Baker’s exploration ofphotographing an English orchard (chap. 6).Once again, however, throughout Baker’ssensuous engagement with thephenomenology literature, the orchard itselfseems to recede into the distance, as thehaptic, tactile nature of photographic practicelooms in the foreground. Similarly, whileHadžiMuhamedovic’s argument (chap. 4) thatsymbols are just as often arboreomorphic asanthropomorphic is a compelling one, thebeing of the tree at the centre of his argumentnone the less remains elusive.

Das’s thought-provoking examination ofsacrifice (chap. 2) provides a more self-consciousengagement with the problem of the Other’sworld and the possibilities for an expansion ofthought on the being of animals in contemporarydebates. Drawing on Mulhall’s discussion of theenigmatic analogy between the otherness ofanimals and death in Heideggerian thought, sherethinks the Vedic-Hindu formulation of sacrificeand argues that the worlds of the Other are not

contained within our own, but are possibilitieswhich hover just out of reach.

Dransart’s exploration of relational ontologiesand the materiality of personhood for Yaghanpeoples (chap. 11) chimes with MartinHolbraad’s reflection on the ontology andmateriality debates of the last decade (‘Can thething speak?’, OAC Press Working Paper Series 7,2011), which, while seeking the emancipation ofthings, often subsumed this task to that ofemancipating the people for whom they areimportant. As Das argues, ‘though we live withthem, this “living” might entail very differentthings for humans and animals’. It is thisrealization which continues to make a nuancedand original exploration of the nature of otherliving beings’ very being, and a study ofinterspecies engagements, so problematic foranthropology.

This volume, however, provides a stimulatingnew collection of ethnographic and historicalperspectives on the ways in which other livingbeings are ‘good to think’, and are of vitalmaterial and metaphorical importance in humanspirituality and creativity.

Lys Alcayna-Stevens University of Cambridge

Fabinyi, Michael. Fishing for fairness: poverty,morality and marine resource regulation in thePhilippines. xviii, 227 pp., tables, maps, figs,illus., bibliogr. Canberra: ANU E Press, 2012.£20.00 (paper)

Fishing for fairness is an engaging ethnography ofdebates about fishing, poverty, morality,environmental degradation, and marine resourceregulation in the Philippines. The introductionhelpfully charts a series of conceptualizations ofthe relationship between poverty and theenvironment: sustainable development,materialist political ecology, and post-structuralpolitical ecology. The Brundtland Report directlylinked poverty with over-use of environmentalresources resulting in environmentaldegradation, and sustainable developmentprojects have often targeted the activities of poorpeople. Materialist political ecology, by contrast,emphasizes the structures of poverty and therelationship between wealth and environmentaldegradation. Fabinyi situates his own approachwithin post-structural political ecology in thesense that he seeks to analyse both materialcontestations over resources and discursivestruggles for the ‘truth’.

The book then turns to the ethnographiccontexts of the Philippines, Palawan province, and

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the Calamianes Islands, where Fabinyi’s mainfieldsites were Coron town and an enclave he callsEsperanza, in which he worked with fisher familiesfrom across the socio-economic spectrum.Impoverished fishers emphasized that they hadaccess only to low-tech fishing methods whichwere not damaging to the environment andconsequently ‘moral’. Conversely, environmentaldegradation was caused by those deploying‘immoral’ fishing methods: so-called ‘illegal fishers’using cyanide or dynamite, both of which damagethe coral reef, and large-scale commercial fisheries,whose larger catches are understood to depleteoffshore stocks. Impoverished fishers felt thatgovernment regulation logically ought to addressthose who deploy environmentally damagingmethods. They were therefore critical of the localMarine Protected Area (MPA) close to the shore,which benefited the tourism industry butdisproportionately negatively affected the poorestfishers who did not have access to boats that couldtake them beyond the reach of the MPA. Somefishers – primarily young men responding to localdiscourses on masculinity, risk-taking, andresistance – therefore advocated contravening therestrictions of the MPA or engaging in other illegalfishing activities such as the use of cyanide as ameans to escape the poverty associated with alifetime of small-scale legal fishing.

Impoverished fishers thus depicted amoral bind in which sustainable small-scalelegal fishing confines practitioners to thecycle of poverty whereas illegal andenvironmentally degrading fishing enables indi-viduals to break out of it. Fabinyi concludesthat in arguing that poverty is not the primaryfactor behind environmental degradation, thediscourse of impoverished fishers is akin to amaterialist political ecology. The developmentof his argument here resonates strongly withtwo other monographs that will be familiar tomany of his readers: Christine Walley’s Roughwaters: nature and development in an EastAfrican marine park (2004) and Celia Lowe’sWild profusion: biodiversity conservation in anIndonesian archipelago (2006). With itsclear theoretical framework and accessibleethnographic description, Fishing forfairness will sit comfortably alongside theseand other related texts on reading lists forundergraduate and postgraduate courses onconservation and development. Last but notleast, the publisher should be commended forits commitment to open access: the book isavailable for free download from the ANU Presswebsite.

Laura Jeffery University of Edinburgh

Hecht, Susanna B., Kathleen D.

Morrison & Christine Padoch (eds).The social lives of forests: past, present, andfuture of woodland resurgence. xiv, 493 pp.,maps, figs, tables, illus., bibliogrs. Chicago:Univ. Press, 2014. £35.00 (cloth)

Debates about the fate of the world’s forests,which have involved thousands of scientists andpolicy-makers over the last forty years, regainedstrength during the build-up to the UnitedNations’ 2012 meeting known as Rio+20.Controversial policies such as REDD+ (reducedemissions from avoided deforestation and forestdegradation), for instance, have renewed theinterest of a vast and heterogeneous researchcommunity for what is now perceived to be aconcerted attempt by powerful actors to designa world forest carbon economy and system ofgovernance. Critiques have contended that thisnew political and economic vision, far frombeing global in scope, works at reinforcing oldEuropean ideas about forests as the last frontiersof wilderness. It is in the context of such heateddebate that the editors of this voluminous bookhave chosen to convey to a large audience themain social science findings on how humanshave inhabited and shaped the fate ofwoodlands all over the world and throughouthistory. Through careful editorship, in particularthe introductions to each of the book’s fiveparts, Hecht, Morrison, and Padoch show how asocial science approach to forests necessarilycovers a large number of issues, from those thatare purely theoretical or conceptual, to thosethat are more policy-orientated. Thetwenty-eight chapters, all written by authors ofleading works on tropical and temperate forests,seek to debunk once and for all a number ofpopular and scientific myths concerning therelationship between forests and peoples.

Several chapters, in particular Hecht’s,Neumann’s, and Grainger’s, analyse the vagueand highly variable definitions of forests used byconservation scientists and policy-makers toargue that distinctions between ‘old growth’,‘primary forest’, ‘secondary forest’, ‘degradedforest cover’, and so forth, are all extremelyproblematic. Hecht emphasizes that theunderstanding of landscapes, including forestedones, is always mediated by layers ofrepresentations. These necessarily ‘get in theway’ even in our most objective attempts toperceive forests as biological or ecologicalentities. In fact, the environment around us isequally shaped by natural, social, and historicaldynamics. Therefore, rather than trying to

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distinguish old growth forests from secondaryregrowth, or non-inhabited pristineenvironments from inhabited degradedwoodlands, we should break down all thesefalse dichotomies and pay attention to thecomplex and cyclical dynamics through whichtoday’s forested landscapes were produced inthe past and are being reproduced as we speak.At once culturally constructed and bioticallyenacted, forests are best defined as socio-naturalsuccessional entities (e.g. p. 99). Too often,notes Hecht, the perception of habitats as wildcomes from what she calls socio-ecologicalamnesia, that is, the incapacity to recognize thatwoodlands have complex and changing sociallives. By showing that woodlands are places thatundergo continuous processes of transition,decline, and recovery implicating both humanand nonhuman agencies, social scientists play animportant role in countering this form ofamnesia. As many of the book’s chaptersillustrate, the interdisciplinary research carriedout in the past twenty years or so proves beyonddoubt that forests as inhabited woodlands differbecause people differ in what they want, ratherthan just because of some purely biological,ecological, or climatic properties.

The socio-nature approach adopted by manyof the authors is very useful for understandingthe interactions between biological and culturaldiversity. For instance, Janowski, Barton, andJones, inspired by my discussions of trekkers andhorticulturists in Amazonia (e.g. L. Rival,‘Domesticating the landscape, producing crops,and reproducing society in Amazonia’, inConvergence and emergence: towards a newholistic anthropology? (eds) D. Parkin & S.Ulijaszek, 2007), offer a fascinating account ofwhy the Kelabit and the Penan of Sarawak, twodifferent cultures physically sharing the sameforested habitat, live in fact in two entirelydifferent worlds. However, if used withoutproper care, the socio-nature approach may leadto inflated claims and exaggerations regardingthe degree of anthropization of a particularlandscape, or the lasting impact of past humanactivity. This may explain why Amazonianarchaeologists continue to be divided on theextent to which the rainforest is ananthropogenic or a pristine biome (see chapters15 and 24). In any case, with a focus onprocesses of succession, social change, andtransitions, the book goes beyond a mereassessment of what we currently know aboutmodern deforestation to sketch some of thereasons behind what some authors define as acontemporary ‘rewooding’ movement. That

most forests in the world have a long and richhistory of human occupation is by now awell-known fact; yet we know too little aboutthe political, economic, and cultural choicesunderpinning forest recovery today (p. 143). Onemyth that the book spends the last sectiondebunking is that urbanization necessarilycauses deforestation. The authors contributing tothe section entitled ‘The urban matrix’ insist thatif many forest habitats were created bylong-term human husbandry (p. 36) in the past,today’s modern humanized landscape matrices,in particular, cities, are both highly dependenton forest resources and necessary to theirpreservation.

The book would have been strengthened bya more systematically comparative approach, agreater epistemological engagement withtrendy terminology derived from complexitytheory (nexus, matrix, etc.), and a morethorough discussion of the conflict betweenresource extraction and biodiversity conserva-tion (and associated political stakes). However,there is no doubt that this rich volumerepresents an excellent and lasting introductionto the social lives of forests in thecontemporary world.

Laura Rival University of Oxford

Muehlmann, Shaylih. Where the river ends:contested indigeneity in the Mexican ColoradoDelta. xiii, 220 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr.Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013.£15.99 (paper)

Shaylih Muehlmann tells a compelling story ofthe people in a village in what used to be theColorado River’s delta on the Gulf of California –used to be, because its waters, diverted mostlyinto various irrigation schemes in the UnitedStates, no longer reach the delta. With roughly300 inhabitants, the village is home to thelargest population of Cucapá in Mexico, anethnic group whose traditional lands stretchalong the Colorado River from Arizona to thedelta. The author concentrates on how Cucapápeople claim and perform indigenous statuswhile negotiating access to resources, especiallyto fishing in a biosphere reserve that theMexican government set up in reaction to thedrastic ecological consequences of thedisappearing river.

The book contributes primarily to a growingbody of literature in which anthropologistscriticize overly simplistic understandings of theconcept of indigeneity. Muehlmann uses thetrope of ‘articulation’ to highlight the successes,

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failures, and reconfigurations of the people’sstruggle to effectively frame their identities inways that link up with wider indigeneitydiscourses. She argues that this trope must beopen to incompleteness, as for the Cucapápeople, attempts at articulation frequently fail,or are performed through disarticulation. Asecond and related concept structuring her coreargument is ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’,indicating how multiculturalist policies are oftenshot through with neoliberal logic. In Mexico,where being considered indigenous has onlyrecently changed from a stigma to a resource,government and NGOs are using indigeneity togovern the people aspiring to this status.

Muehlmann presents how Cucapá peoplearticulate – or fail to articulate – their indigeneityin different fields, including cartography, fishing,work, gender, and language. In chapter 1, shedemonstrates how many representations of theColorado River erase the social and ecologicalproblems in its delta. The author illustrates thelimits of ‘counter-mapping’, describing howsome Cucapá elders are uncomfortable withtwo-dimensional maps and prefer to relatelandscapes in stories. Chapter 2 focuses on therelationships between Cucapá people’s fishingand their claims to indigenous status. This statuspromises exclusive access to fishing grounds inthe biodiversity reserve, but is denied to theCucapá because their fishing practices do notconform to the ‘noble savage’ ideal propagatedby conservationists.

Chapter 3 describes how drug trafficking hasemerged as an attractive source of income in acontext of reduced fishing opportunities anddemeaning factory work. Also here, Cucapápeople strategically employ the indigeneitylabel, as they are considered to have the ‘localknowledge’ necessary to traverse the borderlanddesert clandestinely. Chapter 4 analyses howmany Cucapá people construct their genderrelations as inverse to the Mexican machismostereotype. Muehlmann suggests that theyemphasize the abilities and independence ofwomen in the village in order to distinguish theirgroup from the Mexican mainstream and claimindigenous status. Chapter 5 focuses on howCucapá people perform indigeneity throughlanguage. While indigenous languages are oftenportrayed as near-synonymous with the culturesof the people who speak them, only a smallminority of Cucapá people actually speakCucapá. Muehlmann particularly describes howpeople use swearwords as communal boundarymarkers and as a critique of the politics ofauthenticity.

