Migrations Disructivas

Book and film reviews
Childhoods Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 16: 4, 1988)

– but found that in the field they had to adjust
their expectations. Sim (chap. 5) gives a
Allerton, Catherine (ed.). Children: compelling account of the insights into Londoner
ethnographic encounters. xi, 186 pp., bibliogrs. children’s experiences that the ‘least-adult’ role
London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. afforded her, but also attributes much of her
£60.00 (cloth) success in playing this role to her gender and
appearance, rather than to her skill as an
Recently there has been a rise in the number of ethnographer. Johnston (chap. 4), contrastingly,
ethnographies focused on children. While some was unable to play the ‘least-adult’ role he had
anthropologists continue to treat the subject of envisioned. In an unusually frank account of
childhood as marginal, this edited volume’s ethnographic disappointment, he relates his failed
authors are united by a belief in the importance attempts to position himself as something other
of taking children’s knowledge, perspectives, and than an ‘exemplary adult’ (p. 59), consistently
competencies seriously, while treating distanced from the Chinese schoolchildren he
ethnographies of children as critical to any had hoped to study. In the end, both he and
anthropological understanding. Each chapter of Buitrón-Arias (chap. 3) argue that their best data
Children: ethnographic encounters provides an came from embracing methods that aligned with
engaging and reflexive account of an the roles they were offered, even if those methods
ethnographer’s experience of doing research with diverged from dominant models for doing
children. ethnographic research with children.
Taken as a whole, the book vividly illustrates In making explicit the uncomfortable
how actual field realities complicate the idealized experiences which lie between optimistic research
research methodologies on which ethnographers proposals and published ethnographies, this
of children frequently have been encouraged to volume contributes to a growing body of work
build their research proposals. For example, that moves beyond debates about how particular
Brosnan (chap. 1) relates how the ‘child-friendly’ field contexts limit or facilitate the use of
methods she developed with children in one specific methods to an analysis of how the failures
Rwandan Tutsi village turned out to be and frustrations of fieldwork actually generate
inappropriate and ineffective for working with anthropological knowledge. For example,
children in a neighbouring Hutu village. After a Kaland (chap. 8) describes how awkwardness
halting start, she eventually concluded that in his relationships with young people,
‘child-friendly’ methods were founded on although unanticipated and unwanted, became
assumptions about childhood that did not hold a source of insight into their lives, ‘precisely
true for the Hutu children. because of what is experienced as awkward’
Similarly, many of the contributors began their (p. 115). Froerer (chap. 6) and Milićević (chap. 2)
fieldwork intending to position themselves in a both describe how taking children’s knowledge
‘least-adult’ role – drawing on Nancy Mandell’s and competencies seriously left them challenging
work (‘The least-adult role in studying children’, adult narratives about children – both in the field
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

C Royal Anthropological Institute 2018
390 Book and film reviews
and in the discipline – as they recorded knowledge attacks on homeless people by school-age
that children were not supposed to have. children. In 1998 these culminated in curricular
Commendably, most of the contributors revisions (implemented in the early 2000s),
provide highly reflexive accounts of the ways their including reduced school hours, inter-disciplinary
own feelings, relationships, expectations, and classes or ‘integrated studies’, and a broader
disappointments shaped their ethnographic range of electives. Propelling reform was the
encounters. Although in places the book falls into concern that the Japanese education system was
the trope of the apparently-doomed-but- not instilling sufficient independence, creativity,
eventually-redeemed-fieldworker, several of the and ‘global literacy’ in Japanese students.
contributors – most notably Hoechner and In The strange child, Andrea Gevurtz Arai
Montgomery (chaps 9 and 10, respectively) – proposes both to explore this moment, and to
resist this temptation and instead expose the consider how the figure of the child seems to
complicated ethics (and feelings) their research capture a new uncertainty in Japanese society.
generated, detailing their mistakes and regrets The ‘child problem’ has become the terrain for
alongside their attempts to make peace – in analysing social fragmentation and the unhealthy
Hoechner’s case with the Qur’anic students who aspects of social pressure. At stake here is a
felt betrayed and taken advantage of as a result of system of standardized education and
her attempts to ‘empower’ and ‘give voice’ examination that lay at the heart of late
(p. 133) to them through participatory twentieth-century promises of prosperity, social
filmmaking; and in Montgomery’s case with the security, social cohesion, and upward mobility.
choice to study child prostitution through the Arai takes us into the more sensational and
lens of cultural relativity. widely covered moments in these debates and
Children, necessarily, centres on the transformations: ‘the collapse of the classroom’; a
ethnographers, their perspectives and problems growing awareness of bullying; and school refusal
rather than the children’s. Consequently, it does syndrome. Her second chapter focuses on the
drift occasionally into describing encounters with murder of two schoolchildren by a 14-year-old
groups of children as if they were singular, boy, known as ‘Shōnen A’ (Youth A) in order to
obliterating their diverse perspectives. In other protect his identity. In chapter 4 Arai offers
places, however, the authors vividly depict observations of a Kawasaki City elementary school
individual children, openly describing the and of a middle school classroom in Kawagoe
problematic ways anthropologists intrude upon City, Saitama Prefecture, and shares stories of
children’s lives and acknowledging the ways classroom unruliness, the failure of teacher
children shape the research itself. authority, and peer pressure. She includes a
This book is most successful as an exploration chapter on the cram school industry, which, as
of, as Allerton puts it, ‘the process of undertaking she shrewdly notes, paradoxically has been
ethnography with children, and the ways in which bolstered by the reforms seeking to curtail school
it might be different to ethnography with adults’ pressure.
(p. 7). Whilst it also succeeds in demonstrating Drawing on two lectures by psychologist
the importance of ethnography with children, it Hayao Kawai, a consultant to the Ministry of
will be of most interest to those who are looking – Education, Arai conceptualizes the discourses she
whether for practical or theoretical reasons – for a observes as a shift from post-war discourses of
resource that moves beyond anthropological ‘dependency’ (see Takeo Doi’s The anatomy of
‘mantras’ and ‘orthodoxies’ (p. 4) to honest and dependence, 1971) to a neoliberal worldview: the
reflexive accounts of how anthropologists have production and new rationales of governance
navigated ethnographic encounters with children that ‘shift responsibility to the individual for his or
in profoundly different cultural contexts. her own training and self-development’ (p. 7).
Rachel Shah Durham University Arai also examines educator and critic Ryōichi
Kawakami’s claims that children have become
‘weak’ and that schools must ‘prepare kids for
Arai, Andrea Gevurtz. The strange child: society’ by encouraging self-sufficiency.
education and the psychology of patriotism in Arai sees these as evidence of a plea for
recessionary Japan. xv, 233 pp., illus., bibliogr. autonomy. Yet Kawai’s call for the independent
Stanford: Univ. Press, 2016. £18.99 (paper) self was accompanied by a call for compassion,
mutual understanding, and restraint, and it reads
Discussion of school reform and ‘problem as a thinly veiled entreaty for a return to
children’ in Japan began in the 1970s and early traditionalism. Kawakami’s appeal for the
1980s, in part prompted by a series of violent internalization of order and discipline also is

Book and film reviews 391
rooted in nationalist – indeed militarist – an important discursive sphere, but I worry that
ideologies, in which obedience and authority readers unfamiliar with Japan will read her book
were inculcated through bodily experience. While as pointing to a shift from an unquestioned
Arai’s term ‘neoliberal patriotism’ attempts to collective to a call for individualism, when in fact
capture this contradiction, her analysis doesn’t this dichotomy misrepresents both past and
offer us enough guidance to understand the present.
contradictory ways in which reforms that invoke Amy Borovoy Princeton University
the language of individualism are often informed
by neo-conservative and neo-national ideology.
The precise meaning of the ‘stress on Gozdziak, Elzbieta M. Trafficked children and
individuality’ or ‘self-reliance’ called for by the youth in the United States: reimagining
Ministry of Education was never clear. survivors. viii, 182 pp., tables, bibliogr. New
Commentaries on the reforms – both critical and Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2016.
supportive – did not necessarily embrace £25.95 (paper)
discourses of ‘neoliberalism’. Some celebrated the
reforms as being about child-centred learning Every decade or so, stories about vulnerable
and adapting to individual needs (something children hit the headlines, leading to calls for
different from ‘individual autonomy’). Critics policies to be formulated and practices to be put
worried about diminished social equality as in place to ensure that abuses are brought to an
schools became more open to individualized end. Latin America’s street children, South East
learning. Both positions are compatible with Asia’s child prostitutes, young soldiers, and child
social democratic perspectives that have deep witches in Africa have all, since the 1980s, taken
roots in Japan. their turn in the spotlight as critical social
Consequently, I worry that Arai’s problems. Yet in every case, where
interpretation of the call for ‘individualism’ as anthropologists have carried out detailed
‘neoliberalism’ places too much faith in Ministry ethnographic work, especially when they have
of Education propaganda. Peter Cave’s drawn on children’s own views and
ethnography Schooling selves (2016) shows how understandings, their studies have consistently
teaching ‘individual responsibility’ has not drawn a more complex picture in which binary
threatened the ideal of ‘group life’ – a concept notions of victim/perpetrator, innocent/criminal,
that continues powerfully to shape Japanese abuser/abused, adult/child are unsustainable and
pedagogy. According to Cave, group life sometimes downright dangerous. Into this
simultaneously encompasses ideals such as important field comes Elzbieta Gozdziak’s book
individual initiative, problem-solving, judging Trafficked children and youth in the United States. It
autonomously, and learning to think by oneself. is the first book to look at the experience of
‘Responsibility’ can also mean ‘social children and young people trafficked across
responsibility’. international borders into the United States and,
Arai’s own interesting observations of the using a multi-sited ethnographic approach, is
discourses of reform and classroom dysfunction based on interviews with children and young
are hemmed in by the dichotomy between people (mostly girls, but also including some
dependency and neoliberalism that frames her boys) who have been designated as child victims
analysis. She describes the reforms as ‘the of trafficking.
replacement of one identity discourse for another’ The problem of child trafficking is one that has
(p. 9) in a way that masks continuities and been defined in a particular way: the preferred
contradictions. One wishes that Arai’s fascinating image of the trafficked child is of a poor,
ethnographic material were in better balance vulnerable, young girl, who is tricked or sold by
with the more sensationalist texts and discourses desperate and/or wicked parents into a life of
to which she devotes attention, including Youth (usually) sexual slavery overseas. The awfulness of
A’s murders. Indeed, it is still not clear to what this stereotype has led to an upsurge in the
extent we can extrapolate from this extraordinary numbers of agencies, charities, and private
event concerning contemporary social issues. individuals attempting to identify, rescue, and
Post-war Japan’s ‘imagined community’ is rehabilitate these girls, often with ambiguous
here depicted as a cardboard cut-out, even results. Gozdziak examines why this image has
though Doi’s work on dependency itself was an come into being, why it is so potent, and why it
attempt to locate Japanese society and culture bears so little relationship to young people’s own
within cosmopolitan discourses of humanism and experiences and aspirations. It is these youths that
psychoanalysis. In her analysis, Arai has captured are the main focus of her book. Over the course

