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Archaeology and material regard to the sufficient parameters that link them. Although Reeves is the most explicit culture regarding methodology, all of the chapters recognize cultural, spatial, and temporal scales as reticulate and hierarchical units of analysis. Delle, James A., Mark W. Hauser & Moreover, they all adopt a perspective in which Douglas V. Armstrong (eds). Out of many, one people: the historical archaeology of material remains are given equal footing to historical documents. The chapters embody the colonial Jamaica.x,332 pp., maps, figs, synergism of archaeology and history. tables, illus., bibliogr. Tuscaloosa: Univ. Introductory and concluding chapters (chap. Alabama Press, 2011.$27.50 (paper) 1 and epilogue) situate Jamaican history and archaeological research. Three chapters examine This outstanding collection of papers documents the early colonial period. Spanish influences on the quality and quantity of historical archaeology Jamaica and other British colonies have often research conducted on the island of Jamaica over been neglected. A detailed account of the early the past thirty years. Jamaica offers a significant sixteenth-century Spanish sugar industry offers a location for the investigation of the colonial counterpoint that employs very specific enterprise in the Americas. Beginning with archaeological observations to illuminate the Spanish explorations and conquest in the tension between feudalism and agrarian sixteenth century, followed by British accession capitalism (chap. 2). Jamaica was the proving in 1655, the island provides the opportunity to ground for underwater archaeology during investigate the different strategies of European excavations of Port Royal undertaken by Donny metropoles and the majority population who Hamilton and his students at Texas A&M arrived there against their will. Moreover, between 1981 and 1990. (Known as ‘the because Jamaica remained a British colony until wickedest city on Earth’, Port Royal collapsed it achieved independence in 1948, it reflects very into the sea during a catastrophic earthquake in different experiences from its North American 1692.) Chapter 3 targets wrought-iron tools and many Caribbean counterparts that were recovered during underwater excavations to transformed by European expansionism. From a evaluate local practices in the city; practices that comparative perspective, Jamaican history is are recorded in probate records, but are comprised of multivalent landscapes. disconnected from the lived experience. The All of the chapters recognize that historical archaeology of interactions and communication investigations must proceed at multiple in a public setting among the British colonial ‘effective’ scales. Matthew Reeves (chap. 10) merchant class is the focus of investigations at provides the most specific discussion of this the New Street Tavern in a drier context of Port scalar perspective in which he identifies global, Royal (chap. 4). regional, community, and household levels of The majority of historical research has analysis. It is refreshing to read a chapter that focused on the British plantation system in discusses the integration of different scales with Jamaica. Douglas Armstrong (chap. 5) introduces

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 887 this subject by reflecting on investigations at inhabit the banks of the Nile from Aswan in Seville Plantation and highlighting efforts to Egypt up to al-Dabbah in the Sudan. Most of illuminate ‘both the complexity of social them spoke one or other of several Nubian interaction and the contexts of dynamic languages, though some of the Egyptian creativity embodied in Jamaica’s cultural Nubians had adopted Arabic. They lived in landscape’ (p. 77). A significant aspect of social hundreds of small hamlets, cultivating the interaction is the maritime movement of goods generally narrow margins of the river. The and people. Underwater archaeology again poverty of the area was such that many of the offers a unique perspective, this time in the men were migrant workers who spent long context of a shipwreck (chap. 6). The movement periods in Lower Egypt. Their reputation for of goods into and across the island is the subject reliability and honesty helped them find work as of chapters on the production and exchange of servants, door-keepers, and the like. locally produced ceramics (chap. 9); household At the beginning of the last century, the first marketing activities by enslaved peoples in two Aswan Dam was completed, and it was distinct plantation settings (coffee and sugar subsequently twice raised (1907-12 and 1929-33). plantations; chap. 10); and the essential role of As the lake behind the dam grew deeper, a consumer goods in communicating status and number of Nubian villages were flooded and social identities (chap. 11). Combined, these their inhabitants moved. Relocation on a much chapters provide a harmonic resonance to the larger scale came with the second Aswan Dam diversity of lived experiences, and demonstrate (the High Dam), construction of which took the substantial contributions that historical place between 1960 and 1970. All the Nubians in archaeology has to offer from a focus on Egypt (over 50,000), and most of those in the materiality. Sudan, were resettled as their homes vanished The complex layering of Jamaica’s colonial under the waters of Lake Nasser. history is exposed and scrutinized in all of the Archaeologists were deeply concerned at the chapters, from the initial Spanish conquest, to submersion of the numerous ancient sites the trading entrepôt of Port Royal, the habitus upstream of the High Dam, and many people of hegemonic British plantation landscapes know of the great international effort that led to (chap. 7), the agency of enslaved peoples, the the removal of the Abu Simbel temples from the ‘consumer revolution’ (chap. 11), Maroon area that was to be flooded. Few, however, are ‘freedom fighters’ (chap. 8), and aware of the attempts made by anthropologists post-emancipation politics and realities, to deal with the effects of the great dam. The including the importation of indentured most important of these, the one that is the labourers from South Asia (chap. 12). This subject of the present work, was initiated by volume also highlights how the people of Robert Fernea, who was at that time teaching at Jamaica have actively engaged in revealing and the American University in Cairo (AUC). He protecting their cultural heritage. Not only does enlisted the support of a more senior this collection speak to the history of Jamaica’s anthropologist, Laila el-Hamamsy, director of the peoples (‘Out of many, one people’); it situates Social Research Center (SRC) at AUC, and the Jamaica’s colonial history within broader world two of them turned for funding to the Ford systems. This book is a significant contribution Foundation, which responded generously. Field towards understanding the patterns, processes, research for the project – the Nubian Ethnological and motives of the colonial revolution that Survey (NES) – was carried out in the Egyptian began in the Americas in 1492, and whose part of Nubia in the years 1961-4, under the repercussions continue today. leadership of Fernea and el-Hamamsy. They William F. Keegan Florida Museum of recruited a senior staff of about half-a-dozen Natural History Americans, most of whom (like Fernea himself) had recently received doctorates in anthropology, Hopkins, Nicholas & Sohair Mehanna and a junior staff made up mainly of Egyptian (eds). Nubian encounters: the story of the graduate students (among them Sohair Mehanna, Nubian Ethnological Survey 1961-1964. xxiii, the co-editor of this volume). 328 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Cairo: The NES carried out two broad surveys, one American Univ. Cairo Press, 2010.£22.95 of the Nubian economy, the other of the Nubian (cloth) migrant workers, and four community studies, three of them among the old Nubian The Nubians – in the relevant sense of that settlements and one in a more northern ambiguous word – are a people who used to settlement that had been established in 1934 as a

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 888 Reviews

result of the second raising of the old Aswan understanding of the dynamic connectedness dam. The intention was to co-ordinate the work that spans the entirety of human history. The of all these investigations at the SRC, and an contributors deliver the compelling case that ‘enormous amount of material’ (fieldnotes and history must penetrate beyond shallow time, the like) was collected there. But the NES staff thereby severing the binds between history and quickly dispersed, some materials never reached text, in order to engage the deep past and the the SRC, and in the event the researchers indivisibility of human and world. The calibre of published their results as individuals rather than contributors is exceptional and Andrew Shryock as members of a team. and Daniel Lord Smail should be congratulated The opening section of this book (by Hopkins for assembling the line-up whilst also fostering and Mehanna) is a detailed account of the NES the volume’s collaborative character. Ten and of some related research. At the end of the thematic chapters are divided into four sections: book there is a list of the publications that ‘Problems and orientations’; ‘Frames for history resulted from the NES, a guide to some of the in deep time’; ‘Shared substance’; and ‘Human unpublished ethnographic materials, and a expansion’. Each chapter is co-authored, bibliography of some relevant work done facilitating a sophisticated fusion of insights from outside the framework of the survey. archaeology, anthropology, history, linguistics, The main body of the book consists of and primatology. This transcendence of sixteen papers, covering a wide range of specialization yields some remarkably innovative subjects. Three of them are previously and perceptive results. unpublished, and among these the account of ‘Histories can be written from every type of the resettlement written by Mohamed Fikri trace’, Shryock and Smail note refreshingly, Abdul Wahab (the only member of the NES team ‘from the memoir to the bone fragment and the who spoke a Nubian language) is particularly blood type’ (p. 13). From this foundation the noteworthy. The NES was a work of salvage volume’s contributors unpack the fashioning of ethnography, and viewed as such it was a historical argument through the power of success, greatly increasing our knowledge of the evidence, architectures of likenesses, and Nubians. But Hopkins and Mehanna consider at narrative structures. This volume therefore some length whether, taken together, the exposes and moves beyond the conspiracy – publications of the NES ‘amount to a coherent assisted by conceptions of (post)modernity, the account of Nubian society and culture’. Their triumph over nature, and social evolution – answer is evidently no. One common weakness which maintains deep time as inaccessible to is the absence of detailed information, which can anthropologists and historians. Deep history also be felt even in such excellent papers as those by demonstrates admirably how instruments such Charles Callender, Abdul Hamid el Zein, and as patterns, frames, and metaphors enable the Hussein M. Fahim. The book itself is the product reconstruction of deep pasts. In light of this, the of a larger SRC project, the purpose of which is work scrutinizes a number of co-evolutionary to collect, order, and make available at the AUC devices, including relationships (‘kinshipping’), material relating to the NES. It may be that the exchange, hospitality, networks, trees, mass of raw data in this and other archives – to extensions, scalar integration, and fractal say nothing of an unpublished book left by replications. Callender after his death – will eventually give Amongst the illuminating contributions – us a fuller picture of Nubian life as it was half a and they are all impressive in various ways – the century ago. In any case, the present publication explorations of ‘shared substances’ perhaps will remain an indispensable tool for every shine brightest. The case is well made that serious student of the subject. networks of relationships and exchange are Frank H. Stewart The Hebrew University social projects and these have always connected of Jerusalem and punctuated time and space. None the less, as instruments for ‘making history’, they remain Shryock, Andrew & Daniel Lord Smail ‘incoherent and imperfectly intelligible’ (p. 132). et al. Deep history: the architecture of past and In chapter 6, Felipe Fernández-Armesto and present. xvii, 342 pp., maps, tables, figs, illus., Daniel Lord Smail describe powerfully, by way of bibliogr. London, Berkeley: Univ. California discussion ranging from hospitality and feasting Press, 2011.£20.95 (cloth) to elite cuisine and cannibalism, the centrality of food to human history and our long social and Deep history is a volume of great significance, meaningful engagement with it. The media of bringing fresh insight, focus, and shape to our kinshipping are explored by Thomas Trautmann,

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Gillian Feeley-Harnik, and John Mitani in chapter century, originating from the island of Putuo, in 7. The authors, positioned between primatology China, and now in the collections of the and ethnography, manage to break the bounds Museum of Liverpool. Drawing on Arjun of the Hegelian historical frame. In essence this Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff’s pioneering involves defining kinship in terms of biographical approach, the book reconstructs consciousness, memory, and gesture rather than the social lives of these enigmatic sculptures language, whilst also recognizing its ‘elastic’ through a detailed mapping of their manifestation. The history of human sociality – geographical and epistemological dislocations from intimate to global – is thereby over a period of over six centuries, in two reconfigured, and with it further transformations countries (China and the UK), and in diverse unfold, including what it means to be human contexts of display (Buddhist temples, Great and the spatial and bodily dimensions of both Exhibitions, private collections, and public relationships and materiality. The point could be museums). made in qualification that food and kinship are Each chapter is devoted to the analysis of the vast topics. In both cases other areas might meanings and values attributed to the sculptures have been included fruitfully: for example, in a different context of display. Following a movement and flows, social memory, creativity, chronological order, the book opens with a power relations and inequality, material chapter probing the sites and modes of culture, and ritual. Such interrogations of the manufacturing of these artefacts and their interplay between the deep and shallow pasts significance as objects of Buddhist veneration in of shared substances remain available for the temples of Putuo Island. The analysis others. continues with an investigation of the historical The impact of the volume is at once inspiring circumstances under which the sculptures left and unsettling. It delivers a challenge for us all Putuo and reached the UK as part of the to do much better in our various disciplinary material collected by a British army officer attempts to understand deep time and during the Opium Wars (1839-42). This move reconnect short and long histories. Some also entails a transition from a sacred, public immediate points of self-awareness can be context (the temple) to a secular and private drawn out. Firstly, we must recognize – and realm (a private collection). After being tackle – the myopia of inflexible forms of prominently displayed in London’s 1851 Great particularism and hyper-specialization. Exhibition, the sculptures became sought-after Secondly, we must accept that it is premature to collectibles as curiosities, antiquities, and art think previous purges of master narratives from treasures (chaps 3 and 4). They left the realm of the scaffolding of historiography were successful. private cabinets and connoisseurship in 1867, For example, if we care to look, notions of following the acquisition by the Museum of progress and human exceptionalism can be Liverpool, where they were subsequently found fit and well in the lexicons of cultural incorporated into displays on the ‘Mongolian emancipation, economic development, and Race’. technological modernization. Thirdly, we must Chapters 5, 6, and 7 focus on the social lives reject unified visions of human history. This of the sculptures as part of museum collections. includes key products of the postcolonial search These chapters show how, as museum objects, for diversity, often linked to uncritical the sculptures continued to be highly mobile, as applications of agency theory, which have they journeyed across ideologies (imperialism, transformed and homogenized the subaltern evolutionism, postcolonial criticism), into the familiar. classifications (as archaeological, ethnographic, Timothy Clack University of Oxford art objects), and museological paradigms (modernism, aesthetics, new museology). This fine-grained analysis notably enables Tythacott Tythacott, Louise. The lives of Chinese objects: to raise, in the book’s concluding chapter, some Buddhism,imperialism and display. xii, 275 pp., key questions about the ‘semantic flexibility of illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berghahn things’ (p. 226). Is there a limit to the polysemy Books, 2011.£56.00 (cloth) of objects? Can some objects resist endless re-contextualizations by virtue of their powerful Louise Tythacott’s monograph takes the reader iconography? Tythacott points at the consistent on a mesmerizing journey through time and prominence of the religious character of the five continents following the itineraries of five Buddhist sculptures–acharacterthatthemany Buddhist sculptures dating back to the fifteenth epistemological and museological interpretations

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 890 Reviews

never truly managed to overwrite. The book Economics and trade closes with a chapter discussing a range of future scenarios for the five sculptures, including their permanence at the Museum of Liverpool, Lyon, Sarah & Mark Moberg (eds). Fair and their repatriation to China. trade and social justice: global ethnographies. Over the last two decades, a significant viii, 307 pp., bibliogrs. New York: Univ. Press, number of volumes have been exploring the 2010.$75.00 (cloth), $25.00 (paper) potential of biographical approaches to illuminate the study of material culture. In many ‘Does fair trade really work?’ Anyone who writes instances, however, biographical accounts focus or teaches about global trade has fielded this on specific moments in objects’ social lives. question dozens of times from students, Based on an impressive amount of historical data colleagues, and friends. This volume, consisting collected in archives, libraries, and museums of ten ethnographic case studies of fair trade’s around the world, Louise Tythacott’s work is a impact on commodity producers around the uniquely comprehensive study: the objects’ globe, provides welcome evidence to help movements throughout their social trajectories answer that question. As a whole, the have been painstakingly charted and critically ethnographies suggest that fair trade has, at the discussed. This material provides the palimpsest very least, had remarkable success in creating a for engaging discussions of the role of conversation about how commodities are ideologies, disciplinary taxonomies, display produced and exchanged internationally. Since approaches, curators’ preferences, conservation the 1980s, fair trade has grown from a fringe techniques, and funding arrangements in movement to a sophisticated global bureaucracy determining the fate and value of museum that regulates a market generating over US$1 objects. As a result, the book offers a wealth of billion in sales. This rapid growth has not come theoretical insights on a broad range of issues of without its challenges. In practice, fair trade has relevance to museum studies, anthropology, and often failed to live up to its rhetoric of economic material culture scholars. These include, but are justice and farmer empowerment. While many not limited to, the polysemy of objects; of the essays in this volume are critical of how colonialism and cultural hierarchies; the role of fair trade functions ‘on the ground’, however, collectors and connoisseurship; the creation of the authors are generally sympathetic towards knowledge and value; the shifts between the movement’s goals. private ownership and public good; the issue Much of the existing scholarship on fair trade of repatriation; the placement of sacred has focused on coffee, the product that has the objects in secular spaces; as well as the most well-established fair trade market. While ambivalent status of Chinese objects in Western this volume contains three chapters on coffee museums. (by Julia Smith, Sarah Lyon, and Molly Doane), it Written in an accessible, yet never reductive expands our understanding of fair trade by narrative style, this study tells us much more including studies of tea plantations (Sarah Besky than the story of a set of Chinese sculptures. The and Catherine S. Dolan), bananas (Mark discussion of the endless array of labels, Moberg), flowers (Catherine Ziegler), and crafts meanings, and values that, over six centuries, (Patrick C. Wilson and Kathy M’Closkey). The the West has been attributing to these objects editors provide a skilful introduction that holds up a mirror to Western civilization – its summarizes major debates within fair trade intellectual shortcomings and illuminations, its scholarship: Does fair trade paradoxically create greed and fears, and its endless fascination with a market-based solution to problems caused by and (in)capacity to understand other cultures. faith in free markets (p. 7)? Does it turn The rigorous and accurate historical research systematic economic inequalities into matters of over an exceptionally extended period of time, private consumer choice (p. 8)? Does fair trade and the very effective synergy of historical, lose its counter-hegemonic force when it is taken anthropological, museological, and curatorial up by corporations like Nestlé and McDonald’s approaches, insights, and research tools, are (p. 12)? Does fair trade create a new system of what make this book unique, and highly governance that re-creates unequal North-South recommended reading not only for Asia power relationships (p. 15)? These questions scholars, but also for anyone interested in the reappear throughout the volume, which is role that objects play in processes of knowledge organized into three sections: part 1, ‘Global and value creation. markets and local realities’, focuses on how fair Marzia Varutti University of Oslo trade’s goals are or are not being met in specific