The book provides excellent analyses ofpeople’s attempts to articulate their projects invarious discursive fields that otherwise cut uptheir lifeworld into discrete categories andspaces: the elusive indigenous label, thecriminalizing protected area, the shrinkingfishing season, the militarized border, and so on.My main critique would be that the book treatsthe Colorado River – whose water is abstractedby powerful infrastructure upstream and whosefish are mostly harvested by an industrial fleet atsea – as a background on top of which social,political, economic, and cultural dynamics areconstructed and unfold, rather than as anintegral part of these processes. In thisfine-tuned analysis of indigeneity politics in afishing village, the author rarely describes fishingitself. Focusing more on these material practicesand relationships would have perhaps clarifiedthe role of the disappearing river, changingavailable marine species, invasive vegetation,tides, and moon in how Cucapá peoplenegotiate indigeneity, dignity, and livelihoods.Arguably, they try to articulate their projects notonly in relation to policies and stereotypes, butalso regarding the way water and fish move ordo not move.

Nonetheless, the book offers an eloquentlyargued and ethnographically grounded critiqueof the general understanding of tradition as fixedheritage, and of indigeneity as inhering inunchanged language, livelihoods, and practices.The Cucapá people in Muehlmann’s account arestruggling to formulate their identity andasserting decent lives in changingpolitico-economic settings.

Franz Krause Tallinn University/University ofAberdeen

Kinship

Fragoulaki, Maria. Kinship in Thucydides:intercommunal ties and historical narrative. xii,443 pp., bibliogr. Oxford: Univ. Press, 2013.£90.00 (cloth)

Aristotle wrote that man is a political animal. Hemeant by that not that men by nature engage inpolitics, but rather it is the nature of man to livein a city, to live in complex groups. All humansocieties organize themselves in kinship groups.A study of these groups and the ties of kinshipallows us to understand how a society functions,how it builds alliances, both local and national.

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The present turmoil in Iraq and Syria couldperhaps be elucidated by understanding tribaland kinship relationships.

Ancient Greek society likewise was organizedby patrilineal kinship groups. Like most societies,the hierarchy of groups was organized fromthose where the ties were strongest to theweakest, the first loyalty being to the smallestgroup, the oikos or extended family, then tolarger groups, such as phratry and tribe. Ofparticular interest in ancient Greek history is thespread of colonization and the relationship ofthe colonies to the mother city, both kinship,economic, and political.

During the fifth century BC, the Greek worldwas sent into a maelstrom of two wars whichspanned most of the century. The first was thePersian Wars, which began in 490 BC and didnot end until the middle of the century. Toconfront the invading Persians, Greek city-statesmilitarized, and formed alliances. The two mainpowers that emerged were the Athenian Empire,headed by the city-state of Athens, and thePeloponnesian League, headed by Sparta. Thosepowers had ethnic as well as politicaldifferences, Athens being a democracy andsupporting democratic states, Sparta anoligarchy supporting other oligarchies. Thesetwo powers went to war in 431 BC, aconflagration that drew in most of the Greekworld throughout the Mediterranean, and lasteduntil 404 BC, when Sparta finally defeatedAthens. The historian of that war was aparticipant, the Athenian general Thucydides,whose exhaustive History of the PeloponnesianWar records events down to 411 BC.

Fragoulaki has done an exhaustive andthorough study of the terms of xyngeneia(shared descent) in the narrative of Thucydides.She examines the phenomenon of kinship incities, communities, and ethnic groups asportrayed in Thucydides and attempts to shednew light on his historical interpretationsthrough this lens. Her work provides a usefulreference tool for people studying the issues ofkinship in Thucydides and the PeloponnesianWar. After beginning with a chapter on kinshipterminology (chap. 2), she follows with fourchapters on intercommunal kinship inThucydides’ work: chapter 3 focuses onxyngeneia between the powerful city-state ofKorinth and its colony Kerkyra and Syracuse;chapter 4 deals with Aeolian communities;chapters 5 and 6 examine Sparta and Athens,respectively. Chapter 7 looks at Greeks andnon-Greeks of the West. These chapters arefollowed by two appendices: the first on

Athenian kleruchies; the second a comparison ofThucydides and Herodotus.

The content of the book and methodologyused suggests that Fragoulaki is from a literarybackground and is neither an anthropologist nora historian. There are weaknesses in the book, orrather criticisms can be made of what the bookcould have been, but is not. Fragoulaki couldhave added much more from anthropologicaltheory about societal formation and alliancebuilding. She quotes Thucydides as saying thatin the Athenian attack on Syracuse in 413 BC,alliances were built not on kinship, but on otherfactors (p. 1). However, in the course of the bookshe never really comes to grips with the issue ofthe relative importance of kinship and otherfactors in determining the alliances of thePeloponnesian War. Her most valuable section ischapter 3, where she looks at Korinth and itscolonies and the relationship between kinshipties and alliances.

This book is well worth reading for thoseinterested in the Peloponnesian War. It could,however, have made an even greatercontribution if Dr Fragoulaki had looked moreclosely at anthropological theory and explicatedfurther on other factors of alliance buildingduring that war.

Robert J. Littman University of Hawai‘i atManoa

Joseph, Suzanne E. Fertile bonds: Bedouinclass, kinship, and gender in the Bekaa Valley.234 pp., tables, illus., bibliogr. Gainesville:Univ. Press of Florida, 2013. £46.30 (cloth)

Intimate aspects of choosing a spouse, havingchildren, and living and working together as afamily among politically and economicallydisenfranchised Bedouin in modern Lebanonconstitute the foreground of this book. Morewidely, this study challenges Western feministviews on gender and reproduction in the ThirdWorld, critiques ideas of Marx and Malthus onpopulation and poverty, and argues for anuanced understanding of fertility and bondingamong people everywhere, but especiallyamong the Arab agro-pastoralists at the core ofthis research.

The author, who introduces herself as ‘anative Lebanese anthropologist’, collected theprimary data for this study in Lebanon’s BekaaValley near the Syrian border in 2000-1 and2007. In the first period, she conductedreproductive histories from a random sample of240 ever-married Bedouin women between 15

and 54 years of age resident in the area, along

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with reproductive histories of 108 of thewomen’s husbands (who had been presentwhen she interviewed their wives).Anthropometric measurements of height andweight were also taken from the 240 womeninterviewed and from seventeen of theirhusbands. An additional forty-one reproductivehistories were collected in 2007 from anon-random sample of post-menopausalwomen. The author also indicates that sheengaged in ethnographic fieldwork among‘rural Bedouin communities’ in the Bekaa andthe Syrian Desert for a period of almost twoyears.

The primary data show a process of changeunfolding in the area. A woman in her mid-fiftiesin 2000 recalled a life when she was a girl ofnomadic pastoralism with sheep, camels, andhorses, of living in a goat-hair tent, of migrationfrom one pasture area to another, and ofeconomic ties and social interactions withfarmers and merchants. Colonial andpostcolonial policies brought closure to manyaspects of the old nomadic way of life. Newnational borders restricted seasonal migrations,new farming and urban development ate upformer grazing lands, and modern educationand new job opportunities beckoned Bedouinyouth, especially males, away from traditionalherding. A national census in 1932 failed toenumerate nomadic herders as part ofLebanon’s people despite their long-timepresence in the territory. Livestock raisingcontinues but has declined. Many Bedouin menin the Bekaa now work as sharecroppers ortenant farmers and as wage labourers. Somehave built permanent housing but acquiringland deeds is difficult owing to lack ofcitizenship papers.

This study confirms that both male andfemale Bedouin value strong family and kin tiesand that a recent decline in fertility hasaccompanied a preference for smallerhousehold/family sizes. Fertile couples managethe spacing of offspring through breast-feeding,withdrawal, and other natural means rather thanartificial contraception. Women are highly valuedas sisters and mothers and share pride in theirtribal descent along with men in their Bedouincommunity. Yet the local peasant folk in theBekaa see the Bedouin there in strongly negativeterms as unsanitary, unhygienic, and ‘dark’.Such prejudice is regarded by Joseph assymptomatic of a global demographic dividewhere high fertility in the ‘global South’ isviewed through racist and classist lenses thatpromote fear of the ‘Other’ engulfing, polluting,

and spreading criminality to the developed orcivilized world.

Concern to combat ‘modern’, ‘civilized’views that claim high fertility and rapidpopulation growth are due to women’ssubordination and lack of authority because ofearly and prolific reproduction, polygyny, andclose kin marriage probably explains theauthor’s decision to produce detailed chapterson colonial myths about gender anddemography, consanguineous marriagepractices, population, and poverty, plus a reviewof nomad studies world-wide. This material,derived from secondary sources, is extremelyimportant and critical. But, for me at least, thereader is pulled too strongly away from the fieldin Lebanon. I would have preferred moredetailed focus on how class, kinship, and genderare being transformed in the field in the BekaaValley – recognizing, of course, the centralityand critical significance of the material in thesechapters. The secondary material is crucial, but itshould not overwhelm data and interpretationsfrom the field.

Donald Powell Cole The American Universityin Cairo

Material, material culture,and consumption

Buchli, Victor. An anthropology ofarchitecture. x, 212 pp., illus., bibliogr.London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. £19.99

(paper)

How is the materiality of built form constitutiveof people and social relations? Engaging withthis central question, An anthropology ofarchitecture explores the range of ways in whicharchitecture emerges out of and is productive ofspecific social contexts. A central argument ofthe book is that notions of architectural form asa fixed set of formal characteristics havedominated approaches to architecture inanthropology and archaeology, as in the socialsciences more broadly, precluding a moredynamic understanding of the myriad ways inwhich people and structures interact andinter-define one another. Seeking to movebeyond this tradition of thought, the book takesinspiration from recent thinking on materials andmateriality. This leads to a focus on architectonicspace in terms of the ‘implacable thingness’ ofthe materials that constitute it. In line with

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broader strands of post-human thinking, thisperspective foregrounds relationships andmeanings that are not reducible to socialconstructions, and brings to light variousnonhuman forms of agency.

Chapter 1, ‘The long nineteenth century’,describes the emergence of a concern witharchitectural form as a significant focus ofanalysis of evolutionary and typologicalapproaches. Moving beyond these perspectives,subsequent chapters survey a range of examplesdrawn from archaeology, anthropology, andbeyond, to show how people create, and are inturn created by, the spaces they inhabit, acrossdifferent temporal and spatial scales. Buchlihighlights how the distinct methodologies andevidence result in specific insights, in relation tothis overarching point. Archaeologically, Marxistand evolutionary concerns with universaldetermining principles of architectural form havegiven way to more recent post-processualapproaches stressing the contextual andmutually constitutive manner in which culturalprocesses and architectural forms relate.Underlying these theoretical shifts, themethodological orientation of archaeologytowards deep temporal scales and the‘empirically evident’ (p. 66) reveals ‘the variednature of material registers and how they shiftover time as regards architectural form and thediffering social projects these registers enable’(p. 70). From an anthropological perspective,Buchli demonstrates how a focus on the house,following a tradition of scholarship establishedby Lévi-Strauss, moves beyond the ‘illusoryobjectification’ of architectural solidity to reveal‘how the house serves as a specific andtransformative register that facilitates ... socialand reproductive life, employing a variety ofmaterial registers to do so’ (p. 88).

More recent scholarship helps shed light onflows and relations that decompose conventionalboundaries of architectural form in new ways.Chapter 4, on ‘Institutions and community’,describes how Foucauldian concerns with powerreveal architectural infrastructures as sites ofbroader struggles in which multiple actors areimplicated. The apparently self-evidentboundaries of built space are also called intoquestion through global digital infrastructuresand international commodity markets, by which‘[s]eemingly implacable empirical forms arereconfigured in novel ways’ (p. 116). Chapter 5,on ‘Consumption studies and the home’, makesa related point, arguing that ‘[a]n earlieremphasis on the readable semiotic and durableobjectivity of the home gives way ... to flows

and their maintenance, and how the regulationof those flows regulates the moral terms ofpersonhood’ (p. 135). In this context, ideas about‘the house’ and ‘the home’ are detached fromone another, including through ubiquitousaesthetic styles that allow an ability to dwellunder the mobile conditions of late capitalism.

The final chapters explore the relationalpossibilities afforded by built forms in ways thatfurther complicate bounded notions ofarchitectural form. Chapter 6, ‘Embodiment andarchitectural form’, illuminates how bodies andbuildings exist in unstable configurations, inwhich it is often impossible to say clearly whereone ends and the other begins. The finalchapter, ‘Iconoclasm, decay, and the destructionof architectural forms’, critiques the propensityfor conventional heritage practice to arrest decayin buildings, arguing for an appreciation of thepractically and imaginatively productiveelements of this ‘profoundly animate’ (p. 157)process. Decaying forms, as the chapterdemonstrates, forge new social relations, offer acritique of capitalist ideologies of progress, andopen up imaginative spaces that constituteanticipatory futures.

The book is not without fault. In places,interesting arguments seem expressed inunnecessarily complex language, and in termsthat may restrict the audience. I also have somereservations about the potentiallyover-determining role of theory. The point aboutthe dynamic nature of space is important andwell made but in places seems to emerge as akind of universal determining principle. Buchliillustrates the approach with a breath-takingarray of examples, but consequently has less tosay about archaeological and ethnographiccontexts animated by concerns withpermanence and fixity.

Notwithstanding these minor reservations,the book makes an important contribution todebates of broad interest. It deserves to bewidely read, including by those interested inmaterial culture, architecture, and space in thedisciplines of archaeology, anthropology,architecture, and beyond. Of particularsignificance is the way in which the approachforegrounds material transformation, movingbeyond the dichotomous opposition of socialand material worlds to reveal the complexrelations through which space is architectonicallynegotiated. This is an important counterpoint toapproaches that universalize the notion ofarchitectural form as static and bounded andhighlights the distinctive virtues of ethnographicand archaeological approaches in foregrounding

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how built forms emerge in diverse contextsthrough time and space.