of several years she interviewed 140 trafficking Margaretten, Emily. Street life under a roof: youth
‘victims’ and discusses the stories they have homelessness in South Africa. xiii, 213 pp.,
related. She found almost no children who fitted maps, illus., bibliogr. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois
the stereotype or who offered a typical victim Press, 2015. £17.99 (paper)
narrative. Almost always in their late teens, these
are young people on the verge of adulthood, In this lively, accessible monograph, Emily
seen in their own communities as competent and Margaretten examines the social lives of
resilient; able to work; have children of their own; ‘homeless’ Zulu youth resident in Point Place – a
and indeed to make their own decisions about derelict apartment block in Durban, South Africa.
migration. Furthermore, trafficking has to be seen She draws on fieldwork conducted between 2003
in terms of difficult and very limited choices back and 2008 to provide a rich, experience-near,
in countries of origin where poverty and hard account of how the youth have transformed the
manual labour are facts of life for many of them. building into a domestic space that enables urban
Piecing together their stories is difficult: they survival.
are often told in a way which is non-linear, In part I she focuses on the institutional
confusing, and even evasive, yet Gozdziak builds displacement of these youths. Margaretten shows
up a compelling picture of how migration how many engage in ‘shelter hopping’, facing
decisions are made; the contexts in which they sporadic police arrests and evictions. She
occur; and the effects of these choices on the lives contends that in this context, a moral economy of
of those who make it to America. The book sharing, metaphorically termed ‘puff and pass’ (as
reveals a complicated situation in which in smoking a joint), has emerged. Youth also
migration choices are negotiated with family and mobilize the paradigms of marriage and kinship
friends; decisions are made with others; while to construct relations of reciprocal connectivity.
children and young people exercise some agency. Couples share rooms: boyfriends generate
Rarely do such trips involve the evil perpetrators income through begging, stealing, guarding cars,
and criminal traffickers of popular imagination: or selling joints outside the building; and
they are often family members. To paraphrase girlfriends cook, clean, and wash clothes inside.
Gozdziak, they are not ‘snakeheads’ or ‘coyotes’ Young women stand in (ukuma) as mothers for
(Chinese or Mexican smugglers) but mothers. In even younger children, and co-resident peers call
one instance, documented in detail, Gozdziak each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. The latter
shows how a teenager brought by her mother to relations are often more symmetrical and
the United States to work in a bar was claimed as sustainable than sexual ones. Whilst Margaretten
a trafficking ‘victim’ and was forced to testify classifies this under the rubric of relatedness, I
against her, even though she never claimed believe that the concept of ‘fictive kinship’ could
victimhood and never believed her mother to have provided greater conceptual clarity.
have done anything wrong. Other cases involve In part II, Margaretten explores domesticities
young women being ‘rescued’ and having their and sexual intimacies in greater depth, arguing
earnings confiscated as the proceeds of crime. that ‘love’ (thanda) and ‘care’ (nakana) are closely
Even in cases where young people are working in interconnected. Sexual relations express social
exploitative conditions, they refuse to see personhood, but also bear expectations of mutual
themselves as victims of trafficking, but refer support. Young women engage in ‘transactional
instead to bad treatment, low wages, and unsafe sex’ with boyfriends inside Point Place to access
working conditions. Most come to the United basic subsistence needs, such as living space, and
States to work; they expect it to be hard and are with outside boyfriends to attain consumption
prepared for that. pleasures. Few risk engaging in commercial sex,
This is a brave, fascinating, and carefully which is marked by the greater possibility of
argued book that complements the increasing sexual assault. Young men act out older ideals of
amount of research coming out of the conquest in the field of courtship. Margaretten
anthropologies of both childhood and migration discerns two contrasting, masculine, ‘ideal types’
which relies on children’s own commentary and in Point Place (to me ‘models’ seems more
ideas about their vulnerability and victimization. It appropriate): the isoka, who attracts through
shows once again that what is considered by good looks, charm, and money; and the
well-meaning practitioners and policy-makers as a umnumzana, who is committed to the home. The
chance to rescue innocent children and restore isoka life-style resonates with the fast street life of
their childhood is seen very differently by the easy money and immediate, immoderate
children themselves. consumption in the informal economy. Although
Heather Montgomery The Open University the umnumzana might not earn sufficient wages

to afford bridewealth, he relies upon the asset of a readers interested in urbanism, the youth, and
room to secure companionship, and upon South Africa.
physical intimidation to attain respect. HIV/AIDS Isak Niehaus Brunel University
is obviously present in Point Place, which makes
sexual relations dangerous and frail. Friends and
Crossing borders
‘siblings’ step in to mitigate the losses of love (p.
129). Unfortunately, much discussion in this part
of the monograph covers familiar analytical Armbruster, Heidi. Keeping the faith: Syriac
ground. Christian diaspora. viii, 279 pp., map, illus.,
Part III begins with a chapter entitled ‘Residing bibliogr. Canon Pyon, Heref.: Sean Kingston,
with the spectral’. Margaretten contends that 2014. £60.00 (cloth)
Point Place residents often invoke witchcraft to
explain all sorts of misfortune. In the popular How do migrants, who see themselves as a
imagination, witches seek to annihilate their persecuted religious minority in their ‘homeland’,
victims, prevent their transformation into keep their faith and their identity over time? How
ancestors, and destroy their lineages. Another are familial bonds maintained and changed, and
spectral manifestation was that of a spirit called how is a larger community reproduced through
‘grandmother’ (uGogo), who caused havoc in language and transnational connections? These
Point Place by possessing youth and afflicting are some of the questions raised by Heidi
them with seizures. uGogo expresses various Armbruster in this book based on fieldwork in
contradictions: she is real, but cannot be seen; Vienna, Berlin, and southeastern Turkey, which
she is an elder living among youth, and a figure was carried out among Syriac Christians from the
from the past inhabiting the present. Discourses early 1990s until 2013.
about her capture the problematic relations Syriac Christians – also called Syrian Orthodox
between youth, their older kin, and ancestors. or Suryoye in their own language – belong to the
In chapter 6, Margaretten follows the Eastern Christian tradition and they often consider
movements of youth between Point Place and their church to be the first in Christianity. Until
their natal homes elsewhere in Kwazulu-Natal. the last few decades they have had a continuous
Older kin generally portray the home as a site for presence in today’s southeastern Turkey in an
nurturance, morality, and discipline, and the area they call Tur Abdin. This region has also been
street as one of danger, immorality, and shared by Kurds, Arabs, and, in the modern era,
depravity. However, street youth experience their Turks. The historical trauma through which most
natal homes as places of poverty and conflict, Suryoye view their past, present, and future is
seeing no difference between these locations. Seyfo, ‘the year of the sword’. This refers to the
Many do not know their fathers, and in seven out massacres – some say genocide – in 1915-16 to
of seventeen cases both parents were deceased which they and (the better-known) Armenians fell
(another indicator of the AIDS pandemic). At victims. Some survivors stayed on in Tur Abdin,
home, aunts and maternal grandparents but others fled to present-day Syria, where they
sometimes assume a nurturing role. formed a fairly large community. They are also
Margaretten’s ethnographic realism and found in Lebanon.
dialogical writing style make for compelling The Suryoye can be seen as both a religious
reading, while her appreciation of Zulu idioms and an ethnic minority, but are not recognized as
and metaphors adds depth and thickness to her such by the Turkish state. Armed conflicts
ethnographic accounts. The monograph’s central between the Turkish army and the Kurds have
strength is the revelation of unexpected adversely affected the economic development of
complexity in sexual and social relations among the whole of the country’s southeast, and from
marginal urban residents. I, nonetheless, thought the 1960s Kurds and Suryoye increasingly have
that occasionally her discussion could have been migrated to Turkey’s western parts. Along with
better organized, and that she could have treated other Turkish citizens, Suryoye were also recruited
certain topics more analytically. Friendship, as labour migrants to Europe, especially to
domesticity, and the uncanny come to mind. Germany. Later, when work contracts were not
Moreover, whilst Margaretten expresses cautious available, many instead sought political asylum in
optimism about the possibilities of informal Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and
housing in her conclusion, she does not provide particularly Sweden. Tur Abdin was more or less
an incisive critique of official housing policies. But emptied of its Christian population. In the late
these deficiencies are relatively minor, and I 1990s, however, the political situation in Turkey
highly recommend Street life under a roof to improved and Suryoye – some of whom had been

born in the diaspora – were able to return to visit Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2015.
their monasteries and churches. £82.95 (cloth)
Armbruster has not focused on diasporic
mobilization or ethno-religious associations; Public discourse and politics in contemporary
instead she delves deeply into how different Western societies are strongly influenced by
individuals describe their life histories and how migration. North America, Europe, and Australia
such narratives tie them to the ‘homeland’ as well are the land of hope for migrants from the poorer
as to their new countries of settlement. These regions of the world, but Western countries
histories also are focused on what to call increasingly close their borders to them:
themselves in their new homes. Some insist that migration is becoming a crisis for such host
they are direct descendants of the ancient societies. Brenda Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda’s
Assyrians and tie into an ethno-nationalist edited volume thus can be read as a commentary
discourse. Others instead assert that they are on this recent political situation.
descendants of the biblical Arameans and The volume’s title already outlines the editors’
underline their ethno-religious affiliation. goal: ‘a unifying theory of ancient and
Ethno-religious markers such as Aramean or contemporary migrations’. It long has been a
Assyrian are thus directly entangled with political doctrine that supra-regional mobility is a
implications. Through a close analysis of her phenomenon of modernity. Archaeological and
participant observation of, and interviews with, historical studies reveal that this is a myth:
members of multi-generational families over a pre-modern populations were also highly mobile.
long period of time, Armbruster demonstrates Migration is an anthropological constant,
how discourses about being the right kind of therefore it is a particularly commendable that
good Suryoye are fluid. Stories of self and other, of the editors have chosen to examine ancient and
‘here’ and ‘there’, are never fixed, but in flux: contemporary migrations within a common
evolving and changing. framework.
This very rich book makes an important Besides a general introduction and theoretical
contribution to research on transnationalism and foundation, as well as concluding remarks, the
diaspora. The focus is on people who have kept volume consists of two parts covering the past
their faith; and who, in different and complex and the modern perspective. However, the
ways, self-identify as links in a long ‘chain’ of selection of archaeological and contemporary
Suryoyoness. In this chain, being a good Suryoye case-studies reveals striking gaps. The editors
has been linked closely to maintaining a boundary complain that they have not succeeded in
against non-Suryoye, especially towards Muslim securing contributors who would close the
Kurds and Turks. Moreover, Keeping the faith is an chronological divide between the ancient and
excellent example of a multi-sited and long-term modern case-studies. Additionally, the selection
ethnography. Armbruster has not only studied in of the archaeological chapters displays a
different places at different points in time, conceptual lacuna: as they all are concerned with
but the temporal and spatial interconnections ancient states and empires, they are hardly
are present in the text throughout and the representative of pre-modern migrations.
material is held together despite the complex Prehistoric migrations in less stratified and
theorization. The book is well written and should stateless societies – which could serve as a foil for
be valuable and enjoyable both for a general comparison – are not represented. Therefore,
anthropological audience and for students and given its narrow focus, while important insights
scholars working on migration or questions of into the history of human migration are to be
multiculturalism. For scholars of this Christian gained from this volume, a ‘unified’ migration
community, Armbruster’s book is also a theory would be less possible to develop.
valuable addition to the research from Sweden, The book’s thematic emphasis is on the
where the largest number of Suryoye in Europe are natural and social disruptions that aggravate the
found. living conditions in the areas of emigration, and
which immigrants cause in their host societies.
Annika Rabo Stockholm University
Conversely, the editors – as well as several
contributors – make the point that such
disruptions are neither an inevitable cause nor a
Baker, Brenda J. & Takeyuki Tsuda (eds). consequence of migration. Thus disruption as a
Migration and disruptions: toward a unifying unifying concept covers only one, albeit a
theory of ancient and contemporary migrations. significant, aspect of migration processes. Since
xii, 348 pp., maps, tables, figs, illus., bibliogrs. all the case-studies are committed to this theme,

