The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: Phylogenetic Approaches

Book reviews 227

James Urry captures a part of her character also proved difficult to succeed with this approach. in his witty portrait of her ‘Jandals’. This book uses linguistic phylogenies because As per the memory of the reviewers, some they offer better resolution of sister groups and historical corrections are offered for the record. because linguistic data are available for more Marilyn Strathern, who has contributed a groups. chapter to this collection, was not actually The book is in two parts. The first asks: ‘How among the ‘pioneer academic staff’ (p. xii) at tree-like is cultural evolution?’ Transmission the University of Papua New Guinea in Port might work vertically, horizontally, or in some Moresby. She was employed by the New Guinea admixture of the two. Contributors use a range Research Unit of the Australian National of empirical studies to examine differences in University, while Andrew Strathern was Professor modes of transmission of cultural traits such as and Chair of the Department of Anthropology Turkmen carpet designs, artefacts from Papua and Sociology at UPNG. Also, when the request New Guinea, and basket designs from Native came through to Ann Chowning and Andrew California. Individually modifiable traits (such as Strathern to provide a paper on possible names the Californian basket designs) may spread more for Papua New Guinea’s currency (before the by diffusion across populations than by new banknotes were created), she and Andrew inheritance within them. Despite this, empirical were given just one evening to produce it, for tests of models of migration routes among presentation next day in Parliament. That is how Austronesians, on the one hand, and Bantu the kina and toea currency came into being. farmers, on the other, support the editors’ Banknotes were developed subsequently, and fundamental hypothesis that group-level cultural Louise Morauta, along with Ann, Andrew entities including languages are related in a Strathern, and others, was involved in tree-like way. suggesting images for these on an equitable The second part assumes the validity of basis of regional representation in the new phylogenetic approaches and applies them to nation. some of the pivotal controversies that have Andrew Strathern &Pamela J. Stewart shaped the discipline of anthropology. University of Pittsburgh Ruth Mace and Fiona Jordan contribute a valuable study of global variation in sex ratio at birth, producing a complex picture which the Mace,Ruth,Clare J. Holden &Stephen authors match convincingly with Darwinian Shennan (eds). The evolution of cultural theoretical predictions. In a cross-cultural study diversity: a phylogenetic approach.x,291 pp., of marital wealth transfers, Mark Pagel and maps, figs, tables, bibliogr. London: UCL Press, Andrew Meade find that monogamous marriage 2005. (cloth) systems are associated with payment of a dowry, whereas such payments are rare or non-existent This book is probably best described as work in when marriage is polygynous. Again, the progress, documenting the emergence of a authors are persuasive in connecting such pioneer field. In 1994, Ruth Mace and Mark Pagel empirical findings with predictions from originally proposed that phylogenetic Darwinian theory. comparative methods were essential for testing The penultimate chapter is entitled ‘The cow co-evolutionary hypotheses in cultural and is the enemy of matriliny’. Using data from bio-cultural evolution. A decade later, this book Bantu-speaking populations in Africa, Clare represents the state of the art. Holden and Ruth Mace ask whether we can infer If cultures arise from mother cultures by a causal relationship between (a) the spread of descent with modification, they cannot be cattle and (b) the loss of matrilineal descent. considered independent data points. No Using a language tree to reconstruct Bantu statistical test of an adaptive hypothesis is valid if population history, they show conclusively that the sample includes cultures related in this way. matriliny plus cattle is indeed a highly unstable Phylogenetic comparative methods of the kind combination, destined to change within a few explored in this book aim to get around this centuries to cattle plus patriliny or mixed problem by constructing trees specifying descent. They are also able to show that it is the ancestral relationships. introduction of cattle that occurs first, prior to How might such trees be constructed? One the collapse of matriliny, indicating the direction possibility is to use genetic data. However, of causality. humans are an unusually young species with The authors offer suggestive evidence that remarkably little genetic variation, so it has the Bantu-speaking populations of east and

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 223-260 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2007 228 Book reviews

southern Africa may have been matrilineal before Boellstorff addresses recent anthropological they acquired cattle. Readers of this journal will interest in cultural interchange and the recall that this was precisely the argument tradition-modernity/local-global conundrum meticulously set forth in the case of the Thonga posed to theory when ‘faraway’ places by the Swiss missionary and ethnographer Junod increasingly appropriate signs of Western-near – and denounced on spurious grounds by culture and knowledge, for example by Radcliffe-Brown in his regrettably influential appropriating gay and lesbi subject positions essay, ‘The mother’s brother in South Africa’ and naming men’s cruising spots Pattaya (South African Journal of Science 21, 1924). Where and Texas. Africa is concerned, the matrilineal priority The study, born of Boellstorff’s long-time theory of Lewis Henry Morgan and his academic and activist commitment, is an followers turns out to have been essentially attempt to transcend existing literature on correct. sexuality and globalization that defaults into the For good measure, Holden and Mace take common interpretative binarism that either the aim at a further assumption linked historically world is shrinking towards a uniform Gay Planet with the overthrow of the Morgan-Engels of Western-like similitude, or non-Western paradigm – the currently still widespread traditional same-sex practices are resisting the palaeo-anthropological doctrine that ‘social globalizing pressure and remain unbridgeably organization in early hominids was probably different and sufficiently ‘authentic’ objects of based on associations among male (but not conventional anthropological analysis. Boellstorff female) kin, like that of most human societies advocates an intersectional approach to the and chimpanzees’. How can such statements be study of sexual cultures and subjectivities, by taken seriously when even within a single focusing on the birth of the modern Indonesian language group such as the Bantu residence and state, thus overcoming the previous regional descent rules are so highly variable? As the focus. The question is not whether globalization authors point out, human social organization makes the world more the same or different, changes too rapidly to permit sweeping but that contemporary complex processes of inferences of any such kind. change are reconfiguring the yardstick by which The book does have certain shortcomings. the grid of similitude and difference is Not all the chapters appear satisfactorily polished interpreted. or edited. There is no author index and the In the section ‘Historicity of homosexuality in subject index is somewhat thin and unhelpful. colonial Indonesia’, Boellstorff rejects a clear-cut But these are minor defects in an otherwise temporal trajectory connecting present-day gay excellent volume. If the methods pioneered in and lesbi with ‘indigenous’ traditional these pages fulfil their promise, they may help homosexualities. Instead of assuming that the restore anthropology to its original mission, existence of non-normative sexualities in enabling us to glimpse the big picture of our Indonesia’s past constitutes present gay and lesbi species’ cultural variability, history, and identity in embryonic form, or that indigeneity is evolution. required for modern phenomena to be authentic Chris Knight University of East London and ‘really’ Indonesian, Boellstorff skilfully documents past non-conforming sexualities, such as the transgender bissu and waria.He shows that various gendered and sexual practices were widespread, but that they have little in common with contemporary gay General identity. The question of producing temporal and cross-cultural convergence, while crucial to Western gay culture and ideology, is not Boellstorff,Tom. The gay archipelago: experienced as meaningful for most gay and sexuality and nation in Indonesia. xiii, 282 pp., lesbi; rather it is the importance of national map, tables, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, Princeton: belonging, legitimated by aspiring to Princeton Univ. Press, 2005.£38.95 (cloth), be a good citizen through choosing £15.95 (paper) family life. Gay and lesbi subjectivities emerged in the The gay archipelago is a fascinating and context of the modern postcolonial Indonesia ambitious study of the lives of gay men and lesbi under Soeharto’s regime since 1970. The (lesbian) women in contemporary Indonesia. heteronormative ideal family based on an