Thomas Yarrow Durham University

Cannon, Aubrey (ed.). Structured worlds: thearchaeology of hunter-gatherer thought andaction. ix, 212 pp., maps, tables, figs, illus.,bibliogrs. London, Oakville, Calif.: Equinox,2011. £75.00 (cloth)

Many studies of hunter-gatherer populationshave focused on the relationship betweenpeople and the ecological world. This collectionof papers aims to offer an alternative view byconsidering socially and ideologically structuredactions, specifically those that can be exploredvia the archaeological record. In this sense, thisvolume is very much in keeping with the goalsof the interpretative school of thought andhistorical particularism. The chapters covertopics which have not been considered in depthin relation to people who make a living huntingand gathering.

There are some very strong contributions inthis volume which deserve wide readership.Peter Jordan’s opening paper demonstrates thatethnographic groups who hunt and gatheressentially consider making a living as a religiousact, effectively collapsing the ritual versusdomestic dichotomy which prevails in so manystudies. Jordan argues that social andcosmological relations lie at the heart ofsubsistence practices, which he then explores viathe example of the Khanty of Siberia. Moreover,ritualized practice generates material remainswhich archaeologists will be able to identify inthe archaeological record. This paper thus setsthe scene for what it is possible to explore inrelation to past societies.

The middle set of papers consider theimportance of the landscape to various groups.Oetelaar and Oetelaar detail the landscapes ofthe Niitsitapi of the Northern Plains and providesome wonderful detail on the significance ofparticular topographic features in themythologies and cosmologies of this group.Milne incorporates lithic production into herconsideration of the landscapes of Baffin Island,and makes a convincing argument thatlandscape engagement and enculturationcontributed not only to subsistence andcosmology, but also to specific socialinteractions. McFadyen provides anotherimportant paper for considering landscape inher contribution, which uses Mesolithic Britainas a case study. She argues that we can only

begin to understand landscape if we consider itas part of a network of things, linking people,places, animals, and materials.

While most papers in this collectionconsider identity, two stand out as offeringinnovative approaches to exploring this in moredetail. Janik’s paper on the hunter-gatherers ofprehistoric Northern Europe explores thecultural meaning of food in relation to creatingsocial differentiation amongst various groups.Specifically, she explores the use of nuts indifferent contexts, and this is an exciting way ofthinking about identity as it does not rely onburial evidence, and is thus applicable in areaslacking good burial data (most of MesolithicEurope, for example). Cannon’s contributionconsiders the prehistory of the NorthwestCoast, specifically around the site of Namu. Inthis paper he demonstrates that peopledeliberately constrained their population forlong periods. He argues that this was becausethey wished to maintain very high standards ofliving as well as particular types of relationswith the natural and supernatural world. In thisway very specific group identities weresustained over a long time, which affectedevery aspect of social and economic life,including population growth.

The last two papers in the volume are on theJomon culture of Japan. Kaner considers shiftingresidential patterns, and how these can beinvestigated to reveal aspects of Jomon socialorganization. The paper by Matsumoto paysparticular attention to Jomon figurines against awider backdrop of settlement and burial. Thesewonderful figurines have been interpreted invery specific ways by archaeologists, butMatsumoto demonstrates the potential for theseartefacts to offer insights into both worldviewand kinship relations, both essential in theformation and maintenance of changing Jomonsociety.

Overall, this collection of papersdemonstrates what it is possible to achieve whenconsidering hunter-gatherer social worlds andstructured actions. The interpretations on offerhere are an exciting introduction to possibleways of exploring and understanding thearchaeological record, in terms not just of howpeople made a living but also of how theythought about the world, and acted within it. Inhis conclusion, Cannon notes that while theseissues have been considered elsewherepreviously, they have rarely been applied tohunter-gatherer societies. Undoubtedly this bookwill mark an important milestone inhunter-gatherer research, which I hope will see

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an increasing number of studies explore theissues debated in this volume.

Vicki Cummings University of CentralLancashire

Christensen, Dorthe Refslund & Rane

Willerslev (eds). Taming time, timing death:social technologies and ritual. xv, 269 pp.,tables, figs, illus., bibliogrs. Farnham, Surrey:Ashgate, 2013. £65.00 (cloth)

The anthropology of death has a distinguishedhistory, and this volume readily takes its placealongside such classics as Bloch and Parry’sDeath and the regeneration of life (1982) andHuntington and Metcalf’s Celebrations of death(1979). This volume includes contributions froma variety of disciplinary practitioners, includingsocial anthropologists, sociologists, andEgyptologists. The starting-point for thecontributors is the contention that death andmaterial decay offer an insight into humanperceptions of time. In the editors’ ownwords, events of death ‘have strong potentialsof evoking senses of time and questionsabout existence in time’ (p. 3). This leadsthe editors and contributors also to considerthe agency of the dead. This theme forms astrong backbone to the contributions in thebook.

The book is divided into four sections:‘Conceptualizations of death, materiality andtime’; ‘Death’s time: mourning andremembrance’; ‘Living with the dead: ancestors,landscape and agency’; ‘Self death: corporealityand willed death’. Stuart McLean’s contribution,reflecting on time and memory in the life,heritage, and archaeology of the Orkney Islands,is a particularly effective opening paper. McLeanneatly deploys Gilles Deleuze’s notion of islandsas moments of environmental catastrophe,immanently to be worn away and consigned tothe waves. I particularly liked the way in whichMcLean used archaeological evidence as well asethnographic evidence to weave together a longnarrative of change in Orkney. In his paper, KnutRio also very effectively argues for the centralrole of ephemera in Vanuatuan and otherwitchcraft practices, discussing the way that‘being’ and ‘not-being’, the real and the virtual,are crystallized and materially managed inwitchcraft.

The stand-out paper of this collection isRane Willerslev’s discussion of ‘rebirth and thedeath drive’ in Siberian perspectives of time.Willerslev very effectively triangulates Deleuze’snotions of difference and repetition with

Freud’s notion of the death drive againstSiberian notions of death and rebirth. In abeautifully framed and argued essay, Willerslevcalibrates each of these concepts against theother, and provides an illuminating discussionof Yukaghir and Chukchi beliefs. For me, thispaper encapsulates the purpose of socialanthropology: to investigate other societies andbeliefs while also illuminating our own. In myopinion this essay should become standardreading in anthropology undergraduate readinglists.

Rune Nyord discusses notions of memory inancient Egyptian mortuary contexts, againutilizing Deleuze’s ontology of becoming toinvestigate the relationship between thegathering of time and the creative potentialsinherent in mummified bodies; arguing that themummy acts as a locus for the gathering of timein the ancient Egyptian tomb. From a similarperspective, Mikkel Bille examines the agency ofthe dead in southern Jordan, arguing that thegraves of saints pivot around notions ofpotentiality and uncertainty.

In the final section of the book, KristianBjørkdahl and Karen Lykke Syse discuss notionsof death and materiality in the context ofNorwegian cookbooks, in descriptions andrecipes for meat. This is an interesting argumentthat could have been developed with a widerstudy. Are the changing sensibilities they discussa Scandinavian-wide phenomenon?European-wide? How do these ideas relate tocontemporary American or Asian treatments ofmeat? This was a strong idea that was treated alittle lightly, and could easily spawn a widerresearch project. Despite being a vegetarian, Iwanted to know more! The collection ends witha superb paper by Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsenon head hunting in Bugkalot communities inLuzon, the Philippines. Mikkelsen investigateshistorically recent practices of ritualizedbeheadings alongside similar practices of takingJapanese heads by American soldiers during theSecond World War. Mikkelsen grounds thepractice of beheadings in notions of shame bothamong the Bugkalot youth and in widertheoretical contexts, such as the work of Levinasand Sartre. Importantly, Mikkelsen’s discussionalso incorporates the analysis of earlieranthropologists of death, such as Metcalf,something that the collection on the wholelacks.

I am delighted to see a new generation ofanthropologists injecting new possibilities intothe discipline by engaging with Deleuze’snotions of time. I expect this book to be a staple

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on both anthropology and archaeology readinglists for some time.

Andrew Meirion Jones University ofSouthampton

Jones, Andrew Meirion. Prehistoricmaterialities: becoming material in prehistoricBritain and Ireland. xii, 230 pp., maps, figs,illus., plates, bibliogr. Oxford: Univ. Press,2012. £60.00 (cloth)

This is a book about the materials – the stone,ceramic, and metal – of the Neolithic and BronzeAge of Britain and Ireland. It spans Irish passagetombs, miniature cups from Wessex burials, rockart in Argyll, architecture and pottery in Orkney,beaker burials in northeastern Scotland, andburials, hoards, and causewayed enclosures insouthern England. Such material assemblagestypically form the starting-point forinterpretations of prehistoric social identity andcommunity organization. However, Jones is atpains to resist this move, as he sees within it aproblematic Cartesian separation of materialsfrom society. For Jones, social relations andsubjects are immanent in materials, rather thanexisting beyond or behind them. Thisimmanence is generated through performance –social power, for example, does not exist apartfrom tombs and the specifics of theirconstruction. So the scale of a tomb is critical topower. With performance as the touchstone,only materials that are present matter.

What Jones achieves is a firmly archaeologicalapproach. It has particular resonance for thosearchaeologists who work closely witharchaeometric data. One has to agree that in therush to interpret materials socially, theirmateriality is often passed over. Yet at times itseems that Jones forgets his own advice, that‘the act of performance involves a delicatebalance ... in which some things are madepresent and effective, while others are madeabsent and therefore inactive’ (p. 28). It isperhaps unnecessarily limiting to consider onlypresence at the expense of absence, ormateriality without immateriality. Especiallywhen dealing with burial contexts, wherematerials conceivably substitute for the absentdeparted, it is this ‘balance’ or tension that is sointeresting. Yet Jones’s version of the interplaybetween presence and absence has little to dowith the unsettling absence created by death;‘absence’ for him seems to be more aboutdistant geographical places that are oftenreferenced in material performances (pp. 70-1).His overriding preoccupation with presence

explains why he must cast the absent as‘inactive’; but is not the role of a materialpresence in many cases precisely to evoke anextremely ‘active’ and powerful absence?

Much of the fascinating scholarship onmaterial substitution engages with questions ofritual and religion – recent contributions by IanHodder, Pierre Lemonnier, Verity Platt, GeorgesDidi-Huberman, and Caroline Bynum come tomind, albeit unrecognized by Jones. Moreover,Jas Elsner in a recent review of approaches toritual in material culture studies sees a renewedinterest and promise. So it is quite striking howJones’s approach bucks this trend in itssecularized view of materials. Even ritual isreduced to a ‘species’ of performance. Thiscommitment to performative presence has aflattening effect: the otherworldly, supernatural,or numinous is out of sight, out of mind. Withthe book’s heavy emphasis on burialassemblages, this reduction seems curious; it issurely not accidental, but it goes largelyunexplained.

So why does Jones so assiduously avoidmention of the otherworldly or immaterial? Alikely explanation came to me while readingMichael Scott’s 2013 paper in this journal on ‘theanthropology of ontology’ (Journal of the RoyalAnthropological Institute (N.S.) 19: 4). Thisontological focus is found in Viveiros de Castro,Latour, Holbraad, and Ingold, with the latterespecially influential on Jones (not only here, butsee also his 2013 co-edited volume withBenjamin Alberti and Joshua Pollard, Archaeologyafter interpretation, where this ontological turn isvoiced more strongly). Scott has a fascinatinganalysis of how this turn has cast Cartesiandualism as a ‘wonder-occluding ontology’,rejected in favour of the ‘allegedlywonder-sustaining relational non-dualism’identified ethnographically. So the ‘wonder’ thatis supposedly of the immaterial, religiousdomain is relocated in the material: ‘There areno transcendent subjects vis-à-vis inert objects,only immanent subjects, immersed in myriadshifting relations’ (Scott, p. 864). The ‘flatontology’ thus described is uncannilyreminiscent of Jones’s study. It is as though hedenies any otherworldly religiosity to the burialevidence he discusses, and instead locates it inthe messy, performative, relational presences ofmaterials. This is where the ‘wonder’ issupposed to be, and Jones only partiallyaddresses this issue when he says that he wantsto ‘relocate society in material interactions andperformances’ (p. 14). While this may be musicto the ears of theoretically inclined

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archaeological scientists, other readers may beleft feeling rather lost as the ontological bias isimplicit, creating a sense of uncertainty as to theauthor’s aims and intentions. It is to be hopedthat clarification will come in further work fromJones, building on this valuable material focus toconsider questions of immateriality. If not, thisdepiction of the performed presences ofmaterials as the whole story seems unnecessarilyflat.

Carl Knappett University of Toronto

Wilkinson-Weber, Clare M. FashioningBollywood: the making and meaning of Hindifilm costume. x, 212 pp., illus., bibliogr.London: Bloomsbury, 2014. £19.99 (paper)

In Fashioning Bollywood, the author has amassedmuch valuable ethnographic data with regard towhat it takes to produce a Bollywood cinematicspectacular, and she does this through the lensof dress. As the author writes, ‘It is a book aboutpopular Hindi film as viewed through itscostume’ (p. 1). Underneath the glitz and blingof Bollywood is, as she clearly shows, a networkof relationships, material and ideologicalpractices, and social factors – not surprising in acountry as complex as India.