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 891 ethnographic contexts; part 2, ‘Negotiating are enacted, resisted, and reformed in locally difference and identity in fair trade markets’, specific ways. The concise and well-chosen explores the ‘continuing asymmetries of power chapters will work wonderfully in the classroom, between commodity producers and those who answering some well-known questions about procure their goods for fair trade distribution’ the fair trade system, while stimulating future (p. 16); and part 3, ‘Relationships and inquiry and debate. consumption in fair trade markets and alternative Daniel Reichman University of Rochester economies’, focuses on the consumption of fair trade products, with one additional chapter West, Paige. From modern production to imag- (Faidra Papavasiliou) describing an alternative ined primitive: the social world of coffee from currency project in Ithaca, New York. Papua New Guinea. xvii, 315 pp., tables, illus., This volume is at its best when it presents bibliogr. London, Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. ethnographic observations that illustrate both Press, 2012.£74.00 (cloth), £17.99 (paper) the accomplishments and the limitations of the fair trade system. Moberg, for example, Scholarly bookshelves are crowded with describes how the ‘social premium’ paid to fair commodity studies, and potential readers may trade banana producers in St Lucia has been question what sets this ethnography apart from used to create a ‘novel health insurance fund’ the others. From modern production to imagined (p. 59). At the same time, these farmers see primitive is a unique and valuable contribution many fair trade requirements for weeding and owing to its geographical focus, its topical harvesting as being overly burdensome and not attention to gender roles, the complexities of worth the trouble. Lyon’s discussion of gender co-operation, and the poorly understood world inequality within one of Guatemala’s most of commodity distribution. It also deepens our successful fair trade coffee co-operatives shows anthropological understanding of the social how fair trade’s discourse of democratization imaginary and the problematic consequences of and farmer empowerment can gloss over, and identity-based marketing. even solidify, gender divisions. Besky shows how West sheds important light on coffee a fair trade ‘Joint Body’ on a Darjeeling tea production in Papua New Guinea, a region that plantation becomes co-opted by a plantation is underrepresented in research on agricultural owner, who excludes the plantation’s hired commodities, especially coffee. In PNG, where workforce from the certification process, leading the vast majority of coffee is grown on small to a situation in which fair trade strengthens the farms in rural settings, one out of every three exploitative relationships it intends to challenge. people is connected to the industry in some way While this volume certainly demonstrates the (p. 7). From modern production to imagined value of local-level ethnography as a research primitive provides a strong corrective to method, it might have been strengthened by academics and activists who have a tendency to incorporating methodologies that offer the make sweeping generalizations about the world potential for more collaboration between of coffee production and trade based on the researcher and subject. Many of the authors’ better understood experiences of Latin American criticisms of fair trade are discussed among farmers. In places like Maimafu, every family has experts within the fair trade bureaucracy. Can a coffee grove and the crop is the only source of plantation labour ever truly be called fair? How income for many – consequently, it is seen both can a ‘democratically organized’ co-operative be as their link to cash and the root of their claims certified as such? The ethnographies largely to modernity (p. 110). address these concerns from the perspective of As a result of her deep anthropological commodity producers in dialogue with understanding of local culture and history, West anthropologists. It would be helpful to know is able to illuminate the important ways in which how these criticisms are being discussed and coffee production is shifting gender relations in dealt with by professionals within the fair trade the community. She details how coffee establishment. production has come to define the marital bond This is more of a provocation than a criticism. and the way that a woman becomes part of her Fair trade and social justice is a timely, husband’s clan at the same time that it is comprehensive collection of research that will be increasing women’s workloads and decreasing of great value to anyone interested in trade, the time available for socially reproductive international development, or bureaucracy. At a practices, such as making net string bags, more abstract level, this collection helps us to visiting female family members, and attending understand how transnational political projects church (p. 126). Importantly, West’s focus on

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 892 Reviews

PNG also demonstrates how the social ideology arguing for structural reforms, such as a return of co-operation, so celebrated among supporters to the coffee quota system and technological of certified coffees, is an external imposition that assistance to small farmers, rather than a softer, reorganizes social relations in ways that do not gentler form of neoliberal capitalism. fit with traditional society (p. 146). She Sarah Lyon University of Kentucky demonstrates how the fixation on organic and fair trade certification in the country is potentially raising expectations in ways that are problematic. History The text’s focus on the poorly understood realm of distribution is a critical contribution. West argues that the tendency to paint people in Heng, Derek & Syed Muhd Khairudin the industry as exploitative middlemen is as Aljunied (eds). Singapore in global history. dangerous as it is inaccurate (p. 243). Although 317 pp., tables, illus., bibliogr. Amsterdam: she describes her methods as journalistic, West is Univ. Press, 2011. €44.50 (paper) able to provide an ethnographically rich analysis of coffee distribution from the local level of Ambitious and largely well written, this coffee buying in Maimafu through the offices multidisciplinary volume (re)interprets aspects of and social worlds of expatriates working for Singapore’s past through an analytical transnational coffee import/export firms. In so framework that emphasizes global connections doing she humanizes the ‘coyotes’, or coffee and interactions. Its salience, however, exceeds buyers, who are spoken of so derisively in fair the confines of both historical analysis and the trade and specialty coffee promotional literature. diminutive city-state that is its object. As an Using the lens of coffee, this book helps us to exercise in reworking both history and understand the ways in which desire and fantasy historiography through thick description, it become connected to politics. While other contains themes and predicaments with which authors have explored the increasing anthropologists are undoubtedly familiar. commodification of identity, West concretely The editors present Singapore in global history pinpoints how the use of primitive, edenic, and as a critical rejoinder to two main impoverished images of coffee producers to sell historiographical trends: the Euro-centrism of a product is tied to neoliberalization and earlier world histories, and Singapore’s official deregulation. The codes of conduct and account of its postcolonial ascent under the certifications in which consumers place so much guidance of ‘big men’, notably the redoubtable faith have unfair social and economic impacts on Lee Kuan Yew. Eschewing a modernist, the producers they are ostensibly designed to teleological narrative of nation-formation, the help and ultimately result in consumers who do book treats Singapore’s past as multiple, not enact real politics. complex, and fluid. Central to this project is the In short, West builds on the work of critical insistence that Singapore has always been ‘a geographers to argue convincingly that the location where global processes find their specialty coffee industry reproduces troubling nesting place and where the roots of stereotypical images while occluding the real transformative processes that eventually history and political economic position of the emanated to other faraway parts of a globalizing producers (p. 66). The text ends on the sobering world could be traced’ (p. 17). In this respect, it note that neoliberal marketing sets the stage for serves as a prism through which to explore the moment when the lives of poor people larger processes, such as the workings of across the planet become unfashionable and empire, long-distance exchange, and the thereby unthinkable – as West asks, where will negotiation of diasporic identities. we be then (p. 255)? West states at the outset The book is characterized by an overarching that her book is an attempt to answer the interest in connectedness as both a theme and a question whether we should buy certified method. Each chapter contains a dense historical coffees. Her answer is that doing so probably exposition of intriguing and sometimes won’t help small farmers. Unfortunately, like so surprising facets of Singapore’s past. Some moor much of anthropology, she doesn’t tell her themselves in Singapore, tracing the movement readers what they should do, offering up of persons, things, and ideas through and critiques rather than solutions. Her own research around it. Loh Kah Seng, for example, analyses seems to support a return to political citizenship the social and political impact of British military rather than consumer citizenship: we should be withdrawal in 1971, while Lai Chee Kien paints a

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 893 fascinating portrait of a rambutan orchard set up instructive to anthropologists, who have long by a Hainanese immigrant, which became a been inspired – and bedevilled – by the space for the cultivation of distinct diasporic comparative project. Yet there are also some identities by Singapore’s Chinese literati. familiar pitfalls to this agenda. At times, the More than being a site of passage, Singapore writing verges on reifying ‘the local’, ‘the was also a node in regional and global events regional’, and ‘the global’ as self-evident and networks. Assessments of its agentive phenomena, thus obscuring the crucial question significance in such large-scale nexuses vary of how scholarly categories are themselves between chapters. Derek Heng and Joey Long, constituted and politicized. This is a surprising who discuss Singapore’s brief tenure as a elision, given that such categories are every bit premodern trading polity and its place in Cold as Eurocentric and problematic as the paradigms War politics, respectively, depict it as subject to against which the editors write (p. 13). But the ebbs and flows of larger forces, much of tackling this issue may require a different which lay beyond its inhabitants’ control. Other analytical step forward. The chapters in this authors, however, place more emphasis on the volume do a fine job of highlighting the pivotal role that Singapore played in world complexity and interconnectedness of affairs. Of particular interest is Huei-Ying Kuo’s Singapore’s people and past. The question now study of Japanese-Chinese alliances in Singapore is whether they can move beyond description (1914-41), which shows how Japan’s interwar and critique towards genuinely new expansionist policies were shaped not only by theorizations and frameworks for future anti-colonial sentiment and Sino-Japanese scholarship. antagonism, but also by shifting – and by no Liana Chua Brunel University means uniform – economic relations with different overseas Chinese groups. Hornborg, Alf & Jonathan D. Hill (eds). Textual materials loom large in a number of Ethnicity in ancient Amazonia: reconstructing chapters which explore Singapore’s past identities from archaeology, linguistics, and embeddedness in international ‘information ethnohistory. xviii, 380 pp., maps, figs, tables, empires’ (p. 85). Torsten Tschacher and Syed illus., bibliogrs. Boulder: Univ. Press Muhd Khairudin Aljunied look at newspaper Colorado, 2011.$75.00 (cloth) reports from different angles: the former at how Singapore’s nascent vernacular press responded It is difficult to discuss in such a short space a to a late nineteenth-century Muslim revivalist book in which eighteen authors cover different movement in Sudan, the latter at how Asian and archaeological, linguistic, historical, and European news outlets construed ethnic riots ethnographical issues. The general intention of that broke out in Singapore in 1950.Inhis the editors is to discuss the essentialist stimulating comparative survey of literary conception of ethno-linguistic diversity, which ephemera that circulated among the appears to be somewhat implicit in classic Anglophone classes of Singapore and the Gold Amazonian studies. They argue, firstly, that Coast (Ghana), Philip Holden reveals how certain Amazonian societies were not necessarily small, shared (Victorian and colonial) motifs and simple, and atomized; secondly, that they did techniques of self-formation were given cultural not migrate massively owing to environmental shape as elites in each context forged their own and demographic causes displacing pre-existing forms of moral community. In these chapters, natives; thirdly, that there is not a Singapore appears as a site for the creation – straightforward, mechanical correlation between and severance – of real and imagined relations languages, pottery styles, cultural traits, and throughout a colonial nexus, well before the bound, discrete, biologically distinct groups. The advent of ‘globalization’ and ‘knowledge evidence rather reveals a variable relationship economies’ (a concept pithily examined in between geography, language, culture, and Leong Yew’s chapter). genetics, in which boundaries and collective The collection demonstrates nicely, if identities have been continuously generated and somewhat unevenly, how a concerted focus on transformed by shifting objective conditions the particular can illuminate more general such as demography and ecological diversity, themes and concerns. The contributors’ efforts but also by social factors: trading circuits, to tease out the links between Singapore and strategic negotiation, intermarriage, the wider world point to ways of taking multilingualism, economic specialization, contextual complexity seriously without warfare, epidemics, cultural creativity, and rendering it deterministic. This is surely so on.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 894 Reviews

The book is divided into three parts. The first during the colonial encounter. There is indeed a one, ‘Archaeology’, is perhaps the most certain ‘Arawak tone’ across the whole book: an interesting. It contains articles by Goés Neves austere, serene, conciliatory writing concerned (on the pertinence of correlations between with building bridges rather than erecting language distribution and archaeological barriers (with a few passionate exceptions in record), Heckenberger (on the Arawak influence Whitten and the Scaramellis, who seem to be in the regional systems of the Southern Amazon primarily interested in the colonial politics of periphery and Upper Xingú), De Boer (an ethnogenesis). The chapters are generally eclectic and provoking study of relationships data-rich and interesting, and most of the between archaeological data and ethnography of authors do not seem obsessed with academic captive assimilation among Peruvian Panoans), fundamentalisms: ‘animism’, ‘perspectivism’, Scaramelli and Scaramelli (the colonial ‘post-colonialism’, and so on. construction of generic stereotypes such as There is, however, a sort of latitudinal ‘indios’ and ‘criollos’ in the Middle Orinoco), and decline, and despite punctual exceptions the Hornborg and Eriksen (a comparative systemic northern case studies seem to be better analysis of the Panoan people’s expansion and documented than the southern ones (Hill’s quick their areal relations with neighbouring groups). reference to the Guaraní quest for the legendary The second part, ‘Linguistics’, is rather ‘Land without Evil’, for instance). It is a pity that technical. It includes pieces by Basso (on the the authors in the ‘Ethnohistory’ section have linguistic genres of daily politics in Upper limited themselves to published sources. This Xingú), Danielsen, Dunn, and Myusken (an neglect of historical archives seems rather odd: analysis of structural features of Arawakan any longue durée interpretation of Apolobamba, languages), Da Silva Facundes and Brandão for instance, would have benefited greatly from (lexical borrowings between Arawak and Arawá numerous colonial and missionary sources kept along the Perú-Brazil frontier), Dahl, Gillam, in Seville, Rome, Buenos Aires, Sucre, and La Anderson, Iriarte, and Copé (a formalistic Paz. There are some misspellings in Spanish combination of geographical information (‘Madre de Díos’, p. 305; ‘Santamaria’, p. 319) systems, cartographic modelling, and and also a certain indifference regarding archaeological databases to explore linguistic Spanish and Portuguese scholarship (the diversity), Carlin (historical contacts between abstruse but highly pertinent works by Arawak, Carib, and unclassified languages of the Branislava Susnik, for instance, have been Guyana-Surinam frontier), and Myusken completely forgotten). (grammatical features of northern Quechua as Nevertheless, these minor shortcomings potential indexes of ethnogenetical processes). should not conceal the great value of this The third part of the book is labelled collective undertaking. Interdisciplinarity is ‘Ethnohistory’ and includes articles by Hill usually a Pharisaic virtue. This book, on the (Wakuenai sacred landscapes as meaningful contrary, practices what it preaches: it is full of environmental histories), Virtanen (an heuristic hints and meaningful information, interpretation of the similarities between which has been actually analysed by engaging in Manchineri shamanic geometric drawings and serious transdisciplinary research. the Acre earthworks), Dudley (the Piedmont Diego Villar CONICET (Argentina) region of Apolobamba as a strategic intermediation zone between the Andes and the Bolivian lowlands), Whitten (a study of Runa ethnogenesis in Ecuador with special reference Hunt, David. Legends of the Caucasus. 374 pp., to neo-structuralist distortions that reify colonial tables, bibliogr. London: Saqi Books, 2012. dichotomies: Jivaroan: Savage: Ethnography :: £16.99 (paper) Canelos Quichua: Civilized: History) and Santos Granero (a comparative analysis of three As Bruce Grant and Lale Yalçin Heckman argue symbiotic ‘captive identities’: Taíno-Naborey of in their introduction to Caucasus paradigms, Antilles, Tukano-Makú of Vaupés and ‘[T]he Caucasus offers potentially rich dividends Chiriguano-Chané of Western Chaco). in showing, for example, how cultural The editors argue convincingly for a return of knowledge can inform the management of comparative method based on modern pluralism’ (2007: 5). The legends of the Caucasus exegetical technique. The general impression is contributes to the illustration of the plurality of that there is a marked Arawakan bias – it was in the region through cultural exchanges, fact the most widely dispersed linguistic family encounters, and transformations.