the volume offers a very concentrated discussion, the host society and immigrants, and misgivings
which is reinforced by numerous cross-references on the part of the former, are decisive factors.
between the individual contributions. In brief: given its broad perspective and its
While the archaeological contributions address traversing of disciplines and eras, Migrations and
disruption both as the cause of emigration and as disruptions is a first step towards a unified theory
a consequence in host societies, the case-studies of migrations and important reading for all who
of contemporary migrations mainly take into deal with migration.
account immigration-induced disruptions in host Stefan Burmeister Museum und Park Kalkriese
societies. Not considered is how societies may fall
apart because of the resultant population loss;
this is a topic which could be given some Calkins, Sandra. Who knows tomorrow?
attention in future publications. It is noteworthy Uncertainty in north-eastern Sudan. xi, 269 pp.,
that all the studies dealing with emigration map, figs, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York:
emphasize the point that disruptions do not Berghahn Books, 2016. £85.00 (cloth)
necessarily lead to flight. Increasing ritual and
cultural activities, as well as the marshalling of This book is based on a series of field trips
political power, also could be consequences between 2007 and 2010 to the plains of the
(Beekman, chap. 4); just as the migration rate lower Atbara, a Nile tributary originating in the
might decrease during the course of disruptions Ethiopian highlands and joining the main river
(Knudson & Torres-Rouff, chap. 6). In well north of Khartoum. It focuses on a recent
contemporary Ethiopia, Morrissey (chap. 9) settlement in which a number of Rashaida families
shows that individuals, as well as households, – pastoral nomads, often without long-term
react differently to ecological disasters – ruptures claims to land, who suffered from the droughts of
are not the sole cause of migration. He warns the 1980s – have sought to live. They have
quite rightly that the one-sided focus on precarious relations with other communities
disruption might bias explanatory models, holding established rights in the area. Many of
causing them to label as disruptive all the the women and families depend for survival on
factors recognized as leading to migration transfers from male relatives working abroad;
(p. 214). otherwise they rely on unpredictable deliveries of
Other contributions take a different food and goods from a charity based in Kuwait.
perspective on the theme. De León, Gokee, and They also can hope that their menfolk will find
Forringer-Beal (chap. 7) show how the Sonoran gold using brand-new digital detectors.
Desert migrants themselves suffer from emotional We do not learn much about the history of the
and physical disruptions. In the case of Rashaida migrations to the Sudan from the
Anglo-Saxon immigration to Britain (Hills, Arabian coastal lands, which go back to the
chap. 2), the ongoing controversy of mass mid-nineteenth century, or indeed the broader
immigration versus small-group migration reveals social history of the Red Sea Hills. Nor do we learn
disruptions in the British academic debate itself: much about traditions or shared memories
the latter model is a central point in arguing for among the people we meet. The author focuses
the continuity of an indigenous population and rather on the ongoing interactions of those who
thus is critically rooted in current political have been able to settle – at least for the present
discourses and researchers’ self-perception. This – in a growing community which she calls ‘Um
problem also manifests itself in some of the other Futeima’ (a pseudonym, as are the names of the
archaeological case-studies (Zakrzewski, chap. 3; individuals who play a part as events unfold).
Cowgill, chap. 5). Chapter 2 provides detailed accounts of how a
The chapters dealing with contemporary new delivery from the Kuwaiti charity of
immigration (Meierotto, chap. 8; Eder, chap. 10; household goods and food aid, a few animals,
Tsuda, chap. 11; Maupin, chap. 12) demonstrate and some building materials is expected,
that the ruptures felt by the host population are a received, and apportioned. It is not always clear
matter of perception, significantly influenced by who really counts as ‘poor’ and so is fully
social and cultural beliefs. Comparisons between deserving. The senior men acting for the foreign
different migrant groups reveal the host society’s charity or assisting in the transportation are often
underlying cultural stereotypes and prejudices, respected, but while their judgements are based
which are responsible for the perception of on a largely invisible household ‘list’, they can be
certain immigrant groups as being the cause of biased a little this way or that, or discreetly
disturbances, generally in contradiction of manipulated by recipients – mostly individual
measurable facts. Cultural differences between women, always conscious of the need to keep

reciprocities between households in balance. and in its focus on the experience of uncertainty:
Calkins gives the example of a camel that was not an easy thing to do and quite a challenge to
slaughtered specifically for the benefit of the social anthropology.
people, the meat then divided into shares. Wendy James University of Oxford
However, when one of the initial shares was
unexpectedly given to an outsider (whom some
knew to be related to the main organizer), Levy, André. Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims,
formalities were abandoned and everyone and an Israeli anthropologist. ix, 219 pp., figs,
grabbed angrily at the remaining piles of meat. illus., bibliogr. Chicago: Univ. Press, 2015.
The conventional ‘forms’ of charitable action £20.50 (paper)
were set aside.
The analysis offered here, and throughout the The foundation of Israeli anthropologist André
study, draws explicitly, and in detail, on the Levy’s work is the ‘heritage tour’ that he took in
language of what Calkins describes as the ‘new the late 1980s to his birthplace and ancestral
French pragmatism’ being developed especially home, Casablanca, Morocco. The trip exposed
by Laurent Thévenot and Luc Boltanski, its roots Levy to the complex demographic and political
going back in part to the American philosopher reality of the Jews still living there. The experience
and psychologist John Dewey. In relation to the left a powerful impression, and in the early 1990s
uncertainty of poverty and charitable help in Um Levy returned to Casablanca for fieldwork, seeking
Futeima, Calkins argues that the normal ‘forms’ of to explore in greater depth the world of a small
agreement in social relations are contested, even Jewish community within a large Muslim country.
broken. However, in the new context of gold His ethnography, Return to Casablanca,
mining (chap. 3), whether artisanal (deploying comprises seven chapters in addition to the
only muscle power) or, especially, through the use introduction. In the first chapter, Levy explains his
of digital detectors, the ‘forms’ of conventional choice of this field of inquiry. While not situating
agreement between workers are more secure. his research in relation to any particular theory,
They are ‘insisted on’, as the outcomes are shared he does offer an in-depth theoretical and
between the miners and their helpers; individual exegetical infrastructure for the research question
good fortune is not claimed privately, but that arises from the dynamics of his field research:
ascribed to divine will. In the general market Jewish-Muslim relations. Chapter 2 then focuses
context of food supplies (chap. 4), where farmers on one of the most important developments in
and traders from outside are involved, there is an the history of Casablanca’s Jews, the writings of
effort to ‘standardize’ on both sides the ‘forms’ Yitzhak Ben Yais Halevi, a journalist active in the
represented by prices, costs, sources, and so on; city in the late nineteenth century. Ben Yais Halevi
and finally, in circumstances of urgent sickness or wrote extensively about the message of
death – both often dealt with by the women modernity that found its way to Moroccan Jews
(chap. 5) – new ‘forms’ are sought for which via French colonialism. His descriptions indicate
there may be no precedent. the powerful impact of French colonialism on
The book opens with a helpful introduction to Jewish life, leading, inter alia, to a distancing of
this ‘pragmatic’ approach by social scientists to the community from its Muslim environment.
the study of uncertainty, and its relevance to a This goes some of the way towards explaining the
country like Sudan, where so many communities great exodus of Moroccan Jews (including the
are isolated from the protection which can be Casablanca community) when the French
offered through the established institutions of protectorate ended, for fear that Muslim rule
peaceful civil society. The concluding chapter might bring segregation.
expands on the general advantages of revising The third chapter documents this contraction
sociology and anthropology’s classic older of Casablanca’s Jewish community: numerically,
assumptions about ‘institutions’, as though they in ethnographic images, and in conversations
in themselves create stability and predictability. It with locals who view the process as irreversible.
recommends we take seriously the recent The emigration of tens of thousands of Jews from
pragmatist focus on ‘forms’, which can also be Morocco to Western Europe and North America
understood as ‘bestowing meaning’ in social over the years significantly diminished a
relations, but do not determine certainty in social community that until 1956 had been the largest
action. Readers may find the text a little dense in and most vibrant in North Africa. Levy encounters
places, and rather heavily loaded with supportive a population which, while managing its affairs in
academic references. Nevertheless, it is distinctly relative tranquillity under the aegis of the
original in the way the research was carried out, Moroccan monarchy, lives in constant fear of

possible consequences from the ongoing conflict those referred to in the language of the social
between the State of Israel and the Arab countries sciences in Israel as ‘Mizrahim’. Levy’s book offers
with which Morocco identifies. a sophisticated criticism of the prevalent discourse
Chapter 4 focuses on the attempt by surrounding Mizrahim in Israel, by pointing out
Casablanca’s Jews to regain a measure of control the need to enrich the discussion through
over their lives. Here we encounter an interesting broadening the focus to consider all other Jews
paradox that is the key to understanding Jewish still living in diasporic communities.
life in a Muslim city: the decrease in the Jewish Nissim Leon Bar-Ilan University
population has led to an increasing reliance on
the Muslim environment from which the
community is trying to distance itself. Conversely, Trundle, Catherine. Americans in Tuscany:
chapter 5 focuses on one particular area in which charity, compassion and belonging. vii, 222 pp.,
Jews and Muslims confront each other in a bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books,
situation fraught with competition: the card 2014. £67.00 (cloth)
games on one of the city’s upper-middle-class
beaches. The card game is not an innocent Florence and its surroundings are often chosen by
pastime; it is yet another channel for managing ‘life-style’ migrants as ideal places in which to
complex Jewish-Muslim relations. settle. However, as Trundle found during
The sixth chapter addresses the attitude fieldwork in 2006-7, many of the women she
towards Israel. Do Casablanca’s Jews view Israel as interviewed and with whom she interacted did
an ancient homeland or as one of the centres of not easily develop a sense of belonging, ‘as the
the Jewish diaspora? Levy depicts different romantic vision that had brought them to
situations that would seem to indicate a Jewish Tuscany quickly faded’ (p. 2).
view of Morocco as the de facto homeland, with Predictably, Anglo-American women find
Israel serving more as a mythological centre of adjusting to Italian attitudes to marriage,
Jewish culture. The question of the attitude child-rearing, parental authority, and gender roles
towards Israel arises in chapter 7, too. Here Levy very difficult. Arriving in Florence as liberated,
describes Israeli Jews of Moroccan descent who modern individuals on a journey, they find that
responded to the King of Morocco’s historical on becoming Italian wives they are overprotected
call, in the mid-1980s, to visit the country on a and controlled. Mothers-in-law are interfering
‘heritage tour’. and sometimes hostile, while their Italian
Levy’s book is a rich and impressive contemporaries keep them at arm’s length,
ethnographic work. He correctly points out that because they regard them as promiscuous and
most studies of migration focus on the question fear their sexual competition – both sides are
of adaptation – whether from the perspective of therefore represented by Trundle as unable to
the migrants’ adaptation to their destination avoid well-worn stereotypes. Anglo-American
countries, or the adaptation of the human women thus do not feel entirely welcome in the
environment in the destination countries to the society they are supposed to join, and with no
migrants’ presence. From a theoretical point of jobs and no support from their own families, they
view, then, the book addresses a question that feel isolated and disempowered.
has received scant scholarly attention: what In time, and thanks to patient negotiation,
happens to the diminished minority communities many of them do adjust and feel well integrated,
that are left behind? as mutual reserve and suspicion are overcome,
Return to Casablanca should be mandatory but acceptance in the family’s private sphere does
reading for anyone seeking to engage on a not grant them access to wider social spheres
serious level with the story of the great Jewish where they might feel better fulfilled as
emigration from Islamic countries in the independent adult women. A link with the world
twentieth century. The book represents an outside the family – one that the family cannot
ethnological document of tremendous possibly object to – is the American Charity
importance in view of the fact that Casablanca’s Group (ACG), where Trundle based herself while
community is one of the only remaining Jewish conducting fieldwork.
communities in the contemporary Middle East Volunteering possibly benefited the members
that maintains a communal administration of ACG as much as those they helped; in their
enjoying the supportive patronage of a Muslim collaborative work with fellow Americans, other
nation-state. Additionally, this monograph is nationalities, and Italians, they found
ground-breaking in its perspective on Jews who companionship and they were able to develop
moved to Israel from Islamic countries – that is, their own networks outside their family circles.