The primary focus in the book is on themaking and meaning of cinematic costumes,especially in and around Mumbai. The threepillars of the costume side of the film industryare the tailors, the dresswalas, and the dressmen,but there are many other task-masters involved,each with his or her own speciality, and all ofwhom play their parts and contribute to the finaloutcome: the Bollywood movie. The stars andtheir retinue of actors are on the screen, thecostumes that have had so much attention givento them shimmer across the stage as the actorsgyrate and dance in typical Bollywood fashion tothe delight of audiences across India as well asthe rest of the world. What makes Bollywood soquintessentially ‘Bollywood’ are the costumes,the star body, and the fairly predictablenarrative.

In producing this book, ClareWilkinson-Weber has engaged in some fineethnographic work, talking with individuals fromevery stage of costume production to discoverhow they do their work and what is involved inthe process. All agreed that making films in Indiais ‘not like making films in Hollywood’. The starsystem exists, where the stars often have theirown costume designers, and the culture of Indiaimposes itself on costume, film, and fashion in

quite a distinctive way. Dress enables a critiqueof moral and social attitudes existing withinIndian culture.

The planning and making of costumes forfilm in India is a massive effort, with input andtoil from many people. While this could be saidof Hollywood films as well, it is the network ofrelationships and the social processes in Indiathat make a difference: for example, how thefilm industry fits with India’s inherited castestatus, how various behind-the-scene playersbecome mediators, and how social expectationsplay out.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion that artis a social field and that it is necessary to keeptexts grounded in the social relations thatproduce them, the book articulates the manynuances of social relations at each stage of theprocess. There is a play of relationships amongthe different groups as they ‘defend, transgress,or try to dissolve the boundaries of their variousspecialities’ (p. 43).

The responsibility of the designer, in concertwith the tailor (and indeed everyone involved,for that matter), is to remediate the star body, tobring about the character portrayed through thefashioning of the body in the costume,transforming the mundane body to star person.

From raw, uncut fabric to the final cinematicspectacular, it is clear that there are cultural,political, and economic issues at stake and manyplayers in its progress. Who can take credit forthis sumptuous finale? Wilkinson-Weberpainstakingly takes us through the people andthe stages involved in the massive task ofcostume-making, and the organization of whatmust seem, on the ground, to be chaos.Somehow, it all seems to come together in theend.

The author’s theoretical analysis recognizeshow ‘costume is instrumental in crystallizingcharacter’ (p. 45). Bollywood reflects the idealfantasy world of India; the flamboyant costumesin a ritual performance with a romantic endingare a major part of that fantasy. While this bookfocuses on the costume and fictional cinematiccharacters, it also offers detailed insights intoHindi culture, taste and fashion, genderrelationships, social mores, and the intricacies ofall facets of film-making in India that revolvearound dress. As an anthropologist, the authordraws on theories from both anthropology andfilm studies, investigating the study of dress,craft, production, material culture, and the bodyas well as of film and fashion.

This book will appeal to anyone interested inthe anthropology of material culture, social

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systems, gender studies, dress and body, filmstudies, Indian culture, and fashion. It will alsoappeal to the more analytically mindedBollywood cinema lover. It is essential readingfor those whose focus is on dress.

Lynne Hume The University of Queensland

Yano, Christine R. Pink globalization: HelloKitty’s trek across the Pacific. xiv, 322 pp.,illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ.Press, 2013. £16.99 (paper)

Given the volume and intensity with whichcultural production circulates around thecontemporary world, any book focused on asingle product begs the question of the reasonsunderlying this choice. In Pink globalization,Christine Yano’s new book on Hello Kitty, theauthor argues for her focus on this iconic whitecat – with its red bow, dotted eyes, six whiskers,and lack of a mouth – in several ways. HelloKitty has long been ‘newsworthy’, is enormouslypopular globally, is remarkable for her status asa ‘pure’ (i.e. licensed) product, has great stayingpower, and is consumed by a broad range ofpeople.

In the introduction, Yano positions Hello Kittyas one idealization of a ‘Japanese Cute-Cool’situated within what she calls ‘pinkglobalization’: ‘the transnational spread ofgoods and images labeled kawaii [cute] ... fromJapan to other parts of the industrial world, witha focus on the United States’ (p. 6). Yanounderstands the ‘pink’ in pink globalization asspeaking to notions of both (erotic) femininityand the infantile, not only discretely but also asboth terms operate in relation to each other. ForYano, then, part of the significance of Hello Kittyis how she enables a ‘wink on pink’, apost-feminist ethos in which women are able toassert their strength confidently as women evenwhile nostalgically and playfully embracingcuteness. One of the strengths of this book is therange of ways in which Yano traces theprovenance and unpacks the complex meaningsof this one product, including in affective termsthat do not necessarily resolve themselves infandom or identities generally speaking. Thedesign of Hello Kitty’s face is important in itself:given her mouthlessness, her face can readily beimagined as mirroring the various moods ofthose who possess her.

In chapter 1, Yano explores the Hello Kittyphenomenon in Japan. She discusses shojo (theyoung single women who have been among themost avid consumers of Hello Kitty), the historyof Sanrio (the company that makes Hello Kitty),

and recent anniversary celebrations of the cat’sbirth in the mid-1970s. Chapter 2 explores howSanrio markets Kitty beyond Japan, especially inthe United States, with the ideas of friendshipand happiness as central. In chapter 3, Yanointerviews fans of Hello Kitty, exploring thegendered, ethnic, and other dynamics evident inthese fans’ ‘friendships’ with the cat. Chapter 4

concerns Hello Kitty antipathy. A criticism ofHello Kitty has been that her iconicmouthlessness represents an absented metonymfor stereotypes of (Asian and Asian-American)women as silent and submissive. Among theinterviewees who see Hello Kitty as a threat inthese gendered and other terms are writers,performance artists, and T-shirt and otherentrepreneurs who transgressively play with – insome cases ‘humorously’ brutalize – her image.Yano also explores Hello Kitty antipathy inclass-based terms, in which this product asaggressively merchandized kitsch is seen as adisturbing form of commodity fetishism. (These‘progressive’ critiques can seem ironic for theirelitist assumptions about what is or is not ingood taste.)

Yano’s interviewees in chapter 5 use HelloKitty to subversive effect. These include fans whodraw on her image in the performance ofthird-wave feminist punk and other alternativeyouth cultural affinities, in gay and lesbianactivism, and in pornographic visual cultures.Chapter 6 continues the previous chapter’sreflections on creative re-readings andre-deployments of Hello Kitty, here as high art.This includes exhibitions and publicationscelebrating Sanrio’s cat. Yano draws oninterviews with artists Tom Sachs, Leika Akiyama,and Leslie Holt, striving not so much for artcriticism as to understand the meanings of HelloKitty for each artist. The seventh and finalchapter links Japanese Cute-Cool to the JapaneseNeo Pop and Superflat movements; to JosephNye’s ‘soft power’ and Douglas McGray’srelated concept of Japan’s ‘gross national cool’;and to the Japanese government’s perhapsnecessarily ‘uncooling’ efforts to take advantageof Japanese Cute-Cool.

Pink globalization represents a well-inflectedlook at the Hello Kitty phenomenon. The writingis assured and theoretically rich yet quiteaccessible to a general readership, includingundergraduates. Despite this theoretical richness,it also manages throughout the light, humoroustouches one would hope for from a book on thistopic. If the interviews occasionally run a bitlong, it is through these extended excerpts thatYano is able to excavate the personal historical

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and social experiences that inform herinterlocutors’ reflections. Pink globalization is avaluable contribution to the anthropological,Japanese studies, gender studies, and otherliterature on the internationalization of Japanesepopular culture.

Marvin D. Sterling Indiana University

Medicine and health

Inhorn, Marcia C. & Soraya Tremayne

(eds). Islam and assisted reproductivetechnologies: Sunni and Shia perspectives. xvi,338 pp., tables, illus., bibliogrs. Oxford, NewYork: Berghahn Books, 2012. £60.00 (cloth)

Reproduction is at the core of socialtransformation and is inextricably bound upwith cultural process. Procreation andprocreative practices are inevitably locally andmorally embedded; this fact has been amplycorroborated by the accumulated knowledgeabout reproductive technologies, assistedconception, and their socio-political impact onboth regulatory regimes and practices. Thevariations in regulatory regimes have, in turn,spurred a world-wide procreative industry,moving people, detached bodily substances, andtechnologies across borders, whilesimultaneously provoking debates about theethical, religious, and legal issues that theappropriation of these technologies entail. Thisedited volume addresses such issues – andmore.

Taking as its point of departure thedifferences in Shia and Sunni perspectives onassisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), thevolume has a specific focus on the variance inthird-party gamete donation. Whereas the Sunnibranch of Islam has banned any form ofthird-party donation, the Shia branch has,through a fatwa issued by the Supreme Leaderof the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah AliHussein, allowed for the use of donortechnologies. There are significant distinctionsnot only in the legal reasoning between thesetwo branches of Islam, but also with regard torelations of authority. These distinctions, whichare elaborately and coherently discussedthroughout, serve as a nexus around whichother issues converge. Insisting on theimportance of understanding the rapidlyevolving moral-religious climate surroundingARTs in the Muslim world, this book is

assembled so as to bring different perspectivesto bear on the overall theme. The intellectualbackgrounds of the fifteen contributors rangefrom social anthropologists, to medical doctors,religious scholars, as well as scholars of Islam,biomedicine, and bioethics. These combinedperspectives underscore the complexities of thematter at hand: ARTs seen from Islamic points ofview. As is made evident, the regulation of ARTscannot be grasped by turning to religion alone.On the contrary, as Clarke insists, religiousdiscourse is enmeshed in broader projects andrelations of power.

Following from an excellent introduction,which clearly sets out the intentions and ideasunderpinning the volume, the book is structuredin three parts. Part I examines, through threechapters, Islamic legal thought. Together, thesechapters give an informative background to thenon-specialist presenting the fundamentalprinciples in Islam that concern kinship,marriage, and procreation and which haverepercussions for the appropriation of ARTs.Central concepts such as nasab (lineage), zina(illicit sexuality), darura (necessity), fiqh (Islamicjurisprudence), maslaha (public interest), andistihsan (just solution) are discussed. Theseauthors (Eich, Houot, Mahmoud), drawing onhistorical as well as contemporary sources,demonstrate the comprehensive ethical andlegal reasonings with regard to reproduction –and how these filter into the public.

Part II focuses explicitly on Iran. The fourchapters explore the legitimization of third-partydonation from legal, religious, and ethicalaspects as well as the impact of third-partydonation on family and kinship relations.Whereas Tappen discusses the possibility of anemergent Islamic bioethics, Saniei gives a briefoverview of the main arguments of Muslimscholars regarding human embryonic stem cellresearch. Tremayne’s and Naef’s chapters areethnographic. Tremayne presents some poignantcases of third-party donation gone wrong,arguing that children are pawns in particularcultural practices, where the duty to reproduceis paramount. Naef focuses on gestationalsurrogacy, drawing on the significant distinctionbetween illicit sex and conception. She employsthis Iranian case to refute Héritier’s argument ofa ‘universal grammar’ for incest.

The last section focuses on Islamic bioethicsand the modern nation-state. Drawing onnotions of reproscapes and reproflow, Inhorn,Patrizio, and Serour compare threeMediterranean countries, Italy, Egypt, andLebanon, indicating similarities between the

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Italian and Egyptian cases, with regard toregulatory regimes as well as the reasoningunderpinning these. Italy, however, is morerestrictive. Clarke draws on his material fromLebanon to argue that politics is a better guidethan religion to understanding medical ethics inthe Middle East. Following this line of thought,Gürtin shows in the case of Turkey how ARTs areinscribed in a political discourse of modernityand Turkish secularism, where religion isunacceptable as a causal explanation of stateregulation.

It is to the editors’ credit that they have beenable to harness these diverse angles in such away that the whole in fact emerges as more thanits parts. ARTs and the problem of third-partydonation within Islam speak to more overarchingissues of policy, modernity, gender, rights, andsocial change. Not least, the volume as a wholeaccentuates the importance of nuance andavoiding dichotomous reifications, not onlywithin Islam but also between the so-called‘Christian’ and ‘Muslim’ worlds. In its sensitivityto discrepancies between norms and practice,the volume not only contributes knowledge tothe field of ARTs and procreative practices moregenerally, indicating a socio-political religiouscomplexity that is not easily disentangled. It alsoand perhaps more importantly enhances ourknowledge of Islam, while encouraging acontinual comparative perspective.

Marit Melhuus University of Oslo

Marshall, Mac. Drinking smoke: the tobaccosyndemic in Oceania. xix, 292 pp., maps, figs,illus., bibliogr. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai‘iPress, 2013. £43.95 (cloth)

The title of this book derives from observationsthat in some parts of the world people talk of‘drinking’ tobacco or its smoke (p. 9). The term‘syndemic’ in the subtitle is borrowed fromMerrill Singer, who elaborated the concept in his2009 book Introduction to syndemics. Singersought to include the social context of theproduction of disease in the study of multiplediseases, and Marshall brings this perspective tothe serious health issues afflicting Pacific people,arguing that tobacco smoking ‘is the “glue” thatholds all these diseases and conditions together’(p. 7). The book is divided into two sections. Thefirst is a history of the spread of tobacco,globally and particularly into the Pacific islands.The second section is represented as a medicalanthropology of tobacco in Oceania. Itshistorical project, then, invites its inclusion in agrowing body of quasi-anthropological literature

on commodities spread through the epoch ofEuropean empires and their social and culturaleffects on recipient peoples.