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David Hunt’s collection of legends allows a legends about family and personal honour wider readership to come in contact with a rich, (chap. 9) and relations within the family (chap. regional tradition of oral poetry. The late 10). There is also a very interesting chapter about development of a script for many of the legends of shepherds which connect to Cyclops languages spoken (with the exception of the legends (chap. 7) and a chapter on abundance Georgians) contributed to the preservation of (chap. 8). The two final chapters present legends cultural knowledge in the collective memory of regarding religious issues, such as the the Caucasian peoples. The Tsarist colonial significance of dead ancestors to the modernization in the nineteenth century and the organization of the Caucasian communities emergence of the various national movements (chap. 11), and Prometheus legends, which are which were strengthened by the introduction of tightly linked to the concept of hearth (chap. 12). the Soviet Nationality Policy in the 1920s and the In each chapter there is a very helpful policies of indigenization (korenizatsiia) created a overview, covering, for instance, information significant need for the collection and writing about the historical figures who feature in the down of the regional folklore, which played a legends, and anthropological data about the part in the gradual standardization of ethnic and organization of family/blood relations and national cultures and consciousness. marriage or about the political economy in the The collection of this material signified the region (such as hunting and agriculture, or transition from the performance of these ‘oral scarcity of resources). There is also an interesting songs’ (p. 15) to their transformation into written comparative table that presents the elements poetry, which often included two parts, the included in the Cyclops legends in different prose and the poem. The collectors identified at ethnic groups. In the appendix, the reader will the end of each legend were often prominent find an informative text on the legendary Nart members of the intelligentsia: for example, the people, to whom many Caucasian peoples Georgian ethnographer E. Virsaladze or S.A. refer in their genealogies and oral traditions. At Urusbiev, member of a Balkar aristocratic family, the end of the book, there is a helpful glossary indicating the importance paid to the collection of terms and places, followed by a of these legends. predominantly Russian, English, and French David Hunt’s collection is based on the bibliography. presentation of Caucasian legends from various The book is a rich collection of folk poetry of mountainous peoples (Chechens, Ingush, Laks, a region long misunderstood as a space of Abkhaz, Balkars, Georgians, and others). As he feuds, bloody wars, and political unrest which admits, legends form a special genre which is could captivate not only academic readers. The characterized by its strong tie to a specific more systematic inclusion of short biographical locality, and, therefore, it has an immediate notes on the collectors of the legends or the reference to its people and their beliefs. The newspapers and journals that published them legends included in the book belong to three would have been a plus. Furthermore, there is a categories: military matters, food culture, and need for a brief historical introduction to the family relations. According to the author, the region and a map. criteria used for the selection of legends were Eleni Sideri University of Thessaly the knowledge of the person or place where the legend was recorded and the fact that all the magic elements to which there are references in the texts have once been considered real. Sabloff, Paula L.W. (ed.). Mapping Mongolia: The collection includes historical-political situating Mongolia in the world from geologic legends, covering Nogay Khan, Tamerlane, and time to the present. xxvi, 273 pp., maps, figs, Vakhtang Gogarsali (chap. 1); three legends of tables, illus., DVD, bibliogrs. Philadelphia: resistance to foreign invaders – Persian, Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 2011.£42.50 (cloth) Mongols, and the Russians (chap. 2); and nine against the feudal lords (chap. 3). There is a This volume brings together a range of chapter dedicated to legends of rustling and disciplinary approaches to the study of stealing of animals (chap. 4), and another to Mongolia. Contributions come from social and hunting legends (chap. 6). Chapter 5 refers to biological anthropology, history, geography, warriors and blood revenge legends, and geology, archaeology, and international introduces the concept of honour and its relations. The aim of the volume is to consider, significance in family relations in the Caucasus, from these different disciplinary perspectives, the something that is further developed in the merits or disadvantages of the study of

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Mongolia within two ‘grouping methodologies’ and genetic diversity in Asian and Siberian (p. 16): a North American area studies framework populations. They note how patterns of or, alternatively, a framework based on biogenetic diversity reflect not only evolution Appadurai’s concept of ‘-scapes’. Sabloff argues and adaptation, but also political exchanges, that this has implications for the importance demographic processes, and forms of social afforded Mongolia in both academic and organization (p. 126). diplomatic contexts. Two chapters look at archaeological material. The volume gives a good impression of the Fitzhugh and Bayarsaikhan focus on Bronze Age myriad academic and policy concerns relating to archaeological sites composed of Khirigsuur Mongolia, and should be of relevance to those (boulder mounds serving as burial structures) who are less familiar with the country and to and deer stones (cenotaphs), dating from the specialists who are interested in findings from early first millennium BCE. The authors consider other disciplines. It should be noted that the these part of a single ritual complex (p. 182) that volume does not aim to represent the breadth of predates Scythian origins by between 300 and academic disciplines relating to Mongolia 600 years (p. 167). Honeychurch and (development studies and art history, for Amartuvshin also consider Bronze Age Khirigsuur, instance, are not included), nor does it aim to slab burials, and deer stones, but from the reflect the variety and debate within the subjects perspective of their spatial distribution and in included. What unites these diverse chapters is a relation to the physical geography and political consideration of how best to frame the study of landscape. Goldin looks at pre-imperial and Mongolia. Hurst’s chapter introduces the North imperial Chinese understandings of steppe American academic and political context for area nomads, pointing to a fundamental shift in studies. Sabloff discusses possibilities for Chinese conceptions occurring as a result of developing a framework based on Appadurai’s contact with the Xiongnu (p. 226). It is work, loosely fashioned on the notion of noteworthy that only the final chapter, by ‘specific interaction patterns that transcend the Enkhsaikhan, focuses on the recent past and nation-state’ (p. 18). present-day policy concerns. Other chapters Sneath looks at Mongol identity from a largely discuss historical or prehistorical periods historical perspective. Considering a broad before the establishment of the modern historical period, he looks at the nature of nation-state of Mongolia. political organization and rulership and argues Such ‘transnational’ perspectives are clearly that Anderson’s term ‘dynastic realm’, rather different in nature from Appadurai’s focus on than concepts rooted in national populist ideas, the new global cultural economy associated with better describes this area. Atwood, in turn, ‘disorganized capitalism’, and the fundamentally considers the geographical denominations of disjunctive and unpredictable character and Central Asia, Inner Asia, and Central Eurasia in relationships between global cultural flows relation to Mongolia. He points to unifying (which he terms ethnoscapes, mediascapes, processes under the expansion of the Mongol technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes). In Empire and, from the fourteenth century this context, Sabloff’s application of Appadurai’s onwards, of separation into ‘two different work risks reducing this conceptual framework worlds’, one Turkic and Islamic and orientated to such a degree that it loses its explanatory towards Istanbul and Mecca, the other Mongol relevance. While all contributors embrace the and Buddhist and looking east to Lhasa, Wutai principle of a broadly defined geographical Shan, and Beijing (p. 76). framework for their subject matter, one suspects Goulden, Nandintsetseg, and Ariuntsetseg that (with the exception of Honeychurch and describe the origins of Mongolia’s geological Amartuvshin) the term ‘-scape’ often simply landscape and how this has affected the replaces existing terms that might equally well country’s climate and ecology. This perspective describe the phenomena discussed, for example is brought to bear on recent climatic and ethnicity, cosmology, or technology. Yet that is ecological conditions. Barfield takes a broad not to say that the volume is not both welcome perspective on the pastoral nomads of the and enlightening in its interdisciplinary approach Eurasian steppe, considering shared aspects in and conception of Mongolia and Mongolians as livelihood and cultural practices as the basis for a part of much wider-reaching, flexible ‘distinctive cultural identity’ (p. 104). Schurr and configurations or networks that extend beyond Pipes consider the origins of and affinities national borders. between Mongolians, and base their chapter on Anna Portisch School of Oriental and African studies of cranial, dental morphological trait, Studies

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Whitten, Norman E. & Dorothea Scott country’s indigenous uprisings since 1990 as Whitten. Histories of the present: people and part of a wider conjuncture between colonial power in Ecuador. xii, 253 pp., fig., plates, ideology and contemporary notions of illus., bibliogr. Chicago: Univ. Illinois Press, interculturality that resonate in many parts of 2011.$80.00 (cloth), $27.00 (paper) Ecuador. Chapters 6 and 7 explore the theme of Norman E. Whitten Jr and Dorothea Scott ‘alternative modernities’ by considering the Whitten’s most recent book, Histories of the relationship between indigenous cosmology and present: people and power in Ecuador,isa the changing political economy of Ecuador. One collection of several key articles, written by this of the most interesting chapters in the book is prolific couple over the past ten years or so, Dorothea Whitten’s study of painters from the about the ‘transformative dynamics’ of history Tigua area of the Ecuadorian Andes. She and contemporary cultures in Ecuador. Together approaches these painters as ‘indigenous they constitute an ambitious yet ethnographers’ whose artwork incorporates ethnographically and historically grounded shamanic imagery alongside images that speak attempt to view Ecuador’s cultural diversity and to contemporary national politics and political transformation in terms of ongoing international concerns. Whitten argues that, in intercultural relations. The book is equally a depicting ousted presidents, ecological testament to this couple’s unique and destruction, shamanic healing, and the 9/11 ever-growing contribution to our understanding attacks, these paintings ‘illustrate the dynamics of how Ecuadorians from multiple ethnic and of interculturality and reflect a clear sense of class backgrounds engage with and challenge alternative modernities’ (p. 146). The chapter colonial social categories and power relations. In provides a clear ethnographic example of this sense, beyond constituting a far-reaching indigenous ideas and practices that engage and decidedly diachronic perspective on processes extending well beyond the localities Ecuador, this book raises questions about race, that have defined much previous power, and history that are important for anthropological research in Ecuador. understanding Latin America more generally. Chapter 7 builds on the theme of ‘alternative The book begins by defining ‘interculturality’ modernities’, describing historical and as a process by which Amazonian, Andean, and contemporary relations between Amazonian and black Ecuadorians challenge formulations of race Andean peoples as part of a dynamic regional forged in colonialism and embraced today by system. It relates the history of ethnogenesis in elites. The authors describe how the current Amazonian Ecuador to the Whittens’ analysis of indigenous movement and its supporters reject Canelos Quichua mythology and ritual, arguing the national ideology of mestizaje and with it the that indigenous ideas and practices constitute notion of ‘whitening’ that is central to a racial alternatives to Western understandings of hierarchy that devalues difference. In this way, modernity. The aim here is ‘to understand the the emerging focus on interculturality embraces cosmological scheme of a given people as it cultural difference such that it fundamentally articulates to the pragmatics of changing challenges the idea of a common national political economy’ (p. 179). What makes this identity as mestizos. In considering what the process particularly interesting in Ecuador is authors describe as ‘the indigenization of how, in recent decades, these same indigenous modernity’ in Ecuador, the book draws on a people have had a considerable role in actually combination of Geertz’s interpretative approach altering the political landscape of country. to culture, Turner’s symbolic anthropology, and Taken together, the essays in this book Sahlins’s notion of the ‘structure of the consolidate a new and important way of conjuncture’. understanding Ecuador beyond the confines of What is most striking about this book is the conventional regional studies of Amazonia and multi-regional perspective it brings to the Andes. By integrating the study of diverse understanding past and present cultural Ecuadorian communities in terms of colonial processes in Ecuador. Chapters 2-4 make a history and intercultural dynamics, the book particularly convincing case that indigenous and provides a fascinating perspective on black Ecuadorians can be understood as having contemporary Ecuador. Although the authors in common not only the experience of suffering make a convincing case that their ethnography racism and marginalization, but also being part reveals alternatives to Western capitalism and of the same political process of challenging modernity, readers may be left wondering colonial mentality. This allows us to see the whether or not indigenous perspectives should

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be understood as versions of ‘modernity’ at all. differentiation’. The first section introduces ‘key It is striking that, whereas so many ‘Westerners’ terms’: multifunctionality, language ideology, understand their world – and those of others – practice, and indexicality. By delving into these in terms of modernity, it is not clear that the terms immediately, Ahearn reminds us that people in this book are centrally concerned with ‘introductory’ does not have to mean being ‘modern’. I would contend that, rather ‘superficial’ – for example, the section on than insisting that other perspectives are in fact practice (pp. 23-5) urges students to consider ‘alternative modernities’ or ‘the indigenization of how society and language both provide and modernity’, we should be open to the possibility limit possibility. A particular strength is chapter that other cultures, cosmologies, and social 2, in which she describes the questions linguistic movements might defy our understandings of anthropologists might ask and how they might modernity and tradition altogether. The strength go about answering them. We also appreciate of this book is precisely in illuminating how the emphasis on data: while we may use many Ecuadorians today are embracing a vision quantitative or qualitative data, or both (p. 34), of the future that challenges age-old social linguistic anthropology is an empirical categories and power structures. The rich enterprise, even when grounded in the desire to historical and ethnographic perspective that it use our research for social action. We would, brings, as well as its serious engagement with however, quibble with Ahearn’s discussion of the national political currents, makes this book key work of Sapir and Boas with reference to reading for scholars working in Ecuador and linguistic relativity and the exclusion of an elsewhere in Latin America. explicit discussion of the role of poetics not only Casey High Goldsmiths, University of London within discussions of linguistic relativity, but also in its wider import to the study of the nexus of language, culture, and the individual (see Paul Friedrich, The language parallax, 1986; Joel Language and linguistics Sherzer, ‘A discourse-centered approach to language and culture’, American Anthropologist 89, 1987, 259-309). Ahearn, Laura M. Living language: an Section 2 focuses on studying communities; introduction to linguistic anthropology. xviii, the interrelations of multilingualism and 348 pp., tables, figs, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, globalizing dynamics; literacies; and Malden. Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.£19.99 performance and performativity. Taken together, (paper) the chapters in this section can help students decouple their own connections between There seems an essential tension with many an language and nationality/ethnicity. Chapter 6, introductory linguistic anthropology textbook, on multilingualism, investigates how we wherein it is heavy on the linguistic and light on understand the bounds between languages and –ifnotbereftof–theanthropological.Soitis dialects. Students may be intrigued to discover with some delight that we review Ahearn’s that speakers from the same family may have contribution, which is orientated in the very different linguistic profiles (p. 137). We perspective that language use is ‘social action’ further appreciate the discussion in chapter 7 of (p. xv). Ahearn has written an accessible and the emerging work that deals with engrossing introductory linguistic anthropology understanding literacies as contextual, rather textbook. The book nicely meshes exploration of than as a monolithic, transformative, and the work done by linguistic anthropologists with unequivocally beneficial phenomenon. theoretical discussions and an emphasis on The third section provides a detailed methodological rigour. The interspersed examination of how linguistic anthropology can discussion of Ahearn’s own work with Nepalese deal with questions of gender, race, and love letter writers’ participation in a new literacy nationalism, and finishes with a theoretical (Invitations to love, 2001) ties together sections discussion that recaps studies cited earlier in the and chapters, providing students with the book. Of particular import for scholars of chance to engage ever more deeply with that language contact and shift dynamics is chapter work as they read. 11, ‘Language death and revitalization’, giving The book contains twelve chapters in three students an idea about the way language shift sections: ‘Language: some basic questions’; and death affect specific individuals (pp. 240-2). ‘Communities of speakers, hearers, readers, and These examples are followed by a useful writers’; and ‘Language, power, and social discussion of what it means numerically to

