Van Wolputte, S. (2010). Review: COLLINS, S. All tomorrow's cultures. Anthropological engagement...

Reviews

Burawoy, Michael. 2009. The extended casemethod: Four countries, four decades, fourgreat transformations. Berkeley: Universityof California Press. xviii + 338 pp. Pb.:$21.95. ISBN: 978 0 520 25901 0.

This extended case method, championed byleading anthropologists such as MaxGluckman, Victor Turner, Bill Epstein andJaap van Velsen, has a long and very fruitfulhistory within social and culturalanthropology. This excellent volume byMichael Burawoy, a sociology professor at theUniversity of California, systematises,codifies and extends this method. Based onstudies that he and his students carried out,and squarely founded in a nuanced Marxistanalysis, Burawoy deals with the interlockingrelations between ethnographic detail and thebroad macro transformations that the pastcentury has witnessed. The case method, asBurawoy explains, should not be identifiedwith the ethnographic method since it isessentially a method for thinking about therelationship between theory and empiricalwork. As such it can (and Burawoy providesextended examples) be broadened tomacro-historical sociology to great benefit.The volume, then, is devoted to explaining thetheory and practice of this method. The text isa delight to read with the right mix ofpersonal reflection, methodological analysis,wonderful insights and a good dose of (oftenself-inflicted) humour.

The text that Burawoy has writtenfollows his own academic biography spanningfactories and mines in four countries: Zambia,the United States, Hungary and Russia. Moreimportantly, he focuses on themicro-processes underlying and closelyforming the expression of the four greattransformations of the previous century:decolonisation, the transition to organised

capitalism, the Soviet transition to socialismand the transition from socialism tocapitalism. While the text is squarely based onhis own experience of research, Burawoy doesnot devolve into self-analysis. Rather heallows us to accompany him in a gradualunfolding of ever more complexmethodological development.

Thus each of the four main chapters ofthe book (encased within a very usefulintroduction and conclusion) focuses on oneof these great transformations and disclosesdistinct aspects of the extended case method.In the introduction, Burawoy describes thebeginnings of the extended case method. Thenext chapter develops a formal framework ofthe method through an analysis ofpostcolonial Zambia. He uses this case todevelop two models of social science he termspositive and reflexive. The third chapter isdevoted to an ethnographic revisit at the sameChicago factory that Donald Roy studiedthirty years earlier. He uses this chapter toexplore what an ethnographic revisit impliesfor theoretical development. The fourthchapter traces the move from ethnography tocomparative history by comparing themethods by which Trotsky and Skocpolanalysed revolutions and showing how thetwo models of science are related tocomparative sociology. The fifth chapter turnsto the transition back from socialism tocapitalism in Russia and Hungary. Theconclusion takes a good hard look at theadvantages and disadvantages of the method.An epilogue contains a superb exposition ofthe unique character of public ethnography;of the place ethnographers can take in publicdiscussions of social trends and problems.

While anthropologists may feel lessapologetic about using the case method it isworthwhile for readers of this journal tofollow Burawoy’s answer to the following

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale (2010) 18, 4 471–506. C© 2010 European Association of Social Anthropologists. 471doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.2010.00133.x

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question: how can a single ethnographerworking in a single site illuminatemacro-processes such as the move fromsocialism to capitalism. In his complex answerBurawoy brilliantly shows that an answer tothis question involves four processes: theextension of the participant-observer into thelives of those he or she studies, the extensionof observations over time and space, linkingmicro to macro processes and finally (andmost important) the extension of theory. Hisanalysis offers a careful argument concerningthe often romantic notions of anthropologistsgoing out into the field tabula rasa. AsBurawoy convincingly shows, we need to gointo any field already with theories in mindbut that the more reflective we are aboutthem, the more the research will be valuable.

To conclude, this is a superb volume thatshould be read by all anthropologists for itsinsights and sophistication and clearexposition of a key method that characterisesour discipline.

EYAL BEN-ARIThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)

Collins, Samuel. 2008. All tomorrow’scultures. Anthropological engagement withthe future. ix + 140 pp. Oxford: BerghahnBooks. Hb.: $29.95/£16.50. ISBN: 978 184545 408 1.

The point of departure of Samuel Collins’ AllTomorrow’s Cultures is that anthropology,from its early beginnings until the present,always had a particular involvement withtime. Often described as the science of theOther, these Other ‘tribes’, ‘primitives’, or‘traditions’ usually were imagined asbelonging to the past: visiting remote andexotic places was (sometimes still is) travellingback in time. Yet, by focusing on the Other,anthropology was (is) basically about the Self.‘Looking back’ in time boils down to,basically, looking ahead in the future, at leastas long as one is convinced there is oneparticular, singular, future and a straight pathfrom what used to be to what is becoming.

At stake in this small but challengingbook is the role of the future in the history ofanthropology, and, in line with this, to whatextent each contemporary anthropology alsois an anthropology of what may be inwhatever comes out of the present. To answerthis question, the author follows two relatedtracks. A first one concerns the relationshipbetween (implicit and explicit) visions of thefuture and the anthropologist’s politicalagenda; a second one concerns therelationship between anthropology and(science) fiction. Indeed, both anthropologyand science fiction use representations of animagined Otherness (whether Trobrianders oraliens), in which the Other is not onlycharacterised by a distance in space, but alsodistant in time. In fact, such an imaginaryOtherness is a founding feature of bothgenres: it is elementary in imagining the Self,and lays bare some of the basic assumptions(regarding, for instance, culture, humanity,the universe) that underpin monographs andnovels.

The future is not linear and objective, butcultural and heterogeneous. This is the mainidea that is elaborated in the first two chaptersand that returns throughout the book atregular intervals. From this ‘quantum thread’(p. 22), which is a theme in many a novel,Collins draws his inspiration to scrutiniseearly anthropologists (such as Boas and Tylor)for their scientific and moral conception ofthe future. The future, however, emerges as aparticular concern for the next generation ofanthropologists (such as Margaret Mead),whose experience in war-torn northernAmerica inspired their technocratic ambitionto engineer a post-war society, even if theyrealised that ideas on the future are alwaysembedded in present conditions.

The author then moves to explore thework of Chad Oliver in Chapter 3. Oliver’sfiction was clearly inspired by his academicendeavour (and the other way around). Onthe one hand, Oliver’s fiction drewextensively from his work with NativeAmericans in Texas. Also, his protagoniststake on the role of a future ethnographer. Onthe other hand, aliens fulfil the role of the

C© 2010 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

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imagined Other. Here (and in the work ofother novelists explored in Chapter 4), fictioncomes to the fore as cultural critique, exposingthe assumptions (for instance) anthropologistsshare with regard to culture and development.Also, the ‘fantastic topographies’ (p. 61) ofexoplanets evoke different constellations ofpower, opening up unexplored spaces ofidentity, freedom and power. Collins takes upthis point in his discussion of the relationshipbetween anthropology and futurology, inChapter 5. Cultural alterity, in turn, maystimulate the ethnological imagination: likefieldwork, it allows for (quite literally) analienation of the self – to make the strange andfamiliar interpenetrate.

This interpretation is further elaboratedin the final chapter and in the conclusion ofAll Tomorrow’s Cultures. At least partially,the ethnographer’s claim to expertise (henceauthority) is no longer vested in the ‘savageslot’, but in imagining future developments.As such, however, anthropology criticises ahegemonic view on the future that portrays itas utterly familiar and predictable. Time,however, is not neutral; hence the authormakes a plea not for an anthropology of thefuture, but an anthropology for the future,one that takes into account the manyvirtualities of the present.

This brief overview does not do justice tothe sophisticated (unfortunately, sometimesalso opaque) arguments Samuel Collins buildsup in All Tomorrow’s Cultures (to get a grasp,visit the author’s blog at http://tomorrowculture.blogspot.com/). In thatsense, this book suffers somewhat under itsauthor’s ambitions. Still, All Tomorrow’sCultures offers a complex, erudite, eclectic,and passionate discussion of the possibilitiesof the future in anthropology.

STEVEN VAN WOLPUTTEKatholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)

Dilger, Hansjorg and Bernhard Hadolt(eds.). 2010. Medizin im Kontext. Krankheitund Gesundheit in einer vernetzten Welt.

Frankfurt am Main: Peter LangInternationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.447 pp. Pb.: €65.30. ISBN: 978 3 63157839 1.

The intersection of global processes with localdifferences bring into focus the ways in whichmedical knowledge and practice isconstructed, changed, and adapted for variouspolitical ends. The contributors to this editedvolume examine in twenty-one chapters thecomplex relationship between medicine andcontext by focusing on how medical conceptsand technologies are transferred acrossregional, cultural and social boundaries; howpatients and medical practitioners challengethe concept of ‘closed’ medical systemsthrough migration, flight, and medicaltourism; how communities attempt toestablish social security and financehealthcare; and, finally, how global, national,and communal medical resources are shifteddue to the dismantling of public medicalservices. The ethnographic studies werecarried out between 2000 and 2007 andconsisted of consulting medical archives andassessing the literature available, interviewingindividuals, conducting focus groups, andparticipant observation of medical practices incontexts as diverse as South Africa, Tanzania,Mali, Burkina Faso, India, Ecuador, Austriaand Germany.

Part One analyses the ways in which newmedical technologies and practices such asreproductive technologies, plastic surgery,and vaccination are imagined, adapted, andtransformed differently depending on therespective cultural, moral, and politicalcontexts. For instance, Muller-Rockstrohexplores the transfer of ultrasound from amanufacturing company in the Netherlandsto the users in Tanzania. It becomes apparenthow the different meanings attached toultrasound are negotiated between the Dutchtrainers and the various user groups in Africabased on the different perceptions of the bodyand conceptions of cultural and moral valuesin relation to pregnancy and foetuses. Fromanother perspective, Hadolt and Horbstcompare contexts, usages and problems


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related to Assisted Reproductive Technologies(ART) in Mali and Austria. They illustratethat depending on the reproductive goals andfamily planning, ART takes on differentmeanings and can only be understood in thecontext of local law, morals, and ethics.

Section Two explores questions related tothe discourses and the impact of migrationand mobility on health systems in variouscultural contexts. The authors highlightintersubjective qualities and theircontribution to shaping people’s relationshipto and knowledge of human biology andmedical practice. For instance, Kotte skilfullyanalyses how childbed experiences of Chinesemigrants influence the healthcare practices ofGerman doctors and nurses. She points outthat in order to accommodate diverse culturalunderstandings of childbirth, practitionersshould not only be trained in culturalcompetence, but also to understand that theirown approaches to care are culturallyconstructed and, therefore, open tocontestation.

Part Three outlines the strategicapplication of traditional medicine and itsimplications for local medical practice,knowledge transfer, and identity politics inthe context of globalisation. The interactionand cooperation among different medicaltraditions has increased since WHO’scommitment to ‘traditional medicine’.However, the authors note critically thatwhile the initiative of WHO to respect andintegrate indigenous medical knowledge andpractice into the wider healthcare system islaudable, it raises questions with regard toownership, control, standardisation, andhomogenisation. Zenker illustrates this byreferring to the consequences of WHO’ssupport of the South African ‘TraditionalHealth Practitioners Act’. The Act requiresindigenous healers to adapt their practices tobiomedical standards and freed up funding forlaboratories for testing medical plants fortheir efficacy. Although this is propagated as‘knowledge exchange’, most healers are awarethat the state and the international communityappropriate their expert knowledge withoutmaking them shareholders in it.

Part Four outlines the development andthe impact of mutual health organisations. Inorder to enable access to health insurance forthe general population, community-basedhealth insurance systems are currentlyestablished worldwide. The authors point outthat the often self-organised mutual healthorganisations are accepted differently by thepopulation of the respective countries.Schulze describes the concept of healthinsurance as new mode of security forhouseholds in two villages in Mali. His resultsshow that the composition of householdnetworks of power and solidarity, and lifestyleinfluence families to either invest in healthinsurance or resort to family-based forms ofsecurity. On the other hand, Wlaadarschexplores the relationship of health insuranceand the concept of time particular to differentgenerations in Burkina Faso. She discoveredthat people discerned three types of futures,not all of which call for insurance as eventsappear to be more or less predictable.

Part Five discusses the new opportunitiesfor and risks to health and health care in thecontext of urbanisation and globalisation. Forinstance, Obrist discusses in detail howmedical anthropology can contribute toresearch on vulnerability and health risks inan urban context. Drawing on examples fromAbidjan, she analyses different approachesfrom the discourses on public-health anddevelopment which focus on the transfer ofknowledge and technology, on the one hand,and social and cultural theories whichemphasise the scope of action of individualactors and groups, on the other hand. Theauthor points out that although moreintervention is desirable, more attention needsto be paid to local initiatives which might bemore sustainable in the long-run.

The volume concludes with an outlookprovided by Hauschild, who critically reflectson the successes, failures, and potential ofGerman ethnomedicine and medicalanthropology. According to him,ethnomedicine, founded as a discipline in the1970s, was bound to fail due to the fact thatscholars did not perceive themselves as part ofan international whole but rather as


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self-reflecting free-riders who profit fromdevelopments in related fields. Not until the1990s did medical anthropologists availthemselves of the opportunity to work asrespected partners on interdisciplinaryresearch projects and in cooperation withdevelopment organisations and, at the sametime, preserve a critical lens through whichinequality, poverty, hegemony, and hierarchyare examined and challenged. Emanating fromthese developments, Hauschild calls for anadvancement in long-term interdisciplinaryresearch in order to better understand thecomplex interrelations of body politics in anera of increasing globalisation.

The well-researched, thoroughlyanalysed, and eloquently writtenethnographic contributions of this book aremilestones in German medical anthropologyin that they bridge the gap between the oldand new mandates of ethnomedicine andmedical anthropology, emphasise theimportance of cross-cultural andinterdisciplinary collaboration, and point toopportunities for further research and criticalanalysis.

HANNA KIENZLERMcGill University (Canada)

Edwards, Jeanette and Carles Salazar(eds.). 2009. European kinship in the ageof biotechnology. New York and Oxford:Berghahn Books. 224 pp. Hb.:$90.00/£55.00. ISBN: 978 1 84545573 6.

Bamford, Sandra and James Leach (eds.).2009. Kinship and beyond. The genealogicalmodel reconsidered. New York and Oxford:Berghahn Books. 292 pp. Hb.: £45.00.ISBN: 978 1 84545 422 7.

Although they are quite different, each ofthese books is fascinating in its own way.While European Kinship in the Age ofBiotechnology explores kinship conceptionsin relation to public information on geneticstoday, Kinship and Beyond discusses theeffects the genealogical model continues to

have on thinking in anthropology and otherareas. Both books are strong in theory andfieldwork and make important advances inthe anthropology of kinship.

European Kinship in the Age ofBiotechnology is a welcome contribution toresearch on how people in Europe todayunderstand what being family means and onhow kinship thinking responds to advances inbiotechnology.

As Edwards explains in the Introduction,this research is part of the project ‘PublicUnderstanding of Genetics’ (PUG) that seeksto understand the interactions between howpeople think about and ‘do’ or ‘make’ kinshipand the information they receive aboutgenetics. Edwards reviews the literature onEuropean kinship from Schneider forward,summarises each author’s contribution, andprovides thought-provoking reflections onthe ‘sticking points: the points from which we(as analysts) found it difficult to dislodgeourselves’ (p. 2) that the authors encountered.