In addition to providing an extensiveliterature review, the author enlisted the aid ofsubscribers to the email network of theAssociation for Social Anthropology in Oceania(ASAO) through an invitation to answerquestions about their interactions withinterlocutors involving tobacco. This producednot only a body of stories and reflections on theplace and ethics of cigarette distribution in thesocial relations of fieldwork, but also a significantamount of anthropological information on thehistorical introduction and use of tobacco inrespondents’ research societies. Chapter 4, ontobacco as an object of exchange, is particularlyenhanced by contemporary fieldworkers’information. It is one of three contiguouschapters (out of eleven) that, for me, make thebook anthropologically interesting. The othersare chapter 2, on tobacco as a comestible, andchapter 3, describing the various methods usedaround Oceania to consume tobacco. With twoother chapters they comprise the first section ofthe book, a history beginning with Europeanencounters with tobacco in the Americas in 1492

and ending with recent efforts at tobaccocontrol in Oceania in the wake of its burgeoningcommercial production and serious healtheffects.

The syndemic perspective is developed in thesecond section, with three case study chaptersand a final chapter detailing and analysing thetobacco syndemic. From the syndemicperspective, diseases are not simply ailmentsafflicting individuals but are biosocialphenomena. The case studies present theavailable information on coterminous diseasesand disorders among, in turn, the Maori of NewZealand (chap. 8), the cluster of Micronesiancountries and territories that emerged from theformer US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands(chap. 9), and native Hawaiians (chap. 10).Ethnicity, power differentials, social disparities,and other inequalities are bought together witha range of disorders and diseases, includingtuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, pneumonia, influenza,and obesity, which intersect with tobacco-relatedconditions such as cancer, cardiovasculardisease, and obstructive pulmonary disease. Theauthor argues that tobacco smoking is thecommon denominator, or binding factor, in thissyndemic.

The welter of facts and figures in the secondsection is persuasive, and the overall picture ofthe health risks faced by Pacific Islanders is

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disturbing. The syndemic approach (the authorrefers to it as a theory) is clearly a productivedevelopment and has wide applicability for thestudy of health issues in wider political-economic contexts. However, while the authorcalls the second part of the book medicalanthropology, the preponderance of hard data,statistics, and survey research and the treatmentof peoples as ethnic or national communities,rather than socio-cultural groups, gives it asociological flavour. The contrastinganthropological cast of the first section isachieved by the wide-ranging use ofethnographic references, yet, like other exercisesin regional – or sometimes global – scope, thecultural nuances revealed by concentratedresearch in small-scale societies can be lost.Conversely, a cultural implication of the title isnot really borne out in the book. While theauthor states that ‘to this day common terms forsmoking tobacco in Oceania translate as“drinking” or “eating” smoke’ (p. 9), the givenexamples of the ‘drinking smoke’ trope are fromSouth America, Japan, and China, not Oceania.Hair-splitting aside, the book is an importanttestament to the health consequences of thepromotion of tobacco, particularly in Oceania,and a valuable compendium of historical andanthropological information on tobacco use inthe region.

Michael Goddard Macquarie University

Raikhel, Eugene & William Garriott

(eds). Addiction trajectories. vii, 338 pp., illus.,bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press,2013. £16.99 (paper)

This collection of anthropological essays criticallyanalyses how the concept of addiction emergesas an ‘object of knowledge, intervention,identification and contention’ (p. 6). Byfollowing the ‘trajectories’ of addiction, the bookexamines how addiction and addicts are defined,formed, and move; how addiction is perceivedand treated in different cultural and politicalcontexts, reflecting often very divergingexperiences and expectations. Several articlespoignantly link these trajectories to the specificdevelopments of the state, serving as a greatreminder of why anthropological perspectiveson the state are so relevant.

The articles cover a number of issues: theblurred lines between therapy and use, betweenlicit and illicit drug use, and the processes ofself-medication (particularly Meyers’ article onbuprenorphine treatment in Baltimore); the ways

in which punitive and treatment-orientatedinterventions work in tandem and paradoxicallyreinforce each other (Garriott on meth addictionin West Virginia), and the side-effects ofperceiving addiction as a ‘disease of the will’.

Both Campbell and Garcia discuss theconsequences of viewing addiction as a chronicdisease. Despite the intention to ‘free’ the addictfrom the notion of addiction as a self-imposedchoice, ‘unintended moral and psychologicalrepercussions follow from the redefinition ofaddiction as a chronic, relapsing disease state’,Campbell says (p. 254). Garcia aptly disclosesthese repercussions, stressing that for her(Hispanic) informant the clinical focus on thepast and the structure of repetition did not resultin a ‘working through grief’ but rather in anintensification of it (p. 42). Garcia alsoemphasizes the conflict between the Twelve Stepapproach, in which relapse is to be expected,and a juridical approach, in which relapse is a‘failure of the will’, to be punished by furthertreatment (p. 45).

Campbell analyses how new pharmacologicaladvances and neurobiological knowledge offerhope for treatment as well as fresh dilemmas.This engagement with biological sciences isimportant, Martin reminds us, because‘biological models of addiction can erodeunderstandings of social processes’ (p. 286).

Schüll’s focus on gambling-machineaddiction in Las Vegas adds variety to the kindsof addictions portrayed in the book. Sheemphasizes the ‘closed circuit’ between therapyand gambling, questioning where addictionstarts and ends; the paradox of gambling asself-medication; and the ‘pharmaceuticalleakage’ of medicine migrating from atreatment context to the drug economy(p. 78).

Hansen analyses the pharmaceuticalevangelism in Puerto Rico and discusses whatfaith-based treatment initiatives offer whenperceiving the addict as in need of salvation,rather than in need of pharmaceutical relief.Although a deeply relevant topic, it would havebeen interesting if Hansen had provided moreinformation on the efficacy of these treatmentpractices.

Lovell vividly traces the trajectories of ‘elusivetravellers’ from Eastern Europe who come toMarseilles to seek harm reduction as a way ofclaiming biological citizenship and asylum,thereby stressing the transnational phenomenonof drug users to whom travelling becomes atherapeutic request, and the contrasting regimesof drug management.

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By detailing how the treatment system inRussia has developed, Raikhel’s article isexemplary in showing how and why specifickinds of treatment work well in one culturalcontext as opposed to another, and howtreatment methods become culturallyappropriate. One reason for the success of usingplacebo drugs in Russia, Raikhel says, is thatrather than transforming the subjectivities or‘inner selves’ of patients, these methods act as akind of ‘prosthesis for the will, allowing for achange in behavior without a change in self’(pp. 189-90).

Carr and Saris also discuss the notion of‘will’, but from different angles. Carr questionsthe confessional clinical practice addressingaddiction as a ‘disease of denial’ and portrays itsfar-reaching moral and material consequences.In contrast, she positively promotes analternative (which is refreshing): thenon-confrontational treatment practice of‘motivational interviewing’.

Saris’s article poignantly analyses theembedded dilemmas of ‘will’ and ‘choice’ incurrent understandings of addiction, tracinghistorically how these notions have come to takeshape: ‘theorizing in both psychopharmacologyand addiction increasingly has given us a senseof the will as an uncertain achievement’ (p. 273),he states, where ‘will’ becomes impossible, butis fetishized at the same time.

Illustrating what comparative analysis can doat its best, these articles ‘highlight how theefficacy of all ostensibly pharmacologicaltreatments is shaped by elements, includingchemical effects and patients’ interpretations ofthose effects, clinical performances andrelationships, clinicians’ styles of reasoning andlocal research traditions, and the institutionaland political settings of treatment’ (Raikhel, p.210, original emphasis). They do this very well.

Janne Bjerre Christensen Danish Institute forInternational Studies

Sanal, Aslihan. New organs within us:transplants and the moral economy. xx, 244

pp., illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ.Press, 2011. £15.99 (paper)

This book revisits what nowadays is a prevalentsubject for medical, cultural, and legalanthropologists: organ transplantation. Yet closeto nothing in this book gives a sense of déjà vu.The author offers a devastating portrait of livesthat populate the contemporary world ofinter-vivos and post-mortem kidneytransplantation, and also depicts how the

modern enterprise of transplant works out itsown complexity. Here medical knowledge,political struggles, optimism, and idealism withregard to ‘progress’ are juxtaposed with mediadepictions of black markets in organs, personalsacrifice, marginalization, and suicide in order tokeep bodies moving in hospitals (p. 43). The siteis Istanbul, but one can easily see parallels withSherine Hamdy’s Cairo or Linda Hogle’s Berlin.

New organs within us can be read as twobooks. The two parts, ‘The desirable’ and ‘Theimpossible’, correspond to different terrains andalmost different ethnographic projects. Yet thesetwo distinct sections are intriguingly, intimatelyconnected, almost like part and whole are in atransplant. My metaphor is not irrelevant, sincethe book overall is genuinely interested in theinternalization of difference. Sanal’sconceptualization of benimseme, of makingsomething one’s own (p. 14), is the heart of thevolume. It is all about how the new grafts itselfonto the old, the extraordinary attaches to theordinary, normalcy gets imposed on theaberrant, and, most importantly, at whataffective costs. It is also about implementingnew definitions of death and newspeak abouttransplants, whilst Turkey remains a tough soilfor law and policy reformers to plant seeds in(pp. 12, 48). Sanal does not say it directly, butthe book constitutes a superb ethnography ofhow Watson’s legal transplants might work outin a modern disciplinary field.

Starting with a series of vignettes portrayingindividual patients in Istanbul, the first partdisconcertingly debunks the rehearsed ‘economyof words’ (p. 47) of public health campaigns formore available organs. Sanal describes the storyof a patient whose main desire is ‘liberation fromthe dialysis machine’, not immortality oralterations of the body via transplantation(p. 13). She tells us about Oguz, for whom thedialysis machine makes social life so much easier,‘compared to the frail transplanted kidney whichdemanded constant care’ (p. 19). Crucially,pressures from doctors and parents on patientsto accept an unwanted kidney receive sorelyneeded and unprecedented ethnographicattention (p. 18). So far the academic literaturehas amply revealed various forms of coercion todonate and sell kidneys, but here we read aboutdialysis patients who become transplantrecipients because they, too, can no longer resistthe powerful combination of medical, familial,and economic pressures. This is difficult to hear,and many organ donation campaigners will notlike it, but it is imperative that this story be toldtoo. Thanks to Sanal, this has now been done.

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The first part also offers a professional andinstitutional history of transplant medicine inmodern Turkey, following closely the perspectiveof ‘leaders in the field’, but also of those whoare accused by the media of dragging this fieldunderground. Such ethnographic rendition ofthe hardship of transplant professionals, of howthey despair but also romanticize about theirpower and place in the world, is unparalleled inthe literature in my view.

In part 2, Sanal leaves the sites of dialysis andtransplantation aside in order to travel thelandscapes of integrity and possessiveness overmarginalized bodies: we read of how bodies getneglected in mental hospitals whilst alive, aretreated with care and tenderness (p. 138) whendevoid of life during their passage in researchlaboratories, and then are left to meditative lifein cemeteries. The technique and art ofdissection – ‘turning bodies inside out’ (p. 142) –is reflected upon using Turkish poetry, in-depthinterviews with anatomists, and observation ofthe post-mortem examination of the corpse ofMehmed in a cold and damp room (pp. 137-8).This part also richly describes the numerousproblems inherent in the practice of anatomicaldissection, which is a black sheep amongmedical disciplines. In contrast, transplantsurgery, which can make gifts of life withcadavers, possesses a much more positive voice(p. 176) in the public sphere. For its sensitiveaccount of professional life the book will be ofgenuine interest to historians of medicine andsociologists of the professions as well asanthropologists.

My only criticism would be of the occasionaluse of flowery language to compel horror in thereader. For instance, we are told about a largeformaldehyde container that used to be aswimming pool, and where cadavers arepreserved until they are used for medicalresearch. The long ruminations on this ‘pool ofthe dead’, which manifestly captivated Sanalduring fieldwork, are, to me, less effective thanthe rest of the book. Sanal’s elegant prose ismuch more skilful and compelling when sheminutely describes how health professionals getto grips with difficult questions about life anddeath and create, in her words, an ‘inventedlanguage that work[s] against cultural taboosbut with the traditions of medicine andmodernity’ (p. 63). Her rendition of the hardwork of surgeons and anatomists in devisingterms such as ‘transitional public service’ (p. 135)in order to encourage families to donate toresearch labs the bodies of their long-abandonedkin is truly absorbing.

Last but not least, this is a beautiful object.The cover artwork by Helen Pynor is simplymagnificent. This is far from trivial in the presentcase: the beauty of the photography grabs andinhabits the reader as he or she closes the bookto pause and reflect on Sanal’s dense writing.The art is a reminder that what is going on hereis both painful and never fixed, like benimseme.

Marie-Andrée Jacob Keele University

Migration and diaspora

Cooper, Alanna E. Bukharan Jews and thedynamics of global Judaism. xxiv, 305 pp.,maps, illus., bibliogr. Bloomington: IndianaUniv. Press, 2013. £21.99 (paper)

Bukharan Jews and the dynamics of global Judaismmakes an original and exciting contribution tothe anthropology of Jewish communities andpromises to become an importantreference-point in social studies of Judaism.Alanna Cooper’s engaging study of theBukharan Jews (or the Jews of Central Asia) takesthe reader on a journey throughout thecenturies and discusses a wide range of issues inthe history and anthropology both of thisspecific community and of Judaism in general.