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 899 characterize a language as dead, endangered, with individual chapters, especially with regards and so on. While noting that Jane Hill and others to poetics and linguistic relativity. While we may have provided a necessary warning about the put forth a few pedagogical and theoretical effects of this kind of discourse (‘ “Expert quibbles, we are very much in favour of and rhetorics” in advocacy for endangered sympathetic towards the project Ahearn has languages: who is listening and what do they undertaken here. hear?’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12, 2002, Aimee J. Hosemann & Anthony K. Webster 119-33), students come away able generally to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale understand the social and political dynamics and inequalities in which language shift is enmeshed. The final chapter of the book, chapter 12, Reed, Adam. Literature and agency in English recaps earlier examples Ahearn gave which fiction reading: a study of the Henry Williamson illustrated the role of language in the lives of Society. xi, 212 pp., illus., bibliogr. individuals. What ties these examples together is Manchester: Univ. Press, 2011.£65.00 (cloth) explicated in the chapter’s discussion of the relationships between language, power, and Broadly ethnographic methods have recently agency, or ‘the socioculturally mediated capacity migrated to new locations and been put to ever to act’ (p. 21). Ahearn does not shy away from more varied practical uses, from market research introducing Bourdieu, Foucault, and Williams, to designing welfare services. At the same time, and includes a section discussing Judith Irvine previously atypical ethnographic objects, like and Susan Gal’s seminal paper on the processes documents, financial markets, or legal-political of iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure institutions, continue to attract anthropological (‘Language ideology and linguistic interest. But even as part of the series of ‘New differentiation’, in Regimes of language (ed.) P. Ethnographies’ from Manchester University Kroskrity, 2000, 35-83). The placement of this Press, an ethnography of reading sounds chapter at the end allows students to come to challenging. the discussion with examples of the In Adam Reed’s highly original book, based on-the-ground work that can be re-examined in on over a decade of active involvement with the relation to the theories that frame our enterprise. Henry Williamson Society, reading clearly works A general criticism of the book is that while as an ethnographic object, allowing him also to other introductory texts might be light on the engage with many ongoing academic debates. anthropology, this one is light on the linguistics. Into the bargain, the book teaches something The later chapters in particular include about Britain’s literary societies and about the discussion of more formal linguistic phenomena prolific author Henry Williamson, perhaps best like ergative versus nominative systems known today – apparently to the chagrin of (pp. 281-3). These are not necessarily described many Society members – for Tarka the Otter,first in a way that is accessible to an published in 1927. introductory-level student, and need to be Curiosity about the way English social accompanied by examples that break down arrangements reproduce class identities has concepts on a morphological and syntactic level. periodically given rise to first-rate ethnography This can, of course, be accomplished through and acute insight. Drawing a vivid picture of a lessons on morphology and syntax in a separate tweedy and comfortable world where nostalgia unit, or by including a discussion accompanying and a strong, property-mediated, sense of the chapter. territorial belonging seem to be taken for In conclusion, we strongly recommend the granted, Reed’s ethnography bears some book for both undergraduate and graduate resemblance to this tradition. However, Literature introductory courses. The addition of a text like and agency in English fiction reading is more Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina about experience and how to understand it, and Hyams’s An introduction to language (2010)may less about identity and even less about social be necessary if a descriptive linguistic structure. For Henry Williamson Society background is part of the established curriculum members, reading and rereading the works of an (and we think it should be). Chapters of the author considered by many as ‘hopelessly Ahearn volume could be used singly to middlebrow’ stirs passions and brings forth demonstrate application of the formal materials, tumultuous experience. Even though the or the Ahearn volume could subsequently be monograph deals with reading that is thought of used in toto. For all levels, individual pieces cited as special – readers even use the word magical – in the book could be assigned in connection perhaps it is precisely here that the power of

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mundane literacy and the significance of literary might elicit judgements of both ‘Henry’ and his community, which surely deserve scholarly readers for their political and cultural attention, are best approached. In this preferences, but I expect Reed’s capacity to geographically dispersed but cohesive Society, identify variety and imagination where one where people enjoy the ordinary comforts of expects merely the middlebrow will inspire industrial modernity, reading is at once interested undergraduates and advanced unremarkable and constantly remarked upon. researchers alike. Although Reed draws on disciplines such as Eeva Berglund Independent scholar literary criticism, the sociology of literature, and cultural studies, the monograph is anthropological in being descriptive, agnostic, sympathetic, and highly self-aware. Reed did his Method and theory early fieldwork in Melanesia, and his subsequent work on Britain shows the huge potential of personally felt comparison, implicitly if not Assmann, Jan. The price of monotheism (trans. explicitly. That Reed draws so much on the Robert Savage). ix, 140 pp., bibliogr. theoretical work of Alfred Gell and Marilyn Stanford: Univ. Press, 2010.$55.00 (cloth), Strathern further indicates an intellectual $19.95 (paper) association with Melanesia, but there is also a personal and ethnographically derived aspect to Jan Assmann, professor of Egyptology at the book, which somehow calls to mind the best Heidelberg from 1976 to 2003, has worked on of Melanesianist anthropology. Difficult cultural memory and ‘political theology’; his conceptualizations of agency, time, and nature, German background has sensitized him to the for example, are productively pursued through problems raised by anti-Semitism. These analytically sharp accounts of protagonists’ concerns came together in Moses the Egyptian: experiences of reading or Society activities. the memory of Egypt in Western monotheism Anthropology’s preoccupation with agency (1997). The present volume is a response to seems to have been reinvigorated recently critiques of Moses the Egyptian, especially to through dilemmas relating to materiality, Assmann’s concept of the ‘Mosaic distinction’; technology, and intentionality. Reed, however, five scholarly critiques were incorporated in an refers only fleetingly if at all to this work. appendix to the original German, but do not Instead, he follows his own route to similar figure in Savage’s fluent English version. issues, leading to suggestive observations about Fundamental to Assmann’s methodology is ideas of nature, trust, and persons. He frames the discipline of mnemohistory, or the history of and develops these not with reference to cultural memory, in which there is a merging of globally designated crises but by turning again ‘mimetic memory’ (action, custom, ethics), and again to the solitary yet social reading ‘memory of things’ (which creates individual experience that opens up possibilities of living identity), and ‘communicative memory’ the world from another person’s perspective – (language, social interchange), described already mainly ‘Henry’s’, as Williamson fans refer to him. in Assmann’s 1992 work Das kulturelle Gedächtnis This prompts Reed to write as if readers sense (English translation: Cultural memory and early fictional characters (even animals) or past events civilization, 2011). Mnemohistory, in contrast to (like the horrors of the First World War) as real, the positive history of interpretation, is highly or get inside ‘Henry’s’ mind. That Reed also selective; here, it is the history of Moses as a often writes as if from inside Society members’ figure of memory, in a line stretching from minds feels awkward yet also suggestive. Akhenaten (the ‘Egyptian Moses’), through Overall, in the process of trying to Israelite monotheism and its development in later understand Society members’ ‘life with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and eventually “Henry” ’, Reed contributes to debates not only via John Spencer, William Warburton, Reinhold, on literacy, but also on nature ontologies, social and Schiller to Freud (whose Moses and mono- memory, sense of place, and material culture, theism has enjoyed a recent revival) and the among others. His ethnography opens up twentieth century. Both the beginning and the England, particularly North Devon where the end of this genealogy will raise the eyebrows of author lived, and readers’ homes with their soft biblical scholars, and indeed on p. 117 in the armchairs and overflowing bookshelves, yet present work Assmann himself disclaims it. forcefully resists prejudices about what modern Assmann’s leading concept is the ‘Mosaic comforts and literary habits imply. The book distinction’ (Mosaische Unterscheidung). This

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 901 originates with Pharaoh Akhenaten, in the polytheism, the popular religion of Israel, is fourteenth century BCE, since he was the first never far from the surface; indeed, the polemic we know to have made the essential distinction against idolatry articulates an internal Israelite between truth and falsehood in religion. struggle, notwithstanding how much priests and Traditional dating of Moses, based on 1 Kings prophets attempt to portray it in terms of Israel 6:1, puts him back as far as the fifteenth century versus the nations. BCE, earlier than Akhenaten, but the sources are Assmann distinguishes between considerably later. As Assmann aptly observes, exclusiveness/intolerance as exhibited in ‘Moses is a figure of memory but not of history, Christianity, on the one hand, and in Judaism, while Akhenaten is a figure of history but not of on the other. Whereas Jews interpreted the memory’ (Moses the Egyptian,p.2; see also Mosaic distinction as a border separating them p. 23). from the outside world of falsehood, Christians Primary religions, such as the polytheisms of sought to abolish the border by applying the ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, affirm the distinction universally. Jews isolate themselves, world and all its gods; they are cults, articulated in other words, while Christians (and Muslims) in myths, not linked to exclusive truth claims. seek to convert; but for all, the distinction Secondary religions, specifically the between true and false in religion remains monotheisms of Akhenaten/Moses and paramount. ultimately of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, do This is a stimulating book, posing significant make exclusive truth claims; they rest on questions about European cultural experience cognition, whether through direct revelation or over three millennia; its brevity will be through written texts, and depend on the welcomed by the ‘intelligent reader’ but may rejection of primary religion. annoy scholars who feel their specialties have Primary religions tend to mutual tolerance. been glossed over. Long before Romans noticed that Latin Jupiter Norman Solomon The Oriental Institute, was equivalent to Greek Zeus, diplomats and University of Oxford translators in Egypt and Mesopotamia had discovered the translatabiliity of pantheons; this enabled the writing of binding international Edwards, Jeanette & Maja Petrovic´- treaties, for it was recognized that the gods were Šteger (eds). Recasting anthropological universal even though their names changed knowledge: inspiration and social science. xii, according to language. 206 pp., illus., bibliogr. Cambridge: Univ. Secondary religions, however, stress the Press, 2011.£55.00 (cloth) uniqueness, incomparability, and non-equivalence of God with any pagan gods. It is often the case with great thinkers and Israel’s God is not equivalent to Zeus; He is a writers that, in time, the volume of literature ‘jealous’ God and demands the destruction of written about them will be larger than that the idols, for they are ‘false’. This essential writers themselves produced. One day, intolerance, with its social consequences in predictably, this, too, will prove to be the case warfare and persecution, is the ‘price’ paid for for Marilyn Strathern. This will be no mean feat, monotheism. for Strathern’s scholarship is as prolific and Is this too heavy a price to pay? In response inspiring in volume as it is in scope. Recasting to critics who thought that this was what he was anthropological knowledge is an edited volume by suggesting, Assmann stresses the positive value a handful of Strathern’s previous graduate of monotheism, comparing Israel’s advance in students, all at different stages in their own religion with Greece’s advance in science: ‘Just careers, and of different generations. Intended to as monotheistic religion rests on the Mosaic mark the recent retirement of their teacher, this distinction, so science rests on the volume is partly a tribute to Strathern the “Parmenidean” distinction. One distinguishes anthropologist and her influence on the work of between true and false religion, the other contributing authors (and anthropology between true and false cognition ... Both generally); and partly a testimony to Strathern, concepts are characterized by an unprecedented because the quality and diversity of chapters, drive to differentiation, negation and exclusion’ which are inspired by her, are also inspiring in (p. 12). and of themselves. This volume thus sets an The biblical record, Assmann now concedes, impressive benchmark for the, presumably vast is not simply a polemic against idolatry, however and yet unwritten, literature about Strathern, or strongly that features in certain strands. Israelite Strathernian anthropology.

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This volume, however, is not actually about Strathern-inspired author (Reed); and Strathern in the traditional sense of the word. Battaglia considers the inspiration of Strathern Although the book could be read as an entry herself when she generously quotes her students into Strathernian anthropology, it is not a (thus re-worlding their ethnographies), and in ‘Companion’ or an ‘Introduction to ...’. It is turn makes them akin to Papua New Guinean much more than that. The editors made the wise birds. decision not to engage with Strathern’s work by This brief presentation of the chapters cannot thematically attending to her fields of inquiry or do justice to the analytical thought and care that key concepts point for point. Nor do they treat has contributed to their production. All the her output chronologically. Instead, the authors succeed in their analytical strategy of contributing authors were briefed to consider not constricting themselves merely to translating the ways in which Strathern’s work has inspired or introducing Strathernisms to their own their own, and to engage this as a point of ethnographies. Rather, they take inspiration in departure. the fact that Strathern’s contribution to Attending to Strathern’s work on kinship, anthropology regularly is noted for its exquisite persons, audit, and, of course, the relation, all of capacity to scrutinize everyday, taken-for-granted which are recurrent themes in this book, the concepts and idioms and to de-situate and introduction (Edwards and Petrovic´-Šteger) re-situate them in new domains and eloquently sets the scene for the chapters that conversations. In a similar vein, the authors here follow. It not only lays the theoretical foundation unmoor anthropological concepts, even itself, but it also hints at the, often multifaceted, Strathernian ones, recast them in new meanings these themes have for the volume. conversations in order to make explicit their The introduction further, and rather beautifully, relations, and ‘in so doing acknowledge the draws a connection between legal disputes in unpayable debt that [they] (and social recombinant technology and recombinant anthropology) have gladly incurred’ knowledge, in which this volume is an exercise, (Introduction, p. 18). and thus considers the question of indebtedness Janne Flora Scott Polar Research Institute, and being inspired (by Strathern); both of which University of Cambridge re-emerge in different ways over the following chapters. The contribution of chapters is well chosen. Meeks, Brian (ed.). Caribbean reasonings: M.G. Their diversity, perhaps a nod to Strathern’s Smith: social theory and anthropology in the own, presents ethnographies from several Caribbean and beyond. xiii, 341 pp., bibliogr. different parts of the world: human-mosquito Kingston, Miami: Ian Randle Publishers, 2011. blood relations in Tanzanian experiment huts $35.00 (paper) and scientific environments of facts (Kelly); the hazards of universality as they arise in hybrid Brian Meeks cannot be praised enough for customary, or underlying, law practices in Papua editing a volume in honour of M.G. Smith that New Guinea (Demian); and legal personhood as opens the widest possible space for a it is exemplified by corporate debt transactions multi-perspectival reasoning on Caribbean social and the Japanese household (Riles). Putin¸a’s history – past, present, and, in fact, future. It chapter turns our attention to hetero- therefore well befits the standard set through a normativity, invisible families, and unnamed kin series of conferences and volumes organized by relations in Latvia; while Yarrow attends to the the Centre for Caribbean Thought. The editor is question of belonging through core kinship or right in his assertion that Smith’s much- core house in a Ghanaian resettlement town. contested conceptualizations of the ‘plural Enthusiasm is a theme that runs through society’, ‘creolization’, and corporation theory Berglund’s chapter on the Women’s Design still stimulate vigorous debates and are therefore Service in Britain, which persists despite – far from becoming academic dead stock – goal-orientated forces and audits; as well as relevant for contemporary discourses on social Petrovic´-Šteger’s on an international art change within the Caribbean and beyond. collective where workshop participants Current themes of globalization and dislodge memories from the present and send glocalization, hybridization and strategic them into the future. Other chapters treat the essentialism, or even such fashionable concepts question of inspiration as it appears among as the ‘black Atlantic’ can be traced back to prisoners in Papua New Guinea, reader-writers of these earlier debates and thereby gain in their the Henry Williamson Society, as well as a genealogy of thought.