One of the book’s highlights is that it istruly a collaborative effort. Not only doeseach article review pertinent authors andtheories, describe the research carried out, andpresent a theory-based analysis of thisresearch, but each article is an open dialoguewith the others, enabling the authors to taketheir work a few steps further than each mighthave done individually.

Certain questions permeate this work: (1)Who is kin and who is not, and why?; (2)How is kinship made or done?; and (3) Howcan we study kinship? The authors seek thefringes and frontiers of kinship, following thestrategy that looking at the most ‘foreign’ orleast mainstream examples, where kinship is,as it were, under stress, will clarify itselements.

Several chapters deal with familiesformed in ‘alternative’ ways with respect towhat Europeans have generally consideredthe ‘natural’ form, that is, a heterosexualcouple producing their own offspring. Theysuggest the usefulness of studying familiesformed by means of assisted reproductivetechnologies (ARTs), adoption, and fosteringtogether – not because they are the same, but


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because they are all ways of creating kinshipin atypical circumstances.

Bestard (Chapter 1) uses hisethnographic work in Spain to show that wecan only understand the meaning people giveto genetic material by looking at its positionin ‘the production of social relationships’(p. 28). Working in Lithuania, Cepaitiene(Chapter 2) reveals local thinking regardingthe difference between (nuclear) family andkin through people’s discourse on ARTs.Catalan adoptive families’ construction ofkinship based on physical resemblance isanalysed by Marre and Bestard (Chapter 4).Working with homoparental families, Cadoret(Chapter 5) explains how human institutionscreate kinship. Norwegian laws on adoptionand assisted conception, which today view thechild as an ‘individual in its own right,irrespective of the relationships it embodies’(p. 149), allow Melhuus and Howell(Chapter 9) to posit the ‘naturalization’ of‘unnatural’ forms of procreation.

Other articles discuss diverse aspects ofgenetics and kinship. By studying people’sreactions to genetically modified foods,Degnen (Chapter 3) offers insights intoparents’ responsibility for making people bynourishing their children. Manrique(Chapter 6) uses her research on shared bloodas the basis for kinship in a Spanish gypsycommunity to show that scientific knowledgeonly becomes meaningful when it isinterpreted according to local values. Sharedsubstance is also the focus of the article byPorqueres i Genes and Wilgaux (Chapter 7),who use the continuity of the ‘relationalperson’ (p. 115) in incest prohibitions toquestion any radical break with kinship in thepast or between Western and non-Westernkinship. Demeny contrasts the identity ofprofessional mothers in a Hungarian SOSChildren’s Village with motherhood in thebroader context, concluding that kinshipconsists of ‘a number of heterogeneouselements’ (p. 141) which can be variouslycombined. By analysing the reaction in GreatBritain to studies on the environmentalrepercussions of genetically modified crops,Campbell makes his case for opening up the

idea of kinship to all living beings in ourworld.

In the concluding chapter (Chapter 11),Salazar discusses the relationship betweendifferent kinds of knowledge, analysinggenetic (scientific/truth) knowledge andkinship (social/symbolic) knowledge asknowledge about human relations. He asks‘How is scientific knowledge going to betranslated into culturally meaningfulknowledge?’ (p. 183), concluding that kinshipstructures can use genetic knowledge to makekinship, while genes find a place in kinshipstructures, gaining symbolic meaning.

The articles collected in Kinship andBeyond address the genealogical model’scontinued influence not only in theanthropology of kinship but in many otherareas. As the editors explain, the differentchapters ‘show in various ways howgenealogical thinking permeates a range ofsocial institutions such as propertyinheritance, pedagogy, ethnicity, class andpolitics, not to mention how we conceptualizehuman ecology’ (p. 13). Although the authorsdeal with quite diverse subjects, they showthe sneaky way that the genealogical modelseems to always reappear in our thinking. Thearticles are exciting in their ideas and . . . fun!Each is a pleasant surprise, and together theytake a step forward in kinship studies.

The subject of the first article by Cassidy(Chapter 1) is the pedigrees of racehorses andof their breeders. By contrasting howBedouin and English horse breeders explaintheir animals’ pedigrees, the first by notwriting them and the second by writing them,she shows that there is no such thing as adisinterested genealogy; because they areclassifications, genealogies legitimisedifference.

Using documentary evidence recordingthe contestatory property claims of Luopeople under colonial administration inKenya, Holmes (Chapter 2) reveals colonialauthorities’ use of the segmentary lineagemodel to construct an administrativelymanageable version of Luo kinship based onpatrilineal consanguinity, thus delegitimisingother forms of kinship that were in use.


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Palsson (Chapter 3) highlights thecontradictions of a double-sided Icelandicbiogenetics project that uses genealogicalinformation to study hereditary disease (andmake money by developing treatments) andalso makes this information available forIcelanders to research their genealogies. Bothaspects raised new issues of property rightsover this genealogical information.Cunningham (Chapter 4) discusses twoexamples of the way genes become mobile,first, in imagery used to publicise research onthe human genome, and then in theaforementioned biogenetics project inIceland, where they move from the sphere ofsocial information to that of ‘biologicalcommerce’ (p. 134).

By considering the way people makekinship sense of news items about unusualsituations resulting from the newreproductive technologies, Edwards (Chapter5) studies how the objectification thatgenealogical knowledge carries out affects theway people understand kinship relationships,as well as how what people know about ‘thetrickiness of everyday relationships’ (p. 152)affects this objectification.

Bamford (Chapter 6) exploresrelatedness, based on being born from onewomb and on working the land, among theKamea in Papua-New Guinea, to show analternative to the Euro-American conceptionof species as absolutely separate and kinshipas a shared substance passed from generationto generation. Also using research inPapua-New Guinea regarding knowledge of aspecific physical space as fundamental tokinship, Leach (Chapter 7) criticises both thegenealogical model and the concept ofrelatedness, which fails to escape from theassumption that nature is the basis uponwhich culture works.

The limitations of classificatoryknowledge, the genealogical model, and theidea of the transportation of essences is thesubject of Ingold’s article (Chapter 8), inwhich he proposes storied knowledge,wayfaring, and meshwork as ways to thinkabout humans’ lives; he suggests that whatactually defines us as human is our ‘ability to

weave stories from the past into the texture ofpresent lives’ (p. 211).

Astuti (Chapter 9), analysing Vezokinship in Madagascar, gives an example of apeople who clearly distinguish betweenbiology and sociality in the transmission ofcharacteristics to offspring but who workhard to downplay consanguineal relationshipsand emphasise social ones; we need, then, toreconsider the common misconception thatthe biology/sociality distinction is specific toWestern thought, and therefore must not existin other contexts.

In the final chapter, Viveiros de Castro(Chapter 10) offers what he calls ‘ThreeNano-Essays’. In the first, he explainsAmazonian kinship as an issue not of howbodies are consanguineally related to eachother, but of how difference creates kinshipthrough the relationships that differencemakes necessary. The second ‘nano-essay’rejoins the study of magic and kinship,separated in the early days of anthropology,pointing out the error of assuming that thefirst is ‘mistaken physics’ (p. 251) and thesecond, mistaken biology or ‘primitive law’(p. 251). Finally, Viveiros de Castro outlinesfour kinship models, combining the twodimensions of consanguinity and affinity asgiven or constructed; according to the author,in Amazonian kinship, affinity is the givenwhile consanguinity is constructed.

I highly recommend both books foranyone interested in kinship studies.

NANCY ANNE KONVALINKAUniversidad Nacional de Educacion aDistancia, Madrid (Spain)

Geschiere, Peter, Birgit Meyer and PeterPels (eds.). 2008. Readings in modernity inAfrica. Oxford, Pretoria and Bloomington:James Currey, Unisa Press and IndianaUniversity Press. 226 pp. Pb.: $24.95.ISBN: 978 0 53 21996 1/978 0 85255898 0/978 1 86888 528 2.

What is at stake when we raise modernity as atheoretical and political issue? Why is


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debating this matter so crucial and persistentin African studies and political debates? Inthis volume, Geschiere, Meyers and Pels haveassembled a wide range of potential answersto these pervasive questions. The editors havebrought together different styles of texts that,though eclectic in appearance, share acommon ethnographic concern. Academicworks, political discourses, activistmanifestos, philosophical pieces, fragments ofa theatre play, photographs and paintings,along with various other kinds of texts, can beunderstood as ethnographic insofar as theyconstitute a reflexive take on a modernitythat, behind its juxtaposed layers, hidesnumerous and sometimes controversialapproaches capable of enriching the debate onwhat Marshall Sahlins might have called the‘Western Illusion’. Readings in Modernity inAfrica owes much of its coherence to theeditors’ skill in selecting and interweavingtexts that dialogue directly among themselves,and that in more subtle ways leave space forthe reader to reach her own conclusions. Thetheoretical and political harmony sought bythe authors can be felt especially in theintroductory chapter. In many of the shortresumes introducing each section of the book,the editors call the reader’s attention to themain aspects of each published text withoutany wish to exhaust the emerging debate.

In order to understand thetransformational character of modernity andhow anthropology itself has methodologicallyand theoretically experienced the shifts it hasinduced, the book is divided into two parts:Genealogies of Modernity in Africa andEthnographies of the Modern in Africa.Modernity (as a historically constructedconceptual approach) and The Modern (as anempirical phenomenon that continuallychanged over the last century) form acombined critique of the Western telos ofunilinear progress. The vast majority of thearticles included in the book attain therelational and reflexive ideal that inspired theoriginal project. Nation, state and democracywere built, established and came under threatduring and after independence processes inalmost all the countries under analysis.

Although the editors do not promote anexplicitly postcolonial perspective, theassembled articles primarily deal with socialexperiences of modernity in former coloniesof the British, French and Belgian Empires.Beyond the specific issues raised in eachchapter, almost all of the authors analyse thehistory and the role played by anthropologyin what modernity and modernization havemeant in countries like the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo, South Africa, SierraLeone, Madagascar and Ghana. As Pels arguesin his article on Luguru politics, what he calls‘administrative ethnography’ has played acrucial role in the invention of tradition(p. 59) and the emergence of unexpectedpolitical solutions. Despite their slightdivergences, various contributors, such asNtesebeza (p. 77), Appiah (p. 89), Mbembe(p. 110) and Niehaus (p. 165), share acommon perspective that links heterogeneousand usually binary conceptual perceptions ofmodernity to a transformation of theoreticalcategories over the course of a violent processof liberation and the construction of newpolitical landscapes. Although not directlyengaging with Nkrumah’s ‘philosophicalconsciencism’ (p. 87) or Nyerere’s ‘Ujamaa’(p. 54), many authors move beyond polardichotomies such as those opposing traditionto modernity, contesting these historicaldualisms as an unacceptable topos, a commonreduction of African socialities and theirpolitical and theoretical inventions to a merereaction to colonialism or globalisation.

Shifting beyond a master narrative on theinexorable changes brought by modernisationand the consequent destruction of anatemporal local livelihood, in the second partof the book we discover that Kinshasa, asdepicted by De Boeck, or Dakar, as describedby Simone, are analytically constructedneither as pasteurised urban landscapes inconflict with the rural hinterland, nor as abattlefield where alien knowledge erases anautochthonous past (p. 137 and p. 133). In thesame vein, looking beyond the obvious factthat modern elegant clothing points to earlierFrench colonisation in the Republic of theCongo, for the Sapeur quoted by Gandoulou,


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his taste and predilections are a ‘way ofexpressing oneself’ (p. 195), a self built as arole model, like the Evolues or the Feymendescribed by Ndjio (p. 205). In this sense,modernity – at least in these contexts – goesbeyond the colonial subjugation to foreignsettlers. As Senghor long ago stated, it impliesthe contemporary possibility of creativelyconstructing oneself as ‘not only anexpression of knowledge, but [as] knowledgeitself’ (p. 86). In a true tour de force, theeditors have achieved an impressive balance ofclassical arguments and contemporary debatesin order to demonstrate that modernity as atheme has pervaded diverse analytic domains,historical epochs and social spaces. Despitemissing some key authors (like Archie Mafejeor Mahmood Mamdani), the book is a seminalmap that invites the reader to pose furtherquestions. While the reader is initiallydelighted by the ‘relational understanding’advocated by the editors and the assembledarticles, other problems come to mind.Although a dimension merely insinuated byauthors such as Ferme or Ferguson, the readerfinishes the book eager for another volume onthe less respectable side of modernity, wherefear, war, and human and environmentaldestruction could be scrutinised. As Fergusonhimself would say, shadows are constitutiveparts of any global phenomena. Modernity isno exception.

ANTONADIA BORGESUniversity of Brasilia (Brasil)

Graburn, Nelson H.H., John Ertl and R. KenjiTierney (eds.). 2008. Multiculturalism inthe New Japan. Crossing the BoundariesWithin New York & Oxford: BerghahanBooks. 257pp. Hb.: $85.00./£50.00.ISBN: 978 1 84545 226 1.

Multiculturalism in the New Japan presenteune palette du changement social en cours auJapon a travers une approche de l’arene de lavisibilite sociale et politique des minorites. Unpremier volet de communications est consacreaux dynamiques d’integration/marginalisation

des communautes etrangeres et a leur visibiliteau sein des politiques nationales et desmunicipalites. Ainsi sont proposes la remiseen question du concept de « residents »(Takezawa, chap. I), la migration feminineindochinoise (Burgess, chap. III), lacriminalisation politique des nepalais(Yamanaka, chap. VIII), l’accueil scolaire desenfants etrangers (Okubo, chap. IX). Unecontradiction se dessine ainsi entre larepression du travail clandestin et lesstereotypes vehicules par l’administration etles nombreuses activites organisees en faveurdes communautes etrangeres avec le supportdes ONG et des syndicats locaux.

Le deuxieme volet touche a larepresentation de l’alterite dans laconstruction de l’identite nationale :l’alienation culturelle des Japonais-Bresiliens(Tsuda, chap. VI), le discours public surl’identite et l’appartenance par rapport a ladiaspora coreenne (Hester, chap. VII), lamemoire de la bombe atomique a Nagasaki(Nelson, chap. XI), la perception et larepresentation de la peau noire et dumetissage (Carter et Hunter, chap. X) et lamilitarisation et l’internationalisation dusumo (Tierney, chap. XII).

Le troisieme volet de l’ouvrage s’orientesur les politiques d’internationalisationeconomique (chapitres II, IV, V, XIII). Ainsi,l’on decrit les changements de larepresentation du travail et des hierarchies enentreprise (Hamada, chap. II), les politiquesdu tourisme et des echanges interculturels(Ertl, chap. IV), le « marriage market » issu dela mobilite transnationale feminine(Yamashita, chap. V) et l’internationalisationdes politiques culturelles (Graburn, chap.XIII).

Le caleidoscope de paysages sociauxproposes dans Multiculturalism in the NewJapan se structure par un fil rouge manifestedans toutes les contributions, a savoirl’interaction et le conflit entre les politiques dereconstruction et d’integration nationales etl’engagement citoyen « par le bas ». L’onreleve, ainsi, a la fois, la gestion symbolique etadministrative de la mobilite etrangere et lescontradictions du concept de « l’etranger »,


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soumis aux aleas des frontieres politiques etaux revers des parcours individuels.