Moreover, by comparing their work-styles with to gender, as well as ways of organizing and
those of other nationalities, and especially Italians, carrying out voluntary work, are vividly portrayed,
whom they found to be inefficient and so that through the eyes of life-style migrants, we
disorganized, they were able to affirm their also gain some insight into Italian life and
identity, based on values such as efficiency and changing attitudes to charity at a time of growing
good organization, as well as a democratic poverty and need.
egalitarian spirit. Lidia Sciama University of Oxford
In the book’s third part, Trundle discusses
some of charity’s paradoxes: empathy, sympathy,
accountability, and trust are all examined in light Woube, Annie. Finding one’s place: an ethnological
of the women’s activities and experiences. One of study of belonging among Swedish migrants on
their problems is whether they should extend the Costa del Sol in Spain. 211 pp., illus.,
charity only to those considered to be ‘deserving’ bibliogr. Uppsala: Uppsala Univ., 2014. SEK
poor – a notion generally held by Italians – and to 100 (paper)
what extent they should allow themselves to be
moved to compassion by their distressing stories. In academic literature, intra-European migrants
The answer seems to be that empathy does not have sometimes been portrayed as ‘pioneers of
always need to be associated with knowledge; European integration’, which is also the title of a
too great a concentration on ends may deflect the 2009 book edited by Ettore Recchi and Adrian
charity workers’ energies from developing the Favell. In contrast, media representations of the
means to keep the system going. Therefore, phenomenon have offered bleaker pictures. As
unlike Italians, who only help those they know Annie Woube observes, the Swedish media have
and trust, ACG members adopted an ‘ethic of depicted Swedish migrants on the Costa del Sol
disinterested equality’ that allowed them to as segregated from Spanish society, forming a
concentrate on ‘getting the work done’ with a little Sweden, arguing that ‘Swedes ought not to
degree of detachment, as face-to-face interaction demand integration of others when they cannot
gave way to impersonality, and even a touch of achieve it themselves’ (pp. 187-8).
cynicism (p. 120). In Finding one’s place, Woube adds complexity
Trundle’s book is very conscientiously to this stereotype by exploring how Swedish
documented; however, a surfeit of quotations migrants in Fuengirola, originally a fishermen’s
and references – from Aquinas to Levinas, town on the Costa del Sol, create a sense of home
through Mauss, Husserl, Sartre, Simmel, and and belonging in their lives. Woube adopts a
innumerable others – sometimes just interrupts phenomenological and constructivist perspective,
and obscures her discussion, rather than investigating migrants’ practices and the
enriching it. Another issue is Trundle’s treatment meanings they attached to them. Her fieldwork,
of reflexivity. Invoking George Marcus, she argues carried out in five periods between 2009 and
that reflexivity as a methodological tool in 2013, included participant observation and
anthropological research is ‘central to the repeated, qualitative interviews with twelve
post-modern turn’ (p. 19). In retelling her Swedish residents.
interlocutors’ life narratives, she emphasizes their Framed by an introduction and a concluding
reflexive nature, but notes: ‘It can be unsettling chapter, Woube organizes her analysis of
when those we study take up our conceptual belonging around five subthemes presented in
devices’ (p. 45). She explains: ‘Educated women five chapters: the decision to migrate and the
. . . sought to do the interpretive work for me. migration stories; how migrants identify and
Correspondingly I have sought to create position themselves and others in the new society;
knowledge out of their group practices of how they create a home in a transnational
knowledge objectification’ (p. 45). Here Trundle context; how they maintain connections with
touches on a problem sometimes experienced by Sweden; and how they create a collective sense of
anthropologists conducting research ‘at home’ or belonging. She argues that creating a sense of
‘half-way home’. More important to note is that, belonging is a dynamic process that draws on a
as most ethnographers would agree, Nuer plurilocal frame of reference. Belonging to Spain
tribesmen, Gypsies, or any population, may be is facilitated by studying Spanish and Spanish
just as given to reflection as are Anglo-Americans. society, following the Spanish news, having
Trundle’s book nonetheless does offer an Spanish friends, co-workers, or in-laws, and
interesting description of American and English participation in local traditions. Their old home,
women’s lives in Tuscany. Differences between and Sweden in general, also remains an
American and Italian family relations and attitudes important reference, as well as ‘a safe haven’ to

which migrants can always return. Nevertheless, that many women did not migrate to improve
it also can come to feel distant, or even foreign, their quality of life; some were (initially) reluctant
over time, especially as imaginaries of home are to move and suffered from homesickness.
typically embedded in the past. Travels to, and Overall, however, Finding one’s place provides
communication with, Sweden help maintain a rich account of how migrants construct
feelings of belonging to that nation. The Swedish belonging and home-making, centring on one
collective in Fuengirola was another important particular flow of intra-European migration, that
and more proximal reference for Woube’s of Swedes, in a touristic area in Spain. The book
informants. Here, Woube points to an interesting will appeal to readers interested in migration,
contradiction between the motives that so-called transnationalism, identification, and belonging.
‘life-style migrants’ have for migration and their Miranda Lubbers Autonomous University of
post-migratory adaptation. Although their Barcelona
motives include self-realization and an escape
from the familiar, the disorientation migrants feel
Intersections: archaeology
after relocating leads them to draw on practices
that are familiar from their previous lives and to and anthropology
reproduce their own traditions.
Woube’s analysis is solid and fine-grained, and
the book, her doctoral dissertation, is well Bray, Tamara L. (ed.). The archaeology of wak’as:
written. She considers a diverse literature, explorations of the sacred in the pre-Columbian
allowing the reader to position the findings within Andes. xvi, 403 pp., maps, tables, figs, illus.,
a large framework. She also is successful in bibliogrs. Boulder: Univ. Press of Colorado,
representing the complexity of constructing 2015. £70.00 (cloth)
belonging in a new place. Woube achieves this by
showing the internal diversity of the Swedish The Andean landscape was, and still is, embossed
community in Fuengirola, introducing the readers with sacred locations and objects. Called wak’as
to informants with vastly different characteristics, in Quechua, the language of the Incas, they
migration stories, and constructions of belonging varied in size and importance from regionally
and home. The volume is also strong in drawing recognized shrines to items worshipped by a
attention to the role of organizations and single family. In the words of Bernabé Cobo,
institutions. Although their importance in writing in 1653: ‘[T]he Peruvian Indians used the
transnational social fields is well recognized, term guaca [wak’a] for all of the sacred places
empirical studies tend to focus on individuals or a designated for prayers and sacrifices, as well as for
single organizational context. In contrast, Finding all of the gods and idols that were worshipped in
one’s place describes in detail the Swedish entities these places’ (Inca religion and customs, 1990,
that emerged in Fuengirola (the church, school, p. 47). The universal worship of wak’as, and the
social club, newspaper, restaurants, and stores) important role that they held in the Andean
and their roles in sustaining and easing worldview, was noted by the Spaniards, and
transnational lives. these sacred features of the landscape were
Some issues could have been explored in targeted for destruction in a series of anti-idolatry
greater detail. First, Woube focuses primarily on campaigns that continue to some extent today.
belonging to Spain and Sweden, but does not In The archaeology of wak’as, Tamara L. Bray
pay as much attention to a transnational or less has overseen the production and publication of a
nation-bounded sense of belonging. How wide range of studies by leading scholars
important was Europe as a reference, or concerning wak’a worship. It is a well-conceived
Scandinavia, given the large presence of volume with a narrowly focused, but interesting,
Scandinavians in Fuengirola? Did migrants topic. Bray has made a great effort to gather
develop a greater cultural sensitivity? Second, a contributions from experts representing a broad
more gender-sensitive analysis could have been range of anthropological subfields. In the book’s
illuminating. The study does not really explore introduction, she provides an eloquent summary
how migration decisions were negotiated within of the Andean concept of what a wak’a is and
households. In particular, many of the female, but discusses a few of the sixteenth-century Spaniards
none of the male, informants were married to, or who mention wak’as in their writing. While not
in stable romantic relationships with, Spaniards: encyclopaedic in its coverage, it sets the scene
how did they decide where to settle? Related to and calls attention to the need for greater
this, the category of life-style migrants is not scholarly discussions of wak’as. The next two
sufficiently problematized. Woube shows clearly chapters are ethnographic in nature. In the

second chapter, Catherine J. Allen, whose work is Gallaga M., Emiliano & Marc G. Blainey (eds).
widely cited by other authors in the volume, Manufactured light: mirrors in the
updates our views of animism in light of her Mesoamerican realm. xiii, 324 pp., maps,
ethnographic work among contemporary peoples tables, figs, illus., bibliogrs. Boulder: Univ.
of the Andes. In chapter 3, Mannheim and Press of Colorado, 2016. £21.00 (paper)
Carreño present a challenging linguistic
examination of the very broad notion of social Manufactured light is a timely and important
agency among Quechua speakers and how it collection on the production, use, and symbolism
pertains to their interactions with wak’as. of mirrors in Mesoamerica. While the title
Part III, ‘Wak’as in the time of the Inkas’, suggests that the book is about mirrors more
follows with seven case-studies of wak’a use. generally, the chapters are heavily weighted
Makowski offers a detailed description of his towards a discussion of iron-ore mirrors. The
recent work at the archaeological site of chapters are organized thematically with the first
Pachacamac (chap. 5); and in chapter 7 Dean five focused on manufacturing techniques.
gives a generalized overview of Inca carved Chapters 6-12 centre on the function and
outcrops. Meddens (chap. 8) provides a summary symbolism of mirrors.
of his important work on the intriguing ushnus Gallaga M.’s introduction lays out the book’s
(stone platforms) found in mountain passes of the basic organization and provides some context on
Ayacucho region; while McEwan (chap. 9) the importance of mirrors cross-culturally. He
discusses various classes of objects that were points out that in Mesoamerica, mirrors were so
frequently left by the Incas at wak’as as offerings. important that Paul Kirchoff (‘Mesoamerica’, Acta
To this mix of case-studies, Chase and Kosiba Americana 1, 1943) included them as one of
provide insightful chapters that are developed many culture traits that defined the culture
from their robust archaeological and archival region. However, examples from the Southwest,
work in the regions of Huarochirı́ and Cuzco. For Lower Central America, and the Andes are
me, these contributions by Chase (chap. 4) and mentioned in a number of chapters, and therein
Kosiba (chap. 6) – along with the concluding lies the problem of the culture region concept.
chapter by Topic concerning the remarkable case Following Arthur Joyce (‘Sacred space and social
of the Catequil wak’a of the Áncash region – are relations in Oaxaca’, in J. Hendon & R. Joyce, eds,
the finest pieces in the volume. To read Mesoamerican archaeology, 2004), pyrite mirrors
sixteenth-century descriptions of specific wak’as perhaps should be seen as one among many
and to then see the archaeological field data material correlates of practices linked to social
collected on them brings their history to life in stratification. Nevertheless, this book addresses a
very special ways. lacuna in our understanding of iron-ore mirrors,
In part IV, ‘Deeper histories of wak’as in the their manufacture, and symbolic complexes.
Andean past’, Bray has selected two Middle Furthermore, this collection goes on to address a
Horizon (650-1000 CE) scholars, one representing significant gap in our understanding of how
the Wari civilization (Cook, chap. 10) and another prestige was signalled, and how relationships of
the Tiwanaku (Janusek, chap. 11), to examine power were concentrated within the meanings,
possible wak’a worship in pre-Inca times. Cook uses, and manufacture of mirrors.
selects to discuss the D-shaped structures of the One of the book’s strengths is its
Wari, long believed to be temples, while Janusek interdisciplinary approach. Various contributions
focuses on Tiwanaku stone monoliths. by Gallaga M. and Melgar et al. address the
Although readers – depending on their question of manufacturing techniques through
particular interests – will find some chapters of the experimental replication of pyrite mosaic
this edited volume to be stronger than others, the mirrors. The experiments are grounded in data
organizational form of the book is exactly what an gleaned from the analysis of archaeological
edited volume should be. Bray has selected an examples using scanning electron microscopy
important and well-defined topic and passed it (SEM) and other scientific techniques. Chapters 4,
through a prism of diverse scholarly positions; the 5, 7, and 8, by Kovacevich, Gazzola et al.,
resulting essays proffer new understandings on Mountjoy, and Lelgemann, respectively, are
the archaeology of wak’as in the Andes. I archaeological case-studies of mirror production
recommend this book for library collections and from the Maya region and Central and West
for scholars, primarily archaeologists, who are Mexico. Nearly all the contributors note that
interested in pre-historic religious practices in the mirrors have been symbols of prestige and their
Andes. distribution highly restricted to the upper classes.
Brian S. Bauer University of Illinois at Chicago Kovacevich presents data from Cancuén, where a