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The fourteen contributions to this book cover ‘theorists’ and does not stop short of calling for a wide range of research interests, theoretical the concept’s abolition, once and for all. positionings, and academic and sociopolitical The second part presents three revisited worldviews. These argumentative spaces provide empirical studies of M.G. Smith as an overview on the intellectual landscape ‘anthropological excursions’. Its chapters (by travelled by Smith and his critics and at the same Mohammed Bashir Salou, Murray Last, and time provoke the reader into probing his or her Christine Barrow) highlight the empiricist own theoretical stances while border-hopping foundation of Smith’s grand theoretical from one terrain to the other in plural and/or framework and provide test cases for his creole society debate. The first of three parts of theorizing on social change by reviewing current the volume deals with such ‘critical developments in ‘his ethnographic sites’. The contestations’. It involves its five authors (Philip third part assembles six contributions (by Wyatt Burnham, Jean Besson, Mervyn C. Alleyne, Don MacGaffey, Rivke Jaffe, Jack Menke, Peter Meel, Robotham, and Colin Clarke) in a virtual Anton Allahar, and Huon Wardle) that take the dialogue on the merits, limits, and flaws of the reasoning ‘beyond M.G. Smith’ by choosing aforementioned concepts and thereby some of his paradigms as a starting-point to thoroughly discloses the – sometimes discuss their own research. Both parts deepen conscious, sometimes habitualized – ideological the understanding of the ‘critical contestations’ contents on both sides of the pluralism/creolism in part 1 either on the empirical level or in divide. relation to other theoretical approaches towards Creolization theory, solitarily upheld by Jean ethnicity, nation-building, historical narratives, Besson (in this volume), does not fare too well in and power. However, I found it somewhat this match. Her rereading of Caribbean surprising that no author referred to the ‘creolization’ emphasizes the processes of praxeological theory of Pierre Bourdieu (and ‘localization’ and ‘indigenization’ as defining others), which seems to offer quite a few elements. Maroons, Revival religions, even the remedies for at least some of the unresolved Afrocentric Rastafari movement are all subsumed structuralist dilemmas highlighted in most in the process of ‘Caribbeanization’, involuntary chapters. An overall ‘economy of interests’ may or not. One may wonder how, for instance, perhaps help in analysing power structures in Rastafari would react to such a categorization the Caribbean and beyond, inscribed not only in from the outside (presumably with their social structures of (post)colonialism, but also in vociferous protest, known as ‘fire bun’ rhetoric). the habitus of social actors exposed to these very Beyond such inter-cultural intricacies, the structures, including academics. explanatory value of the notion becomes in fact To sum up, this volume challenges quite opaque if all dynamic culture changes are eloquently current concepts of creolization, translated as so-called ‘creolization’. Besson fusion, mixing, pluralism, interculturation, correctly concedes dynamism as an integral hybridity, and so forth, which, in my view, all feature of the African heritage in the Caribbean. too often go unchallenged for their political But this must logically apply to the African implications, erasure of embedded power heritage in Africa as well. Then the African structures, and their silencing of those heritage would per se appear in permanent categorized in one way or the other by anyone ‘creolization’ and the category might finally lose but themselves. It is therefore a highly its spiritual charm even for its most faithful recommendable reading not just for scholars believers, as Alleyne boldly states in his chapter: interested in the Caribbean, but for all ‘I wish to claim that creole is an ill-defined, concerned with these ideas/ideologies exported variable and complex (or complicated) concept, from anthropology to so many other although it is very appealing as a concept to neighbouring fields. express a rather idealistic view of, or hope for, Werner Zips University of Vienna the future of world society’ (p. 47). Robotham pursues this critical course by unsheathing the hidden (perhaps subconscious) cultural-political Narayan, Kirin. Alive in the writing: crafting agenda of ‘creolist constructions’ vested in ethnography in the company of Chekhov. xiii, middle-class, Eurocentric interests and an 154 pp., fig., bibliogr. London, Chicago: Univ. ideology of healing of structural disparities and Chicago Press, 2012.£11.00 (paper) fragmentations through peace and (false) unity talk. In short, Robotham’s treatise plays havoc Originally drawn to this slim book by its bright with the value-based judgements of creolization yellow cover and the clean-cut simplicity of its

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design, I was also put off, on closer inspection, livelihood – can, I believe, deepen and enrich a by the reference to Chekhov in the subtitle. I had professional voice’ (p. 60). With a little help been frustrated in the past by books on ‘how to from Chekhov, she convinced me. write’ that, while urging us to be more creative, Chekhov, we learn, works for Narayan as an failed to equip us to marry that creativity to the ‘ethnographic muse’ in at least three ways. First, scholarly rigour demanded of the peer-reviewed his impressive corpus of writing, like that of any journals in which most professional competent ethnographer, draws self-consciously anthropologists must publish to survive. I was on a wide range of perspectives, places, and sceptical about whether the writings of a lifeworlds, and demonstrates how that diversity nineteenth-century Russian playwright and might be captured within a single text. storyteller, inspiring as they might be, could Secondly, Chekhov is held up as an exemplar of offer much assistance in the more prosaic task of how divergent professional identities might crafting academic texts. Nevertheless, since I was coexist, holding out ‘hope for anyone who actively searching for new materials to teach an writes both as a scholar and in other voices, or undergraduate research methods module – and who moves between ethnographic insight and encouraged by the fact that there were only 121 social activism’ (p. 17). Given that Narayan is pages to get through in the main body of the herself a novelist and memoirist as well as an book – I decided to read on anyway. I am glad I anthropologist, it is easy to understand her did. Chekhov, at least in Kirin Narayan’s deft attraction to Chekhov in this respect. Thirdly – hands, proved to be a surprisingly solid source and as relevant for those who stick to academic of advice for the ethnographic writer. writing as for those keen to venture beyond – Far from the ethereal musings I had feared, Chekhov speaks clearly to the problems of this book is a real hands-on guide, or, as representation that have been a constant theme Narayan’s husband described it, ‘not a how-to for all anthropologists since the mid-1980s. manual but a how-about? manual’. Readers are Although Chekhov is more than a device – a encouraged to dip in and out, to read it out of useful prop around which to stack her own sequence, and, at many junctures along the insights about ethnographic writing – the book’s way, to set the book aside and undertake the title is slightly misleading in its implication that writing exercises she sets us. There are a dozen he is her sole companion. The book is also rich or more such drills sprinkled throughout each of with inspiration and pithy advice drawn from the five main chapters, demanding between two work dating back as far as Malinowski and and fifteen minutes apiece to complete, as well Margaret Mead, and from more contemporary as some longer ones – each calling for two classics from authors including Lila Abu Lughod, pages of written text – at the end of every Nancy Scheper-Hughes, and Marilyn Strathern. It chapter. The work that they require of us is Piers Vitebsky, for example, whose description broadly reflects the titles of the chapters: after an of a Siberian winter in The reindeer people (2005) overview in ‘Story and theory’, subsequent – in which ‘flash-frozen saliva and hot tea evoke chapters are entitled, simply, ‘Place’, ‘Person’, the cold with a startling, visceral immediacy’ ‘Voice’, and ‘Self’, and encourage us to explore (p. 31) – inspires us to describe more vividly. our data through these themes. One of the What Chekhov does particularly well, exercises I found most helpful – and which I however, is to put into words the dilemmas that earmarked as a starting-point for students unsettle most anthropologists at some stage in preparing to write up their undergraduate their work. His comment after spending two dissertations – was one asking us to list theories months documenting life in the prison colony ‘that your most powerful experience might on Sakhalin resonates powerfully with the connect to’, taking us beyond the literary to the despair sometimes experienced during synthesis of raw data and theoretical insight that fieldwork. ‘I have the feeling I’ve seen it’, he the best ethnographic writing produces. We wrote, ‘but missed the elephant’ (p. 23). should not, though, be hoodwinked into Likewise, in respect of his writing, there are thinking of creative and academic writing as two moments when he wants to ‘work at it furiously; mutually exclusive domains. ‘Professional but at times, in moments of doubt, I could spit survival and success can depend on learning to on it’ (p. 112); or when ‘I feel such a sense of strategically pitch a voice to a setting, even as it revulsion as if I were eating cabbage soup from remains your own’, as Narayan writes. ‘At the which a cockroach has been removed’ (p. 112)– same time, ventures into alternative creative feelings which speak of the insecurities, spaces that allow more experimentation with self-doubt, and (very occasional) moments of one’s full expressive range – without fears for euphoria that accompany the writing process

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 905 and which we convince ourselves apply only to was in many respects too little, too late, as this us. With some help from Narayan, Chekhov can study illustrates. Crapanzano sets the scene with make us feel less alone. an opening chapter which addresses the acute Bullet-pointed lists on general tools for good and unresolved issue of the Harkis’ relationship writing, getting started, moving forward, to their past, and their conflictive present, dealing with writer’s block, revising and through analysing their hostility to a play by an finishing – all gathered together in a final Algerian playwright which sets their history in postscript – are reminders I shall return to, and the wider context of the war. The chapter direct my students towards, often. The tips listed introduces Crapanzano’s analytical strategy, there are not earth-shattering in their originality, which melds oral history, textual analysis, and but that is not the point: they offer psychological insight in a visceral synthesis, commonsense, practical advice designed to keep grounded in a ‘loosely phenomenological you on track and focused on what you want to approach’ (p. 6) whose overall effect could be say in your own distinctive voice. This is a good, viewed as a form of collective biography. The useful book: fun to read and an excellent book’s chief effort at historical contextualization resource for teaching. It is also reintroduced me follows in chapter 2 and comprises a to Chekhov, whose stories–Iwashappy to twenty-page historical background. A more discover – can now be electronically substantial analysis is perhaps warranted, given downloaded for free. the complexity of events in post-war France and James Staples Brunel University Algeria, and their importance for understanding the Harkis’ fate. Crapanzano’s account should thus be read in relation to other works on French involvement in Algeria, such as Politics Silverstein’s excellent Algeria in France (2004), but, placed in that context, the achievement of its core chapters comes to the fore. Crapanzano, Vincent. The Harkis: the wound The central focus of the book is developed that never heals. xii, 240 pp., bibliogr. through foregrounding oral accounts of London, Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2011. individual Harkis, and the legacy of their betrayal £22.50 (cloth) as this emerges in stories of repressed memories, social humiliation, and psychological scarring, Of the many painful and enduring legacies of particularly as mediated within families. Chapter the Algerian War of Independence, the fate of 3 reviews the role of the Harkis during the war. the ‘Harkis’ is perhaps most illustrative of the Chapter 4 documents their abandonment by the moral decay of the French state during this bleak French and massacre by Algerians. Chapter 5 period in its history. Vincent Crapanzano’s focuses on life in the internment and forestry disturbing account complements an increasing camps in France. This chronological progression number of works in French to address the is followed with a chapter on life ‘after the circumstances of this long-suffering minority, for camps’, examining how Harkis view themselves whom the conflict is still, effectively, unresolved. today, and their ongoing struggle for The Harkis are Algerian Muslims who fought as recognition, compensation, and apology. What low-ranking auxiliaries alongside the French is notable about Crapanzano’s approach, and military during the brutal eight-year war. For grants the book its power and conviction, is many, their reward was abandonment, torture, precisely the skilful ethnographic presentation and massacre at the hands of victorious Algerian and analysis of individual testimonies of suffering forces once the conflict had ended. For the and abjection at the hands of the French state. fortunate Harkis who were granted refuge in Crapanzano identifies his own ambivalence to France, as Crapanzano’s book documents, their what is at times an overt sense of victimhood, fate was brutal in a different fashion. They were given the Harkis’ original siding with the French, imprisoned in squalid internment camps before and argues that it is partly his intention to evoke many were relocated to isolated rural work this complex moral response in the book’s camps in the French Midi, where for years they readers (p. 11). An important effect of this were compelled to labour in reforestation strategy is thus to compel the reader to question programmes. previously held moral assumptions about It was 2001 before France officially victimhood, revenge, and mistreatment. recognized the predicament of the Harkis with French politics is still significantly shaped by Chirac’s ‘Day of National Recognition’, but this historical events in Algeria, as the strong

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showing of the far right in the recent French of salvage ethnography with a difference: rather elections demonstrates, a power-base partly than documenting disappearing cultural constructed on mythologization of the Algerian phenomena for posterity, he seeks to reveal their conflict. Crapanzano’s study illustrates how this lost promise as mechanisms of social cohesion legacy continues to shape the interior life of and democratic consolidation, and uses these to individuals, reinforcing arguments that France is build a potent intellectual critique of yet to make peace with this brutal history. What post-socialism and its literature. processes of healing can finally lay such ghosts In Bulgaria, mumming rituals are commonly to rest, it is hard to say, and in a revealing final performed around the New Year or Lent. A stock chapter, Crapanzano’s synthetic approach is of characters (a transvestite bride, a priest, a deployed to analyse this problematic issue for ‘gypsy’ bear trainer and his bear), wearing the Harkis. In particular, he addresses the impact masks, animal skins, and large bells, visit homes on younger people of their parents’ silence and in the village to bestow fertility and abundance marginalization within French society. This is ‘the to householders in return for money and/or wound that never heals’, and while his own foodstuffs. House visits may be supplemented by account would perhaps make for difficult public performances with differing degrees of reading for his subjects, one assumes that a full commercial sponsorship and involvement from exposure of this legacy could be a vital step. In the local government. Drawing on more than a this regard, this important piece of decade of fieldwork amongst mumming anthropological research both is a significant communities across Bulgaria, Creed describes contribution to the literature on contemporary how these basic elements are elaborated by France and, one hopes, might play a role individual village groups over time in response alongside an increasing number of French- to notions of authenticity developed in language works which also seek justice and collaboration with ethnologists and other healing for the Harkis. mumming groups, and the changing political Matt Hodges University of Kent context of the post-socialist period, in which many rural communities experienced economic implosion, unemployment, and depopulation. In Creed, Gerald W. Masquerade and some cases, these responses are directly visible postsocialism: ritual and cultural dispossession in the inclusion of novel mumming costumes in Bulgaria. xi, 254 pp., illus., bibliogr. with direct reference to politics or sports. In Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2011. others, Creed detects a far more subtle $70.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper) renegotiation of issues of gender, ethnicity, and community in mumming practice and In an increasingly crowded market for works of performance under the influence of what he contemporary society in Central and Eastern calls Euro-American ideals of civic engagement. Europe, Gerald Creed’s ethnography of Tackling the issue of gender head on, Creed ‘mumming’ (performance of seasonal folk plays) shows how the historical association of in Bulgaria is a welcome reintroduction of a mumming with the performance of masculinity classic anthropological category of analysis – is increasingly being refracted through the lenses ritual – into the subfield. It is also a reminder of of a post-socialist ‘crisis of masculinity’ and of the important contribution that studies of global gay culture, rendering elements of vernacular culture can make to grasping the transvestism and sexual licence problematic. social and cultural complexities of European Creed takes the fact that acts are now integration and post-socialist liberalization. interpreted as emasculating or sexually Indeed, Creed’s point of departure is that such ambivalent as evidence of a fundamental shift ‘folk’ practices have long constituted a local from the perception of the two genders as cultural resource and, thus, offer an indigenous autonomous but complementary to one in alternative to the wholesale restructuring of which masculinity and femininity lie on a single society and the social ontology of village life continuum. He makes a similar point in the case after socialism. Ignored equally by academics of ethnicity, arguing that a historical system of and policy-makers, Creed states, such cultural ‘ambivalent inclusion’ of Roma populations and expressions (or, perhaps, in this case cultural other non-Bulgarian elements is being displaced performances) have lost their alterity under the by models of multiculturalism which are often ill pressures of hegemonic, Euro-American models suited to the local context. Yet, where Creed is at of liberal democracy, civil society, and market his most persuasive is in his use of the material capitalism. In this sense, Creed’s book is a case to critique notions of civil society, community,

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 907 and the theory of socialist-era ‘atomization of aggravating the spread of AIDS in South Africa. society’. He transcends the context to ask The jury is out on that controversy: Fassin refers fundamental questions about the way to it only fleetingly in his new book. The case anthropologists have previously theorized conflict studies that he covers include the Sangatte and solidarity, and how such models have often transit centre, on the site of a former Nazi forced acted to reinforce preconceived notions of political labour camp near Calais, where successive organization and social cohesion. Beyond foreigners took shelter between 1999 and 2002 arguing that mumming is a contemporary form before trying to cross to England by train or boat of civic engagement, Creed’s point seems to be to seek asylum; official procedures in France with that conflict, prejudice, or selfishness do not which the immigration authorities set out by exclude incorporation and tolerance in means of medical reports to differentiate victims community life, but can be a constructive (as of torture from ‘economic migrants’; floods and well as disruptive) force. landslides in Venezuela in 1999 and the Masquerade and postsocialism is written with consequent, short-lived sense of national unity great sympathy for the people it describes and that they made possible; traumatic symptoms bears the marks of a work matured by decades suffered by young Palestinian men who took of fieldwork. Creed takes the rare (and brave) part in the Second Intifada; and the disparity in step of choosing to analyse an indigenous aid organizations between NGO expatriates and tradition as a key to understanding the state of local employees that extends not only to salaries contemporary society, where others have and living conditions but also to the amount of typically sought answers to the same questions physical protection given them in conflict zones. in studies of privatization and structures of These and other chapters, all of empirical governance. A consequence of this choice, interest in themselves, are held together by however, is a slightly weaker handling of Fassin’s concept of ‘humanitarian reason’. By precisely these issues. A more detailed this he means a globally pervasive, morally consideration of how the generic ‘Western’ untouchable idéologique, in confronting which models of gender, ethnicity, and civic he seeks to straddle the two normally engagement are present in Bulgaria, and how contradictory senses of ‘ideology’: on the one they filter through to rural communities and are hand, an insidious veil obscuring brutal presented to participants, would have economic interests (as in Marx); and, on the strengthened his position even further. other hand, a cultural system that makes sense Nicolette Makovicky University of Oxford of social relations (as in Geertz). Quoting Foucault – ‘We must go beyond the Fassin, Didier. Humanitarian reason: a moral outside-inside alternative, we must be at the history of the present (trans. Rachel Gomme). frontiers’ – Fassin tries to view humanitarian xvi, 336 pp., tables, bibliogr. London, reason from various angles: Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2011.£44.95 (cloth), £18.95 (paper) ... I have moved between the inside and the outside of the social worlds I studied, Humanitarian reason deserves to be widely read as remaining attentive both to the discourses an introduction to the work of one of the most and practices of their members and to the influential and most engaged of contemporary facts and stakes of which they seemed anthropologists. As well as qualifications in unaware ... I knew from experience that medicine and social science, and a record of it was possible to obey this dual diverse field research and prolific publications, injunction: having drawn up medical Didier Fassin has had four years of managerial certificates for undocumented migrants at experience with Médecins Sans Frontières. the same time as criticizing the Retaining his close links with France, in 2009 he humanitarianism of immigration policy, was appointed professor of social science at the and having worked in humanitarian Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. organizations while maintaining a critical Unafraid to challenge received wisdom, in position within them, I was conscious of When bodies remember: experience and politics of the possibility and even the necessity – AIDS in South Africa (2007), he argued that the but also the difficulty – of this negotiation obloquy which met President Thabo Mbeki’s between involvement and detachment, rejection of the international public health which rather than being a sort of model of HIV distracted attention from the schizophrenia, simply proceeds from an salience of exploitation and poverty in ethical and intellectual rigor in which