Un deuxieme element de relief est lavariete des themes proposes et la myriade detrajectoires paralleles et transversales genereepar les micro-cosmes des minorites et lesmiroirs sociaux a travers lesquels celles-ci serecomposent suivant les rapports de force despolitiques nationales.

Ces qualites constituent aussi les limitesde l’ouvrage. Il n’est pas clair a quel public celivre s’adresse. Si l’interlocuteur etait le publicjaponais, l’on pourrait dire que le livre remplitsa tache en tant qu’outil de travail aussi bienpour le gouvernement central que pour lesacteurs locaux. Un public averti apprecieraegalement un apercu de la societecontemporaine japonaise et de l’evolution desrelations interculturelles USA-Japon.

S’il est destine aussi au milieuacademique (ceci est, sans doute, le cas),quelques remarques s’imposent. Dansl’introduction, Graburn et Ertl esquissentl’evolution du theme du multiculturalismedans l’anthropologie du Japon sansdevelopper, toutefois, aucune veritable miseen contexte par rapport au debatmethodologique qui accompagne l’enqueteanthropologique sur les migrationstransnationales (Lachenmann 2008).

Deuxiemement, l’on remarque unrecours trop frequent a l’approcheautobiographique et descriptive. Danscertaines contributions, celles-ci semblentconstituer les seuls centres d’interet desauteurs, au risque de glisser vers desaffirmations aussi nombrilistes quegeneriques. Tel est le cas, parmi d’autres, de lacontribution sur la « blackness » dans lechapitre de Mitzi Carter et Aina Hunter.

Troisiemement, l’on releve une confusionentre theorisation et conceptualisation. Lesdeveloppements « theoriques » annonces parcertains des auteurs en debut de chapitre, nesont, en realite, qu’une introductiondescriptive du sujet. Dans bien de cas, lestextes s’aplatissent dans une boulimie depistes prometteuses sans aboutissementsanalytiques. En revanche, des questionssignificatives telles, par exemple, les enjeux

politiques des concepts de tabunka kyosei(« plusieurs cultures vivant ensemble ») et detabunka-shugi (« multiculturalisme »),mentionnes dans l’introduction, ne sont pastheorisees.

Ces quelques remarques n’enlevent pasl’interet de ce livre et son effort louabled’eclairer des contextes sociaux peu connus.

ReferencesLachenmann, Gudrun. 2008. « Researching

Translocal Gendered Spaces: Methodolog-ical Challenges » in Gudrun Lachenmannand Petra Dannecker, Negotiating Develop-ment in Muslim Societies. Gendered Spacesand Translocal Connections, Lanham, MD:Lexington Books, pp. 13–34.

CRISTIANA PANELLAMusee royal de l’Afrique centrale(Tervuren, Belgique)

Gustafson, Bret. 2009. New languages ofthe state: Indigenous resurgence and thepolitics of knowledge in Bolivia. Durham:Duke University Press. 331 pp. Pb.:$23.95. ISBN: 978 0 8223 4546 6.

This book is an important contribution toscholarly research that seeks to move beyonddisciplinary boundaries, questiondichotomous relationships between agencyand structure, and discredit simplecharacterisations of neoliberalism as ‘bad’ andsocial movements as ‘good’. Bydemonstrating how the ‘bogeyman’ ofneoliberalism can offer even seeminglypowerless actors openings for criticalengagement and reconstruction of existingpower relationships (p. 150), the authorchallenges the overly critical approach toneoliberalism dominant in anthropology.The result of rich ethnographic fieldworkspanning over 14 years, the book reveals theintersection of Bolivian state policy and socialmovements by tracing the policy ofIntercultural Bilingual Education (EIB inSpanish) through multiple scales andethnographic sites. As the author recounts his


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work with the indigenous Guarani of Boliviathrough the 1980s to more recentdevelopments in Bolivian politics andeducational policy, the interests of state elites,social movements and transnational actors areshown to converge and shift across time.These changing articulations opened up anagentive space for the indigenous Guarani tocontest the colonial policies of the Bolivianstate. Knowledge becomes a central resourcein the struggle of the Guarani to walk amongthe Karai (non-Guarani mestizos, criollosand foreigners) and ‘speak without shame’(p. 219).

The book is divided into three parts, witheach part corresponding loosely to differentlevels of analysis and periods of engagementof the Guarani with bilingual educationpolicy. The first part, ‘Resurgent Knowledge’,moves between local Guarani communities,providing a historical context of colonialracial and economic subjugation. This sectionof the book recounts how the Guarani scribesand the Assembly of Guarani People (APG)organised, with the help of non-profitorganisations, to use bilingual education as aknowledge resource, contesting historicalexclusionary policies.

The second section of the book,‘Transnational Articulations’, moves tonational and international policy levels toexamine how as EIB became increasinglyformalised, it concurrently becameincreasingly disconnected from thelocally-based Guarani leadership, losing muchof its transformative potential. The largergeopolitical context placed pressure on elitesat the national level to embraceinterculturalism and still retain epistemicauthority and political control. The finalsection, ‘Return to Struggle’, places EIB in thecontext of growing contestation of neoliberalpolicy by both indigenous activists andteachers’ union. The book concludes with adiscussion of the potential and limitations ofEIB policy in the current political context.

This account of the Guarani’s struggleagainst the Bolivian state skilfully movesbetween multiple levels of analysis, rangingfrom discussions with local Guarani leaders to

state-level decision making and internationalpolitics. The chapters of the book areinterwoven with brief ‘interludes’, whichtrace the author’s movement from village tovillage and then on to the capital La Paz andback again. These interludes often offer arespite from a rich, but dense text andhighlight the concern of localpeople as they relate to the larger context.

The author is particularly careful toreveal his own biases towards neoliberalpolicy, describing how his initial criticalreactions to EIB policy were often dismissedor contextualised by Guarani people. ManyGuarani activists understood the limitationsof the policy, yet responded to the strategicopening EIB presented as embedded in alarger project of neoliberal decentralisation.Although Guarani knowledge wasdisembodied from its context in the formalschool setting, the Guarani students’ activeparticipation in and engagement with learningin schools seemed to result in a growingconfidence in Guarani children that couldhave important implications for the Guarani’sability to navigate Karai society.

While the book offers a nuancedperspective on how interculturalismchallenges existing categories and socialboundaries, it ultimately highlights thelimited potential of knowledge politics. Earlyin the book, the author criticises Charles Hale(2002) for failing to recognise thecontradictions in neoliberalism that renderspace for agency and contestation. Hale isexplicit about the need of cultural rightsmovements to address the structuralinequalities to avoid the pitfalls of ‘neoliberalmulticulturalism’ (Hale 2002: 487). Gustafsoncharacterises such arguments as failing torecognise how interculturalism unsettledtraditional notions of elite power throughepistemic transformation.

Yet, the final chapter of the bookqualifies much of the central argument aboutthe transformative potential of the politics ofknowledge by arguing that withoutaddressing deep structural inequalities,knowledge politics is unlikely tofundamentally change the status quo.


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Gustafson asserts that, ‘Rhetoric abouteducation as a way out of poverty in isolationfrom other state interventions forms part of amarket theodicy that only serves to legitimatethe existing social order’ (p. 280). I appreciatethe explicit return to how structuralinequalities mitigate the impact of policyalignments or articulations, but ending thebook on this note seems to discount much ofthe main argument about the way changes inthe epistemic authority can have a lastingimpact on power relations. The concludingchapter of the book seems to concur withHale’s characterisation of ‘multiculturalneoliberalism’, more than the author’s owncharacterisation of Hale’s argument wouldsuggest.

ReferenceHale, Charles. 2002. ‘Does multiculturalism men-

ace: Governance, cultural rights and thepolitics of identity in Guatemala’, Journalof Latin American Studies 34: 485–524.

TRISH GIBSONIndiana University (USA)

Gyarmati, Janos (ed.). 2008. ‘Taking themback to my homeland. . .’. Hungariancollectors – Non-European collections of theMuseum of Ethnography in a Europeancontext. Budapest: Museum ofEthnography. 381 pp. Hb.: N/A. ISBN: 978963 954 045 3.

The volume Taking Them Back to MyHomeland, edited by Janos Gyarmati,presents the results of a research projectentitled ‘The Non-European Collections ofthe Museum of Ethnography in a EuropeanContext’, a systematic study of the history ofthe various non-European collections of theMuseum of Ethnography in Budapest that hasbeen going on for the last decade. It is a sequelto a first volume published in 2000 inHungarian (Fejos 2000). The aim of theresearch has been to evaluate the Hungariancollections within a broader WesternEuropean context, examining collectionstrategies and musealisation in order to gain a

historical perspective of the specificcollections and to enable a comparativeanalysis.

In this detailed work, the history of eachmajor section of the museum (Africa,America, Asia-Indonesia, Oceania-Australia)is depicted, augmented by a wealth of writtenand pictorial documents from Hungarianarchives. An outline is given of the specialaspects and ‘history’ of each section andcollection, and the most important collectingstrategies are discussed. Additionally, famousexpeditions and collectors are introduced inindividual chapters, e.g. the Teleki expedition,the Oceania collections of Lajos Biro andRudolf Festetics, Benedek Barathosi Baloghs’work in Japan and the Armur River region,and Lajos Boglars’ Amazonian collections.Here, the scholarly background of theindividual collectors is described as well asany international collaboration undertaken inthe various expeditions. Making this volumeespecially valuable and a cornerstone forfurther international collaboration is theappendix, which contains a detailed tablelisting the collectors and the origin andacquisition means of the various collections,as well as a comprehensive bibliography ofthe respective Hungarian publications of thelast century. It enables comparative researchto be done not only in relation to theBudapest museum collections, but also withregard to the discipline’s history in general.

The meticulous manner in which themuseums’ Accession Register is depicted andevaluated for each section and collection,together with diagrams comparing thedifferent collecting strategies as based on thevarious types of artefacts, makes thispublication an excellent reference book forfurther research.

The Department of Ethnography of theHungarian National Museum was founded in1872, before its counterparts were establishedin Berlin (1873) and Vienna (1876Anthropological-Ethnographic section withinthe k.u.k. Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum).There were then three main periods ofcollection acquisition (from 1872 to 1918,from 1919 to 1959, and from 1960 to the


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present). The volume examines each of theseperiods, taking into account the specificpolitical developments that occurred inHungary over the years. Gyarmati defines thefirst period as the ‘golden age of the overseascollection’ (p. 15) and discusses thecontributions made by Janos Xantus toestablish the museum, the severalAustro-Hungarian ‘joint venture’ expeditions,which were marked by a quite competitiverelationship, as well as specific researchstrategies. The author also describes thecontribution of Hungarian anthropologists, asfor example Geza Roheim and Emil Torday,in developing theoretical approaches.

When compared with the ethnologicalmuseums in Great Britain, Germany andAustria, Hungary had neither imperial andcolonial interests, nor the objective ofestablishing profitable trade with the regionsinvolved. A research paradigm that alreadyformed in the first period and continuedthrough the following decades was the searchfor and documentation of ‘kindred people’(e.g. J. Zichy, J. Janko, B. Balogh), whichincluded the Finno-Ugric, the Turko-Tatar,and the Caucasian and Iranian peoples as wellas their cultures and ancestral religions. Thisresulted, for instance, in Vilmos Dioszegifounding an archive of shamanism in 1953.

What makes the ‘Hungarian’ endeavourso fascinating for the history of science is thisparadigm, which was marked by extensiveinterest in both the scholarly and publicsector. The Hungarian community was notenvisaged by shaping and imagining the ‘Self ’through the construction of an ‘Other’, butby searching for common traits with peoplearound the world.

The hardships and challenges forHungarian anthropologists during the secondperiod as well as, to some extent, the third, arealso described: they were relatively isolated,restricted in their freedom of travel, andlacked funds for new acquisitions. Thissection also touches on their obligation toconduct research in line with Marxistideology. But during the third period thepolitical situation gradually became morerelaxed and fieldwork again became possible,

seen best in the contribution of Lajos Boglar(curator of the America Collection) inbuilding up an impressive Amazoniacollection.

This volume is also valuable with regardto the history of ethnography in the formerAustro-Hungarian monarchy, enabling acomparative analysis with developments inAustria during the first decades of the field.

Unfortunately, the reader gets only avague idea about how the various collectionshave been displayed over the years, or thestrategies involved in choosing bothpermanent and temporary exhibitions.Interesting follow-ups to this volume mightinclude a critical review of how research on‘kindred people’ was communicated to thegeneral public or how it shaped a nationalimage of ‘Self’, including the conceptual shiftsand ‘political realities’ as outlined by LaszloKurti (1996), or perhaps an analysis of the‘thick networks of communication andexchange that took shape around themuseums’, as has been presented by GlenPenny (2002) for Germany.

ReferencesFejos, Zoltan. 2000. A Neprajzi Muzeum

gyjtemenyei [Collections of the Museum ofEthnography]. Budapest: Neprajzi Muzeum.

Kurti, Laszlo. 1996. ‘Homecoming: Affairs ofanthropologists in and of Eastern Europe’,Anthropology Today 12: 11–15.

Penny, H. Glenn. 2002. Objects of culture.Ethnology and ethnographic museums inImperial Germany. Chapel Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press.

MARIA SIX-HOHENBALKENAustrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna(Austria)

Haram, Liv and C. Bawa Yamba (eds.).2009. Dealing with uncertainty incontemporary African lives. Uppsala:Nordika Afrikainstitutet. 226 pp. Pb.:$22.95. ISBN: 978 91 7106 6497.

With increasing frequency, anthropologicalwritings on social distress and suffering in


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contemporary African social lives test theconcept of human agency in terms of itsmultiple, and, often very vague valences. Thisvolume’s central theoretical concern in thisvein is the lived relationships betweenuncertainty – as an open-ended catch all forthe contingency of social relations – and theinsecurities conditioned by modernsubjectivity and its social and culturalstressors.

Apart from a single chapter dealing withZimbabwe, this volume develops its analytictensions around the emotive and affectivedimensions of suffering in several easternAfrican localities (the notable exception beingthat no case studies pertain to Kenya) anddelivers sometimes heart-felt ethnography onthe relationality of misfortune and its socialfallout. For readers not familiar with easternAfrica, the volume can contribute valuablecomparative notes on the tensions betweentradition and modernity, on the one hand, andnewly emergent concerns for the everydayforce of insecurity in areas thought, otherwise,to be spared the violence of warfare.