workshop of artisans engaged in mirror put, Gallaga M. and Blainey’s book is an

production was identified and where he found important contribution to the scholarship of
mirrors in non-elite contexts as well. Gazzola et al. experimental archaeology, craft production, and
discuss evidence from Teotihuacán on the use mirrors more specifically.
and manufacture of pyrite mirrors – a number of Claudia Garcı́a-des Lauriers California State
examples that have been found as components in Polytechnic University, Pomona
larger offerings at all of the major
politico-religious structures in the city. Mountjoy
analyses several pyrite ornaments from Jalisco’s Grieco, Anthony. Shepherds in the cave.
Mascota Valley; and Lelgemann presents evidence DVD/PAL, 60 minutes, colour. London: The
of iron-ore mirrors from sites in Zacatecas. These RAI, 2016. £50.00 + VAT
two chapters illustrate the importance of
economic and ideological interactions across This documentary promotes the Fornello
Mesoamerica. sustainable preservation project, which is being
Lunazzi’s contribution (chap. 6) is an managed by the art restoration and conservation
‘exploratory or experimental think-piece’ written workshop Messors, under the direction of
for an archaeological audience (p. 138). His Giovanni Ragone and Tonio Creanza. A feature of
chapter presents an interesting discussion of the Fornello, in the Murgia region of Puglia (Italy), is a
optical qualities of various kinds of stones used to conglomeration of caves, one of which contains
make mirrors. The contributions by Blainey the Byzantine frescos that are being restored by
(chap. 9), McGraw (chap. 10), and Dennet and the project team. This restoration is at the centre
Blainey (chap. 11) use the physical qualities and of the film, but it is also entwined with the
ritual functions of mirrors and other luminous, project’s other ambitions: to restore the site,
reflective materials such as crystals to discuss using environmentally sustainable methods, in
mirrors’ importance in the Mayan region and its order to make it habitable, and to enable local
periphery. Blainey’s innovative contribution shepherds to use the caves for cheese-making and
describes the reflective qualities of mirrors and -ageing. Messors’ ultimate aim is to realize
their use with entheogenic substances in Fornello as a living, historical site: ‘By utilizing the
shamanic divination, thus evoking the experiential practices that already were being used by its
components of Maya religion. McGraw describes original inhabitants, it will serve as a vital model
the contemporary ritual use of crystals and other of conservation and sustainable living’ (http://
materials as part of an overall reflective surface messors.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/
complex that Blainey, in his earlier work, defined 11/Fornello-Sustainable-Preservation-Project.pdf,
for the Maya. Ethnography among highland accessed 14 February 2018).
Maya groups shows that reflective surfaces The film opens with a scene of shepherds
continue to play an important role in scrying and driving their flock, before talking to camera, and
divination practices. Dennet and Blainey propose this is followed by Creanza’s explanation of the
new models for understanding the economic and archaeology of the Byzantine frescos. As with so
ideological relationships between Lower Central many cave sites in Italy, Fornello has been closed
America and the Maya area, based in part on the and is inaccessible to the public and the
exchange of mirrors. Kindl (chap. 12) studied the shepherds who would otherwise use it; a point
Wixaritari (Huichol) ritual use of mirrors and other which is highly politicized in the film. Through his
related objects to argue that mirrors serve in a cinematography, the film-maker Anthony Grieco
reflexive manner as ‘instruments of mediation succeeds in setting the caves within the wider
through the visible and the invisible world’ Puglian countryside, juxtaposing this with scenes
(p. 278). This ritual and symbolic complex is inside the caves themselves. Much of the film’s
related to the concept of nierika, which includes focus is on the restoration and details of the
the creative process of making ritual objects. frescos, but these scenes are interspersed with
Taube effectively ties the book’s eclectic those depicting other caves, particularly those
chapters together through a thematic discussion used for cheese-making and -ageing. A scene in
centred on the ‘ontology of mirror stones’ which the project team and others are eating
(p. 286). Additionally, he fills in a few gaps by dinner inside the fresco cave arguably brings
expanding somewhat on Olmec mirrors, and together the two main aims of the project,
providing additional details on the symbolic although I felt rather uncomfortable with this use
complex of mirrors and reflective surfaces in of an unprotected and inaccessible site.
Mesoamerica with additional iconographic, The purpose of the documentary is rather
ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence. Briefly unclear, but it may be aimed at raising awareness

of a noble and ambitious continuing project, as and social inequalities are commonplace in
well as in the hope of attracting funding. This upland Southeast Asia. Large-scale, competitive
documentary is well produced, with some feasting activities are perhaps the most prominent
delightfully shot scenes, particularly of the Puglian indicators: ambitious individuals entertain the
landscape, and features memorable characters. village community with sumptuous meals,
Whilst I was somewhat frustrated by the absence provide jars of rice wine, or even sacrifice precious
of a clear aim and storyline, the film succeeds in water buffaloes for the ancestor spirits. Thus, they
presenting vignettes of the various stakeholders in gain prestige and authority, create social
the Fornello project, and consequently provides networks and reciprocal obligations. In his latest
an insight into both the fresco restoration and the book, archaeologist Brian Hayden presents
project’s aims to include and enable the local Southeast Asian case-studies to sustain his grand
community. The film employed a professional theory of feasting as a key factor in human
director and producer (Grieco), with the result history. Hayden’s main argument states that the
that it feels more like a straightforward establishment of feasting networks promoted
documentary than an ethnographic study, sociopolitical complexity and cultural innovation.
despite presenting the perspectives of a range of By combining archaeological and ethnographic
people using the site. Whilst this is helpful in methods, Hayden’s ‘paleo-political ecology’ (p. 5)
presenting numerous different voices and investigates the practical and adaptive benefits of
perspectives, this approach gives the film a surplus production/distribution and costly
‘tourist gaze’ perspective (J. Urry, The tourist gaze, feasting behaviour.
1990; J. Larsen, ‘The tourist gaze 1.0, 2.0, and Building on anthropological classics such as
3.0’, in A.A. Lew, C.M. Hall & A.M. Williams, eds, Leach’s Political systems of highland Burma
The Wiley Blackwell companion to tourism, 2014). (discussed in chap. 2), Hayden focuses on
Grieco’s film also switches back and forth ‘aggrandizers’ (most notably lineage heads) and
between interviews with the project participants their ability to produce surplus agricultural
and other stakeholders, and it is this approach products, and thus to control land, resources, and
that frustrated me. There is as well a clear bias in labour. Feasts organized by these ambitious
which characters are pushed to the fore. individuals constitute the nexus of marriage
Understandably, Creanza, as a project director, is arrangements, sociopolitical hierarchies, labour
the protagonist, but the absence of his relations, and village defence. Accordingly,
co-director, Ragone, is noticeable. Nevertheless, resource acquisition and the surplus production
the film is successful in conferring the views of a necessary for feasts play major roles in the
variety of stakeholders in the caves, achieving this development of political complexity. Opulent
through the interviews with individual feasts validate elite status. However,
representatives from each of those groups. As environmental constraints and irregular surplus
mentioned above, I found this approach rather production may limit the representation and
choppy, creating a somewhat broken narrative, reproduction of social order through feasting
the result of which was to leave me confused as cycles.
to the ultimate purpose of the documentary. If Hayden links sociocultural evolution to
the aim is to highlight the variety of parties with a abundant resources and surplus, and considers
vested interest in protecting and actively utilizing competitive feasting a trigger for animal
the cave, Shepherds in the cave achieves this, but I domestication, technological innovation (e.g.
remain unclear regarding the intended audience. pottery), and the transformation from hunting
I assume that the main aim of the film is to raise and gathering to agrarian societies. Even if
awareness of the project and associated (cultural, readers remain sceptical of single-factor
social, political) issues, and I hope it succeeds. frameworks for sociocultural change, and do not
Anyone interested in participating in the project share Hayden’s grand theory of human evolution
will find details here: http://messors.com/home/. propelled by aggrandizers, the book presents a
Eleanor Betts The Open University strong argument for the (social, cultural, political,
and economic) significance of both domestic and
ritual feasting in Southeast Asia. Hayden correctly
Hayden, Brian. Feasting in Southeast Asia. xiii, 314 emphasizes that feasting is crucial for the
pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Honolulu: understanding of ‘traditional cultures because it
Univ. of Hawai‘i Press, 2016. £72.50 (cloth) entails understanding subsistence, alliances,
corporate groups, kinship, ritual, regional
Contrary to the widespread stereotype of exchanges, and the structure of political power in
egalitarian upland societies, ambitious individuals a community’ (p. 4).

This detailed analysis is based on anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians

archaeological findings and rich (historical) working in Southeast Asia, it is also an informative
ethnography from different upland regions in read for students and researchers interested in
Southeast Asia. Oral history and descriptions of questions of upland political ecologies,
ritual practice flank examinations of the human-environment dynamics in general, and
precarious materiality of mobile upland theories of sociocultural change and innovation.
populations (including ceremonial structures, Oliver Tappe University of Cologne
vessels, stoves, grains, and animal remains). The
book brings together fifteen years of Hayden’s
own research and material from his research Klaus, Haagen D. & J. Marla Toyne (eds). Ritual
collaborators such as former MA/Ph.D. students violence in the Ancient Andes: reconstructing
and local ethnographers, whose contribution is sacrifice on the north coast of Peru. xvi, 468 pp.,
explicitly acknowledged. This comparative maps, tables, figs, illus., bibliogrs. Austin:
framework with its detailed documentations Univ. of Texas Press, 2016. £27.99 (paper)
enables Hayden to draw a comprehensive
synthesis and important conclusions. Sacrifice and ritual violence often are assumed to
The case-studies differ in length and be important facets of social life in the
analytical depth. Especially well documented are pre-Hispanic Americas; popularly seen as
the chapters on the Akha of Northern Thailand gruesome testament to the Otherness of
(chap. 3) and the Toraja on Sulawesi island Indigenous American societies. The
(chap. 6). Fine-grained ethnography, including archaeological literature on these practices,
numerous photographic illustrations, and careful however, has remained remarkably thin until
analyses of archaeological findings document recently. Coastal north Peru is a new exception to
the rich feasting complex in these societies. This is this, and this book is a turning-point for our
also true for the chapter on longhouse societies in understanding of human sacrifice and its
upland Vietnam (chap. 4), and, to a lesser degree, archaeologically revealed ritual practices. Aided
for Sumban megalithic communities (chap. 7) and by an expanding set of bioarchaeological tools,
upland societies in Laos (chap. 5). However, in the Haagen D. Klaus and J. Marla Toyne set out to
latter case it becomes evident that some of the diachronically and synchronically contextualize
ethnography from the 1990s is outdated, while sacrificial practices on the north coast of Peru, as
socioeconomic disruptions caused by civil war and well as to interrogate some of the interpretative
communist revolution are not taken into account orthodoxy associated with them.
with regard to changing feasting patterns. As stated in their introduction, the challenge is
Hayden follows a rather instrumental approach to separate semiotic representations of ‘ritual
when explaining socio-cosmological phenomena violence’ from archaeological observations – to be
– for example, ancestor cults as deliberately mindful of the possible incongruity between art
fostered by aggrandizers to reproduce cycles of and practice. To support this aim, the editors
ritual obligations and establish debt relations. He expand the concept of ritual violence to include
ignores recent changes in livelihoods (such as not just different forms of human sacrifice, but
cash crop production by Akha in the Sino-Lao also animal offerings and the ritual termination of
borderlands) or religious transformation (from objects. Rather than dwelling on the Inka period,
Pentecostal conversion to animist revivals). They the book instead lays out a developmental
seem to him to be only indicators of ‘modern framework of ritual violence that ranges from its
detribalizing conditions’ (p. 174), rather than earliest traces in pre-ceramic times (7000 BC-AD
having the potential to establish new feasting 100), running through the heavy emphasis placed
practices in upland Southeast Asia. Yet his book on sacrifice in the Moche periods (AD 100-800),
provides important ideas and inspiration for more and through to the subsequent Sicán (AD
in-depth research of such key issues in 750-1375) and Chimú societies (AD 900-1470).
contemporary Southeast Asian anthropology. His Each of the volume’s four parts details one
concept of ‘transegalitarian’ societies – marked by aspect of ritual violence. The first six chapters
notions of private ownership, competitive provide a diachronic overview of sacrifice. Most of
feasting, and unstable sociopolitical hierarchies – the chapters present the findings of
is a valuable heuristic device to investigate the osteoarchaeological research on ‘deviant’ burials,
tension between egalitarian ethics and social ranging from the statistical testing of the direction
practice in many Southeast Asian societies. of cuts on human bones, to comparisons of both
Feasting in Southeast Asia will provide food for burial settings and iconographic representations
thought for a wide readership. Indispensable for of human sacrifice. The analysis also widens in