Cooper’s account begins in New York, wherein the 1990s she taught at a religious school forJewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.She found the stories of the new arrivals fromCentral Asia particularly fascinating, and,encouraged by her students, travelled toUzbekistan to do research on their community,which was rapidly disappearing owing to massmigration in the wake of the Soviet Union’sdissolution. The researcher’s goal was ‘not onlyto document Jewish life in Central Asia before itwas too late, but also to gain insight toJudaism’s adaptability’ (p. xi). These objectivesappear to have been very well met: the bookboth provides a sophisticated ethnographicaccount of the community’s life and considers itin light of broader Jewish studies debates aboutthe meanings and boundaries of Jewishness andthe nature of Judaism’s diversity.

The book specifically focuses on what theauthor describes as ‘moments of reunion’, whenBukharan Jews came into contact with Jews fromother parts of the world. Cooper suggests thatthese encounters offer a particularly useful sitefor analysing debates about what ‘normative’Judaism is, where the boundaries of Jewishness

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should be drawn, and who has the authority todecide on these issues. Part 1 opens with adiscussion of an encounter between Cooper’sstudents from Central Asia and their Ashkenaziteachers in New York. The author was struck bythe discrepancy between the students’ accountof Jewish religious beliefs and practices that theyhad brought with them to the USA, and theirteachers’ desire to address their religious‘ignorance’ and to help them reconnect to‘proper’ Judaism. To cast light on the roots ofthe Bukharan Jewish tradition, part 2 of thebook, which offers an excellent example ofhistorical anthropology, goes back to theeighteenth century and focuses on theinteractions between the Central Asian Jewishcommunity and an emissary from the Holy Land.Here Cooper presents and challenges thecentre-periphery paradigm, which she describesas a framework that historians have invoked todescribe the history of Central Asian Jews and todemarcate the boundaries of ‘normative’Judaism. The author conducts a historiographicalanalysis of two versions of the story of thisencounter, which was not recorded in anyprimary sources. According to the version thatbecame dominant in historiography, theemissary found the Bukharan Jews isolated andreligiously ignorant. According to anotherversion, which became side-lined, they werestrongly connected to the Jewish tradition andchallenged the emissary’s understanding of howJudaism should be practised and who counts asan authority on this matter.

Part 3 continues with the historical accountof the Bukharan Jews and takes the reader to theturn of the twentieth century. The ethnographicfocus of this part of the book is on a specificcontroversy, which occurred in Samarkandaround the topic of shehitah, or ritual slaughter.Cooper’s discussion is based on an analysis ofthe letters of those who became involved in thisdebate and reflects on another paradigm used inthe Jewish tradition to describe the Diaspora.This is what the author refers to as the Edah(Jewish historical/ethnic group) paradigm, whichis invoked as a means of accepting the culturaldiversity of Jews and Judaism. The section showshow the Bukharan Jewish Edah was formed as aresult not of any perceived isolation, but ofinteractions with different Jewish groups aroundthe world, from the Jews of Russia, to WesternEuropean Jews and the Jews of Jerusalem. Part 4

returns to the contemporary world and is basedon multi-sited ethnography conducted inBukhara, Samarkand, New York, and Israel. Thispart moves away from discussions of history

writing, public memory, and communityleaders, and turns to experiences of ‘lay’community members and the way theirtransnational encounters impact theirunderstandings of the self. The book’sdiscussion of the processual nature of religiouschange in the Jewish tradition provides novelinsights into the debate about what it means tobe Jewish and promises to stimulate furthertheoretical research into the relationshipbetween the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ inanthropology of religion.

Yulia Egorova Durham University

Murphy, Fiona & Mark Maguire.Integration in Ireland: the everyday lives ofAfrican migrants. 159 pp., illus., figs, bibliogr.Manchester: Univ. Press, 2012. £65.00 (cloth)

Integration in Ireland examines the variousdimensions of African migrants’ integration onthe ground in Ireland, exploring what‘integration’ looks like ethnographically throughmigrants’ everyday lives. Conceptually, theauthors ground their theoretical approach in thework of Veena Das and Michael Jackson, infocusing consistently on the daily lifeworlds oftheir mostly Nigerian, Congolese, andAfrican-Irish research participants. Theirperspective raises important points about whatnational and social belonging means,particularly its unevenness and fluidity, andmultifaceted and non-teleological nature.

For example, drawing on the work of BredaGray and Ulf Hannerz, the authors consider thequestion of what migrants are integrating into.Through their connections, African migrants arepart of their localities, and are changingpractices and meanings around them, in theprocess of making them meaningful in their ownlives. Another important point the authors raisethrough their conceptual approach is thatintegration is made up of fluid and dynamicprocesses of exclusion and inclusion in differentsectors of migrants’ lives – in labour, religion,politics, and education, and among youth.

Individual chapters reveal how inclusion andexclusion look different in the various areas ofeveryday life, in which it is clear that Africanmigrants are making different claims anddifferent kinds of meaningful connections, giventhe histories, policies, and discourses affectingthose sectors. In the competitive taxi industry,African drivers have a hard time making a livingbecause of the over-supply of taxi drivers, inwhich consumers are able to choose‘Irish-looking’ drivers. African taxi drivers strive

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to maintain their dignity in the face of constanthumiliations and weak pay. In local politics,several African women have become active, aftergaining some prominence and confidencethrough working in pro-immigrant NGOs. Yetbecause African migrants are conflated withasylum seekers and non-nationals, there is littlespace for these budding politicians to attractpopular support, pointing to one of theliabilities of a vote-based system of democracy.In the area of religion, Pentecostalism generatesidentities which circumvent the meaningfulnessof national identities and claims belonging onthe basis of religious imaginings. However, ‘theunobtrusive presence of many African churchesbespeaks the hostile worlds in whichworshippers perceive themselves’ (p. 80), andevents to claim public space organized byAfrican churches are not always well understoodby the larger public. In the area of education,individual parents negotiate small butmeaningful changes in schools, generally innon-curricular and festive activities likeInternational Day. Finally, the authors explorebeauty pageants, as a place where youth canshowcase themselves and their talents amongtheir peers and families.

At times, I wondered whether integrationwas the right term for the complex processeswhich the authors were examining, given thehistorical weight of the word, which places theburden of change squarely on migrants. Perhapsso, given the EU focus on civic integration. Also,the authors argue that their informants want tobecome part of Irish society, which means thatintegration as a term is meaningful to them.However, at times the ways that the authorswould like to push the cultural sense of theword – to mean how Africans are changing Irishsociety as well as being changed by it in theprocess of belonging – becomes flooded out byits more usual meanings. What other words existfor these processes? The authors introduce theconcept of pluralism when discussingeducational matters, and perhaps this wordwould have served their study better (althoughpluralism has its own baggage and normativeclaims). I have used the term ‘belonging’,borrowed from kinship studies, in this review.Each term has advantages and disadvantages.

In the conclusion, the authors argue that onereason that integration is multifaceted is that it isleft to civil society. This approach is consistentwith the state’s relation to society inneoliberalism. Although neoliberalism leavesroom for charismatic and forceful individuals topromote multiculturalism in education and run

for political office, in other dimensions, like inthe deregulation of the taxi industry, it has madethe working lives of African taxi drivers moredifficult, and because of consumer choice, theirracialization and foreignness has become moresignificant in their ability to make a living.

Although the situation for African migrants inIreland looks generally grim and gloomy, thebook makes it clear that they are makingimportant contributions and inroads. The bookis well written and provides a comprehensivewindow into the situations facing Africanmigrants in Ireland in their quest to belong.

Cati Coe Rutgers University

Politics and citizenship

Dave, Naisargi N. Queer activism in India: astory in the anthropology of ethics. ix, 265 pp.,illus., bibliogr. London, Durham, N.C.: DukeUniv. Press, 2012. £16.99 (paper)

While reading Queer activism in India, I wasreminded of a scene from Gulzar’s seminal 1996

film Maachis (Matchstick) set in Punjab duringthe political turmoil of the 1980s. A young mannamed Kirpal, thinking about joining theseparatist militancy, questions Sanatan, one ofthe militant leaders, about the ethics of his‘movement’. Amused by Kirpal’s enthusiasm,Sanatan replies, ‘What movement? ... When aman is continually subjected to injustice, and helacks the strength to fight alone, he organizesothers like him. Sometime around religion andsometimes around caste or nationality. But hisfight is still against that same injustice’. Kirpalretorts, ‘What about the law?’ Sanatancontinues, ‘Has law ever resolved anything? Youhear about these inquiry commissions that goon for ten to twenty years ... I am not fightingfor some future generations. I want my rights,within this lifetime. Right now! Right thisminute!’

Dave captures the emergence of a movementfar less radical than the Sikh militancy, yetsimilarly complex and bifurcated, and similarlymotivated against continuous injustice: themovement for recognition and equal rights forsexual minorities. The questions that Dave seeksanswers for are similar to ones Kirpal poses toSanatan, ‘Why are activists, activists? Why do[these] activists act?’ (p. 4). Unsurprisingly, asDave reports, the answer to these questions donot differ significantly. She writes, ‘These

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activists act because, collectively, they nurtureethical ideals about what the world could looklike. They act out of conflicted, sometimesuncomfortable, beliefs in the possibility ofjustice. They act in part because they desire newfreedoms that they can as yet only imagine, butstrive to enable’ (pp. 4-5). Building on Foucault,Dave characterizes queer activism as an ‘ethical’practice that involves a struggle against the‘drive for normalization’ (p. 6). Activism opensup new possibilities and space for creativitywhere one can escape the hegemony of morality(p. 6).

Based on two years of concentratedfieldwork, and nearly a decade of ongoingresearch, which included analysing archivaldocuments as well as intimate interviews andparticipating in the activities of Delhi-basedorganizations and support groups focused onsexual minorities rights (Sakhi, Sangini, CALERI[Campaign for Lesbian Rights], PRISM), thisethnography offers perhaps one of the mostcomprehensive accounts of the perpetuallyshifting landscape of queer rights in India. Morespecifically, Dave documents the emergence andpublic awareness of lesbian subjectivity andcommunity, which is confronted with its own setof circumstances that differ from groupslobbying for the rights of gay men, transgenderindividuals, and even hijras.

Since its inception in the early 1990s, theIndian queer rights movement has been marredby public disagreements about identitycategories around which the activists organize.The discursive choice to deploy homogenizingcategories of ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’, which areperceived by some as Western imports, versusthe desire to preserve the heterogeneoussame-sex desire that flourishes in the fairlyapolitical homosocial spaces of homes, beautyparlours, and college dormitories carriesdifferent consequences for actors belonging todifferent socio-economic backgrounds(pp. 16-18). The question, ‘Is lesbianism Indian?’continues to resurface as a source of tensionamong the activists. As organizations andsupport groups embrace lesbian subjectivity tocultivate a sense of an imagined community,Dave asks, ‘What potentiality had to beforeclosed – or what affective possibilities had tobe normatively qualified?’ (p. 36).

Lesbian oppression is rooted in the indignitiesof exclusion and invisibility rather than abjection.Far from being marked as deviant, lesbian desire,as Dave notes, is ‘excluded from all social andcultural recognition’ (p. 13). Hence, the activists’efforts and their insistence on celebrating

same-sex love among Indian women aremotivated less by resistance and more by socialand cultural invention (pp. 13-15). Dave alsocarefully and thoughtfully contextualizes lesbianoppression within the broader patriarchalstructures of power that police the mobility andlives of Indian women. For most of the womenwhose life-stores Dave chronicles, leaving thefamilial home is a radical act that is akin tocoming out (p. 63).

The ethnography consists of five essay-likechapters that can be read and taught as separatearticles capturing the different intimate andpublic moments in the life of queer activism inIndia. However, a more nuanced understandingof the ethical convictions that motivates ordinaryindividuals to join a movement, to becomeactivists, to go on acting primarily in their owninterests but also in the interests of others likethem, can only be gained by a complete readingof this richly textured ethnography.

Harjant Gill Towson University

Hegland, Mary Elaine. Days of revolution:political unrest in an Iranian village. xxxv, 316

pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. Stanford: Univ.Press, 2013. £18.99 (paper)

The Iranian Revolution in 1979 has attracted alarge body of scholarly interest dealing with thecauses of the Revolution and the factorsinfluencing people’s participation in therevolutionary movement. In Days of revolution:political unrest in an Iranian village, Mary ElaineHegland argues for the existence of culturalparadigms, and in particular the taifeh politicalculture, as the dominant frameworks throughwhich people made sense of the revolutionaryprocess and their own engagement with it. Thebook is based on Hegland’s extensive fieldworkin the village of ‘Aliabad’ in the southwesternprovince of Fars during the critical monthsleading to the Revolution, as well as hersubsequent visits in 2003 and 2008. Throughparticipant observation and by drawing on oralhistories from the village residents, Heglandtraces the processes of change in the economicand political structures of village life from theearly decades of the twentieth century, throughto the implementation of land reform policies inthe 1960s and their consequences during the1970s.

Despite major transformations in Aliabad’spolitical and economic structures, Heglandargues, rapid modernization on its own isinsufficient to account for Aliabadis’ participationin the revolutionary movement. Rather, the

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‘processual paradigm’ of taifeh-keshi, a culturalmodel created over time, through practice, andin response to real conditions, animatedAliabadis’ understanding, evaluation, orexpectation of political processes in theirstruggle over political power and economicresources. Furthermore, the book argues that therhetoric and symbolism of Shia revolutionaryideology was incorporated by the villagers onlyafter their resistance was made meaningfulthrough the taifeh-keshi paradigm.