Ezra Chitando’s ethnography of Harare’s‘born-again’ Christians places affliction alonga scale that includes, but does not terminatewith the hopelessness of Zimbabwe’seconomic and political prospects. Here, aselsewhere in Africa, Pentecostal-charismaticchurches offer hope in the certainty of faithgospel and its attendant health and wealthdoctrines, a glimmer of potentiality amidcrushing constraint that leads adherents todream of leaving Zimbabwe, together withnewly blessed and sanctified passports thatpromise deliverance from suffering, not inheaven, but in neighbouring countries.Echoing this crusade for certainty in Uganda,Catrine Christiansen’s chapter on Busiadistrict’s savedees shows that the search fordivine certainties often begins with individualconcerns to heal relationships, such as rockymarriages, through personal relationships toGod, before adherents turn to heal othermalefactory relations with the demonic. Bothchapters highlight how uncertainties – andfantasies of certitude – are manifest inrelations with others, despite the stress on

personal salvation in charismatic churches.The three chapters on witchcraft deal

with uncertainty in terms of ‘fragile relations’,following Knut Christian Myhre’s insightfulcontribution. Eschewing descriptions ofcontemporary Chagga witchcraft as anepiphenomenon of colonial transformationsor millennial capitalism, Myhre’s detailed casestudy examines how commensality,neighbourliness, and disease are linkedtogether in witchcraft narratives by theuncertainty brought about through disruptedor undermined social relations. In ToddSanders’ contribution, the anthropologicalthesis of witchcraft and capitalistaccumulation is challenged through a casestudy of Ihanzu critiques of the ‘transparency’of capitalist markets and goods. Among theIhanzu, Sanders argues, the destruction orappropriation of traditional goods and wealththrough witchcraft, while not directlyobserved, can be ‘seen’ through the work oflocal diviners. What causes concern amongIhanzu is where witchcraft narratives speak to‘modern’ wealth accumulation, wherediviners cannot ‘see’ the logic of witchcraft atwork, its ‘invisibility’ the opaque source ofapprehension and anxiety. For SimeonMesaki, the prevalent murders of elderlywomen, accused of being witches, brings analtogether more tragic uncertainty of ageingin contemporary Sukuma society andempirically adds to the theme of genderviolence developed elsewhere in thevolume.

Mental distress and female suicide in Dares Salaam, Tanzania, are the themes unitingthe chapters by Mary Ann Mhina and NoahNdosi, respectively. These contributorsexplore the ways in which biomedicalinterventions and ‘traditional’ therapeutics areinterpellated in a wide critique of the socialstigma of mental illnesses in Africa,particularly in terms of gender and familyrelations. Both chapters contribute initialresearch findings on topics that are stillunderdeveloped in anthropology and Africanstudies, urging further work on thissignificant question of uncertainty andbioethics.


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Adding to the now voluminous literatureon HIV/AIDS, the last two chapterssensitively address the questioning of life anddeath in the face of killer diseases. HanneMogensen’s ethnography of the discovery ofanti-retroviral treatment by a recentlydiagnosed HIV-positive woman in Ugandademonstrates the pressures and potentialitiesof knowing a person’s HIV status within thecontext of extended families. Taking on boardthe public optimism about biomedical andpharmaceutical ways of coping with HIVinfection, Mogensen shows how life cancontinue when HIV/AIDS is no longerconsidered a death sentence. In Liv Haram’sfinal chapter, readers are exposed to theviolent politicisation of female sexuality in theKilimanjaro region, Tanzania, throughdetailed ethnography of ideologies claiminghow and why the spread of AIDS isassociated with the predatory sexuality ofwomen exploiting the wealthy and healthybodies of men. Focusing on how locals mapout sexual networks, Haram addsconsiderably to understanding the kinds ofgendered etiological work usually overlookedin public discourses about prevention (andcure), thereby enhancing the hegemony ofmale sexual dominance.

This volume speaks to uncertainty incontemporary eastern African lives withempathy and each contribution adds morethan can be expressed in this review. Optingfor an ‘open’ conceptualisation of uncertainty,however, may be an approach its authorsmight wish to reconsider in future work inthis direction, focusing more intently on therelationality of lives unbalanced.

MARK LAMONTGoldsmiths, University of London (UK)

Kapferer, Judith (ed.). 2008. The state andthe arts. Articulating power and subversion.Oxford: Berghahn. 180 pp.Pb.: $27.95/£15.00. ISBN: 978 1 84545578 1.

As the ruins of antique cities still tell us, ifthere is any realm where the State has a say

about the arts, it is the public one, even if in amore intimate way, the State insinuates itspolicies into private lives. Kapferer starts herintroduction with a puzzling assertion thatlinks the beginning of State interventions inthe arts with the Italian Renaissance and itscourt society. Her choice for this case amongother ones that she seems to dismiss leads usto understand her cosmogony to be linkedwith a specific acceptance of the State whichwould be identical to its ideological discourse.Fortunately, as she invites the reader toconsider also ‘other creative production’,Kapferer sketches a Foucauldian andCerteausian tonality for this study of ‘therelation of the arts of living to institutions oforder and control’ (p. 5) that includestransnational order, globalisation, and thepower of NGOs in the debate. As Beundershas it, in multicultural societies, arrogance hasgiven way to persuasion, while freedom ofexpression makes difficult encounters withhuman rights, the democratisation of politics,and the mediatisation of all events. Freedomof expression and censorship are ‘grey areas’shifting with politics. Globalisation, as Chongdemonstrates with the case of Singapore, caninduce local policies aiming at the creation of(‘false’) specificities for the sake of marketinga location, and induce trends through theattribution of grants. Art can then be part ofstrategies of resistance, as Fokidisdemonstrates after citing Broothaers in aquotation reminiscent of Althusser’s‘Ideology and the State IdeologicalApparatus’, showing how a collective artproject facilitates the expression of repressedmemories of displacement in South EasternEurope. Another way of ‘engaging withhistory’ is through the performing of‘traditions’: as Henry demonstrates,Australian festivals are more than afolklorisation of the past as, to the performers,they are the only way to re-appropriate andtransmit their traditions. How much do we, inplaces such as Central London, master oururban experiences? This is the questionKapferer addresses while wondering aboutpublic and private partnerships in challengingthe State. Showing how streets and


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monuments mark physical trajectories in thecity, she aptly reminds us that cities are notmade only of social fabric and individualconnectivity, as some anthropologists areprone to see them. The politics of monuments(addressed by many authors in post-apartheidSouth Africa, not mentioned in this book) isexamined from the standpoint of the ‘Self andthe City’ by Kipphoff, who analyses theBerlin Memorial for the Jews, and some othersites in Romania. Very interestingly,investigating the ‘Symbolic Economies andCritical Practices’ in ‘The Culture Industries’,Miles describes how the arts, while beingvalued as such, are also social and economicinstruments, and examines how UK (andother) policies use art, places and trends.Sassatelli, at the European Community level,scrutinises policies meant to foster Europeancohesion and identity through the seeminglyparadoxical promotion of local flexibility inthe interpretation of general policies. In hischapter, Valentine analyses responses togovernment actions at the level of productionand distribution under the neo-liberalparadigm. A trend he underlines is the need tobe ‘auditable’ in a context marred by an‘absence of trust in, and knowledge of,organizations’ (p. 131), well in tune with ‘thepost-modern mishmash’ and resulting in animpossibility of long-term planning (thiscould be applied to the academic field as well).Valentine’s institutional analysis points to theneed to connect art as production and the artof life. The last chapter by Oye is a case studyof the social impact of the gentrification ofSchwerin, the capital city ofMecklemburg-Vorpommern (former EastGermany).

Making the red thread behind thecollection and arrangement of chapters moreexplicit would have helped the reader’strajectory. The introduction, unfortunately,interweaves rather general considerations ofvarious aspects of the topic with sketchyexamples and often lapidary affirmations. Yet,the themes tackled are of high importance andthe literature background to the collection ofchapters is much to the point of this originalendeavour. A goal this book achieves is in

opening a theoretically well-grounded debateon the relation between two aspects ofculture: culture as production and culture associal praxis. The field of politics andeconomics of art as articulated by States andby global non-governmental institutions andappropriated by communities is illustratedthrough various case studies. Such a book ismost welcome as an eye-opener on thepervasive ‘auditable’ mishmash into whichcultural productions (either as art or as art oflife) are currently processed and squeezed.

DANIELLE DE LAMERoyal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren(Belgium)

Liempt, Ilse van and Veronika Bilger (eds.).2009. The Ethics of Migration ResearchMethodology, Dealing with VulnerableImmigrants. Brighton and Portland: SussexAcademic Press. vii+171pp. Hb.: £47.50.ISBN: 978 1 854519 331 7.

Dans cet ouvrage collectif, les auteurs nouspresentent leurs reflexions autour des themes,aussi delicats que complexes, de l’ethique etde la methodologie de recherche sur desmigrants en situations precaires. Cescontributions s’integrent aux debats autourdu terme problematique ‘vulnerable’ resultantde l’augmentation des nouvellesconfigurations migratoires irregulieres quiouvrent de nouvelles perspectives et denouveaux terrains a l’etude des migrations.A priori, le phenomene en soi, de par sonaccentuation et ses aspects divers, rendevident le besoin de vigilance extreme lors desrecherches et impose, donc, un certainpluralisme methodologique afin de ne pasobtenir des resultats partiaux ou deformes parsubjectivite, empathie ou negligence.

Dans l’introduction, les redactrices, Ilsevan Liempt et Veronika Bilger, expliquentavoir voulu recueillir des contributions sur lesdefis et les difficultes susceptibles de surgirlors de recherches aupres de groupescomposes de personnes qui se sentent


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marginalisees et vulnerables. Le but de ce livreest de partager des questionnements ethiqueset methodologiques, de contribuer, ainsi, a labibliographie restreinte sur le sujet et depromouvoir les approches a perspectivesmultiples.

L’ouvrage se divise en trois parties : lapremiere portant sur les methodes et lesproblematiques de nature ethique dans descontextes institutionnels a travers deux etudesde cas dans des prisons. Robert F. Barsky etChristin Achermann evoquent les specificitesd’une telle recherche, les prisons constituantdes espaces ou naissent plusieurs contrainteset difficultes et, par consequent, meritant desapproches multiples par respect pour tous lesacteurs sociaux impliques.

La seconde partie propose de reflechirsur les principales methodes de recherche ensciences sociales et traite les questions poseespar les chercheurs et les strategies suivies pouracceder et preserver les contacts au sein degroupes generalement difficiles a rapprocher,tels que des ‘sans-papiers’, des demandeursd’asile, des migrants travailleurs du sexe et desimmigres clandestins. Les contributions deRichard Staring, Janine Dahinden et DeniseEfionayi-Maader, Veronika Bilger et Ilse vanLiempt respectivement, constituent un espacede reflexion autour des choix des methodespour la mise en rapport avec les informateurs,du traitement des informations recueillies etde l’usage des resultats au profit del’objectivite et de la production du savoirscientifique.

La troisieme partie est issue de l’effort adefinir le role du chercheur et sa position facea ses informateurs : l’asymetrie dans cetterelation etant inevitable. A travers des cas de‘sans papiers’ et de mineursnon-accompagnes, Eugenia Markova et NuriaEmpez se mettent a examiner les rolescontradictoires du chercheur vis-a-vis de sonstatut parfois double et de son niveaud’engagement dans les groupes etudies.

Cet ouvrage compose de contributionsde haut niveau academique se propose dedebattre sur la methodologie et sur l’ethiqueautour de la structuration et du deroulement

de la recherche, sans pour autant soutenir telleou telle approche. Au contraire, tous leschercheurs adoptent un œil critique sur lesqualites et les defauts de leurs choix et invitenta une reflexion encore plus profonde autourde ce sujet, etant donne que la bibliographieexistante se focalise surtout sur les politiquesconcernant le phenomene et non pas sur lesenjeux de la recherche deterrain.

Tous les auteurs prennent en compte lescontextes politiques et juridiques danslesquels emergent les cas etudies et font lasynthese de leurs resultats sous une approchecritique des possibilites et des delimitationsdes methodes et des strategies suivies.Expliquant clairement le parcours suivi pourchaque cas, toutes les contributionspermettent de saisir les problematiques poseesau prealable, durant et apres la recherche deterrain, lors du traitement des resultats. Lesauteurs, tres minutieux avec les donnees deleurs recherches, refusent de donner desreponses immediates aux questions ethiquesqu’ils ont du confronter.

L’ouvrage reussit ainsi a elargir le champde reflexion non seulement autour de larecherche aupres des migrants, lespropositions presentees ici pouvants’appliquer aux cas de tout groupe considerecomme ‘vulnerable’. Les contributionshonnetes, privees de fausses pretentions etdouees de clarte scientifique serventd’exemples d’epreuves a surmonter etpresentent aussi des fautes methodologiquespotentielles, les auteurs n’hesitant pas aconseiller aussi des changements (par exempleAchermann, pp. 72–73). Bien que l’approchemulti-perspective soutenue puisse s’appliquera des travaux groupes et non individuels, toutlecteur attentif s’appuyant sur les sciencessociales peut en tirer profit.

Toutes ces qualites permettent d’excuserquelques fautes pourtant presentes dansl’edition (par exemple un site non-valide;p. 22, une enumeration erronee des notes,p. 96; des citations qui ne figurent pas dans labibliographie, p. 100) et a conseiller cettelecture comme etant indispensable pour toute


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personne ou organisation s’occupant desgroupes marginalises et vulnerables.

ELENI BOLIERAKIEHESS (Paris, France)

Loftsdottir, Kristın. 2008. The bush issweet. Identity, power and developmentamong WoDaaBe Fulani in Niger. Uppsala:Nordiska Afrika. 264 pp. Pb.: SEK20.00.ISBN: 978 91 7106 6176.

The book under review is based on theauthor’s two-year field research in Nigerbetween 1996 and 1998. This included theauthor living with different nomadic familiesof the WoDaaBe clan in a pastoral area, aswell as with members of the same clan in theurban environment in Niamey, the capital ofNiger, and in a border town with Nigeria.This approach enables the author to get athorough insight into the reasons forWoDaaBe migrations to towns, andchallenges to their identity, that leads her to aparadoxical conclusion: although in town onecan not fulfil the ideal of wodaabe-ness that isinterwoven with pastoral nomadic way of life,by using globalised images of WoDaaBe inselling identity-related products (handicraftsand dances), this diversification enables otherfamily members to stay in the bush.

Throughout the book the authorsuccessfully combines her personalobservations, exchanges and understanding ofexperiences of individual WoDaaBe withscholarly analysis. In order to understand acomplex situation of WoDaaBe in thecontemporary world, she needs to enter intoseveral fields: identity and development,migrations to town, ethnicity, production ofindigenousness, global power relations, andinner diversity of power positions and gender.

In the first part, Loftsdottir acquaints uswith globalised discourses produced incontexts of power that create WoDaaBesubjects, and influence their living conditions.The chapter on development is based onarchival work and a review of the literature,

showing how development subject as pastoralproducer serves the interests of the state forexports, rather than improving life conditionsfor existing nomads. Different, but alsoproduced on the stronger part of powerrelations, is the subject of WoDaaBe aseco-indigenous people, commercialised toserve the Western longing to project them asinnocent Others. Those subject positions,imposed frozen in time, from two differentdiscourses, are reintroduced in concludingchapters, in order to show how WoDaaBeperceive and use them to their own benefits,in their individual relations with Westerners.

Loftsdottir also presents WoDaaBeethnography, leading us through seasons inthe pastoral nomadic annual cycle, thepleasures and difficulties of living in the bush,initiating the reader in relations betweenhumans and animals, the logic of nomadicmovements – crucial concepts of WoDaaBeidentity – as well as inner inequalities, mostevident in age relations, and even more ingender relations. The reader then follows theauthor and WoDaaBe into the city,understanding migrations as a consequence ofdiminishing space and resources for anomadic way of life, getting to know thecontinuity of diversification of nomads’activities, the aim of workers to buy the cowsthat rarely succeeds, emergence of newdesires, nostalgic relations to the bush, andnew meanings of ethnicity facing other ethnicgroups and the state. Particularly important isthe commercialisation of identity-relatedproducts, crafts and dances, where the lattermultiply their meanings in an urban context.