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respect for informants does not preclude the eastern tropical forest region of Ecuador, the exploration of areas where they are perhaps ranging from Colombia into northern unable or unwilling to go (p. 246). Peru, they nearly disappeared as a result of colonization, rubber tapping, disease, a border 1941 2 A cubist approach, we might call it. Though Fassin war ( - ) between Ecuador and Peru, and the launches a ‘critique of humanitarian reason’ to encroachment of more powerful local groups. 1998 conclude this book, echoing Kant and Sartre, he In , four communities were recognized recognizes that ‘humanitarian organizations call by the state as NAZAE (today ONZAE), the for a politics of life that reestablishes solidarity and Zápara Nationality of Ecuador. Viatori’s work gives equal value to lives’ (p. 241), even though focuses on ways the Zápara people and their bridging of the world’s injustices is doomed dirigentes (leaders) sought funding and technical to be ephemeral and illusory. assistance from a variety of European and North As an example for anthropologists, this is American NGOs, the United Nations, and the surely admirable. However, Antonio Donini of World Bank to build a trilingual education the Feinstein International Center, Tufts programme in Zápara, Spanish, and Kichwa (the University, has recently suggested that, whereas most widely spoken Indigenous language global budgets for relief aid have increased throughout Ecuador and the one in which most 2001 fivefold over ten years, humanitarianism as a Zápara are fluent). In , the Zápara language ‘mobilizing myth’ may be on the decline, to be was recognized as a ‘Masterpiece of the Oral replaced by more modest aims – sometimes and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’ by 200 000 described as ‘neo-Dunantist’. Urgent needs UNESCO. This recognition (and the $ , include the apparently increasing gravity of promised to fund a multi-year language so-called ‘natural disasters’, the virtual education and teacher training project) was very breakdown of the international asylum system – important to the Zápara as speaking an refugees being succeeded by internally displaced Indigenous language is an essential ‘marker’ and ‘internally stuck’ people – and (probably in without which Indigenous people find it difficult the near future) the effects of increased violence to achieve the recognition needed for access to as a result of falling standards of living. Didier resources and the possibility of legal recognition Fassin’s combination of analytical toughness and of bounded territory. expressive empathy should inspire a new Unfortunately, the necessary funding did not 2004 generation of hands-on ethnographic materialize until , and by then many researchers. But he does skate over the problems had developed that undermined slipperiness of the word ‘humanitarian’, which is significant aspects of the project. In examining the habitually used with varying degrees of ‘tribal slot’ into which UNESCO expected the looseness but also has precise legal meanings Zápara to fit, as well as the frictions created by under the Geneva Conventions. PRODEPINE – Ecuador’s Indigenous and Jonathan Benthall University College London Afro-Ecuadorian Peoples’ Development Project, funded by the World Bank from 1997 to 2002 – which promoted indigenous ‘social capital’ in Viatori, Maximilian. One state, many addressing poverty and inequality through nations: indigenous rights struggles in Ecuador. ‘ethno-development’, Viatori argues that x, 155 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. Santa Fe: governmental reforms and outside assistance SAR Press, 2009.£29.95 (paper) actually created new problems for the Zápara during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In this fascinating and largely very successful These include intra-group divisions and conflicts, work, Maximilian Viatori examines the effects of new forms of class distinction, tensions between the intersection of non-Indigenous allies, an dirigentes and solidarios (advocates), the restriction international indigenous movement, of Indigenous political action, and various environmentally focused and other NGO dependencies on the very outsiders who were projects, and Ecuadorian indigenous protests supposedly working for Zápara autonomy. and state multicultural policies on the Zápara, an Because these mega-projects focused on ‘social Indigenous group of approximately 1,300 capital’ (i.e. cultural knowledge and practice) persons whose territory ranges between the rather than on historical and structural Pindoyacu and Conambo rivers in the eastern inequalities, any failures of these projects to relieve Ecuadorian province of Pastaza poverty in Indigenous communities were blamed (www.codenpe.gob.ec). Although the Zápara on a ‘lack of local initiative’ that ultimately were once rather widely dispersed throughout ‘reproduced the status quo’ for the Zápara (p. 113).

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This new era of decentralized social services beans, Chianti, and smooth threats of the and cultural programmes propped up by cultured Hannibal Lecter, scholars of international grant funding has turned activism nineteenth-century empire, race, science, and into ‘project-ism’, whereby the only way to pseudo-science will now think of literary critic achieve anything concrete (at times) is to write Patrick Brantlinger, who analyses Victorian exhaustingly long grant proposals, sometimes notions of the practice in his latest book. In fact, (in the case of UNESCO) in languages other than cannibalism is just one aspect of the attitudes Spanish (p. 83). For instance, to receive the towards non-white or ‘uncivilized’ races that he UNESCO designation the Zápara had to contract examines in a wide-ranging and thought- a university-educated outsider to write a provoking study. Although the last instalment of proposal of more than 100 pages that justified an informal series on race and the Victorians, the revitalization of Zápara on the grounds that this tome will be a fruitful source of ideas for ‘their rapidly vanishing language represented an those unfamiliar with his previous work, as well enduring link between between Zápara as long-standing followers hungry for the final collective identity and the rain forest ecology of portion. eastern Ecuador’ (p. 83). The Zápara had to Each case study is bursting with tantalizing argue strenuously to get the important element material about the strangeness of nineteenth- of shamanic practices inserted into a proposal century British notions of race and civilization. that otherwise redefined their reality into Chapters consider such diverse topics as concepts and project pieces defined by UNESCO. Victorians’ fascination with Fijian cannibalism My criticisms of this work, which would be and Benjamin Disraeli’s affection for Turkish an excellent text for courses on globalization people and Ottoman civilization. When focusing and Indigeneity, language disappearance and on views of the Irish, Brantlinger observes the revitalization, or Indigenous movements in the accusations of cannibalism levelled against Americas, are minor. Although I agree with participants in the 1798 rebellion. Analysing Viatori’s suggestion that more scholars should accounts of those Aborigines conduct ethnographic studies of the effects of civilized to death in Van Diemen’s Land, he ‘large-scale reforms’ on Indigenous peoples (pp. describes the ghoulish hunger of pseudo- 122-3), I wish that he, and other scholars who scientific British racists for the remains of work in Latin America, would make more William Lanney, thought to be the last connections to the peoples of and scholarship Tasmanian man. If accusations of cannibalism about Indigenous struggles and advocates in against Lanney’s people were wholly North America and the Pacific. Also, although unsubstantiated, then his ‘civilizers’ were clearly Viatori’s work is full of references to recent work eager consumers of his corpse in their own on the history and political science surrounding depraved way. Though the volume is not limited Indigenous activism and challenges to survival in to references to cannibalism, but ranges far the Ecuadorian Andes and Amazon, one learns more broadly, there are enough of these relatively little about the Zápara people and their references around to make a nice recurring language outside the realm of policy and theme in otherwise diverse contexts of racial politics. This shortcoming produces an irony that thought. unfortunately parallels some of Viatori’s own Brantlinger shies away from overreaching critiques regarding the frictions produced by conclusions, and his work shines when non-Indigenous advocacy and the perils of highlighting paradoxical tensions in Victorian multiculturalism. culture or unresolved disagreements between Kathleen S. Fine-Dare Fort Lewis College authors and thinkers. It would be nice to know more about which aspects of the texts he analyses were, in his view, commonly Race and racism representative of the society which produced and consumed them. Fact and fiction blur, and it is not clear where Victorian storytellers make Brantlinger, Patrick. Taming cannibals: race idiosyncratic connections and where they merely and the Victorians.x,277 pp., bibliogr. offer clear examples of commonplace social London, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, facts. Following Edward Said, to whose memory 2011.$45.00 (cloth) the book is dedicated, Brantlinger suggests that ‘racism and empire have been two sides of the Though the twenty-first-century public might same coin’ (p. 10). But it would also be associate cannibalism most readily with the fava interesting to consider more fully the

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relationship between the expansion of territorial Fabian, Ann. The skull collectors: race, science, empire and notions of civilization, perhaps by and America’s unburied dead. xii, 270 pp., considering how theories of racial civilization illus., bibliogr. London, Chicago: Univ. worked in places beyond British political Chicago Press, 2010.£18.00 (cloth) borders as distinct from those within them. However, while the chapters may feel somewhat Ann Fabian has written an illuminating study of episodic, and this historian would have preferred so-called ‘scientific racism’ in the United States a bit less psychoanalysis, the book’s strength is from the 1830s into the 1900s. She begins with the ultimately in the breadth and intelligence skull collecting and ‘craniometry’ of Samuel displayed. George Morton, author of Crania Americana In the introduction, Brantlinger criticizes (1839). Morton agreed with Blumenbach that some of the chronological judgements made by there were five human races and that the Andrew Porter in the nineteenth-century volume ‘Caucasian’ race was superior to the others. Unlike of the Oxford history of the British Empire, fearing Blumenbach, however, Morton contended that that they downplay racial thinking before the the races were separate species. He collected and 1880s. Yet Taming cannibals would itself benefit measured the volume of skulls as an index of from more attention to questions of change over intelligence to prove his ideas about race. Despite time, even if bigotry was well represented his biased approach, he was widely recognized as throughout the century. One section reinforces a reputable and objective scientist. the traditional view of the 1860sasa Fabian soon broadens the focus to include transformative period, but the exact degree of other skull collectors. Morton constructed his this change can be overstated. Even if splits ‘American Golgotha’ through the help of many healed at this point between the others in the field. George Combe, the Scottish Anthropological and Ethnological societies – phrenologist, wrote the afterword to Crania ultimately merging to form the Royal Americana. James Audobon, John Kirk Townsend, Anthropological Institute – the complexity of and Louis Agassiz helped. And Morton had a racial thinking was probably still multiplying direct influence on George Gliddon and Josiah rather than consolidating. An afterword Nott’s Types of mankind, which ‘brought ingeniously deploys Kipling’s 1898 ‘White man’s Morton’s theories about skulls as a record of burden’ to link Britain’s civilizing imperialism to racial hierarchy to new groups of readers, the expansion of the United States. It might, including a handful of firebrand southerners though, have been wiser for the author to omit who liked his idea that “Negro-Races” had “ever allusions to ‘neo-imperialism’ in Iraq or been Servants and slaves” ’ (p. 111). anti-Islamism and anti-immigration in American Gliddon’s lengthy career in Egypt brought and British politics as prima facie evidence of mummies into the picture and led to Morton’s persistent assumptions of white supremacy 1844 Crania Aegyptiaca. Their mutual conclusion (p. 23) unless the direct link could be was that ‘the physical or organic characters demonstrated in greater detail and the argument which distinguish the several races of men are as could be developed more fully. old as the oldest records of our species’ (quoted Brantlinger notes the malleability of ideas of on p. 106). Caucasians created Egyptian race, nation, and civilization, and his greatest civilization and black Africans were then as today achievement is to add such exciting, rich, and the slaves of the Caucasians. Races and racial flavourful morsels to our understanding of a inequality were fixed for all time. baffling complex of prejudices and assumptions. It was a puzzle, therefore, to know what to The finest couple of chapters concern imaginary make of William Brooks, or Stumanu, a central ancient – white – races of extinct African figure in chapter 2. He was a Native American civilizations and the speculative rise of successor from Oregon whose skull had been deliberately species – of machines, aliens, or degenerate flattened in a cradleboard when he was an humans – in the future. Those interested in the infant. Having a cranium shaped like his was a histories of empire, human sciences, or racial mark of distinction among the Flathead Indians. exploitation will eagerly devour this book, But if skulls were culturally malleable, then how blending the author’s expertise in literary could Morton’s conclusions about the timeless criticism with a wider range of multidisciplinary characteristics of races hold up? And how could research. Taming cannibals offers a feast of ideas George Combe’s phrenology be sustained? for readers from a wide range of disciplines to Morton and Combe found the ‘flathead’ digest. phenomenon fascinating, but it did not change Richard Huzzey University of Liverpool their conclusions.

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Chapter 4 shifts to the Fiji Islands. In 1838, sculptures, representing ‘The Races of Mankind’. commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, a fleet of Three years earlier, the museum had six American ships set off to explore and map commissioned sculptor Malvina Hoffman to parts of the Pacific Ocean. Naturalist Charles produce pieces meant to capture the physical Pickering, an old friend of Morton’s, sailed on differences understood to be the distinguishing one of the ships. When the US Exploring features of different races. With museum Expedition returned in 1842, they brought a support, Hoffman spent several months in Asia, Fijian chief, Veidovi, who died soon after they recruiting ‘anthropological subjects’ in Japan, anchored in New York. Pickering urged Morton China, Bali, Java, and India. She also borrowed to come quickly to see the Fijian before he died, images from photographs that had appeared in but that wasn’t possible. And Morton himself anthropological texts and then recruited a team died before he had a chance to study Veidovi’s of able assistants (talented artists hard-pressed remains. But Morton’s disciple, James Aitken for work by the Great Depression) to produce a Meigs, took charge of Morton’s collection of collection of busts, of individuals and groups. crania. Meigs also saw Veidovi’s skull on display Museum curators kept Hoffman’s sculptures in Washington, D.C., although what he made of on display until 1969. Debates over the idea of it is sheer speculation (p. 128). Veidovi had been race and tensions between the dictates of seized as a murderer and cannibal whose physical anthropology and the demands of art followers had killed and allegedly eaten ten made the exhibit controversial from the start, as American sailors. Did the shape of his skull art historian Marianne Kinkel explains in her register murder and cannibalism? No doubt for detailed new book. Could physical most Americans it registered savagery. Yet the anthropologists and artists agree on a means to Exploring Expedition lost two more sailors in a visualize racial difference? How were museum violent confrontation with the islanders, which visitors meant to understand Hoffman’s led the Americans to take revenge by torching sculptures? Were they portraits of individuals or villages and killing some ninety Fijians. racial types? And how did their meaning shift With the turn to Fiji, Fabian moves away from over the course of the twentieth century, as Morton and his version of craniometry. The final events of the 1930s shattered any lingering sense two chapters follow race science through the of innocence in displays of racial hierarchy? 1800s and beyond. Chapter 5 stresses the irony Kinkel has written a ‘cultural biography’ of of Americans confronting the massive death toll Hoffman’s sculptures that explains their of the Civil War and putting parts of dead white production, follows their circulation as soldiers on display in the Army Medical Museum small-scale replicas, their reproduction as versus the continued grave-robbing practised photographs in atlases and encyclopedias, and against Native Americans. And the epilogue explores the changing racial paradigms that moves into the 1900s and the interest in shifted their meanings. measuring the brains of ‘eminent men’. How to The work of physical anthropologist Aleš explain their eminence when they had small Hrdlicˇka helped set the stage for Hoffman’s brains? Fabian then briefly comments on Robert project. Hrdlicˇka tried to capture a visual logic of Wilson Shufeldt, author of ‘Personal adventures racial difference with a display of individual of a human skull collector’ (1910) and of two portrait busts and skeletal materials for the racist diatribes against the ‘menace’ the ‘Negro’ Panama-California Exposition in 1915. Many race posed to American civilization. She ends by visitors left with the impression that Caucasians noting the 1990 passage of the Native American topped the evolutionary scale. Whatever its Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. message, Hrdlicˇka’s ‘dry as dust’ scientific Altogether, this is a fascinating study; Fabian has display lacked the visual punch of popular important stories to tell about the abuses of natural history. To attract and entertain a science by the powerful. general audience, curators and board members Patrick Brantlinger Indiana University at the Field Museum turned to artistic taxidermists and skilled scene painters to build Kinkel, Marianne. Races of mankind: the emotional appeal into dioramas of people and sculptures of Malvina Hoffman. xiv, 276 pp., animals. illus., bibliogr. Chicago: Univ. Illinois Press, Hoffman seemed to have the skills to put 2011.$40.00 (cloth) some of that emotional appeal into a display on human races. She was in her mid-forties when On 6 June 1933, Chicago’s Field Museum of the museum hired her, well known for portrait Natural History opened an exhibit of 105 busts that she produced for wealthy clients and