By concentrating on the transformations inthe role played by land and agriculture, themain source of livelihood for the villagers,Hegland constructs a very sophisticatedargument based on the cultural model of taifeh,a model which relies on common interests andshared identities, often associated with kinshipties and maintained through variousperformative techniques. She demonstrates howpeople’s engagement with the taifeh-keshiparadigm, which entails the coming together ofa taifeh to take action in a conflict, wastransformed with changing conditions. It is inthe light of this ‘processual paradigm’ – aconcept somewhat similar to Bourdieu’s ‘theoryof practice’ (Outline of a theory of practice, 1992)– that people interpreted ongoing politicalevents, extending it to the national level in therevolutionary movement against the Shah andhis brutal government forces.

Perhaps less convincing is Hegland’sargument for the precedence of the taifehculture over what she refers to as ‘Shiarevolutionary ideology’. Given that this is one ofthe major points the book aims to establish, thelack of clarity on what is meant by ‘Shiarevolutionary ideology’ leaves the readerunconvinced of the exact distinction so centralto Hegland’s argument; or even the ways inwhich these two frameworks influence andinteract with one another. Perhaps aware thatthe subject is not developed sufficiently, Heglandexplains in the footnotes that her next book willfocus on the Shia paradigm of martyrdom in theIranian Revolution and as such she will notinclude much more in the current book. Yet,considering the metonymical similaritiesbetween some of the central concepts andpractices exemplified in the taifeh culture andthose in the Shia belief system – such as theideals of struggle against injustice and an unjustruler, the duty to defend the oppressed, or theconcept of az khod gozashtegi or self-sacrifice –the emphasis on the mere symbolic assimilationof Shia Islam remains rather unqualified. Giventhe thoroughness with which Hegland develops

her argument for the interaction between thetaifeh political culture and the changingeconomic structures, perhaps it would havebeen better to leave the argument for therelationship between local political paradigmsand religious beliefs altogether for anotheroccasion.

Days of revolution is nevertheless a highlyoriginal and informative account of theeconomic and political transformations in Iran’srecent history at grass-roots level. Withexceptional clarity, and through unique personalaccounts, Hegland develops a persuasiveanalysis of the cultural model of political actionbased on the economy of personal ties,successful maintenance of hierarchical powerrelations, and the rituals and processes thatmaintain these dynamics for access to economicand political power. The book is a brilliantexemplification of Katouzian’s discussion ofcycles of ‘arbitrary rule’ and ‘chaos’ throughoutIranian history (The political economy of modernIran, 1981). Hegland’s in-depth ethnography ofthe village of Aliabad, as well as her close andsensitive reading of Iranian history, also allowsher to construct a theoretical framework thatgives a far more orderly account of theseseemingly chaotic cycles.

Narges Ansari University College London

Herriman, Nicholas. The entangled state:sorcery, state control, and violence in Indonesia.xvii, 172 pp., table, illus., bibliogr. NewHaven: SEAS, Yale University, 2012. $22.00

(paper)

The district of Banyuwangi in East Java hasbecome notorious in anthropological circles forits outbreaks of violence against suspectedsorcerers. In this crisply written book, based onover a year of intensive fieldwork in the regionduring 2001-2, Nicholas Herriman not onlyprovides a compelling reassessment of thisviolence, he also develops a provocative critiqueof recent directions in the ways that bothIndonesian studies and anthropology haveconceptualized the state.

Herriman writes against theoretical modelsthat see state power as totalizing, a trend heobserves in regionalist evaluations of theIndonesian state and in Foucauldiananthropologies of ‘state effects’. Suchapproaches, he argues, blind us to the fact thatlocal personifications of the state (such as villageand neighbourhood heads in Banyuwangi) areactual people, complexly embedded in localcommunities and circuits of obligation, and who

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may therefore ‘enact’ state power incontradictory or unexpected ways. Hedemonstrates this by exploring the dilemmasthat local state officials encountered whenresidents of their villages were accused ofsorcery: in theory they were obliged to followthe rule of law and protect the suspectedsorcerer from the mob, in practice they oftenshared their neighbours’ antipathy to theaccused or were afraid that they themselvesmight become targets of their neighbours’anger. Those who actively sought to protectsorcerers faced protests as villagers took mattersinto their own hands (a phenomenon Herrimanterms ‘resistance from below’). More often,though, local officials did nothing to help theaccused or merely facilitated their exile from thevillage – a ‘compromise’ that Herriman describesas illustrating ‘social control from below’.Alternative forms of social organization to that ofthe state, namely ties of kinship andneighbourship, thus emerge as ‘strong enoughnot merely to attenuate, but to incorporatebureaucratic state control’ (p. 15). It is for thisreason, Herriman proposes, that we should thinkof the state as ‘entangled’.

The argument is very effective, clearlyexecuted, and should earn The entangled state aplace as essential reading in courses on politicalanthropology. That said, the monograph’s tightfocus on violence against sorcerers has thedrawback of precluding the fuller discussion of‘entanglement’ that Herriman’s argumentinvites. Three areas stand out as warrantingfurther investigation moving forwards. Firstly,one wonders whether other aspects of localofficials’ duties – such as the management ofvillage budgets or the provision of assistance tovillagers in legal disputes – might also besubject to dynamics of ‘social control frombelow’. Secondly, while Herriman provides avery good historical overview of state activity inBanyuwangi, we learn relatively little about theparticular histories of state activities (and localofficials’ performances) in the villages wheresorcery accusations were levelled. This seems tobe crucial information that could illuminate whysome local officials were effectively sidelined byangry mobs while others had sufficient room formanoeuvre to secure suspected sorcerers’ safepassage to other regions of Indonesia. Putanother way, if the state is always entangled inthis rural setting, then what might we learn froma comparative analysis of its variousentanglements? Finally, given the significance ofcommunity demands in his analysis, it would beinteresting to know to what extent Herriman

thinks both the content and form of communitydemands might themselves be a ‘state effect’.

The possibility that they might be issuggested by what Indonesianists will find to bea very striking finding: that Banyuwangiresidents considered their attacks on sorcerers tobe a form of ‘demonstration’, analogous tothose demanding the resignation of Suharto andthe introduction of democracy. This discoveryforms part of a masterful re-evaluation of whythe reform period should have seen such asignificant rise in the outbreak of killings.Offering a subtle analysis of how police inaction,the publication of state-issued radiograms, andthe moment of Reformasi all contributed to a‘sense of opportunity’ that made the prospect ofkilling sorcerers take hold in villagers’imaginations, Herriman currently has the finalword on how this gruesome moment in EastJava’s history might best be understood. Yet thevery fact that the imagery of reform anddemonstrations figured in residents’ accounts ofthis period suggests that killers were engagingwith the state and with sorcerers not just asvillagers, but also as citizens. To this extent it isnot clear whether they were ever truly ‘resisting’state control so much as placing new demandson it, and thus working their way – as manyIndonesians were doing at the time – towardsnew and more aspirational modes ofentanglement.

Nicholas J. Long London School of Economicsand Political Science

Lazar, Sian (ed.). The anthropology ofcitizenship: a reader. vii, 336 pp., illus.,bibliogrs. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.£24.99 (paper)

Sian Lazar’s introduction to this edited volume,which identifies an emergent subfield withinanthropology, explores the competing Westernpolitical philosophies that have shaped liberalunderstandings of citizenship, and thegenealogies of anthropological and relatedscholarship that have led to citizenship as acategory of ethnographic inquiry andcontestation. She contrasts Aristotle’s civicrepublican conceptualization of the polis – inwhich citizenship was based in sets of practicesthat produce both the political person and thecollectivity – to that of social contract theorists,who understood citizenship as rooted inproperty ownership and individual liberty asexisting prior to entry into any collectivemembership. These two traditions informliberal-democratic understandings of citizenship,

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freedom, and politics. However, as manyscholars have pointed out, both the Greek polisand Enlightenment notions of rights relieddeeply on exclusions of slaves, women, imperialsubjects, and a host of others against whom thenotion of the citizen was constructed. Theselegacies continue in the ways that citizenship’sbenefits are unevenly distributed incontemporary nation-states. Lazar shows us thateven those who are legal citizens are – owing toclass, gender, or ethnic/racial status – often nottreated as full members of the nationalcommunity, or even given opportunities for fullpolitical participation.

Lazar discusses how anthropology, while stillengaged with these philosophies, has shifted toa study of ‘citizenship regimes’: ‘legal,bureaucratic, ideological, and materialframeworks that condition practices and ideasabout government and participation in politics’(p. 10). Through descriptive analyses of howcitizenship happens on the ground, both assubjects are produced through technologies ofgovernance in various institutions, and in theways that they themselves organize andproduce political identifications, Lazar arguesthat anthropological studies have a unique roleto play in denaturalizing understandings ofcitizenship that link it to nation-states and toliberal-democratic forms of politicalparticipation and governance. For her, then,citizenship is at its core merely – andprofoundly – ‘how we live with others in apolitical community’ (p. 1). This definitionopens up multiple field-sites where we canstudy the process of citizenship-making andallows us to explore substantive and unofficialforms of citizenship that do not match up withpassport-based political membership. Lazarnotes in particular the volumes Theanthropology of politics (J. Vincent, 2002) andThe anthropology of the state (eds A. Sharma &A. Gupta, 2006) as influential in shaping thissubfield.

I would recommend Lazar’s introductorychapter for both undergraduate and graduatestudents interested in the origins of ideas aboutpolitics and citizenship, and the variousexclusions they enact. I would, however, haveliked to see a richer engagement with thequestion of how anthropological theories ofcitizenship apply to stateless and migrantgroups, cyber-citizenship, and queer citizenship,and an analysis of the ways that citizenshipregimes within colonialism, imperialism, andslavery inform contemporary technologies ofgovernance. While Lazar gestures to feminist and

postcolonial scholarship, her engagement withthese literatures is not as deep as would beexpected given her own work and some of thecontributions in the volume.

The anthropology of citizenship providespromise for a volume that unfortunately doesnot deliver as a primer for students on thediversity of approaches to citizenship within thediscipline. The volume is divided into two mainparts, ‘Theoretical foundations’ and‘Ethnographic explorations’. These have theirown introductions, and are divided again intosub-parts (some with introductions, and somewithout), and then sometimes into furthersub-sub-parts. This is confusing for the reader.Two whole sections of the first part arededicated to excerpts from ‘civic republican’ and‘liberal’ political theorists, such as Aristotle,Rousseau, Locke, Marshall, and Arendt. Theseare very short excerpts that are already wellsummarized in the introduction, are readilyavailable to students in many other venues, arenot in any way anthropological, and in factundermine Lazar’s stated intention to‘counteract assumptions in both popular andscholarly thought in the West that equate liberalcitizenship with citizenship’ (p. 26). It is not untilsection 1.3 (‘Constructing an anthropology ofcitizenship’) that we actually read anything byanthropologists themselves (Rosaldo, Holston,Ong). This section could easily have started thevolume and perhaps have been bolstered bysome other foundational texts in the subfield,perhaps those that expressly engage with the‘citizenship regime’ framework that Lazaroutlines in her introduction.

The remainder of the volume has someengaging pieces, including ethnographicexplorations of gendered entrepreneurialcitizenship in Bolivia (Lazar), biologicalcitizenship post-Chernobyl (Petryna),therapeutic citizenship within health-carefacilities (Nguyen), beauty pageants as sites ofdiasporic citizenship production (Siu),transborder citizenship (Glick-Schiller),citizenship among refugee populations in Gaza(Feldman), rural-to-urban migrant belonging inChina (Solinger), and Turks in Germany(Mandel), among others. These are, however,haphazardly organized and not uniform inlength. Some are longer ethnographic pieceswhile others number just a couple of pages. Inaddition, the categories of citizenship I foundmissing from the introduction are also notrepresented in the contributions, except for asmall section on non-migrants. None the less,Lazar should be commended for her impressive

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introduction to the volume, which is in itself avaluable introduction to the anthropology ofcitizenship.

Neha Vora Lafayette College

Religion, ritual, and violence

Bowman, Glenn (ed.). Sharing the sacra: thepolitics and pragmatics of inter-communalrelations around holy places. viii, 185 pp., figs,tables, illus., bibliogrs. Oxford, New York:Berghahn Books, 2012. £46.00 (cloth)

Sharing the sacra is a collection of essaysfocusing on inter-religious relations around holyplaces. The reader is taken to a range of sacredspaces and events – including monasteries,mosques, synagogues, Marian sanctuaries,funerals, ancestral altars, processions, and WorldMusic festivals – which are mutually shared bydistinct religious groups and congregations,without leading to conflict and violence.

The book critically addresses Ron Hassner’sargument that sacred places cannot be sharedand, more specifically, Robert Hayden’s thesisabout the antagonistic and conflictual nature ofshared religious sites. For Hayden, the sharing ofreligious spaces inevitably leads to conflicts andthe consequent expulsion of one of the religiousgroups. Religious spaces, so the argument goes,are first and foremost spaces of violence andexclusion, or, in Hayden’s own words,‘antagonistic tolerance’ and ‘competition’.

Using ethnographic and historicalapproaches, the chapters in this book show that,contrary to Hayden’s argument, religious spacesare frequently peacefully shared by differentreligious groups. The authors do not deny theexistence of conflicts in such spaces, but arguethat these are far from the whole picture. Bycontrast to Hayden’s essentializing approach toreligious groups and identities, the bookhighlights the processual nature of religiousidentities. Being Muslim or Hindu in Punjab, forinstance, implies a dialectical relation betweenboth, frequently through the sharing of thesame religious spaces. Several texts in this bookvividly show how religious forms of belongingare mutually produced in inter-religious spacesof ritual and daily interaction, while not denyingthe existence of distinct social fields and spacesof interaction between religious groups (see thechapter by Adam Chau).