Although Kristın Loftsdottir comes fromIceland, she is still categorised as any other‘white’, anasara, by WoDaaBe, meaning thatthey consider her as having access to riches,resources and ‘development’, tightly includedin their perception of this category. Theauthor exposes her ambiguous position in thefield (which is the more general position ofany anthropologist), where she is like a childlearning proper behaviour, and dealing withlonging for belonging. She chooses aparticular ethnographic genre, influenced byintersubjectivity, as discussed by Lila


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Abu-Lughod, including anthropologistfirst-person narrative, in order to present theway her insights – in particular concepts ofWoDaaBe identity, in the meaning of theirpractices, and in their everyday and survivalpreoccupations – were achieved. She succeedsin not overshadowing her subjects of researchby the presence of an anthropologist in thetext, giving emphasis to individual WoDaaBeexperiences, and using the author as theidentifier point in her dynamic relations withWoDaaBe individuals. She includes thedifficult role of interpreter, or ‘assistant’, as acrucial intermediary between ananthropologist and a group he/she belongs to.

The Bush is Sweet is an excellentethnography of contemporary WoDaaBepreoccupations, the globalised context of theirrepresentations, their very real effects and,most important, the agency of individualWoDaaBe. It is a highly readable book,interesting not only to professionalanthropologists, but also for a wider audience.It is a welcome reading for developmentworkers, and undoubtedly helpful ininfluencing young anthropologists who wishto do research in changing ‘Fourth world’societies.

SARAH LUNACEKUniversity of Ljubljana (Slovenia)

Lubkeman, Stephen C. 2008. Culture inchaos. An anthropology of the socialcondition in war. Chicago: University ofChicago Press. x + 401 pp. Pb.:$25.00/£13.00. ISBN: 0 226 49642 2.Hb.: $63.00/£33.00. ISBN: 0 22649641 4.

This volume is based on more than ten yearsof multi-sited ethnographic research on theexperience of war, displacement and mobilityof ‘Machazians’ from Machaze province inMozambique. Nevertheless, the geographicalreferent is absent from the title. This makessense, since the ambition of Lubkeman is touse his monograph to develop a theoretical

argument in regard to the social condition inwar. Thus, the experience of Machaziansbecomes a strategic research site for exploringrelations of structure and agency underconditions of limited predictability.

War is widely perceived as an event inwhich violence determines subjectivity,agency and social processes due to its capacityfor destruction or destabilisation of life,meaning and social relations. Against thisperception, which he calls the ‘violentordering of things’ (p. 9), Lubkeman arguesthat the inhabitants of war-scapes are engagedprimarily in imagining, plotting out andenacting their lives in relation to‘micropolitical’ social struggles of, forexample, gender and generation, rather thanthe ‘macropolitical’, national dimensions ofthe conflict (p. 14). This is not to say thatviolence does not have an impact on people’s‘life-scapes’ – and indeed Machaze was one ofthe provinces most affected by displacementduring Mozambique’s protracted war – but inmost cases the influence is indirect in thesense that violence reconfigures andcomplicates the conditions under whichpeople pursue their strategies and engage inparticular social struggles.

The book has an introduction plus tenchapters, organised in four sections. It sets outwith an ethnohistorical exploration ofMachazean migration and socialtransformations before the war, and proceedsto analyse how these social relationsconditioned the political projects of the warboth at the local level and in terms ofstate–citizens relations. The third sectionlooks at the social condition in war, primarilythe different ways in which mobility andimmobility were played out among peoplefrom Machaze. As one of the main points ofthe book, Lubkeman suggests thatdisplacement is not the same as forcedmigration. Rather ‘displacement occurs whenlifescapes are transformed in a way thatintroduces and accentuates extreme forms ofstructural violence’ (p. 213). Thus, he talksabout ‘forcibly immobilized’ women whostayed in the villages or in refugee camps,while many men engaged in, or continued,


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forms of migration to South Africa that canhardly be defined as displacement. AsLubkeman heard the reasoning behindmigration-related decisions, people wereattentive to the longer-term implications oftheir choices rather than just being dominatedby the most pressing tactical concerns. Thequestion is to what degree such decisions havebeen rationalised after the fact.

The last section analyses how the warbecame a socially transformative condition,continuing to work for a long time afterhostilities officially ended. The focus is onmigration, the reluctance to return toMozambique after the war, and in particularthe importance and complexities of aMachazean moral economy in the wake of thesocial novelty of ‘transnational polygyny’,which developed under the conditions of war.Confirming findings of other studies ofpost-war transformations, Lubkeman showshow women tend to become disempowered asa consequence of these transformations.

Importantly, however, this sectiondemonstrates that cultural models of the pastwere not irrelevant to the imagination of thefuture. Rather, people continued throughoutand after the war to deal with ideas ofMachazean identity and moral universe inorder not to upset ancestors and to producesocially acceptable discourses and practicesdespite the changing social conditions. In thelast chapter, my favourite one, Lubkemanengages very explicitly in theoretical debate ashe tries to figure out how and why thepropositions and practices of some agents –some of them rather surprising and veryinnovative – gain social traction and becomeincluded in Machazean social imagination,while those of others remain marginalised.

Lubkeman is not alone with his argumentand approach. In a way his intellectualtrajectory from the mid 1990s to the secondhalf of the naughties follows a certain currentof studies of violence and displacement withinanthropology that engages critically withmainstream perceptions of these issues. ButLubkeman’s version is extremely solid, welldocumented, theoretically consistent and wellargued, and the different sections will fit very

well into thematic reading lists for courses onwar, violence, migration and displacement.

FINN STEPPUTATDanish Institute for International Studies,Copenhagen (Denmark)

McCourt, Christine (ed.). 2009. Childbirth,Midwifery, and Concepts of Time. Oxford :Berghahn. xviii + 260pp. Hb.: £55.00.ISBN: 978 1 84545 5866.

Les travaux d’anthropologues et desages-femmes rassembles ici portent sur lesimplications du temps, et plusparticulierement de la maniere dont celui-ciest gere culturellement, sur les femmesimpliquees dans le processus de la naissance.Appliquee au phenomene de la naissance demaniere generale, il apparaıt que cette gestiontemporelle s’impose independamment dessouhaits personnels propres a chaque femme.Elle englobe par ailleurs tous les acteurs quiparticipent d’une maniere ou d’une autre auprocessus de la naissance et leur vecu de cetteexperience ainsi que leur role au sein de cedernier: membres de la famille proche,partenaire, professionnels ou juges commetels. Privilegiant la methode ethnographique,l’attention de chaque contribution se portesur les usages et les pratiques, les discours desacteurs, les techniques et les ideologies quisous-tendent la « nature temporelle de lanaissance et de tous ceux impliques dans ceprocessus » (p. XV). La majorite des etudespresentees dans cet ouvrage a ete menee dansdes contextes biomedicaux occidentaux(principalement en Europe et en Amerique duNord. Les auteurs sont particulierementattentifs a l’emergence de pratiquesalternatives a celles encouragees (pour ne pasdire imposees) par le systeme biomedical,particulierement en ce qui concerne la gestiondu temps dans la naissance.

Le chapitre 1 retrace l’evolutionsocio-historique de la conceptualisation dutemps dans le contexte europeenpre-moderne, moderne et contemporain.Selon les auteures, ce contexte a donnenaissance a la biomedecine en tant que


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systeme de sante, puis aux tendances a laglobalisation qui ont peu a peu conduit cesysteme, ainsi que celui de mesure et demarquage du temps, qui lui est associe, a etreetendu a d’autres pays. Elles abordent ainsi leschangements socio-economiques qui ontcontribue a la transformation de la conceptiondu temps ainsi que la propagation et ladomination de la biomedecine comme savoirautoritaire et pratique.

Le chapitre 2 propose un etat des lieuxdes etudes menees en anthropologie et ensociologie en lien avec la question du temps etmet en valeur de leur pertinence dans laremise en question du discours biomedical,grace au regard critique qu’elles offrent. Lestravaux de Marx, Foucault, Durkheim etBourdieu sont abordes et completes par desethnographies centrees sur les questions dutemps et de la naissance.

Les chapitres 3 et 4 se concentrent surl’analyse des theories et des pratiques autourde la gestion du temps au moment del’accouchement, notamment a travers uneanalyse des travaux de Friedman et de satechnique de gestion active de l’accouchement(ch. 3), et en presentant des formes alternativesde gestion de l’accouchement, que les auteursqualifient de plus « traditionnelles »et qui consistent a « etre avec » la femme encouches (ch. 4).

Les chapitres 5 a 7 approfondissent laquestion des modeles alternatifs de gestion dela naissance, et leurs impacts sur le rapport autemps des sages-femmes dans leurs pratiquesquotidiennes (ch. 5). Le chapitre 6, avecl’exemple des « centres de naissance », illustrela tendance a valoriser de plus en plus lespratiques d’accompagnement dites« traditionnelles » dans les pays riches, touten continuant parallelement a imposer auxpays « en developpement » le modeletechnocratique de la naissance occidental. Lechapitre 7 explore les concepts Aborigenes dutemps et leurs impacts sur la gestion de lanaissance dans divers contextes obstetricauxdu nord du Canada.

Les chapitres 8 et 9 se concentrent surl’interet des approches narratives dans la

recherche sur les questions de sante. Cetteapproche, qui serait mieux a meme de rendrecompte de la nature de l’experience de lanaissance, est presentee dans le chapitre 8. Lechapitre 9 en illustre les arguments au traversde recits de femmes, de leur experience dutemps lors de leur accouchement en milieuhospitalier anglais, et de leur sentiment dedecalage entre ce qu’elles ressentaient et ce quileur etait impose (against the clock).

Le chapitre 10 aborde les paradoxes et lesconflits lies a l’imposition de « l’alimentationsur demande » dans les maternites anglaises,tandis que le chapitre 11 analyse les reponsesdes femmes japonaises face a l’ « incertitude »de la maternite.

Ce riche ouvrage est destine a tous leschercheurs en sciences sociales preoccupes parla problematique de la naissance, comme auxpraticiens qui souhaitent adopter un autreregard sur les pratiques actuelles autour de lanaissance.

LINE ROCHATUniversite de Lausanne (Suisse)

Metcalf, Peter. 2010. The life of thelonghouse. An archeology of ethnicity. NewYork: Cambridge University Press. xi + 345pp. Hb.: €50.00/US$85.00. ISBN:9780521110983.

Amidst the dense and sparsely populated rainforests of central Borneo impressively largelonghouses became the centres ofcommunities accommodating up to severalhundred members. Why do people live insuch longhouses? How did they come intoexistence? And how did they construct theiridentities? These are the central questions thatPeter Metcalf addresses in his book The Lifeof the Long house. An Archaeology ofEthnicity.

The approach chosen by the author isboth anthropological and historical. Due tothe combination of empirical data collectedover a period of 27 months and the critical


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analysis of historical sources, Metcalf’s workis relevant not only for Borneo specialists butalso for those in the wider field of SoutheastAsian studies. His account adds a widelymissing historiography of marginalisedinland/upland groups and as a resultcontributes to a better understanding ofpresent social realities in Borneo andbeyond.

Metcalf opens his rich ethnography witha detailed description of longhouses. Oncelocated in the immediate vicinity of rivers,they were embedded in a flourishing networkof pre-modern trade. Since the 16th century,when the influence of Brunei was at its heightafter the ruling elite had converted to Islam,trade relations flourished until the 1940s.Exotic forest products found their waydownstream and were traded via Bruneitowards China in exchange for exquisitemanufactured goods that were traded upriver.Trading was therefore the precondition andmain reason for the rise of longhousecommunities. What the author means by alonghouse community, however, goes farbeyond the common understanding of theterm. For Metcalf, the longhouse communityis like a self-supporting organism with thelonghouse being its political, religious andcultural centre. ‘There was, however, onething that almost all houses embodied: thesense of being a metropolis, the culturalcenter of what I can only call a nation’(p. 61).

Metcalf shows how ethnicity isconstituted by a longhouse ‘nation’ in orderto differentiate themselves from others livingoutside the community, whatever their ethniclabel. People from different places becameunited in a longhouse and then the place nameof that longhouse evolved into an ethnonym.‘The process of place names becomingethnonyms demonstrates the character oflonghouse communities as sites of productionof ethnic differentiation’ (p. 68). Whatconstituted the people’s sense of who they arewas much more the knowledge of a sharedhistory and place of living than any assumedform of tribalism. The specific community

Metcalf describes throughout his book wascalled Long Batan, headed by Aban Jau, anoutstanding leader in the 19th century, whosegenius lay in mobilising people. Longhousecommunities like Long Batan assembledpeople who had previously lived at differentplaces, collectively referred to as Orang Ulu(Upriver People). Long Batan, a geographicalterm, at first not more than a map reference,became the name of the community in thecourse of time and consequently turned intoan ethnonym. This is what Metcalf describesas the making of ethnicity.

Another significant aspect of life in thelonghouse lies in the religious sphere, which isgiven priority in the chapter entitled ‘TheLong houses and Ritual’. In Metcalf’sopinion, the study of religion in anthropologyis essentially the study of ritual. Thefundamental principle observed within thelonghouse community reads: ‘When in Rome,do what Romans do’ (p. 214). According toMetcalf, the significance of religion was aboutwhat needed to be done and not what neededto be believed. In this respect ritual consensusand not necessarily a consensus of beliefconstituted the broad basis for a balanced andharmonious religious life. Some readers,however, may criticise Metcalf for being tooidealistic in his view of the historic longhousecommunities and, indeed, more emphasis oninternal power struggles and conflicts wouldhave been desirable.

With his archaeology of ethnicity Metcalfportrays the rise and fall of the Long Batanlonghouse community. After departing fromthe heyday of a pre-modern trade nation andpassing two colonial regimes he finally arrivesin the present. Today the former inhabitantsof this rainforest nation are stranded in coastalcities, being part of the urban proletariat.Metcalf states that for them modernity hascaused cultural and economicimpoverishment, rather than liberation froman oppressive tradition.

The work of Metcalf certainlydemonstrates anthropology’s ability todeconstruct ethnicity and nationalism. Byshowing the making of ethnicity, a process he


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calls ethnification, stereotypes of ‘tribal’societies fade into irrelevance.

CHRISTIAN WARTAInstitute for Social Anthropology, AustrianAcademy of Sciences, Vienna (Austria)

Moberg, Mark. 2008. Slipping away.Banana politics and fair trade in the EasternCaribbean. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.272 pp. Hb.: $90.00/£55.00. ISBN: 978 184545 1455.

This study takes on a central topic inCaribbean studies – the banana trade –refracting through it issues of local politicsand global ideological and economic change.The book examines the way small producerson the island of St Lucia were affected by, andthen creatively responded to, 1990s tradedisputes that ended in a rejection ofpreferential status for Caribbean growers. Butas much as this is a story about the ravages ofneoliberal globalisation – which puts smallfarming St Lucians in competition with hugemainland producers – it is also an examinationof the specifics of how Santa Lucians farm andmarket their products, how they relate witheach other, how they make meaning in theirlives, and especially how they do politics.