order to destabilize the assumption that ritual sacrifice in southern Peru, and a set of
violence and killing were either leadership- comparative observations by Tiesler (chap. 15),
instigated practices or strictly localized building on her extensive experience with Maya
phenomena. Several of the contributors make the mortuary archaeology and wider Mesoamerican
valuable observation that localized human and ways of studying ritual violence.
animal sacrificial practices, sometimes unique in The book is clearly organized and almost all
form and execution, coexisted with more formal the contributions fit well within its aims. It is richly
rituals, regular in procedure and form, concluding illustrated and the list of authors shows a balance
that contextual understandings are key in between US-based and Peruvian scholarship.
envisaging the lived realities surrounding ritual Klaus and Toyne have succeeded in editing a
violence in different archaeological periods. volume that will speak to those interested in
The volume is remarkable, perhaps unique, in mortuary patterning and broader questions of
highlighting distinctions in the archaeological ritual funerary and sacrificial behaviour
record of ritual violence, achieving the editors’ worldwide. There is also a significant amount of
goal of problematizing more simplistic renderings data included that directly addresses the results of
of sacrificial killing as a way to ‘satisfy the gods’. recent archaeological excavations on the north
Instead, it succeeds in archaeologically teasing coast of Peru and thus this will be required
out the political negotiations that influenced the reading for archaeologists working on the
form, intensity, and prevalence of sacrifice in pre-Hispanic societies of the central Andes and
different ethnographic settings (see M. Bloch, beyond. Most importantly perhaps, it succeeds in
Prey into hunter, 1992). The morphology of ritual its goal of contextualizing and particularizing
violence is necessarily broad, and this volume cases of ritual violence and connecting them to
follows the recent categorization established by anthropological notions of negotiation and
Glenn Schwartz (‘Archaeology and sacrifice’, in practice.
A. Porter & G.M. Schwartz, eds, Sacred killing, Alexander Geurds University of Oxford; Leiden
2012), who distinguishes amongst offering, University
foundational, or retainer forms of sacrifice. This
classification allows the contributing authors to
Matters of life and death
include most of their archaeological and
supplementary iconographic data.
The second part’s four chapters narrow the Berger, Peter & Justin Kroesen (eds). Ultimate
interpretative lens, thus further mobilizing the ambiguities: investigating death and liminality.
meticulously gathered osteological data in order 278 pp., tables, illus., bibliogrs. New York,
to, for example, discuss matters of victims’ Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016. £75.00 (cloth)
communal identities, or to challenge the idea that
there was only one category of sacrificed ‘captive’. This collection of eleven essays takes a
Moreover, chapter 9 by Verano and Phillips distinctive – and welcome – angle on death
convincingly shows that the idea of a complete through the lens of van Gennep and Turner’s
opposition between captives and other sacrificial notion of liminality. It offers a vivid set of
victims is unwarranted by the archaeological ethnographic and textual descriptions of funerary
findings from both Moche and Chimú settings. rituals and other death-related ritualizations from
The shorter third and fourth parts present multiple cultural contexts.
more cross-contextual materials over four The book is divided into three sections. The
chapters. This helps the book include more on the first, ‘Rituals’, begins with de Maaker’s (chap. 1)
subject of sacrificial practices and to engage in description of how the mortuary rituals of the
regional comparison. Chapter 12 focuses on Garo of Northeast India control the corpse’s
animal sacrifice (predominantly camelids), ambiguous powers and channel the deceased’s
providing insights into the provenance and presence into a resource for social renewal.
sacrificial practices at the Huancaco site. Vitebsky (chap. 2) argues that shamanic dialogues
Chapter 13 analyses the practices of ritually with the dead among the Sora of Middle India
terminating vessels and other objects. This is a (Odisha) form a prolonged state of both
subject often studied in isolation from other forms ‘postmortem liminality’ (p. 101) and, indeed,
of sacrifice, and while the editors’ decision to communitas, whose end – in the sense of a
include it here is understandable, these chapters reintegration – may not be clearly marked.
on animals and pots perhaps do not make for a Focusing on another Odisha tribe, the highland
completely balanced comparison. The final two Gadaba, Berger (chap. 3) compares Hindu and
regional comparisons present Wari human Tribal death rituals, which highlights the idealized

ascetic individual of Hindu soteriology, in contrast demonstration, and in still others it forms a thin
with effervescent social renewal. Nanninga bridge to entirely alternative concerns.
(chap. 4) applies van Gennep’s rite de passage The chapter organization also seems unclear.
model to the 9/11 suicide attackers, using Chapters 5, 6, and 8 deal with discrete ritual
martyrdom videos produced by al-Qaeda. examples, and could have appeared in the first
In the second section, ‘Concepts’, Robben section; chapters 2 and 3 seem equally as
(chap. 5) applies liminality to describe the plight conceptual as those in section 2. Chapters 9
of the relatives of Argentina’s ‘disappeared’: the through 11 are less focused on discrete rituals
ten to thirty thousand persons kidnapped or killed (with the exception of Bremmer’s discussion)
by the Argentinian military, especially during the than on theories of individual soteriology. The
early to mid-1970s. Like Vitebsky, Robben question of organization thus raises a deeper,
elaborates the concept of a permanent state of unresolved question: to what extent is liminality
liminality, here within an explicitly political bounded by a concept of ritual? While Berger
process. Hardenberg (chap. 6) investigates the takes death as a ‘paradigm’ of liminality, a more
emotional, cognitive, and social dimensions of explicit grounding in ritual studies – where the
Kyrgyzstani mourning rituals. Berger’s second concept originated and has been applied most
offering (chap. 7) attempts to retrieve the consistently – might have led to greater focus and
Durkheimian notion of effervescence through a coherence, albeit at the expense of some of the
sustained and wide-ranging theoretical essays in the final section.
discussion. These concerns do not, however, diminish this
The final section, ‘Imageries’, contains four collection’s obvious strengths. I have already
essays. Mirnig (chap. 8) explores medieval noted its overall empirical richness. Within South
(tantric) Shaiva death rites, which were grafted Asian studies, the volume marks a significant
onto existing Brahmanical forms, resulting in advance over Parry’s Hindu-centric work, in its
doctrinal ambiguities. Kroesen and Luth (chap. 9) comparative focus on Tribal communities and
examine the image of sleep as a metaphor for post-Brahmanical tantric developments (see also
death in seventeenth-century Protestant Europe M.R. Sayers, Feeding the dead, 2013). At the
in the works of the Dutch sculptor Rombout theoretical level, the volume certainly makes a
Verhulst and the cantatas of Johann Sebastian strong argument for the enduring relevance of
Bach. Bremmer (chap. 10) reconstructs concepts the sociological tradition from Durkheim to
of body and soul in Archaic Greece, drawing Turner. Robben’s article alone presents a most
especially on the Homeric epics. Finally, Kuiper poignant illustration of the analytic power of
(chap. 11) takes the volume’s theme as an liminality in a contemporary setting. Berger’s
occasion to reflect on Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s valiant argument for Durkheim’s much maligned
The leopard, a novel written close to the author’s concept of effervescence should be taken
death. seriously, for it seems to open a rapprochement
In its relative preoccupation with Indic between structural and cognitive science
exempla, Ultimate ambiguities may remind the approaches to ritual.
reader of Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry’s Marko Geslani Emory University
Death and the regeneration of life (1982). The
comparison, however, proves not entirely
flattering. The latter’s co-written introduction is Bharadwaj, Aditya. Conceptions: infertility and
notable for its rigorously historiographic procreative technologies in India. 292 pp.,
comparativism, unspooling the thematic effects table, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York:
of the volume’s focus on the symbols of fertility Berghahn Books, 2016. £68.00 (cloth)
and rebirth. Contrastingly, if there is a critique of
Ultimate ambiguities, it is that it fails to maximize India is one of the world’s leading sites for
consistently its conceptual and comparative reproductive medicine, and within this
potential. Given the volume’s breadth, Berger’s reproductive landscape surrogacy has received
brief introduction seems excessively brisk, missing significant attention. Although Conceptions
the opportunity to signal the cross-cutting astutely addresses the question of surrogacy in
themes that connect the essays, whether India, in terms of ‘exploitative relations of
implicitly or explicitly. Moreover, while all the (re)production . . . through a sustained critique
authors take death as their primary focus, the of normative and ideological processes that shape
overall engagement with liminality is uneven. In the experience of gender’ (p. 170), Aditya
some essays the concept serves as a central Bharadwaj has a more ample agenda. In fact, the
problematic, in others it occasions a theoretical monograph’s aim is to explore how (in)fertility is

managed in contemporary India. To this end, juxtaposes the Western dichotomy of

Bharadwaj draws on an array of sources spanning nature-culture with the Indian notions of tradition
from ancient religious texts to state policies, as and modernity. Bharadwaj also considers the
well as his own encounters with clinics and debates on science and religion and how these
couples seeking infertility treatment, all the while evolved differently in India. He conveys the sense
placing his arguments and discussions within a of ambivalence permeating clinical encounters
broader anthropological, feminist, and historical and how this mirrors a Hindu engagement with
framing. It is the way this religious cultural the sacred. Introducing the notion of theodicy, he
contextualization is mobilized and placed in argues that ‘metaphysical explanations have
active conversation with pertinent scholarly become culturally acceptable coping mechanisms
traditions that gives this book its distinctive for the clinicians and their patients as they
vitality. Bharadwaj paints with a broad brush, but struggle to make sense of the uncertain nature of
is throughout attentive to details. He underscores assisted conception’ (p. 239). Moreover, he
the complexity of the issues involved in trying to claims this indigenizes biomedicine, producing
grasp the many strands that coalesce in making ‘clinical theodicies that resolve the “why”
sense of infertility’s multi-layered qualities. questions posed by intractable infertility’ (p. 239),
The book’s four parts trace the metaphor of thus transforming the way biomedicine is both
conception in its many ramifications through perceived and practised.
multiple sites, each part subtly shifting the prism This work has been fifteen years in the
to shed yet new light. Bharadwaj problematizes making, which lends it an exceptional depth.
the biological act of procreation; explores the However, Bharadwaj admits this has made for a
social conceptions of infertility; and unveils the fragmented ethnography. Moreover, privileging
religious concepts and the significance of ancient clinical encounters over sustained participant
imaginations that inform contemporary attitudes. observation in households and communities
He gives us both the patients and clinicians’ creates significant lacunae with regard to kinship,
perspectives on the process, practices, and, not religious practices, and power relations that are
least, the experiences of treatment, indicating the the everyday confrontations of infertility.
expectations and contradictions within and Bharadwaj is well aware of these shortcomings
between each group. He exposes the stigma and suggests paths for further research on such
attached to infertility for both sexes, underscoring issues (and more) in the Indian context.
that it is women who carry the brunt of the This book is undoubtedly a valuable
shame. Simultaneously, in their attempts to face contribution to the emerging ethnographies from
the problem together, Bharadwaj notes a positive non-Western settings on assisted conception. It is
shift among couples in their attitudes towards also a pertinent reminder of the significance of
marriage and infertility. He also discusses the religion in understanding the local variations in
burden of the cost for many of the patient-seeking both managing and making sense of assisted
groups and clinics’ attempts to accommodate conception. With its comparative gaze, it provides
them. Conceptions conveys the suffering endured an important mirror, challenging Western
by all patients, while leaving no doubt about the assumptions. Bharadwaj not only succeeds in
class bias that runs through fertility treatment. transmitting the many and variable facets that
These processes and observations are carefully feed into this healing system, he also confirms an
contextualized within a much broader framework. anthropological creed: small facts do indeed
Bharadwaj takes into account India’s colonial speak to large issues.
heritage, as well as the postcolonial state, with an Marit Melhuus University of Oslo
eye to health-related policies, more specifically
the deregulation of public health services, and the
increasing international investment in biomedical Broz, Ludek & Daniel Münster (eds). Suicide
services. He also is attuned to the media and how and agency: anthropological perspectives on
they propel certain imaginaries in the public. self-destruction, personhood, and power. xi,
Significantly, there is a comparative dimension 224 pp., figs, illus., bibliogrs. Farnham, Surrey:
that runs throughout the book. Bharadwaj is in Ashgate, 2015. £70.00 (cloth)
constant dialogue with Western traditions, and
the introductory chapter provides an excellent While suicide is frequently characterized as an
framing of the ensuing discussions. Actively individual exercising power over his or her own
engaging with feminist scholarship (both Western life, such agency is often simultaneously
and Indian), he traces these debates back to their undermined by psychopathologic aetiologies, or
roots. Drawing on extensive readings, he explanations proffering structural forces.