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for small statuettes and garden statuary that Sex and gender appealed to the same group. Through family connections, she had badgered her way into studying with Auguste Rodin. In 1930, her taste Amit, Vered & Noel Dyck (eds). Young men still ran towards classical sculpture and away in uncertain times. viii, 329 pp., bibliogrs. from contemporary modernism. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. Perhaps this bent has left her something of £55.00 (cloth) an outsider in histories of twentieth-century art – an ‘uneasy toehold’ is the phrase Kinkel uses to The edited volume Young men in uncertain times describe the status of her work. But Hoffman’s exemplifies a new wave of scholarship on men approach to sculpture prepared her well for the which benefits from the recent growth of men’s museum’s project. She claimed she worked from studies. While continuing to fill gaps in the a kind of mystical connection with her sitters anthropology of men, newer works can also that would leave her ready to receive the imprint respond to a critical mass of existing scholarship. of the visual characteristics of race. As Kinkel This volume provides important ethnography on writes, ‘Her sculptural approach involved an understudied phase of men’s lives – youth – reconciling portraiture conventions with the while also engaging in critical conversation with accuracy requirements associated with prior work that has exceptionalized young men’s anthropometric photographs, plaster casts, and experiences. By analysing these experiences in a measurements, while also engaging fine art political-economic context, this book provides a compositional techniques and ethnographic timely addition to conversations between narratives that she hoped would enliven the masculinity studies and youth studies, figures’ (p. 47). Hoffman’s ‘daybooks’ capture undermining simplistic attributions of young her efforts to balance aesthetic ideas with a men’s problems to ‘youth culture’ or scientific call for authenticity and accuracy. masculinity. There was no way to fix a single settled In their introduction, editors Amit and Dyck meaning on the figures she had produced and critique journalistic and academic assertions that their ambiguity fascinated Kinkel. Even museum young men are a unique and dangerous anthropologists disagreed about how to present population, calling these claims a moral panic and interpret the figures. The museum related to tensions resulting from economic presentation did seem to assume that an ideal turmoil and widespread inequality. They frame visitor was white and to hint that evolution had the volume’s project as contextualizing young deposited a white race at the height of men’s actions by investigating how global civilization, but the sculptures were too rich in trends like widespread lack of employment contradictions to convey anything resembling (despite expanding educational access), ongoing scientific certainty about race. The Parisian economic crisis, and violence have hindered avant-garde delighted in replicas on display at male youths’ attainment of local markers of Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro and New manhood. The editors call for a shift from Yorkers crowded the Grand Central Galleries and focusing on young men’s deviance to studying bought up the figures. most male youths’ attempts to conform to social Their ambiguities suited them well for the expectations. They argue that this can best be next several decades’ changing understandings accomplished through ethnography that locates of race. In the 1940s, Hoffman’s figures were young men’s experiences and actions in a recruited into wartime efforts to promote a political and economic context. sense of the brotherhood of man, and in the The volume’s contributors meet these aims 1970s, faculty at Chicago’s Malcolm X College ably. Providing the necessary historical and put them on display in a celebration of structural background while foregrounding Afro-centrism. They had their widest circulation ethnography is a difficult task that most as images along the margins of maps published contributors achieve elegantly, meaning that in school atlases and popular encyclopedias, readers without deep knowledge of specific where they perpetuated the old racist logic of world regions will nevertheless understand the visible, biological difference. As Kinkel describes relationships between specific young men’s it, Hoffman’s ‘Races of Mankind’ staged some experiences and the structural circumstances strange scenes from a marriage of art and shaping them. Individual chapters also anthropology. contribute in different ways to the shared project Ann Fabian Rutgers, the State University of of denaturalizing young men’s experiences and New Jersey the labels they receive. For example, Mains’s

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 913 chapter shows how the structural conditions that life-stories of young men in London’s Camden cause young Ethiopian men to deviate from the Town. ideal life-course of finding work and marrying This volume will be useful for scholars of lead to their characterization as simultaneously masculinity, youth, and anyone interested in ‘threatening’ and ‘lacking in agency’. Irwin understanding the lived consequences of critiques the standard view of combat as a rite of neoliberalism and inequality worldwide. Since passage by revealing, through extended the chapters draw on a range of theoretical ethnography with Canadian soldiers, that it orientations with specialized languages, the produces ‘old young men’ rather than paragons book as a whole may not be appropriate for of ideal masculinity. Taking a historical view, beginning undergraduates, although single Jankowiak, Moore, and Pan show how chapters would be ideal for area studies courses. political-economic developments in China have It would be an appropriate text for advanced fostered the emergence of an extended youth undergraduate or graduate courses on phase, while undermining previously entrenched masculinities, youth, or political economy. male privilege. Also revealing the construction of Emily Wentzell University of Iowa new categories, Terrio describes how young migrant men are criminalized in French court discourse. Newmahr, Staci. Playing on the edge: It was somewhat disappointing that two sadomasochism, risk, and intimacy. xi, 228 pp., chapters that exemplify the book’s goals were bibliogr. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, largely reprints. Elliston’s chapter, a condensed 2011.$70.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper) version of an excellent 2005 article, explicitly denaturalizes the fact that it is often young men Scientific approaches to sadomasochism have involved in nationalist uprisings, by asking what most commonly treated it as a manifestation of historical, economic, and cultural events made social and psychological pathology, practised by this the case in French Polynesian protests. damaged, possibly dangerous, and probably Evans’s chapter, which begins with a compelling deeply misogynist individuals. Staci Newmahr’s critique of the recent gendering and racialization 2011 book on the North American SM of British knife violence, does not integrate this community of Caeden comes, therefore, as a theme into the interesting but previously refreshing take not only on SM practice published ethnographic content that follows. specifically, but on marginality and constructions A major strength of this volume is its of ‘deviance’, intimacy, play, and risk more cross-cultural scope. In addition to providing a generally. The central argument of the book, broad view of how young men respond to which is based on four years of participant shared global pressures in different local observation in the Caeden SM scene, is that SM settings, the volume as a whole presents interactions are not primarily sexual, but concern interesting similarities and differences between the setting and pushing of a range of ethnographic cases. This was especially apparent boundaries at the extremes of human identity in young men’s enactments of emotion. While and existence. With this insight, Newmahr Frederiksen’s chapter shows that Georgian men establishes commonalities not only with other value emotional openness demonstrated examples of ‘serious leisure’ – such as gambling, through heart-to-heart talks, and Irwin’s shows free running, tombstoning, and mountain rescue Canadian soldiers crying unabashedly when a – but also with the existential dilemmas thrown friend is killed, chapters by Roche, Evans, and up by participant observation, which here takes Armstrong and Rosbrook-Thompson show on the quality of an extreme form of immersive young men valuing emotional closure and embodied practice. ‘hardening’ in resource-poor neighbourhoods of Newmahr introduces us to the world of England and sectarian Northern Ireland. Several Caeden through its personalities and its chapters also compare and contrast different community structure. We see community young men’s lives, providing nuanced portraits members laughing and joking together at the that avoid homogenizing geographically similar communal breakfasts that follow a Saturday men’s experiences. Notable in this regard are night out at the club, organizing parties, and Rios and Rodriguez’s comparison of two stewarding at lectures and public events. American young men of colour’s family histories Members of the community are big on hugging. and experiences of the ‘school to prison Both men and women show care and concern pipeline’, and Armstrong and Rosbrook- for each other, and take collective responsibility Thompson’s presentation of the for the safety and well-being of their members.

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So the apparent violence of some of the SM values ascribed to intimacy, which she contrasts encounters described in the book comes as a with the pathologization of violence and risk. As shocking contrast to the solidarity and with much of the material presented in her bonhomie pervading the descriptions of the book, this is a line of argument that takes us into community. Nevertheless, it is the safety net of potentially uncomfortable places, such as the the community that enables and sustains the contemplation of rape, murder, and assault as acting out of fantasies framed by SM ‘play’. In intimate practices. It is a symptom of the quality the public SM scene explored by Newmahr, the and integrity of her work that Newmahr is able ‘play’ provides a dialectical space in which the to take us to the dangerous edges of sociological participants explore the power and the limits of thinking on these risky topics. illusion, the parameters of which have been Julie Scott London Metropolitan University discussed and agreed in advance by both or all the parties to the play. However, whilst consent is one of the cardinal rules of the SM West, Mark D. Lovesick Japan: community, Newmahr demonstrates, through sex*marriage*romance*law. ix, 259 pp., tables, interviews, observation, and her own embodied bibliogr. London, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. participation, that the sought-after experience of Press, 2011.£19.95 (cloth) the play is the dangerous edge of uncertainty at which the participants connive. How far will the It is difficult to write responsibly about sex or illusion be taken? When does illusion become sexuality in Japan for an English-speaking reality? Newmahr’s analysis highlights the role of audience. Many people I encounter in my pain in mediating the agency of participants in courses or elsewhere in the world are quite sure plays that have unequal power relations at their that, although they might not know much about heart. The ‘tops’ or dominants who hand out Japan, Japanese sexual practices are strange. pain in various forms reject the idea that their American news media and popular culture feed aim is to ‘hurt’ the partner adopting the this mistaken image, from an infamous New York ‘bottom’ or submissive role, just as the Times article about a Japanese man and his ‘bottoms’ reject the notion that their desire is to plastic, blow-up ‘girlfriend’ going out for a date be hurt. From both perspectives, managing and on the town, to throw-away one-liners on embracing pain becomes a means of exercising prime-time television shows about how all the joint agency and achieving an altered state, weirdest sexual kinks belong to the Japanese. characterized by a sense of catharsis, flow, and These images create, in my students and many the suspension of thought. This is an enterprise other people, a firm but incorrect expectation that revolves around the issue of trust. However, that Japanese people are what I’ve labelled in order to maintain the illusion of the play, trust ‘hyper-sexual virgins’ – people with unusual becomes meaningful precisely because of its sexual practices who also don’t have much sex; capacity to be broken. It is the very edginess of weirdos whose weirdness is confirmed. this precarious balance that opens up a space of This global discourse about and marketplace risk and uncertainty, allowing for the emergence for representations of Japanese sexual weirdness of an exceptional intimacy which, Newmahr makes it incredibly difficult to write responsibly argues, is the real goal of SM encounters in the about Japanese sexuality because an author can community she studied. never be sure how, exactly, his research is going The power of Newmahr’s analysis is that she to be used. Any book about Japanese sexuality goes beyond the exotic eroticism of her subject could be mined for freaky tidbits and used to in order to open up broader theoretical debates concretize Orientalist fantasies. This is what I call around the concepts of edgework, gender the Dave Chappelle conundrum, after the identity, intimacy, and risk. Much of her American comedian who came to understand discussion about safety and risk resonates, for that some of his audience were finding example, with debates in gambling research confirmation of, not challenge to, their racism in contrasting ‘safe’ recreational play with his comedy, and suddenly quit rather than ‘addiction’, and I have heard habitual gamblers participate in that dynamic. In Lovesick Japan: talk about the experience of ‘flow’ in much the sex*marriage*romance*law, Mark West anticipates same terms as some of Newmahr’s informants. and parries the very real Orientalist assumptions Grounding her observations in the fine grain of many readers might bring to any book about detailed, long-term ethnographic research, sexuality in Japan. Newmahr provides a convincing argument for a Without a doubt, Lovesick Japan is a properly sociological reappraisal of the positive fascinating book that offers a necessary

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 915 perspective on legal ideologies surrounding love sense that their judgments assume that all love and romance in contemporary Japan. West’s is damaged or damaging. In many ways, this primary research focuses on 2,700 court book is ultimately about Japanese judges and opinions written by Japanese judges in all sorts what arguments they find the most of cases. With convincing force, he argues that compelling. ideologies about love, and what makes love This book would be helpful to anyone ‘real’ or ‘natural’, underpin legal judgments, interested in the broad intersection of law and often in ways that the judges themselves find human experiences, particularly around unconscious or surprising. More broadly, he romance. Perhaps preaching to the choir, I hope finds that love is a vitally important standard in that any potential readers use it to acknowledge many cases where it ostensibly shouldn’t matter. the complexities of love and sexuality in Love is mentioned more in criminal cases than in contemporary Japan, rather than reinforce marriages and divorces, and the measurable everything they think they know. realness of a defendant’s love could be used, for Allison Alexy University of Virginia instance, to differentiate the same actions as either a homicide or a failed double-suicide, the former bringing a much more severe sentence. Lovesick Japan repeatedly describes legal Social anthropology judgments that hinge on the realness of a person’s love, which judges use to justify or excuse otherwise inexcusable actions. West’s Besnier, Niko. On the edge of the global: analysis also finds that most judicial uses of modern anxieties in a Pacific Island nation. ‘love’ describe it ‘as if it naturally could not be xxiv, 297 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. anything other than an overwhelming, Stanford: Univ. Press, 2011.$70.00 (cloth), disorienting force to which people unwittingly $22.95 (paper) cede self-control’ (p. 29). Love, in these legal descriptions and uses, is a dark force that pushes The Pacific Island nation of Tonga, also called people to do bad things. ‘The Friendly Islands’, is situated in the Addressing the hypothetical Orientalizing Southwest Pacific, right next to the International audience that always has me worried, West Dateline and thus close to – or even beyond – begins the book by emphasizing that only the the edge of many ordinary world maps. To most unusual cases work their way into the legal many Westerners it is also, if at all known, a system. By studying court cases, he discovers prototypical example of a South Sea paradise, many interesting things about the ways Japanese apparently fallen out of time and untouched by judges write about love, but very little about the anxieties and burdens of modern-day life. how love is imagined and experienced by the Nothing, in fact, could be more wrong, vast majority of ‘regular’ Japanese people. That including the very assumption that Tonga is only said, Lovesick Japan is an immensely readable ‘there’, in this small island group in the Pacific, book that is full of surprising and upsetting case at the edge of the world. studies. The author offers myriad examples of On the edge of the global by Niko Besnier is a Japanese judges making arguments about what compelling attempt to straighten these love ‘obviously’ is, or ultimately ‘should’ be, misconceptions and render instead a which often make them seem out of touch or comprehensive account of how immersed in a horribly damaged people. Indeed the book globalized world and in modernity the people in begins with a short but powerful chapter that (and out of) Tonga actually are. Not only have describes how the legal system is structured to people of Tongan descent spread all over the make judges quite literally out of touch with world, with almost as many if not more of them average citizens: law students are more likely to nowadays living abroad than in Tonga itself, but be recommended for judgeships if they a substantial proportion of Tongan citizens keep minimize their own opinions; judges are moving between different islands, different relocated regularly so they never get too close to countries, and different worlds, in search of any particular community, and are therefore also education or medical care, owing to family feasts very likely to live in isolated communities with and other obligations, and for economic reasons other judges and their families. When judges of all shades, such as seeking wage labour, as socialize primarily with other judges, and part of their profession, or for stocking retail encounter only the most damaged experiences products. Even the lives of those who do not of love in their courtrooms, it begins to make travel are so much affected by production and