St Lucia, and particularly its banana-richMabouya Valley, is literally and figurativelyan island enveloped both (1) in the context ofits neighbours and (2) in a temporal trajectoryof colonial settlement and exploitation,regional and global migration, and dynamicglobal trade. The main arc of the book tracesthe colonial-era creation of a ‘stablepeasantry’, and the ways in which politiciansmobilised rural voters in subsequentgenerations, making them dependent onprotected markets for their crops. But in the1990s, St Lucia’s political economy of bananaproduction was shaken from the outside, byglobal neoliberal practices focused exclusivelyon price without accounting for human andenvironmental welfare in the way localpolitics necessarily did.

To illuminate these dynamics andcommunicate a fascinating history, Mobergcombines several perspectives and methods.Broadly, the book is both historical andethnographic. It is also both multi-sited andmulti-layered, incorporating data from theregion as well as the global market, andexamining ‘agents’ not only in the fields, butalso in the realm of political vote-getting, incompeting markets, and at the level of globalindustry and trade. As needed, the bookdraws not only on ethnographic, historicaland interview data, but also quantitativeeconomic data, a local survey and veryeffective authorial accounts. Using whateversources are needed enables Moberg to writeaccurately about everything from thesomewhat veiled agenda of big companies tothe sub-rosa realities of the local smugglingeconomy.

The book is so beautifully written that itmakes this complex story exceedingly clear.As the text telescopes through space andweaves the history of colonial dominationinto present-day explanation, for the mostpart the author avoids analyticaloversimplification. At the same time, whatholds the book together and makes it a joy toread is a narrative consistency only possiblefrom a writer who knows the case intimately.

The rich local feel and personal quality ofthe writing, which includes detaileddescription of both place and socialinteractions, would make this text an excellentstarting point for classroom discussion aboutthe human dimensions and global sweep ofneoliberal change. It is likely to engage notonly experts but also students from beginningto end.

Yet there are places in the text whereMoberg offers a kind of discussion that seemsto address somewhat naıve student readers byanthropomorphising state-level actors andtreating neoliberalism as a cogent policyrather than an assemblage of contingentpractices. Here is an example of such writing,which trades Moberg’s critical empiricalstance for a politicised, anthropomorphicshorthand: ‘[W]hile the US governmentzealously supported Chiquita’s effort to take


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over the 2 percent of the world’s bananamarket reserved for Windward Islandsproducers, it appeared wholly indifferent tothe tens of thousands of islanders whoselivelihood relied on the market’ (p. 157).

While such discussion turns the reader’smind to the human dimensions of globaltrade, it also departs from the author’sanalytical framework of an ‘agency’ theory ofthe state. The strength of critical theory ofany variety is its ability to undermine thetaken-for-grantedness of prevailing rationales,to shore up the matrices of power anddomination that rationalise socialrelationships such as those of the neoliberalera. Thus it is important to notice when one’sown ideology becomes naturalised or takes onan abstract life of its own.

Nevertheless, on an empirical levelMoberg’s inspired, extensive work doesfurnish the reader with a criticalunderstanding of this case. The authorconcludes, fittingly, with a meditation on thedark sides, perverse incentives and pervasiveironies of even progressive politics and traderelationships.

ANGELA JAMISONUniversity of California, Los Angeles (USA)

Montgomery, Heather. 2009. AnIntroduction to Childhood: AnthropologicalPerspectives on Children’s Lives.Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. 281 pp. Pb.:€ 23.00. ISBN: 978 1 4051 2590 1.

Jusqu’a recemment, peu d’anthropologues sesont interesses explicitement a la vie sociale, etaux pensees et paroles des enfants. Dans sonlivre sur l’anthropologie de l’enfance, HeatherMontgomery, professeur de ChildhoodStudies a la Open University (Royaume-Uni),presente la richesse et la pertinence de cettespecialisation relativement nouvelle.

Dans huit chapitres organises de faconthematique, Montgomery fait la synthese destravaux de recherche recents centres sur lesenfants ; d’autre part, elle propose une

relecture d’ethnographies plus anciennestraitant de la condition des enfants en regardd’autres problematiques : le genre ou les ritesd’initiation par exemple.

Le premier chapitre dresse un tableauhistorique des differentes approchesanthropologiques de l’enfance et les parallelesentre ontogenie et phylogenie, et donc entrementalites des enfants et celles des peuples« primitifs », etablis au 19e siecle (EdwardTylor), passant par Boas, Mead, Whiting, LeVine et d’autres, jusqu’aux nouvellesapproches qui valorisent les enfants commeacteurs sociaux au lieu de s’interesser auxprocessus de « socialisation » a travers leregard des parents.

Heather Montgomery consacre ledeuxieme chapitre aux differentes definitionsde l’enfant. En 1960, l’historien Philippe Ariesavait formule l’hypothese que l’enfance etaitune categorie inventee en Europe au 15e

siecle, these depuis refutee, mais dont lepostulat fondamental est largement accepte : ilne peut y avoir de definition universellementvalide d’un enfant. Par exemple, les avis sur lemoment auquel la vie d’un enfant debute sousune forme ou une autre sont tres divergents(chapitre 3) ; l’auteure mentionne les debatsautour de la legalite de l’avortement auxEtats-Unis, mais aussi les croyances associeesaux esprits d’enfants avortes au Japon et aTaıwan. En Australie et en Afrique del’Ouest, l’idee qu’une existence spirituelleprecede l’incarnation de l’enfant est repandue;dans ces societes aux taux de mortaliteenfantine eleves, certains enfants-esprits sontcompris comme etant constamment attires parl’ « autre monde » auquel ils retournent desqu’ils peuvent. Dans de nombreuses societes,certains enfants sont classifies commeinhumains, selon des criteres tres variables :ceux nes dans une position inhabituelle, ceuxdont les dents superieurs percent d’abord, lesjumeaux. . .

Le chapitre suivant est consacre al’entourage social des enfants : famille, amis etmembres de la meme classe d’age. Desanthropologues ont aussi enquete aupresd’enfants qui vivent en dehors d’une famille,par exemple dans la rue ou dans des


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orphelinats. Au chapitre 5, nous rencontronsles enfants comme acteurs sociaux. Ilsapprennent a parler ; encore une fois, lespratiques d’enseignement varientenormement, mais partout des valeurs socialessont acquises a travers cet apprentissage. Lesenfants jouent, ce que des folkloristes ontetudie depuis longtemps ; les anthropologuesinterpretent maintenant les jeux comme bienplus qu’une simple imitation de la vie desadultes : ils constituent un commentaire sur lasociete, avec un aspect creatif, voire subversif.Enfin, les enfants travaillent ; les frontieresentre jeu, socialisation et travail ne sont pastoujours faciles a etablir, mais la contributioneconomique des enfants est desormais mieuxreconnue par les chercheurs.

Depuis l’emergence des droits de l’enfant(Convention des Nations Unies en 1989), despunitions auparavant considerees commebanales ont ete relevees dans les ethnographiescomme dans les debats des societeseuropeennes (chapitre 6). Il y a peu derecherches sur les mauvais traitements desenfants ; de tels abus mettent le relativismeculturel des enqueteurs a rude epreuve. Anoter que nombre d’adultes infligent aussi desdouleurs aux enfants sans que cela ne soitconcu comme une punition : circoncision,rites d’initiation, exorcisme. . .

Le septieme chapitre traite de la sexualitedes enfants. L’idee que chaque enfant estsexuellement « innocent » prevaut surtoutdans les societes occidentales et n’est d’ailleurspas universellement partagee dans celles-ci (cf.Freud et ses disciples). Les comportementssexuels sont difficiles a observer ou a evoquerpour les anthropologues, et cela d’autant plusquand il s’agit d’interviewer des enfants. Lepeu d’ethnographies existantes soulignent lefait que l’acte sexuel n’a pas le meme sens danstoutes les societes. Certains aspects sont biendocumentes dans la litteratureanthropologique : le tabou de l’inceste, parexemple, ou l’homosexualite ritualisee enPapouasie-Nouvelle Guinee. HeatherMontgomery a elle-meme enquete sur lesenfants prostitues en Thaılande, qui ressententle devoir moral de se sacrifier pour le bien-etreeconomique de la famille. Enfants et parents

font une distinction entre le corps et l’esprit ;le dernier ne serait pas touche par les activitessexuelles. Sous la pression du gouvernementet des ONG, dans un contexte de propagationdu Sida, un changement des mentalites estpourtant sensible, rapporte l’auteur.

Le dernier chapitre est consacre al’adolescence et l’initiation. Il n’y a pastoujours une phase de transition a l’age adultecaracterise par un conflit entre les generations.Dans le sillon de van Gennep, la litterature surles rites d’initiation est vaste, mais elle fait peude place aux paroles des enfants.

Au cours des trente dernieres annees, unenouvelle anthropologie centree sur les enfantsa ainsi vu le jour, avec de nouvelles questionset methodes d’enquete. Le corpus de larecherche etait devenu suffisamment largepour justifier la publication d’une synthese deces travaux. Heather Montgomery est alleeencore plus loin en soulignant l’interet desethnographies anterieures, dont les resultatspeuvent etre utilises de facon creative etproductive par les anthropologuescontemporains. Son ouvrage est parseme decitations judicieusement choisies et dote d’unebibliographie particulierement riche.

ANNE FRIEDERIKE DELOUISUniversite d’Orleans (France)

Niels Barmeyer. 2009. Developing ZapatistaAutonomy. Conflict and NGO Involvement inRebel Chiapas. Albuquerque: The Universityof New Mexico Press. 282pp. Pb.: $29.95.ISBN: 978 0 8263 4584 4.

L’ouvrage de Niels Barmeyer fait une sorted’economie politique a l’ere de laglobalisation en abordant l’Etat du Chiapasdepuis la societe civile qui participe aumouvement anticapitaliste depuis le milieudes annees 1990 aux cotes de l’organisationzapatiste. Perspective originale car encore peuetudiee que celle de l’auteur qui tente demesurer l’impact de la presence des ONGdans le processus d’autonomie descommunautes autonomes zapatistes.


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L’auteur reconstruit d’abord l’histoire deSan Emiliano et La Gardenia dans la region deLas Canadas, deux des villages ou arrival’EZLN des les annees 1980, mais sortiesaujourd’hui de la resistance. Puis il contel’histoire de Cipriano, son ami indigeneengage dans le meme projet d’installation desystemes d’eau que lui, converti eninformateur pour l’etude, et « excommunie »de sa propre communaute, selon lui, pours’etre trop rapproche des « etrangers ». Enfin,il decrit ses differentes experiences dansd’autres communautes divisees entrezapatistes et non-zapatistes, demontrant queles ONG se sont erigees en substituts de l’Etatpour promouvoir les services de base auxcommunautes, comme les systemes d’eau, etmontre les difficiles negociations que cespratiques de solidarite nationale etinternationale impliquent a un niveau local.

Selon l’auteur, les imperatifseconomiques supplantent l’ideologie dans leschoix des affiliations politiques descommunautes, mues uniquement par lesnecessites pragmatiques. Tel fut le cas dans unpremier temps des adhesions franches etmassives a l’EZLN dans les annees 1980, enpromesse de jours meilleurs et surtout deterres. Mais le manque d’alternativeeconomique offerte par l’EZLN au fil desannees a accru les tensions entre les membreset provoque la sortie de la resistance de laplupart d’entre eux au tournant du millenaire.Comme le lui dit une ancienne zapatiste deSan Emiliano, bien qu’elle approuvait ce quele Sous-Commandant Marcos avait fait etcontinuait a faire, l’EZLN n’a pas reponduaux necessites de la communaute, a l’inversedu gouvernement qui, « meme s’il donne peu,donne au moins quelque chose ».

J’ai apprecie les parties descriptives etdetaillees sur l’ethnohistoire descommunautes, les recits des debats enassemblees ou entre habitants, ainsi que lesintuitions et les pistes de reflexion qu’il ouvre,a commencer par le sujet central de l’ouvrageautour de l’economie de la resistancezapatiste, l’effort de comparaison entre lesregions de la Selva et de Los Altos, et le travailreflexif autour de ses experiences personnelles

au sein de l’ONG pour tenter une reflexionsur la presence de ladite societe civile auChiapas. Les parties historiques sont longueset bien documentees. Elles s’arretentneanmoins a 2003 et le processus entame avecla creation des Caracoles est a peine evoque,manquant sur ce point une importanterestructuration, notamment du role des ONGau Chiapas ou celui des femmes au sein del’organisation zapatiste.

Si le debut de l’ouvrage developpe lesprocessus d’organisation et l’action collective,bien vite, il se concentre pleinement sur lafragmentation et l’atomisation interne descommunautes. Le texte s’attarde longuementsur les ambiguites, contradictions et divisionsinternes entre zapatistes, entre ceux-ci et lesnon-zapatistes, partisans politiques locaux oumembres internationaux des ONG.

On ressent un certain desenchantemententre les lignes de l’ouvrage, ce qui expliquepeut-etre les analyses versant souvent dansl’interpretation instrumentaliste de conflitsd’interet entre habitants, EZLN,gouvernement et ONG, ce qui, pour ma part,a empeche une adhesion franche a la these deBarmeyer. Car s’il releve a juste titre lesdifficultes economiques de l’autonomiezapatiste qui a entraıne avec elle des deviancesde ses membres des principes zapatistes, onreste avec l’envie de comprendre plus enprofondeur pour quelles raisons l’EZLN perdle controle sur certaines bases et pas surd’autres, quel est le role des leaders locauxdans ces « luttes pour l’hegemonie », et lecout que les divisions pour motif economiqueont engendre a un niveau organisationnel etstructurel dans les communautes, comme parexemple les migrations vers le nord. J’auraisegalement apprecie que l’ouvrage consacreune plus grande analyse du rapport entreideologie et economie, pour comprendremieux la « flexibilite » des populationsindiennes dans leurs affiliations politiques,ainsi que l’articulation entre la rigueur desinstructions et sanctions zapatistes qu’ilevoque a maintes reprises et, a l’inverse, le« manque d’autoritarisme » qu’il dit etre lemotif principal de la perte de controle del’EZLN sur sa population.


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L’ouvrage reste neanmoins stimulant etconstitue une contribution interessante pourcomprendre le Chiapas contemporain.

SABRINA MELENOTTEEHESS-LAIOS/IAP-CEMCA(France/Mexique)

Poissonnier, Nicole. 2009. Das Erbe der‘Helden’. Grabkult der Konso undkulturverwandter Ethnien in Sud-Athiopien.Gottinger Beitrage zur Ethnologie Band 3.Universitatsverlag Gottingen. 290 pp. Pb.:€38.00. ISBN: 978 3 941875 03 6.

In 1931 French archaeologists Azaıs andChambard, with impressive photographs,drew the attention of Africanists to groups ofanthropomorphic wooden figures calledwaakaa in Konso. A short time later, A. E.Jensen (Im Lande des Gada, 1936) explicitlydocumented these monuments erected inmemory of outstanding male persons. Sincethen every scholar writing about Konso hasmentioned them, but now NicolePoissonnier’s book offers a nearly completedocumentation of these sculptures. The basisfor her enterprise was a jointEthiopian-French project in the 1990s, whenPoissonnier was a member of a team thatprepared an inventory of the Konso waakaa.It was an urgent programme since thievesstarted to steal the figures and sell them to artcollectors and tourists. After the end of theproject Poissonnier did ethnographicfieldwork to deepen her knowledge of thesestelae and their meaning.