According to Ludek Broz and Daniel Münster in Part III is about power: persons and bodies
part I of this volume, anthropology and functioning, resisting, or becoming within power,
ethnography are well positioned to offer critical while negotiating suicides. In Münster’s work
perspectives on this contradiction or ‘tension of (chap. 6), discourse surrounding farmer suicides
agency’ (p. 4, emphasis in the original). However, reveals a moral economy. When talking about
their intent is not to resolve this tension, but to agrarian suicides in South India, informants posit
use it as an opening to complicate reductionist several concepts of agency: victimhood (structural
views on self-killing and gain more holistic causes), voice (resistance), and responsibility (care
perspectives through ‘local ontologies of suicide’ for the land). The most local of these concepts is
(p. 20). The volume’s contributors thus employ responsibility for the land amidst changes in
the lenses of personhood, relationality (part II), migration, religion, and economies. Sharp and
resistance, and power (part III) to explore Linos (chap. 7) offer a theoretical piece on
different perspectives of suicide and agencies. occupied Palestinian bodies. Here, suicide
Staples (chap. 2) uses fluid understandings of bomber attacks employ the ‘polluting power’ of
personhood (involving relationality) that appear their Palestinian bodies in Israeli spaces to
in Hindu belief systems to ask how agency might implement a form of ‘steadfastness’ (p. 134), seen
be differently experienced from other societies’ as neither resistance nor submission. Agency is
more individualized concepts of personal agency. found not just within the political-cultural body,
In this South Indian site affected by leprosy, but also in the fleshy-physical body in the form of
young people’s attempted suicides are the bomber’s remains. Chua (chap. 8) shows how
understood both as individual acts and as having women in South India use suicide talk, fantasies,
‘multiple agents’ (p. 42). Staples situates this and threats to manifest care or lack thereof.
coexistence of manifold agencies against the Stories here are laden with complex agencies
backdrop of industrialization and liberal economic located in a person, but constituted of concern
reforms that shift modes of living and thinking. In for kin. Widger’s (chap. 9) work with Sri Lankan
Greenland, Flora (chap. 3) uses the Inuit figure of children’s ‘suicide play’ (p. 165) focuses on
the qivittoq to interrogate self-imposed death concepts of self-destruction as integral to identity
related to personal anguish. While someone formation. Agency, Widger argues, is produced in
completing suicide here can still pass on his or her part through play, where children form
name to successive generations, the name of the understandings of suicide in ‘morally appropriate’
qivittoq, who chooses a life of loneliness and (p. 179) ways. Finally, Jaworski (chap. 10)
solitude in the forest, does not continue through unpacks agency in relation to power using
lineages and that person does not receive a Foucault’s ideas about authorship and Butler’s
Christian funeral. Flora shows that the qivittoq’s performativity to understand a suicidal subject’s
personhood is lost through his or her position. She then turns to the question of
self-detachment, while those who kill themselves whether or not suicide can produce freedom, a
go on to reappear alongside new persons in their question that forces us to interrogate subjectivities
namesakes, where agency continues. In Yucatán, and desire in the faces of power. This
Mexico, Reyes-Foster (chap. 4) finds that local argument leads Jaworski to suggest that we
understandings of self-killing reveal the examine the very framing of agency in relation to
ambivalence between the aetiologies of Western suicide.
biomedical discourses and traditional religious This volume makes an important contribution
beliefs about demonic influences. This to scholarship on agency in suicide. It offers
incongruity emerges in attributing agency as well: ethnographic perspectives that complicate
while selfhood is threatened by the possibility of mainstream understandings around the
demonic attack and by possible transculturally persistent practice of self-killing.
psychopathologies, suicide is also condemned as However, as it describes living through and with
a personal act. Finally, Broz (chap. 5) shows that suicide, it adds more. As Strathern notes in her
partible personhoods in a Siberian village allow afterword, this volume not only contributes to
for ‘soul-double loss’ (p. 90). Agency shifts to the understanding suicide and agency through local
‘snatcher’ (p. 90), who takes one’s soul-double, ontologies, but also shows how suicide tells us
and the victims become passive, eventually about aspects of social life.
committing suicide because they are unable to C.M. Cassady Wayne State University
live without their soul-double. Here, complex
causal chains exist in which agency shifts
from persons to animals and other nonhuman Miles, Joanna, Perveez Mody & Rebecca
beings. Probert (eds). Marriage rites and rights. xvi,

298 pp., tables, illus., bibliogrs. Oxford: Hart social changes. Wray examines the ‘moral
Publishing, 2015. £35.00 (paper) gatekeeping’ underpinning the state control of
cross-border, or transnational, marriages,
whereby relationships are construed as pure or a
In 2013, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act sham. Akhtar then uncovers the tendency for
was passed by the UK Parliament, legalizing Muslim marriages among British South Asians to
same-sex marriage in England and Wales. This Act go unregistered, resulting in couples’ lacking
extended the legal rights of same-sex couples marriage rights in the eyes of the law. The
previously legislated under the Civil Partnership section’s last chapter comes from an
Act, which had afforded them the rights of anthropologist, Mody, who contributes a stirring
married couples, but without the ability analysis of forced marriage among British South
to marry. Yet, while lawyers have tended to Asians. While the legal definition of ‘force’ – the
see marriage in terms of the rights it produces, absence of choice – appears straightforward,
the debates that surrounded this legislation Mody argues that boundaries between forced
revealed the cultural and emotional meanings and arranged marriage are blurred when family
invested in marriage rites’ performance. Written obligations can obscure forcefulness. She notes
in the wake of this legislation, Marriage rites and that the legal system’s concern with individual
rights investigates the recent history of marriage consent ‘presupposes people who see themselves
in England and Wales. The volume, edited by as singularly masters of their own agency’
Joanna Miles, Perveez Mody, and Rebecca (p. 205), ignoring the role of kin in
Probert, includes contributions from law, social marriage.
anthropology, history, and numerous other Part III shifts its focus to language, ritual, and
disciplines. The authors utilize a range of the meaning of marriage. Farrimond documents
methods to consider marriage’s enduring shifts in the language and symbols of Church of
connections to religion, law, and cultural England (Anglican) wedding ceremonies, while
practices, and show how it is changing: becoming Harding undertakes an analysis of the House
less compulsory, increasingly secular, and no of Lords’ parliamentary debates on the
longer marking the beginning of couples’ lives aforementioned Civil Partnership and Marriage
together. Acts. She finds that while homophobic language
The volume is divided into four parts. In part I, was relatively rare, heterosexist tropes were more
scholars examine the historical shifts in English common. Finally, part IV calls for changes in how
and Welsh marriage rites. Haskey begins by we understand, perform, and legislate marriage.
reviewing changes in how couples are marrying. Edge posits that the religious and legal elements
He documents a decline in religious marriage, the of marriage should be separated, with religious
emergence of remarriage after divorce, as well as organizations taking on ceremonial roles and the
rising extra-marital cohabitation and childbirth. state imbuing legal rights. The volume concludes
Next, Probert considers the dramatic rise in with Herring’s excellently titled ‘Why marriage
pre-marital cohabitation from the 1960s. She needs to be less sexy’. He understands the legal
theorizes that cohabitation has become its own focus on consummation – whereby ‘failure to
rite of passage, and thus has altered the meaning consummate renders a marriage voidable’
of marriage. Loosened from the rites of sexual (p. 276) – as discriminatory, as it applies only to
initiation and homemaking, marriage now different-sex marriages. He instead proposes a
acquires significance ‘from its own mode of definition of marriage that is anchored in care.
celebration’ (p. 73). Purbrick scrutinizes the Care work, he argues, should be legislated, as it is
ritual giving and receiving of wedding gifts, the ‘primary source of economic disadvantage’ in
positing that these are material endorsements (or relationships (p. 288).
not) of couples’ marriages. Peel investigates The volume’s focus on a specific cultural
same-sex couples’ accounts of their civil context is both its strength and its weakness. It
partnership ceremonies, positing their potential orientates Marriage rites and rights’
to radically alter heteronormative wedding interdisciplinary emphasis, allowing it to
practices. significantly extend existing scholarship on
Part II establishes connections between marriage. Yet, at times, the chapters’ common
marriage rites and rights. Vardag and Miles ask context leads to repetition, as is particularly the
whether pre-nuptial agreements – enabling case with authors’ chronicling of same-sex
couples to alter their state-defined marital rights – marriage law. Moreover, some further
are themselves emerging rites, reflecting partners’ cross-cultural comparison could have better
gendered interests, family relations, and broader anchored the authors’ definitions of marriage and

how it is changing. Regardless, this edited articles on the programme, and her interviews
collection provides a richly detailed picture of the with Japanese and Indonesian officials, NGO
legal and ritual dimensions of marriage in members, and language instructors, are critical to
England and Wales. addressing the question of national imaginations.
Lara McKenzie The University of Western Readers interested in contemporary migration
Australia for care work will find interesting comparative
material here, particularly concerning the roles of
the government, media, and non-profit groups in
Świtek, Beata. Reluctant intimacies: Japanese supporting a policy designed to assure the labour
eldercare in Indonesian hands. xvi, 226 pp., force needed to care for a supra-aged society. The
maps, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York: programme’s problems and strengths are
Berghahn Books, 2016. £64.00 (cloth) delineated through the various voices that Świtek
presents. Japan specialists will not be surprised to
In 2007, Japan and Indonesia signed a trade read of discrimination, a reluctance to engage
agreement (EPA) that included the establishment with newcomers, police searches, and mixed
of a programme bringing Indonesian caregivers messages about how welcome the trainees are as
and nurses to Japan for training and work. Unlike caregivers and potential citizens. Świtek offers an
previous foreign worker training programmes, the interesting perspective on ways in which Japanese
EPA incorporated intensive language study; society is both changing and unchanging; on
required sitting for the Japanese licensure exam at how elder care is developing; and how ‘ordinary’
the programme’s completion; and allowed for the people (as well as government and institutions)
acquisition of permanent residency status if are responding to demographic realities. The
participants passed. Another difference from comparison of the Indonesians to previous
previous training programmes was that the immigrant groups, based on the structural
Indonesians were to provide bodily care to senior conditions of employment and the type of work
adults, an intimacy that might be, as the title they do, offers insights about how cross-cultural
suggests, ‘reluctant’. Drawing on Julia Twigg’s work relationships might lead to ‘viability as
notion of ‘body work’ (‘Carework as a form of colleagues, friends, and co-residents’ (p. 197).
body work’, Ageing and Society 20: 4, 2000), This is the question of intimacy, body work,
Świtek suggests that intimacy creates shared relationships, and perceptions with which the
experiences and personal knowledge between the study begins, and Świtek is an excellent guide.
immigrants and their Japanese care receivers, Yet when intimacy is used to characterize
co-workers, and managers. These in turn provide cleaning genitalia, imagined communities,
alternative framings of self and other that employer-employee relationships, and being
complicate essentializing stereotypes in volleyball teammates, the concept’s analytical
interpersonal relationships. She also argues that power is diminished, coming to mean little more
owing to heavy government involvement and than familiarity or comfort. This is relevant to
media attention, the programme contributes to Świtek’s second question of whether or not the
national reimaginings that challenge Japan’s view intimacy generated by the EPA programme will
of itself as an isolated, unique ‘island nation’. open Japan, making it a more diverse society.
Świtek focused her fieldwork on seven of the There is little doubt that by portraying the
first 204 Indonesian trainees who were ‘seeded’ – trainees as ‘always smiling’, reporters and editors
one or two per accepting facility – around the contribute to that opening. A more critical
country and has produced here a multi-sited perspective might note that just as personalizing
ethnography of the programme’s first year and essentializing operate simultaneously at the
(2008-9). She stayed at their homes; followed interpersonal level, there is also a double register
four of them at work; engaged in their leisure of national self-definition. Świtek optimistically
activities and official events; and travelled to envisions a gradual ‘opening’ as people interact
Indonesia. She interviewed co-workers and with the trainees and the media humanizes them
managers, and heard comments from the care to the public. Yet the antithesis is not merely
receivers, although owing to the inability of many Japan’s homogeneity myth, but the use of that
of the residents to give truly informed consent, myth to promote a more militaristic and
little is reported of their views. Multilingual in nationalistic society. The direction of change is
Japanese, Indonesian, and several European not a foregone conclusion, but a matter of
languages, Świtek is sensitive not only to the political power.
ethical issues of her research, but also to the use Specialized readers will benefit from Świtek’s
and nuances of language. Her analysis of media ethnographic insights into cross-cultural body