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consumption processes elsewhere, and are so book is a must-read. For everybody else, it is much intertwined with ideas, ambitions, and simply a pleasure. aspirations generated multilocally, that it must Andrea Bender University of Freiburg appear almost impossible to tease apart ‘the traditional’ and ‘the modern’. And yet this is one of the author’s goals that Donahoe, Brian & Joachim Otto Habeck he is successful in achieving. Key components in (eds). Reconstructing the House of Culture: this endeavour are the protagonists’ bifocality, a community, self, and the makings of culture in broad variety of sites and selves, and the Russia and beyond. xii, 336 pp., maps, figs, significance of objects and bodies. The tables, illus., bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: sometimes opposing, often complementary, Berghahn Books, 2011.£55.00 (cloth) roles of producers and consumers, their roots at home and in the diaspora, their proximity to – Houses of Culture, often situated in the centre of and sometimes identity as – local others, are towns, were plentiful across the Soviet Union. At unravelled and analysed in detail. All of these these cultural institutions Soviet citizens analytic ingredients and tools are used to shed underwent socialization, and acquired and gave light on the second topic of the book: the expression to their civic and ethnic cultures. But anxieties that modernity brings with itself, how since 1992 what has become of these spaces of they are experienced, how they are operating in mass leisure (places of community people’s daily lives, and how they are coped entertainment, dance, music, libraries) and how with. This focus on anxieties is framed by a do local people and artists experience these detailed description and subsequent account of public spaces both within Siberia and further the events of ‘16/11’, the unprecedented outburst afield? This edited volume answers these of violence that took place in the capital questions. Reconstructing the House of Culture is Nuku’alofa in 2006. based on a comparative research project funded To illustrate his theoretical arguments, the by the Max Planck Institute for Social author takes his audience on a round tour Anthropology, as well as the accompanying through Tongan modernities, to various places conference, ‘The Social Significance of the House and events most of which are considered banal of Culture in Siberia’, and workshop, even by their most essential actors, but which ‘Reconstructing the House of Culture’. This book none the less provide fascinating and revealing is essentially a social anthropology of showcases for the intricacies of this topic: contemporary Russia. The chapters emphasize second-hand marketplaces and pawnshops, the post-Soviet era and explain what locals now beauty pageants, hair salons and gyms. Even the experience at the Houses of Culture. General Heilala festival, which is intended to weave themes covered are ideological change, together strings of ‘Tongan culture’ (anga socio-economic transition, and the impact of free faka-Tonga), reveals many details about market reforms upon local cultural production modernities in Tonga. A whole chapter is and values. Scholars interested in the devoted to the role that religion and church anthropology of modern-day non-Slavic Russian denomination may play, both in production of peoples will find this book very useful indeed. and coping with anxieties, as well as in shaping The book is divided into two parts. The first the different roles that people may adopt when part looks at Siberian Houses of Culture in a dealing with these anxieties. comparative perspective, and the second part Based on some twenty years of extensive examines Houses of Culture in a broader fieldwork, the author has gained knowledge of historical and geographical context. If the five Tongan language, culture, and life-style that Siberian case studies (the first five chapters) give informs his keen ethnographic observations and the book analytical depth, then the chapters on analyses, interspersed with linguistic examples. Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Bulgaria, as well as Cuba and Besides its profound insights, the book is also Brazil, add breadth and situate the book in a just pleasant to read, comprehensible even in its wider global context. Indeed, they add value to most theoretical parts, as entertaining as it is the book by defining and re-defining the House instructive in its descriptions of daily life, and of Culture in the contemporary world. But just with a fine sense of humour shining through as important is the explanation of the everyday occasionally. For me, as an anthropologist personal interactions at these places. The working in Tonga for more than ten years, this authors provide a collection of engaging book is a jewel. For anybody interested both in personal observations from their fieldwork the region or the topics more generally, this studies. Virginie Vate and Galina Diatchkova’s

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 917 opening chapter sets the tone of the book and anthropological content makes it original. This explains the history and contemporary text fills a gap in the market regarding the social development of the House of Culture in and emotional significance of public leisure Chukotka. The section on (Chelsea FC owner) institutions in Siberia and elsewhere. Its chapters Roman Abramovich summarizes the problems clarify issues of change and continuity in the and challenges of social transition in Siberia Siberian House of Culture paradigm, as well as today (p. 39). Brian Donahoe’s chapter on the explaining the international reach and resilience Tyva House discusses how the locals feel about of these institutions. the loss of central funding post-1992, the impact Sevket Akyildiz School of Oriental and African of Federal Law 131 (2006), and the lack of moral Studies and ethical infusion in contemporary culture. In their chapter, Joachim Otto Habeck, Brian Donahoe, and Siegfried Gruber discuss the Groves, Murray. The Motu of Papua: tradition findings of the comparative research project. in a time of change. xxii, 255 pp., maps, figs, (The appendix to the book provides detailed tables, illus., bibliogr. Vancouver: Webzines of information about the research methodology Vancouver, 2011.$25.00 (paper) used, including the structure and type of research questions asked. Overall this appendix Murray Groves’s The Motu of Papua is an is designed to provide ideas for future unusual text. The book was composed at the social/cultural anthropology studies.) end of the 1950s as a doctoral dissertation on In part 2 of the book, Ali Igmen’s chapter on the basis of research amongst Motu people the radical aims of Houses of Culture in living in the vicinity of Port Moresby, the capital Kyrgyzstan during the 1920s and 1930s addresses of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Neglected for the ‘civilizing mission’ of the Soviet Houses of some five decades by the author, it was finally Culture amongst the predominately rural published in 2011. The book is therefore a Muslim Kyrgyz and Uzbeks (p. 165). His study of historical text. This is an ethnographic account of the local implementation of Soviet cultural Motu social life in the 1950s. It is not a history of policies notes how, ‘[i]n the long run, the clubs Motu life during the 1950s seen from the in effect encouraged Kyrgyz to reassert their perspective of a scholar in 2011. Indeed, the text indigenous culture to create their Soviet offers almost no contemporary commentary on community’ (p. 183). In other words, a hybrid the original 1950s material, nor does Groves community was formed bridging local and engage in any theoretical discussion. It is not, union-wide identities. Alexander King’s therefore, an intervention into contemporary contemporary fieldwork study on the anthropological debates. Rather, it must be read Kamchatkan indigenous communities highlights as an ethnographic description and profoundly the economic problems faced by local artists empiricist anthropological analysis located in the today, and the resourcefulness of these locals. discipline as it existed at the end of the 1950s: it Aivita Putnina’s chapter explains how Latvian testifies to Motu life in colonial PNG and state cultural policy somewhat mirrors the demonstrates anthropological thinking of the former Soviet practice and sees culture as period. Once these features of the text are ‘clearly defined’, whilst simultaneously fostering understood, the book makes intriguing reading. free market and private forms of sociability The book is divided into two halves. In the (p. 231); her example of government funding first, Groves gives an account of the main cuts, and the public gardening and historical and political dynamics contributing to environmental work by women (p. 227)is Motu life in the 1950s. In the first chapter, he topical in the context of the popularization of describes their territory, relations with nearby community and allotment gardens in modern groups and trading partners, and the main cities. Nadezhda Savovas’s thoughtful chapter political distinctions operating between Motu creatively fuses present-day examples from people. He also sketches some myths of origin Bulgaria, Brazil, and Cuba. She poetically and key political issues affecting Motu social life. describes how ‘tactile human interactions and The following two chapters give an account of social networks express a need and a dream to missionization and its effects; and of inhabit home-like community spaces: tangible government, the development of the city of Port houses that in their essence are intangible, Moresby, and their impact on indigenous life. moving and ever-changing’ (p. 260). Both of these chapters draw on archival material. The link between public leisure, culture, and The lack of theoretical engagement in these ethnic identity makes this book topical; its sections is extremely marked. This limits the

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usefulness of these sections for scholars and might usefully be read alongside material interested in colonial and postcolonial issues at on cargo cult, development, or law in the large or in Papua New Guinea more generally. region. The Motu of Papua is a book that will However, the synthesis and summary of the make a considerable contribution to the long archive sources is deftly handled and these history of Motu studies in anthropology, within chapters will provide a valuable resource for which it can take its place. researchers with an interest in the region. Will Rollason Brunel University The second half of the book provides an analysis of what Groves regards as the Motu political system. This section is at once Jones, Graham M. Trade of the tricks: inside representative of the state of the art of the magician’s craft. xvii, 289 pp., illus., Melanesian anthropology in the 1950s, and an bibliogr. London, Berkeley: Univ. California intelligent and shrewdly observed extension of it Press, 2011.£18.95 (paper) to confront manifest processes of social change. Groves’s analysis of Motu social structure Entertainment magic involves keeping secrets, of demonstrates clearly the conflicts faced by his course, but it also (and even more importantly) structural-functionalist contemporaries, depends upon their revelation. Indeed, though especially in the New Guinea Highlands: there is most magicians go to great lengths to conceal a lineage structure from which there are their tricks from non-magicians, practising significant exceptions; there is a hereditary conjurers routinely – although very carefully and system of authority which also depends on highly selectively – reveal tricks to their peers, personal prestige; property relations vacillate typically in exchanges that diffuse technical between the personal and the collective. The knowledge within the subculture while accruing absence of any systematic symbolic analysis, social capital for its participants. Exactly how which again dates the book, makes it impossible and under what conditions magical secrets get to reconcile these conflicts. transacted lies at the heart of Graham M. Jones’s Despite these limitations, this section of the fascinating book, Trade of the tricks: inside the book does make a series of intriguing magician’s craft, based on fieldwork conducted interventions into issues of social change. Groves as a participant observer in the thriving magical traces a transition in political systems between communities of Paris, where Jones took part in villages close to and within Port Moresby, and regular meetings of a number of magic clubs, those furthest away. He shows that while the attended performances, and created countless most remote villages deliberately partition opportunities to interact with other magicos (the themselves from statutory colonial authorities, term French magicians use for themselves in those in the city have abandoned customary both the singular and the plural). Now Assistant forms of political regulation in favour of local Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts government. Those on the coast between these Institute of Technology, Jones became a member find that the capacity of traditional forms of of the Fédération Française des Artistes prestige-based politics to govern migrant Prestidigitateurs – requiring an oral examination workers operating with different values and and a performance for the admissions resources has collapsed, yet the local councils committee (as well as a secrecy oath) – during which seek to replace these customary forms of his research. As a magicos himself, Jones has an control are ineffective. This analysis leads Groves insider’s knowledge of this unique subculture. to the highly contemporary observation that His writing is lively and engaging; Trade of the these Motu people operate a politics concerned tricks will fascinate specialist and non-specialist with performances of state power. In this section readers alike not simply through the inherent of the analysis, Grove’s work relates strongly to intrigue of its French magician subjects, but even literature on cargo cult and the state in more so with the many unexpected insights Melanesia and indeed more recent material on Jones derived from studying them closely for the ‘performance’ of personhood. several years. This is a book that will be of most interest to Jones’s keen appreciation of the craft of scholars who have a direct interest in the Port magic brims over throughout the book and Moresby region and Motu people particularly. draws one into his analyses of how magicians Because this is essentially a text written in the learn, perform, interact, form social groups, and 1950s, its capacity to intervene or be applied to earn a living – for many, the latter depends on contemporary debates is limited, although its unemployment benefits for performing arts analysis of colonial politics is sharply perceptive workers. Jones is attuned to phrasing and word

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012 Reviews 919 choice and uses linguistic anthropology (not to dominated by the figure of Jean Eugène mention a high level of French fluency) to parse Robert-Houdin, the so-called ‘father of modern the verbal subtleties of conversations for what magic’. This legacy, however, as the book’s final they reveal of interpersonal dynamics and tacit chapter makes clear, was not enough to prop up understandings and expectations. He makes the ill-fated Centre National des Arts de la Magie astute comments on the delicate balance that et de l’Illusion in Blois, which lost vital political conjurers must perpetually strike between and economic support during construction in deceiving and alienating their spectators. Jones the 1990s – yet another recent reminder of points rather ruefully to the fairly small number ‘magic’s questionable cultural status’ (p. 221), of women involved in magic (several of whom however fascinating the art and its practitioners he spoke with), noting that ‘the locker-room continue to be for so many today. atmosphere of some clubs imbues many Matthew Solomon University of Michigan interactions with unpleasant sexual overtones’ (p. 136). Onstage, Jones says, ‘much of magic is dominated by a system of heterosexual Rumsey, Alan & Don Niles (eds). Sung tales masculine signs in which women, when they do from the Papua New Guinea Highlands: studies appear, figure as the objects rather than the in form, meaning, and sociocultural context. agents of illusion’ (p. 132), although he finds a xvi, 330 pp., maps, tables, figs, illus., music, noteworthy exception in a comically ironic bibliogrs. Canberra: ANU E Press, 2011.Free performance by Otto Wessely and Christa (last (download) name not given) that shows some of the ‘subversive potential’ of what he terms ‘queer The book, which is available to download free magic’ (p. 159). from ANU E Press, is the result of a ten-year Near the end of a captivating introduction, interdisciplinary project. It deals with the art Jones offers the following disclaimer: form of sung tales that is widespread in the ‘Appearances aside, this isn’t really a book about central Highlands area of Papua New Guinea. magic anyway; it is a book about the social Since a great deal of knowledge about culture, organization and valuation of expert knowledge language, style, and musical form is required to that just happens to focus on magic’ (p. 32, be able to fully embrace this multileveled art of original emphasis). Indeed, for Jones, sung poetic language, an investigation into this contemporary French magicians present a topic was only possible by combining the compelling case study of how specialized expertises of different scientific fields. Specialists knowledge is protected and transmitted. And from different countries and stemming from the despite the ubiquity of modern communications fields of socio-cultural anthropology, linguistics, technology – the author spots one curious and ethnomusicology came together in two audience member searching the Internet on a consecutive workshops in 2004 and 2006 in the smartphone for an explanation of how a trick is Highlands of Papua New Guinea. A variety of done while the magician is still in the midst of a approaches to the complex matter are performance – one comes away from the book documented in the volume: the thirteen with the sense that the most crucial things chapters have been written by fourteen magicians do still occur in unmediated authors, covering analyses of styles, structures, face-to-face interactions. In an especially and languages, thus making it possible for the intriguing section, Jones explores how magicians first time to compare the different forms of work to establish intellectual property rights not sung tales from the Papua New Guinea only by ‘publishing’ tricks in limited-edition print Highlands. and DVD publications, but also by ‘registering’ Some characteristics of these sung tales are them through informal processes that rely on as follows: (1) they are nightly entertainment, shared communal norms and the ostracism of often with an educational aspect; (2)theyare violators. performed indoors by a seated individual, mostly The book primarily concerns prestidigitators male, performer; (3) they are sung to a melody of the present, but Jones’s assiduous historical in an archaic language, thus different to regular research (showcased in a rich and diverse speech; (4) the storytellers are respected bibliography) also pays dividends, starting with specialists, creating poetry in performance, and a 1953 poetic homage to magicians by Jean are paid; (5) there are no musical instruments or Cocteau, which Jones translates in its marvellous dances used in the performances; and (6)the entirety. He places twenty-first-century French stories are known to the listeners but they are magicians within a proud national tradition improvised upon. This art form does not appear

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completely alien to European readers: it is that the region lacks this art form (p. 22). In reminiscent of the ballad-mongers that were some cases, detailed information is still scarce fixed parts of pre-television entertainment. These and further investigation would be needed. performers were also mainly male, used archaic As part of a multimedia offering, besides the language, performed in a way different from text chapters there are also audio examples, a acts using normal speech, were often without full text of an interview, and a video to be musical accompaniment, and hoped to be paid downloaded. Unfortunately, these important for their services. The contents of the sung tales extras are not added as a CD to the purchasable might be factual or fictitious (or both) and hard copies, but they are listed at the beginning elaborate on romance, history, and mythical (p. xv). So, the more complete version is the prehistory, or the fight between good and evil, digital one. There is a positive side to E Press: it in most cases based on the journey of a is possible at low cost to publish material which protagonist. would otherwise not be published, and it is The book is aimed not only at specialists in democratic, allowing everyone with a computer the region or the topic but also at ‘readers with to read it. But the growth of online publications a more general interest in comparative poetics, also releases many publishers from the duty to mythology, musicology, or verbal art’ (p. 1) and, print less popular material. If all specialist after a short introduction to region and topic, literature without a substantial lobby were studies are presented from different linguistic published in digital form only, it might be lost groups in the densely populated area. The should this way of conserving knowledge prove diversity of styles in the different regions of the unstable. Having made this point, I want to state variegated country allows the use of the term that through the novel way of presenting ‘sung tale-genres’ (p. 1, cf. p. 20). Duna, Huli, different views on such an interesting topic as Enga, Ipili, Angal, Ku Waru, and Melpa all offer a the sung tales, this edited volume should be similar use of the sung tales and this considered more than just a specialist first-of-a-kind comparison also serves as a publication for a small group of readers. So fascinating investigation into similarities and much of a culture is combined in the tales differences among these groups with their ‘long through their contents, interaction of characters, history of social interaction and intercultural humour, and metaphors that they allow a deep exchange’ (p. 5). Thus, it is not only interesting and intimate view into another people. I can in which areas the sung tales are performed, but highly recommend to everyone this poetic also in which of the neighbouring areas they are approach to an interesting region. not – even though an absence of a regional Alexis Th. von Poser Ethnological Museum, variety in this book does not necessarily mean Berlin

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 18, 886-920 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2012