The book is divided into seven chaptersand an appendix with an English summaryand a glossary. Many informative photographsillustrate the reports. In the first chapter theauthor presents her interview partners andgives a short ethnographic outline of thedifferent ethnic groups referred to inSouthern Ethiopia. Since most of the waakaaare erected for ‘Heldentoter’ as she calls them(‘hero-killers’ in her English summary), thischapter is followed by a discussion of the

‘meritorious complex’ which, according toGerman cultural historians, included killinghumans. Subsequent chapters deal with thesocial status of a killer, killing as an element ofconstructing masculinity, the honouring ofhero-killers during their lifetimes, theirinsignia and their funeral ceremonies. InChapter 6 Poissonnier presents a detailedclassification of the different waakaa, usingstylistic, functional and socio-religiouscriteria as well as regional variations. Threecategories are characteristic: Groups of figurescomprise the main body of waakaa. They areplaced on a pathway, with the man who killedan enemy or a large felid (lion or leopard) inthe centre amidst his wives and those hekilled. Other figure types represent clan headsand outstanding men. Only in some regionsdo statues serve as grave markers. In the finalchapter the question of the assumedinterrelation of killing and procreation isdiscussed critically. This book is a firstattempt to present these monuments ofKonso culture in such a comprehensivemanner. In this respect, Poissonnier’s bookwill be of lasting value.

Before referring to her theses andinterpretations, some general critical remarksseem appropriate. As to the scientificpresentation of Poissonnier material, I cannotbut find fault with her sometimes casualdealing with the relevant literature. A morecareful use of the available sources could havehelped her in avoiding some misjudgements.While in Chapter 5.4 she writes correctly ofthe ancestors, elsewhere (e.g. pp. 91 and 162)her phrasing is very unclear. Sometimes her(ancestral) spirits give the impression ofghosts. The consideration of Konsoconceptions of the soul may have helped herto a subtler definition. Unfortunately, sheoverlooked that the chapter numbers in thetable of contents differ from those in the textand the references. A bit more carefulnesswould have given more weight to hersometimes-knowing arguments.

Poissonnier puts her interpretation of thememorial figures for heroic killers on a broadbasis of comparison, taking into account thephenomenon of killer ideology. In addition,


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she quotes numerous statements of SouthEthiopian heroic killers. She observes that tobecome a killer is the norm for a man, whilenot to be a killer is the exception (pp. 138,276).

Discussing the rules that have to beadhered to in order to become a killer, theauthor enlarges upon Helmut Straube’s ideaof a rite of passage (p. 115). There are manyregulations and ceremonies before and afterkilling. The time of the hunt itself, when thekiller is outside the cultivated homeland, sheinterprets as a phase of limination (followingvan Gennep and Turner), and the feasts inhonour of a returning killer as a ritualreintegration into society.

This leads us to the question why killingis so important in these societies. Since thelate 19th century most scholars have acceptedthe idea of an interrelation of killing andprocreation. According to this concept, it isthe duty of a man to kill enemies or wildbeasts, guarantee child-birth, and enrich thefertility of his group. Poissonnier does nottotally deny this spiritual connection, but shefavours the idea of a ‘principle of vitality’(p. 261) thought of as a flowing of energywhich is more than just biological fertility andis manifested in good luck and a healthy andwealthy life. To enforce this flow of energythe hero has to live an exemplary life. Thenhis energy can be transferred to the land, tolivestock and to his people. Killing inEthiopia must therefore be considered in thecontext of its social setting.

In this context, Poissonnier’s remarks onthe role of women in connection with malekilling are of importance. Even though she –much to her regret – could not discuss thistopic with women (she was working withmale interpreters), she was able to gaininteresting insights into the mindscape ofwomen concerning male killing. In severalexamples she demonstrates how women urgemen to become a killer. She also notes that inKonso the central motive of the interviewedkillers to become a killer was the honourshown by the woman toward them (p. 139).The killer’s lustre falls upon his wife, hisfamily, and his lineage, an effect that is

extended beyond death as is manifested by thewaakaa.

The strength of this book is the extensivedocumentation of the waakaa. The authorwas also able to clarify some anthropologicalideas existing about ritual killing. Adding thewomen’s view to the context, she opened anew field of discussion. Ethnologists, arthistorians and scholars of comparativereligion will gain valuable information fromthis book.

HERMANN AMBORNUniversity of Munich (Germany)

Robben, Antonius C.G.M. (ed.). 2009. Iraqat a distance. What anthropologists canteach us about the war. Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press. 216 pp.Hb.: $39.95. ISBN: 978 0 8122 4203 4.

Ethnographic research might be considered arite of passage that every anthropologist hasto go through in order to gain credibility andthe respect of his or her fellows. Long-termstudies, fluency in languages, face-to-faceinterviews and, last but not least, participantobservation are the major tools used inethnographic research and are a key sourcefor theories. But what can one do when suchresearch is not feasible? What is to be done ifdoing such work puts the researcher intolife-threatening situations? Or ifanthropologists are suspected of being spies?Antonius Robben takes up these questions inthe chapter entitled ‘EthnographicImagination at a Distance’, which forms theintroduction to the volume on Iraq underreview here, highlighting the new challengesbeing faced in ethnographic field research inour world today. But he also shows that thesechallenges are not as new as we might assume.All five contributors to Iraq at a Distancedemonstrate that with various approaches,distance can be overcome. Due to their richexperience and their comparative andhistorical methods, they are able to expoundon the current situation in Iraq, althoughmost of them have not spent any time in Iraq


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since the US invaded the country in 2003.Each describes the war zone in Iraq from adifferent angle – and of course from adistance – but their descriptions are detailedand full of anthropological insights.

Whereas Alexander Laban Hinton, JuliePeteet, Jeffrey A. Sluka and Antonius Robbenfocus on historical and comparative methodsto explain the major characteristics of the warbeing conducted in Iraq, Nadje Al-Ali showsthat the women of the Iraqi Diaspora can be areliable source of anthropological knowledgeabout the country. She points out that theplight of Iraqi women has not been adequatelydocumented, although women’s rights issuesare being taken into consideration in the‘larger international processes of imperialismand global capitalism’ (p. 57). Al-Ali’sin-depth examination of the difficulties beingexperienced by Iraqi women goes far beyondan analysis of the justifying rhetoric used inthe so-called War on Terror. In contrast,Alexander Laban Hinton discusses the powerof the narratives used by the US governmentto create a new Manichaean order – a worldsplit up into good and evil – and itsconsequences in Iraq. Taking into accountscholarly investigations he undertook inCambodia, he recognises that when violenceis ideologically framed, similar phenomenaoccur. He describes the anthropologicalpotential of revealing counter narratives toshow a Manichaean worldview in global warnarratives. While Hinton focuses on theimportance of counter narratives, Jeffrey A.Sluka rather shows how hearts and minds arelost in wartime due to the ‘classical errors ofcounterinsurgency warfare’ (p. 127). Hestresses that counterinsurgency is not a newform of war, but was a common British tacticin North Ireland during the 1980s. Suchcounterinsurgency is strongly connected topolitical aims of a war. The more supportinsurgents gain within the general population,the more difficult it is to maintain thatpopulation’s support of the government.Drawing on his knowledge of such errors,Sluka’s chronology of losing hearts and mindsin Iraq is a clear picture of this phenomenon.Julie Peteet examines possible connections

between Palestine and Iraq. However, fromthe start she stresses that although acomparison is possible, the differences, whichare significant, must be taken into account.For Peteet, the ‘strength has rested on ourexploring how global processes areinterpreted and reinscribed locally and theway local events can reverberate globally’(p. 84). Her awareness of the global dualistsituation combined with her local experiencesin Palestine are the two major cornerstones ofher comparative approach, and they allow fora number of new insights to be made aboutIraqi realities. Robben relies on field researchhe did in Argentina that examined trauma andpolitical violence. Although aware of thedifficulties involved in comparing Argentina’sDirty War with the War on Terror in Iraq,Robben examines military strategies andtactics in the two wars and shows possiblepoints of comparison. The epilogue byIbrahim Al-Marashi emphasises thesimilarities between the contributions andhighly praises their ability to examine Iraqfrom a distance.

Contributors to the volume show that afundamental change has occurred, not only inthe circumstances under which research isdone, but also in the field of anthropology asa whole. Based on anthropological analysis, ithas become possible to give ethnographicimagination a new form. Robben writes that:‘Ethnographic imagination transcendsempiricist realities, and anthropologicalinterpretations at a distance should not bewithheld because of methodological standardsthat can never be met in war zones’ (p. 3).Iraq at a Distance gives anthropology thepossibility of breaking new ground, as itreveals a new potential for the field. Thisvolume provides significant insights, bothmethodological and ethnographical ones, intocurrent events in Iraq, and will be animportant source for scholars doing work onIraq or the Anthropology of War.

IRENE KUCERAInstitute for Social Anthropology, AustrianAcademy of Sciences, Vienna (Austria)


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Stasch, Rupert. 2009. Society of others.Kinship and mourning in a West Papuanplace. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. xv + 317 pp. Pb.: $24.95. ISBN:978 0 520 25866.

Having previously read various articles on theKorowai by Stasch, I had been struck by theway he presented classical anthropologicaltopics such as joking relationships andmother-in-law avoidance in a highly originalway. These Korowai customs did not onlydiffer significantly from what one wouldexpect on the basis of comparative evidence,but Stasch was also able to make clear whythis should be so. Society of Others has thesame qualities but is much wider in its scopeand more explicit about its theoreticalapproach.

There are approximately 4000 Korowaiwho live in the south-eastern part ofIndonesian New Guinea. About 30 years agosome Dutch Protestant missionaries, togetherwith their Papuan auxiliaries, settled at themargins of their territory, followed by itslargely nominal incorporation into theIndonesian state. Partly because of theirspectacular tree-top dwellings Korowai (andthe neighbouring Kombai) attracted theattention of high circulation magazines andtelevision broadcasters and they wereincluded in the programmes of touroperators. Yet compared with other Papuancommunities, external influences on their wayof life have been relatively modest. In anycase, for the focus of the present book theseare of marginal importance. In otherpublications more detailed attention has beengiven to this issue and the author promises togive us a full-length treatment in the future.

Stasch starts with a consideration of therelation between clanship and territory: Allthe land is divided among numerouspatriclans allowing a fair distribution ofnatural resources such as sago groves, huntinggrounds, streams for fishing, and, mostimportantly, keeping strangers at a properdistance. Dispersed residence is both ideal andpractice. After a more general considerationof the way Korowai use dyadic relationships

to identify and define persons, the subsequentchapters deal with kinship and aspects of thelife cycle: conception, birth and childhood,marriage, death and mourning. Like manyMelanesians, Korowai do not conceptualisesocial relationships as consisting of bondsbetween individuals who exist as separateentities apart from their mutual engagement.However, Korowai appear to be very specialin the way they emphasise that people thuspaired are profoundly different even to suchan extent that Stasch characterises them asforming a ‘society of others’. He contrasts hisapproach with a theoretical tradition that seessocial bonds based on pure identification as anintegral part of social life and especiallycharacteristic of pre-modern societies.Although such insights may still informstereotyped ‘Western’ folk ideas about‘primitive’ societies, I cannot imagine thattoday professional anthropologists would stillsubscribe to such simplifications. Yet even ifthis is merely an Aunt Sally needed for thesake of argument, it makes Korowai lookperhaps more ‘other’ than necessary.

The strength of Stasch’s interpretation isthat it is not based on subjectiveunderstandings arising from theanthropologist’s empathy, implied by themethod of participant observation, but on asystematic analysis of the signification ofconcrete actions through which relationshipstake on a material form. He concentrates onthe meanings that arise from the use of signs(technically known as pragmatics). Althoughlanguage is obviously very important forcommunication, material objects and all kindsof purposeful behaviour are also part of such asemiotics. Especially important media arespatial relations, as ‘having a place’ is a basicattribute of all acting beings (including thedead who become demons), and the temporaldimension marking creation and disruption ofsocial bonds. Because of the profoundambiguity of social bonds, linking pairing andavoidance, Korowai are constantlymonitoring their own and other people’sactions, that are for the same reasonexperienced as highly contingent. ForKorowai reflexivity appears to constitute


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social life rather than being its reflection.Once derided as causing ‘epistemichypochondria’ (Geertz) amonganthropologists, here it has become a mostvaluable ethnographic tool.

Theory, method and evidence arestrongly interwoven in this closely arguedstudy. Its dense texture presents a convincingpicture of how Korowai experience socialrelations. However, Stasch does not give asystematic account of how to investigate(indigenous) reflexivity and its (ideological)limitations. Patriarchal bias remainsunexplained. Nor is it clear why thedisapprobation of outsiders could have causedthe recent demise of infanticide, which wasconsidered to be a normal reaction when forsome reason it was felt that a new-born babywas an unacceptable stranger. I would alsohave appreciated it if Stasch had related theimplications of his own findings moreexplicitly to the often highly involvedtheoretical linguistic notions of MichaelSilverstein, whose influence he gratefullyacknowledges.

JAN DE WOLFUtrecht University (The Netherlands)

Turino, Thomas. 2008. Music as social life:the politics of participation. Chicago:University of Chicago Press. xviii + 258 pp.Pb. with a CD: $22.00. ISBN: 978 0 22681698 2.

Turino begins this introductory text inethnomusicology by explicitly stating his aimto establish clear analytical tools for thinkingabout music in a social context. His mainintended audience is the undergraduatestudent and also those, like myself, who arenewcomers to the field. The book is concisebut offers a commendably broad take on thesubject that cuts across genres and culturesand provides a systematic approach todeveloping a greater understanding of bothmaking and listening to any kind of music in

almost any setting. The theoretical approachis explicitly semiotic, drawing on Peirce inparticular but also on Bateson’s frame analysisand Csikzentmihalyi’s notion of flow. Turinoargues that music draws together inner life,reasoning and emotion in ways that rationalthought cannot, emphasising the particularlyprominent role of indexical and iconic signswhich form ‘the basis for feeling directempathic connection’ (p. 16, emphasis inoriginal). His subsequent analyses thus drawout the iconic and indexical elements of musicand music-making and the layers of meaningthey elicit.

A central argument is that, despite itscommon iconic and indexical capacities, musicis really a number of diverse phenomena thatone needs to understand as operating verydifferently within social contexts. Hisfour-part typology contrasts live and recordedmusic on the one hand before breaking eachfield down into two. Live music is thusdivided into participatory and presentationalmodes, classified on the basis of whether acontrast is drawn between audience andmusicians. A coherent case is made for therepetitive, noisy and buzzing qualities ofparticipatory music that render it moreinclusive. The recorded field is divided intohi-fidelity, which is iconic of live presentation,and studio audio art: a sound object created ina studio. Whilst the last is used to point outthe possible scope of recorded music, it is notdiscussed in detail as a social process, perhapsbecause it is too specialised and recent aphenomenon that, even in the West, is notalways obvious as ‘music’.