Sharing the sacra also reveals how thesecontexts are frequently accompanied by the

creation of common ritual grammars, languages,and discursive formations (see the chapters byAnna Bigelow, Rohan Bastin, and WillTuladhar-Douglas). Thus the chapters illustratehow religious forms of belonging may besupplanted and transcended by other forms ofcollective identity and ethical reasoning. Theseare not only produced from below, by believers,but also imposed from above, for example bystate officials and tourism agencies (see thechapters by Aomor Boum and DoraCarpenter-Latiri). In this last case, it becomesclear how inter-religious discourses and agendasare themselves part and parcel of state projectsfor economic development based on heritagemaking.

Finally, the book highlights the importance ofa historical analysis. Several authors lookdiachronically at the shifting relationshipbetween conflict (expulsion, destruction, etc.)and peace (see, e.g., the chapter by DionigiAlbera). Thus Hayden’s teleological argumentthat shared religious spaces always end up inconflict is disproved. Sharing the sacra is essentialreading. By showing how and in which contextspeople create forms of belonging and imaginedcommunities beyond religious divides, itdeconstructs and disturbs the rhetorics of theclash of civilizations, with its ‘identitary frames ofreference’ (Bowman, p. 2). The volume alsoconstitutes an important challenge toanthropologists’ own complicity in theperpetuation of purified notions of religious andnational identities. Furthermore, it reveals howinter-faith and inter-religious discursiveformations are produced – in contexts ofnostalgia, religiosity, tourism, citizenship, publicspace, among others – by believers, stateofficials, and transnational institutions. Thus thevolume provides important theoretical andmethodological tools for an anthropology ofinter-religious relations.

José Mapril New University of Lisbon/Centrefor Research in Anthropology

Derges, Jane. Ritual and recovery in post-conflictSri Lanka. xvi, 213 pp., illus., bibliogr. London,New York: Routledge, 2013. £85.00 (cloth)

Ritual and recovery in post-conflict Sri Lanka is abook about the discourses that inflame war,about the social transformations warsprecipitate, and about ways of living throughand sometimes transcending the brutalizationinflicted by war’s random violence. Throughout,Jane Derges draws our attention to theshattering of language and the protective

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silences that result from war, as she challengeswell-intentioned international relief agencies topay closer attention to the gaps between theirassumptions and the healing practices of thelocal areas in which they work, and calls ontheorists to rethink the complex relationshipbetween suffering, resilience, and healing. Theresult is a dense, thought-provoking book.

The ‘post-conflict’ in the book’s titleimmediately alerts the reader to the gapbetween words and experience. The Tamilcommunity Derges lived with in northern SriLanka was only momentarily ‘post-conflict’. Herfieldwork took place during a crumblingceasefire (2002-6) that created a pause betweenthe first two decades of fighting and the third,which members of the community prescientlyfeared as the impending ‘final battle’. In 2009,that battle cost tens of thousands of lives and, asof this writing, ended the fight for the division ofSri Lanka, leaving the mostly Hindu, Tamil northheavily occupied by the mostly Buddhist, mostlySinhalese, mostly southern Sri Lankan army.

The first section of the book situates the workboth geographically and in terms of the issuesthat drove the inter-ethnic, intra-ethnic, andpolitical violence. In the second section, Dergesdraws our attention to the personal and socialdislocations and transformations war imposes ondaily life: deaths, disappearances, land-mines,artillery fire, check-points, imprisonments,torture, brutal evictions and displacements,changes in the roles of children, women, andmen, and changes in family structure and socialorganization as men go off to war or are killed,neighbourhoods are destroyed, and the middleclasses flee abroad. She traces the small andgreat humiliations of war, the shared losses andsuffering that equalize former differences withinthe community. The older members of thefamilies Derges lived with have seen their worldtorn apart; the younger members have grownup in a world framed by violence, with nomemory of any other possible world. The figuresof 75,000 people killed and 1.2 million displacedare but the start of the story.

In this context, silence not only becomes asign of inexpressible experience, but is alsoinstrumental for survival since victims now liveas neighbours of their aggressors. Amongst thepeople Derges knew, hope for the future lay notin talking about the past, but in working in thepresent to rebuild from the ruins.

Therapeutic practices brought to the regionfrom the outside run counter to this focus onthe present, Derges points out. The diagnosisand treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder

are in conflict with local approaches to healingin several other ways as well, she notes. First,they focus on individuals, while the localexperience is of collective violence and collectivesuffering. Second, they are disease-orientated,assuming an individual is a ‘victim’ with a‘disorder’ to be healed, obfuscating what Dergescalls the disorder of the political system that sentsoldiers into war. Derges understandsnightmares and an inability to focus asreasonable responses to overwhelming violence.Third, focusing on the trauma obscures a fullerunderstanding of the experience: trauma, yes,but also comradeship, resilience, andcohesiveness.

Derges calls on internationals to respect localways of transcending the violence, whichinclude music, theatre, spirit guides, and rituals.In the third part of her book she focuses onThuukavaadi, a ritual in which, after fasting andmaking offerings, practitioners are suspended inthe air by hooks attached through the flesh oftheir backs and legs. It is an act of thanksgivingand of propitiation for protection, undertakenboth for the individual and for the community,with parallels in the practices of Native Americannations, and even, though not surprisingly witha more individualistic focus, in theEuro-American west (see W. Marshall, ‘Thetherapeutic experience of being suspended byyour skin’, The Atlantic, 21 September 2012).Devotees report not pain but peace, serenity,and release from suffering.

This is a difficult book to read, on two levels:editing and content. It could have benefitedfrom more careful editing to avoid repetition, toexplain phrases unfamiliar to the non-specialist,and to complete the promising beginnings ofthe glossary and the list of acronyms, fromwhich key terms are missing. The difficulty of itscontent is that it is inescapably heart-breaking,for this is a thought-provoking reflection on war.

Diane Niblack Fox College of Holy Cross

Roberts, Allen F. A dance of assassins:performing early colonial hegemony in theCongo. x, 311 pp., map, illus., bibliogr.Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2013.£19.99 (paper)

The first words of this volume set its theme:‘This book is about a beheading. The eventoccurred in December 1884 and has beenarticulated ever since through competingCongolese and Belgian histories attuned toparticular audiences and political goals’ (p. 1).

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This confrontation is embodied by Émile Storms,a Belgian colonial agent and administrator, andhis victim, Lusinga, a chief of the Tabwa peoplesettled on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika.Near the end of this work, the authorsummarizes its organization and arguments:

This book has been divided in two. Thefirst five chapters present competing yetimbricated histories of two hugelyambitious men: one Congolese, the otherBelgian. As the protagonists engaged in adeadly pas de deux, they mirrored eachother in ways that neither could havefathomed nor would have admitted if hedid. Both men aspired to far greaterglories than either attained, and one tookthe head of the other. A second section[also five chapters] traces what happenedto the skull and other soulful parts of theAfrican once they were exiled to Europeand the Belgian incorporated them intohis phantasmagorias, along with whatmight have happened had they remainedin the Congo. The protagonist’ mimesisset the scene for colonial hegemony soonto be imposed in the 1880s and forattitudes still with us all these years later,yet the madness of encounter is assignificant as any so evident outcome(p. 229).

This second part of the quote epitomizes theauthor’s peculiar style of writing, his murkysyntax and strange diction, and his occasionalindulgence in weakly supported suppositions.

Notwithstanding these reservations, Ienjoyed this book. Its content and approachare reflected in its cover and title. The covershows a watercolour of Storms in whiteuniform, black boots, and red cummerbundand fez striking a dramatic pose with his gunin hand. This is juxtaposed next to aceremonial wooden statue by a Congolesecarver for Lusinga’s eventual veneration as animportant chiefly ancestor. Both are nowobjects in the Royal Central African Museum inTervuren and alienated from their originalsignificances. The book’s title refers to the ritualsongs and dances performed by Storms’ Africanmercenaries before they decapitated Lusinga,looted and destroyed his headquarters, andmurdered, raped, and enslaved his followers. Itcombines orderly African customs and ritualswith the disorder and violence they weremeant to accompany, and this in turn is aviolence and disorder employed to achieve a

supposedly greater order of colonial oppressionand exploitation.

Roberts’ most interesting accounts analysethe traditional symbolic meanings of suchCongolese songs, dances, and material cultureand indicate how these related to ideas aboutviolence and power as well as to Congolese andEuropean notions about decapitation anddismemberment. I am less persuaded byRoberts’ views of Tabwa murder of kin at thefunerals of chiefs. His comments here andelsewhere about the need for cultural relativismin analysing customs are undermined by his useof terms such as ‘grotesque’, ‘madness’, and‘phantasmagorias’ when describing Congoleseand Belgian behaviour. The Congo is one of thegreat tragic sectors of world history. Belgiancolonialism was probably the most odious andcruel in all of Africa, facts Belgians still rarelyacknowledge. Even in the postcolonial era theCongo remains a scene of terrible humanbehaviour. Cultural relativism seems a shakyissue at such times.

Roberts and his first and second wives havecontributed greatly to the understanding of thepeoples of the eastern Congo, particularly theTabwe and related Kuba. His decades offamiliarity with this area richly inform thisvolume. Yet I wish he had provided broaderethnographic background here so readers couldbetter grasp and evaluate his analyses. This is anambitious work requiring more informationabout nineteenth-century Belgium than Robertsprovides if we are to comprehend Storms andthe changing significances the Congo held inBelgians’ views of themselves. Despite mycriticisms, however, I recommend this volume.Its broader themes conjure up a bitter anddramatic sense of the colonial past, stillcontested and poorly understood by bothBelgians and Congolese. It imaginatively showshow much may be learned by examining thecolonial record from a combination of Africanand European (and other) points of view. It alsosuggests how material culture may teach us tofashion new analyses.

T.O. Beidelman New York University

Vokes, Richard. Ghosts of Kanungu: fertility,secrecy and exchange in the Great Lakes of EastAfrica. xvi, 240 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr.Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer;James Currey, 2009. £55.00 (cloth)

This study considers a Roman Catholic radicalreligious movement among the Kiga in themountainous region of southwestern Uganda

Book reviews242


near the border with Rwanda. On the morningof Friday, 17 March 2000, a building at Kanungu,a settlement of the religious Movement of theRestoration for the Ten Commandments (MRTC),burned down. The bodies of over 400 memberswere found inside. Several days later over 200

more bodies were discovered buried nearby. Theevidence (much carelessly treated forensically)led police to declare them suicides and/orpossibly murdered cult adherents who believedthe millennial end of the world was at hand.There had been few reports by outsiders thatthis increasingly secretive group was inclined toviolence, so many were perplexed and troubledby what occurred. The large number of deathsdrew international attention, so this became aquestion of the international image of Ugandaitself. The author arrived on the scene shortlyafter these deaths and abandoned his previousplans for fieldwork in order to investigate theseevents. He spent over twenty-six monthsresearching them between 2000 and 2005. Hecalls his study ‘an historical ethnography’ of theMRTC. It resembles an investigative journalisticaccount of a major murder mystery and is basedon extended interviews, site observations, andexamination of those records that werepublished or otherwise accessible. This materialis often inconsistent and uneven, and muchseems withheld by those involved, especiallythose with power and authority.

The book is divided into nine sections. Aprologue describes how and why the author firstbecame interested in these mass deaths. Chapter1 provides introductory historical andethnographic background on the area. Chapter 2

describes traditional Kiga beliefs about how thefertility of humans, livestock, and crops may bejeopardized by malevolent kin and neighbours.These may be countered or redressed byconfessions, payments, and reforming humanconduct and are adjudged by spirit mediums(usually women) and the men associated withthem. Such ritual practices flourish in times ofcrisis and provide powerful social networks forthe distribution of goods and influence byresourceful and ambitious Kiga. Chapter 3

provides detailed accounts of the changinginfluences of this anti-misfortune cult centred on

a female spirit named Nyambingi which Britishcolonialists considered subversive. (Monographsby Freedman and Rutanga and many articles byothers provide rich data on Nyambingi and theMRTC. Monographs by Edel and Ngologozaprovide general Kiga ethnographies.) Chapter 4

describes how Roman Catholic missionaries tiedNyambingi to aspects of the Legion of Mary,thereby increasing conversions. After the localchurch was taken over by Kiga and theirneighbours, such beliefs became even moretraditionally African. Chapters 5 and 6 providedetails on recent crises that led this cult toflourish – droughts and famines, the disruptiveincursions of alien refugees, outbreaks of malariaowing to global warming, and a catastrophicHIV/AIDS epidemic. Detailed case studiesunderscore these ills. Chapter 6 also describesmore about how the Legion of Mary mergedwith the cult of Nyambingi. Chapter 7 describesthe final, radical forms this movement took,dominated by a female prophet and with manywomen followers. A brief epilogue providessome account and analysis of the effects themass deaths had on contemporary local society.

Despite reading much data, mainly personalnarratives of former members and theirneighbours and kin, I finished the book unclearabout what had occurred and why. I wonderedhow women fitted into Kiga beliefs and values aswell as Kiga social organization. Why was somuch violence directed against women? Whywere women the main voices of protest? Wasthis part of traditional belief, or did it reflectchanging ideas and a disintegration of traditionalkinship bonds? Nowhere did I find a meaningfulanalysis of how power and authority work inKiga kinship. Did this fit local Catholic viewsabout women? Did this relate to currentgovernment and economic policies? Uganda is acorrupt police state, so addressing suchquestions is difficult and dangerous, especially ifone wants to continue working there. It is alsodangerous for informants. If an author writes amurder mystery, he or she should expect thereader to want more answers than thisprovocative book provides.

T.O. Beidelman New York University

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