Turino draws on this typology to explorethe role of music in identity and selfhood,attending to the ways in which musical stylesemerge in conjunction with cultural cohortsand formations. These themes are explored inthree subsequent chapters in which the role ofmusic in social life is examined in more depth.Turino draws on his own research inZimbabwe and on his participation in therevivalist old-time music scene in the USA.Finally he compares the significance of musicin the emergence of Nazism in Germany and


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the civil rights movement in America. This lastchapter, though it makes strong points aboutthe similar ways in which group cohesion andshared beliefs are facilitated by music, is lesseffective because it dwells too much on thebroader social and political context of thesemovements and not enough on thenitty-gritty of music and its social effects.

It seems churlish to criticise such awide-ranging book for what it does not cover,but Turino’s focus is clearly much more onparticipatory and presentational forms ofmusic than recordings. The social possibilitiesopened up by recording, and in particular itsarticulation with the media, is not extensivelydeveloped, perhaps because Turino’s ownresearch is less concerned with this. One suchpossibility is for music to be a peripheralpresence in social life rather than a focal pointof activity. Turino’s emphasis, reasonablyenough, is on circumstances in which music isvital and central. Recording has allowedmusic to become a ubiquitous but seeminglyvapid element of marketing, entertainmentand daily life, but the experience and socialsignificance of this is seldom explored. Turinoalso neglects the relationship betweenlanguage and music, rarely discussing thelyrical contents of songs, their relation tosound and, in turn, social life. This implies asharp, but I think contestable, distinctionbetween language and music that perhapsmany would not recognise.

These minor criticisms aside, this is astimulating and important book that providesa useful gateway towards understanding thecomplex ways in which music and socialityare intertwined. Turino writes with authorityand admirable clarity of word and argumentand this book should be essential to anyoneembarking on ethnographic studies of music.It also has wider relevance to researchersinterested in art and social life and the socialsignificance of sound. I certainly found ithelpful for reconsidering my own research onthe importance of bird sounds to people, forexample. Turino is clearly a strong advocatefor the social power of music and for the needto analyse music not in isolation but withinthe contexts in which it arises and becomes

meaningful. This book is an articulatetestimony to this approach.

ANDREW WHITEHOUSEUniversity of Aberdeen (UK)

Vidal, Laurent. 2010. Faire del’anthropologie. Sante, science etdeveloppement. Paris: La Decouverte. 292pp. Pb.: € 26.00. ISBN: 978 2 7071 58857.

In this book, Laurent Vidal unveils a new wayof practising anthropology, exemplified byfour research projects concerning health inAfrica (tuberculosis, AIDS, maternal healthand malaria). He shows that onceanthropologists conduct their research on‘applied’ objects such as health, within theframework of multidisciplinaryproblem-solving or policy-oriented researchprojects, they are no longer in the traditionalposition of the solitary anthropologist. Whileconcepts and tools of the discipline remain thesame, the process of formulating researchquestions, building research projects andconducting them change fundamentally.Anthropologists have to constantly managetheir relationship with other researchers,other disciplines, and also with thepractitioners whose practices they study;practitioners who have requested the researchor who are the objects of it, for instance,health centres’ staff, people in charge ofsanitary policies. Researchers can no longercarry out their research independently. Theyhave to negotiate it, place it within a set ofissues or within a framework of analysis thatis not only theirs. They need to adjust to theevents and to adapt their strategy. They needto work on how to present their results, sothat they can be understood and accepted bythese diverse stakeholders. They sometimesplay a more direct part in making practicesevolve and improve. Not only are theyinvestigators and observers, they also have tobe able to act as coordinators or mediators.

Laurent Vidal believes that this way ofpractising anthropology is not a weakening of


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the discipline, linked to the constraints ofinvitations to tender or of cooperation withmedical sciences. On the contrary, it is a newway of practising anthropology, coherentwith today’s world, and more particularly,coherent with the ethical demands of socialusefulness and of making research resultsavailable and useful for the people involvedin it.

Going back over the history and theunfolding of these four research projects,Laurent Vidal invites us to witness research inthe making, from the negotiation of theproject to the dissemination of the results,illustrating in great detail theoften-overlooked dimensions of research inpartnership. Specifically, he examines theplace of anthropology within enlargednetworks of scholars from other disciplinesand practitioners and its implication foranthropologists and their work: thelegitimacy of the discipline, its scientificspecificity, are not so straightforward whenfaced with health agents and researchers usedto reasoning based on statistics; those behindhealth policies, the health centres’ directors,the nursing staff are both actors who requestor accept the research, actors who areobserved and interviewed, and actors whoexamine – and sometime question – theanthropologist’s results.

A particularly rich chapter depicts theissues involved in presenting findings to theactors who are directly involved. The authorsees such presentations both as an ethical andmethodological requirement, and as anopportunity for research. They require a formof ‘simplification of the content from themoment one does not address a colleague ofthe same discipline: a simplification whichshould not, however, weaken the analysis’(p. 93). This stage is all the more critical giventhe fact that the anthropologist’s pointing outmalfunctioning within the health system canbe perceived as systematic challenges orcriticism. It is necessary to be particularlyvigilant about the way the results areconveyed, so that the pointing out triggersdebate and action, and not rejection. The

various stages of interaction, negotiation, andpresentation/dissemination thus offer rareopportunities for understanding of some newaspects of the issues under study. From thispoint of view they are also part of the ‘field’,and contribute to the research process.

Here the author defends and illustrates ina clear and convincing way the ambition of ananthropology which comes to terms with itsparticipation in complex projects and itsinvolvement within the network of diversifiedactors, which exchanges with other disciplinesas with practitioners, and makes of this veryinvolvement an object of epistemological andmethodological thinking, as well as a sourceof information for research. In such aperspective, there is no strong delimitationbetween a ‘fundamental’ and ‘critical’anthropology and a more ‘applied’anthropology, because such an ‘applied’anthropological research within enlargednetworks focuses on fundamental issues andkeeps its critical perspective, while cultivatingreflexivity on itself and on its own position.

PHILIPPE LAVIGNE DELVILLEGret/IRD/Lasdel (France/Niger)

Vokes, Richard. 2009. Ghosts of Kanungu:fertility, secrecy and exchange in the GreatLakes of East Africa. Woodbridge: JamesCurrey & Kampala: Fountain Publishers.xv + 240 pp. Hb.: £55.00. ISBN:9781847010094.

People died in their hundreds in the Kanunguinferno in South Western Uganda in March2000. Hundreds of bodies were exhumedfrom different other sites, including in theMakindye division of Uganda’s capital,Kampala. Investigations, which prompted theHead of State’s commissioning an inquiry, ledto a revelation that the deceased belonged to areligious group – The Movement for theRestoration of the Ten Commandments ofGod (MRTC). About ten years later, thisCommission of Inquiry has not officially


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released its report – partly due to thecomplexity of the issue at hand. Manyquestions remain unanswered regarding thistragic incident which made headlinesworldwide. From an eight-year ethnographicstudy, a book Ghosts of Kanungu: Fertility,Secrecy & Exchange in the Great Lakes ofEast Africa has been written for scholars andthe general public who would like to knowwhy and how MRTC grew in the early 1990s,how it came to profoundly influence peopleand why many people left the mainstreamCatholic Church for this sect.

Answers to these questions have beencompiled in seven chapters that many willfind well-written and accessible. The authorcovers, among other themes, fertility andmisfortune, the many lives of Nyabingi spirit,the process of building the network, religionin times of HIV/AIDS in Uganda, the historyof an African-initiated church and the lastdays of MRTC. The main findings – whichare methodologically well-grounded andlinked to historical and religious practices inUganda – suggest that the MRTC operated insecrecy under the leadership of JosephKibwetere and Ceredonia Mwerinde.Members of this religious group lived invarious parts of Uganda but mainly inKanungu, its headquarters. The MRTC wascompelling because its key messages werecentred on the visions of a local visionary –Ceredonia Mwerinde – and that her visionswere so persuasive because of the Nyabugotoconnection, a cave for Nyabingi worship.Whereas people joined MTRC because of thedaily violence in their homes, HIV/AIDS,infertility, domestic violence and poverty, itwas mostly women who joined this sectbecause the misfortunes it promised toaddress mainly affected women in rural areas.It is argued in this book that the largestproportion of MRTC membership werewomen who were motivated by the messagesof hope, healing, and the provision of a refugefrom their backgrounds, which werecharacterised by violence and misery.

However, how and why the inferno on17 March 2000 led to the loss of thousands of

lives is still only partially answered. Differentschools of thought propose different ideasincluding mass murder, mass suicide and, inthis book, mass poisoning in the dining hallby key leaders and the subsequent ignition ofa fire on unconscious diners in the buildingafter their meal.

While the book provides new insightsabout the Kanungu massacre, I found itdifficult to understand the author’s argumentthat the MRTC was founded and linked toNyabingi worship. This is because in thechapters following (i.e. from Chapter 4,addressing the Genesis of the Network) heprovides overwhelming evidence that theMRTC could have been a break-away sectfrom the Catholic Church. He states forexample ‘. . . the movement – both before andafter its expulsion from the mainstream[Catholic] church – stemmed from an attemptby its leaders to further promote the keysymbol of the Virgin Mary’ (p. 101). And if itwas this cult’s objective to restore the TenCommandments, I doubt whether anymember in this group would agree with theauthor’s attempts to link their practice withNyabingi worship. In fact, on p. 137 there is acontradiction when the author writes that‘Ceredonia’s vision attacks those women whoin the event of infertility, turn to traditionalhealers (abafumu) for help. At one point thevision condemns traditional healers as beingin company with the devil’. My questionthen is: if MRTC messages condemnedassociation with evil, and one of the TenCommandments is ‘Thou shall not haveany other God beside me’, how then, couldthey have been promoting Nyabingiworship?

Throughout the book, there is atendency to verify ethnographic data fromUganda with viewpoints from key informantsliving in New Zealand who only based theirjudgements on photographs taken from thedifferent sites of the massacre. My belief isthat such data greatly influenced theinterpretation of information in this book. Iwould have loved to read this book withanalyses based on viewpoints of people who


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were physically present at the scene and hadexperience in MRTC activities.

GRACE AKELLOGulu University (Uganda)

Wilson, Tamar Diana. 2009. Women’smigration networks in Mexico and beyond.Albuquerque: University of New MexicoPress. 232 pp. Pb.: $29.95. ISBN: 978 08263 4720 6.

Tamar Wilson’s research on Mexican womenand their migration experiences is one of thebooks that has filled the gap in this literaturein the last two decades. Since then, thenumber of research studies on women’smigration has increased sharply, as has the useof narrative research methods. The turningpoint came with the thematic issue of theInternational Migration Review in 1984 thatwas dedicated to women’s migration and to anappeal for researchers to study migration as agender-marked phenomenon. Twenty yearslater we can say that many responded to thecall. We can see today how numerous,extensive and multidisciplinary the studies ofwomen’s migration have become. Thebiographic and narrative approach provedindispensable to understanding the socialstructure of migration phenomena. With thehelp of auto/biographical and other narrativemethods, our knowledge of migrations hasbeen enriched with a number of studies of thedifferent roles, experiences, positions andtreatment of men and women within themigration context in the past and today.

This book about Mexican womenmigrants is an excellent example of a fruitfulcombination of gender perspective andnarrative method, which vividly andemphatically reveals the lives of women onthe move. Women’s migrations patternsemerged through the complicated structuresof family decisions, intimate considerationsand the densely knit personal and kinship tiesof both sexes. They are seen as much morethan mere consequences of socio-economic

and legislative circumstances that pull andpush people around the world or inside onecountry. If the migration flows of the lastcouple of decades have become a women’sphenomenon, it is important to understandthat this phenomenon is extremelyheterogeneous and structured by ethnic,racial, religious, class, identity and culturaldifferences.

Within the heterogeneity of women’smigration waves, the only commondenominator seems to be that we can nolonger consider women to be only passive‘victims’ or ‘objects’ of circumstances.Women can be seen, rather, as active decisionmakers regarding the change of their own,and to a great extent, their families’ lives.Tamar Wilson’s book is rich in such examples.Although there are still circumstances inwhich we cannot see any positive changes ofthe position of women, there are situations inwhich women migrants gain power, influence,importance, and work and income autonomy.This is a key characteristic that the researchersof migration processes as gender-markedprocesses have found – that migrationsreshape gender social roles, reorganise andrestructure them. In the centre of the researchof the female migrant experience is anexperience of lost, reshaped, transformed, andre-assembled personal, ethnic, work andsexual identities. Tamar Wilson’s book showsthis experience in a persuasive way.

Women’s Migration Networks in Mexicoand Beyond is based on women’s stories ofmigration and the ways in which women withfew economic resources (we could even sayproletarian women) try to survive and raisetheir children. The main topics of the personalmigration histories that the author collectedand analysed are the principles and dynamicsof the networks, her own included. This is notonly a book about Mexican women on themove to find work, shelter and provision fortheir children, and it is not only about keyconcepts such as network mediation, socialcapital formation and transnational migration.It is also a book about the author herself andabout friendship. In fact, it is a story aboutthe research history itself.


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The narratives, the life stories, are lives indifferent and changing contexts. Thesecontexts are defined by social, economic,historic, religious, and educationalcircumstances; and the migrants’ decisions aresubject to the influences of family,community, and social institutions. Thesedecisions, however, also depend on intimateactions, independent decisions and theirconsequences. Of course, Tamar Wilsonknows very well how important it is that wetake into consideration the ideological,political and social standpoints of the‘knowledge producers’: of thoseresearchers-listeners who then abridge thesestories, shorten or adapt them and fit theminto frames, theories, and concepts and finallyinterpretatively place them into their owncontexts. The book is thus about the contextsof people who narrate, and also the contextsof those who produce knowledge andauthority from these narratives.

In addition to the thorough and precisechapters on the wider contexts of Mexicanmigration and the concepts in the studies ofmigration and gender, Tamar Wilsondedicated her book to the stories. She has notreduced the stories to short quotes andillustrations of her interpretations. She

included them in the book as an integral partso that we can actually read them at lengthand follow the described complex curves ofthe ‘work histories’ as Wilson calls them. Thefoundation story is the story of DonaConsuelo and it is no surprise that it is also astory of friendship between two women, twomigrants, two workers, two caregivers – aresearcher and a story teller in exchangeableroles. The auto/biographical method by itselfdoes not enable the voices of ‘ordinary’ peopleto be heard. Their voices, interpretations,experiences can only be heard if the decisionof the researcher makes that possible. For thisreason, the methodology of auto/biographicalresearch is constantly subject to ethical andmoral considerations. There is no doubt thatTamar Wilson is totally aware of them, whichmakes her book indispensable not only forunderstanding the women’s migrationexperiences in Mexico ‘and beyond’, but alsoto understand the need for an ethical researchapproach and responsible analysis.

MIRJAM M. HLADNIKSlovenian Migration Institute, ScientificResearch Centre of the Slovenian Academy ofSciences and Arts, Ljubljana (Slovenia)


Van Wolputte, S. (2010). Review: COLLINS, S. All tomorrow's cultures. Anthropological engagement...

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Transcript of Van Wolputte, S. (2010). Review: COLLINS, S. All tomorrow's cultures. Anthropological engagement...