work and national discourses on culture, religion, to the manual typewriter or celluloid film. In the
and race. Extensive mid-chapter diversions more sociological terms in which this argument is
discussing stereotypes or caregiving, lengthy developed, the authors take care to counter what
paragraphs, and the ambiguity of some key terms they call a ‘relational contextualism’ (p. xiii),
(e.g. acceptance, culture, race) decrease which would see the present-day attachment to
accessibility for general readers or vinyl as little more than the basis of snobbish
undergraduates. Nonetheless, Reluctant intimacies distinction in the face of digital culture. The vinyl
is a welcome addition to Japanese studies and to enthusiasts studied here are, for the most part,
anthropological debates about migration, care fully caught up in multiple dimensions of digital
work, and nation. culture, tracking record prices on-line and, in the
Susan Orpett Long John Carroll University case of those who are club deejays, interweaving
vinyl tracks with digital sound files in the course
of an evening’s performance. At the same time,
the commitment to vinyl of the people
Sound and music
encountered here is not circumscribed by a
unidirectional, devotional relationship to a
Bartmanski, Dominik & Ian Woodward. Vinyl: specific material or object. Vinyl, as this book
the analogue record in the digital age. 203 pp., makes clear, circulates through (and gives
illus., bibliogr. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. coherence to) distinct and complex life-worlds,
£17.99 (paper) life-styles, and ways of living within cities.
The last of these characteristics nourishes
A favourite topic of business and cultural some of this book’s most interesting and original
journalists over the past ten years has been the lines of analysis. Much of Vinyl focuses on
commercial revival of the vinyl recording. While present-day Berlin, and its authors offer a
the production of vinyl records had all but ceased compelling account of the ways in which vinyl
by the early 2000s, with pressing plants closing circulates through the commercial and domestic
down and music retail stores disappearing, by spaces in that city. In doing so, it produces what
2009 vinyl had become the fastest-growing Bartmanski and Woodward call a ‘vinylscape’
physical medium for recorded music in Europe (pp. 139-64), a complex network of places,
and the Americas. This new success had much to occasions, and affectual relationships which settle
do with the rapid decline of competing media, into a city’s broader ethos. In the case of Berlin,
like the CD, but vinyl’s recent rise has been vinyl stands for an ethics of independence (from
absolute and not merely relative. Record transnational cultural industries) and
companies large and small have returned to cosmopolitanism. The latter has much to do with
issuing vinyl releases, pressing plants have been the fact that, divided and isolated during the Cold
refurbished or launched anew, and stores War, Berlin was far from being a major centre for
specializing in the vinyl record have grown in the production and consumption of vinyl records.
number in cities around the world. If vinyl now flows through the spaces of the city’s
This vinyl revival forms part of the context of independent culture, this is because Berlin has
this intriguing new book by two sociologists, now come to occupy a central role as crossroads
Dominki Bartmanski and Ian Woodward. It is by in the transnational flow of cultural objects, ideas,
no means the only scholarly treatment of vinyl and practices (like collecting). ‘As an objectual
records in the last two decades. Indeed, before medium’, the authors suggest, ‘vinyl is distributed
their recent commercial revival as carriers of across space and time’ (p. 37). Vinyl captures the
music, vinyl records had been studied from ways in which the record transports multiple
multiple angles and disciplinary perspectives: as histories of musical style around the world into
the focus of collector cultures; as a form of both large temples of musical consumption like
cultural ‘waste’ filling second-hand markets; and Berlin’s mega-clubs and the intimate corners of
as central to histories of sound technology. Vinyl individual lives.
builds upon this scattered body of work, then In a nod to recent work within what cultural
enriches it considerably through a set of theorists have named ‘new materialisms’, Vinyl
ethnographic journeys into the worlds of vinyl moves to treat vinyl as ‘an example of “vibrant
collectors, users, and dealers. matter” that retains “iconic power”’ (p. 169). Its
Among the foundational arguments of this vibrancy is an effect of several features of the vinyl
book, one finds the claim that vinyl enthusiasts record, such as the physical manipulation
are not nostalgic, anti-digital purists. In this, they required for its use, and the ways in which its
are unlike those who have obstinate attachments visible grooves both reveal and obscure its

Book and Film Reviews 411
expressive content. Vinyl’s present-day iconic people of al-Andalus’, develops the notion of a
power has roots in the canonical, post-Second network of listeners and performers who share a
World War musical monuments it helped to carry commitment to Andalusi music. Focusing on the
to market, but now rests just as firmly on its present, here Glasser approaches Andalusi
heroic survival in the face of technological musical practice as a tradition. The first chapter
innovation. posits that Andalusi music is at once local and also
Will Straw McGill University part of a transnational network. For Glasser, in
fact, the repertoire does not reside in particular
Glasser, Jonathan. The lost paradise: Andalusi cities but, rather, ‘in people who have come from
music in urban North Africa. xvi, 319 pp., illus., those places and embody that sense of place’
bibliogr. Chicago: Univ. Press, 2016. £21.00 (p. 39). Chapter 2 elaborates on the central
(paper) figures of the master (shaykh) and the devotee
(mūlū‘) and, in considering the relationship
Each musician ‘goes to the grave with words and between them, investigates who ‘the people of
melodies which those who remain do not know al-Andalus . . . imagine themselves to be’ (p. 55).
and do not conserve . . . such that these Turning to the repertory, chapter 3 approaches
melodies remain their captive’ (p. 4). Citing Andalusi music as a complex genre. It is in this
words collected by one of the critical figures of context that Glasser explores the categories of the
the century-long revival project of Andalusi music, thaqil (heavy) and the khafı̄f (light), which carry a
Jonathan Glasser thoughtfully questions the ‘place ‘variety of associations regarding gender,
of the lost’ (p. 5) in a musical revival stretching sophistication, propriety, social class, genre
across Algeria and Morocco and into the boundaries, and the body’ (p. 99).
Maghribi diaspora; a network of sites which he Part 2, ‘Revival’, is an in-depth historical
aptly refers to as the Andalusi archipelago. exploration of the Andalusi musical revival project,
Through sophisticated ethnography and in which the author examines the centrality of
painstaking multilingual archival research, Glasser tadwı̄n (inscription). Focusing on the career of a
shapes a compelling narrative about a notion of particularly important revivalist, Edmond Nathan
the lost that he summarizes as ‘the ethos, pathos, Yafil, chapter 4 situates the revival during early
aesthetic and mystique of the Andalusi musical twentieth-century colonialism, as well as in the
archipelago’ (p. 253). context of the relationship between master and
In this book the lost becomes a complex devotee, asking: ‘What was the relationship
notion which comes alive through an incisive between revivalist discourse and musical practice,
analysis and the skilful interweaving of and what made revivalist discourse efficacious, if
practitioners’ and melomanes’ (aficionados’) at all?’ (p. 122). Chapter 5, which examines
words, sound recordings, printed compilations of diverse strategies to assert textual and musical
song texts, photographs, transcriptions, and authority, focuses on the relationship between
amateur associations. This is how Glasser invites printed compilations of song texts and a variety
his readers into an archipelago of sound, where of texts; it is in this context that Glasser explores
debates and anxieties about loss and revival are issues relevant to language, audiences, and class.
embedded in the intertwining of the past, the The chapter also questions the practice of
present, and the future, giving continuity and hoarding in relation to compilations. Chapter 6
vitality to Andalusi music. He is particularly examines amateur associations as key institutions
interested in the gharnāt.i genre from the for the Andalusi musical revival. By treating them
Moroccan-Algerian border region – approached as ‘a technology of tadwı̄n and transmission’
as a textual tradition as well as a performance (p. 176), Glasser posits that although presented
and listening practice. In this critical contribution as modernist, associations may also reproduce the
to the increasingly rich literature devoted to dominant discourses that they claim to counter.
Andalusian music in English, the effectiveness In the final chapter, which looks at the politics of
of Glasser’s argument hinges on an patrimony by examining the state in relation to
ethnographically and theoretically solid Andalusi music, the author demonstrates that,
articulation of the notion of the lost at the rather than as a hegemon, the state should be
intersection with a genre formation that viewed ‘as a potentially powerful resource in the
transcends ideology and rhetoric. project of tadwı̄n’ (p. 207).
The lost paradise is divided into two parts and This is an engaging, clear, and eloquent book;
introduced by vivid ethnographic moments, thus however, it would have benefited from a glossary
tracing different threads of the notion of the lost of Arabic terms to facilitate the reading for
through each chapter’s themes. Part 1, ‘The non-Arabic-speakers. This minor detail aside,

The lost paradise is an essential reference for but this, to paraphrase Lydia Goehr (The
researchers of the musical traditions of North imaginary museum of musical works, 1992), is
Africa and the Middle East, and a crucial work for imagined rather than real. Moreover,
scholars of North Africa and beyond. improvisation is Hodgkinson’s stock in trade, as it
Alessandra Ciucci Columbia once was for many musicians. His paradigm
University emerges from years of observing and reflecting
on how he and his colleagues create music from
Hodgkinson, Tim. Music and the myth of infinite possibilities, risking the consequences of
wholeness: toward a new aesthetic paradigm. x, the routes they take at any given moment, be it
264 pp., bibliogr. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT through his involvement in the radical group
Press, 2016. £26.95 (cloth) Henry Cow; playing piano for Mike Oldfield’s
Tubular bells; or in more recent performances
Tim Hodgkinson’s wonderful book basically tears with Siberian shamans.
our perceptions asunder. It argues for a new The Siberian encounters have served to
aesthetic paradigm, but this demands the reinforce Hodgkinson’s belief that anthropology
destruction of what we have come to understand gets around the divide between nature and
as music. The basic claim is that music is culture by falsely assimilating us into a set of
erroneously reduced to structural components in beliefs about society, while side-stepping the
which graspable fragments become sonic untranslatable within our being. He proffers the
symbols, whether by analysts or psychologists, by sacred as a way to account for humankind’s
those studying cognition or those claiming that ‘innermost secrets’, and from here music, and art
music has a grammar which in some way more broadly, becomes a way to express the
matches – or is reproducible as – language. Such untranslatable. For his thesis to work, however, he
approaches are formulaic: Hodgkinson cites has to dissemble the notion that we should be
Webern’s 1963 The path to new music, noting able to speak about the things music does. This is
that his formula of structure has it that the listener a lot to ask, and Hodgkinson spends half the book
(subject) extracts (activity) structure grappling with the great and the good, from
(object A) from a work (object B), or creates Adorno to Guillaume Dufay, from Boethius to
objects that can be seen but for which ‘the ear Richard Taruskin, and from Durkheim to
remains, paradoxically, mute; we hear blindly’ robotics, semiotics, hermeneutics, and
(p. 133). The inherited approaches, then, delete phenomenology.
freedom and the experience of a musical There is an unfortunate suggestion of circular
aesthetic. insularity, but Hodgkinson’s ontology of music as
Hodgkinson offers a new definition: music is art and experience does unpack listening. As he
‘sound that has listened to itself’ (p. 131). puts it: ‘We need to rid ourselves of the metaphor
Listening is recursive. It involves experience, and of wholeness to get at the deep heterogeneity of
received notions of consonance and dissonance. the human informational space’ (p. 191). Bakhtin
It comprises unconsciously hearing the harmonic had it right in that the aesthetic domain is where
partials of each sound (as described so brilliantly the power of music resides, is created,
by Helmholtz in the 1870s) onto which we improvised, embodied, and listened to. The
consciously map harmonic and melodic aesthetic is the art, and to rationalize the aesthetic
connections. Listening is, of course, fundamental in musical ethnography or ethnomusicological
to the experience of music, and fundamental to ethnography discredits the experience. In this,
the body and brain, but it does not need a Hodgkinson argues that even Theodore Levin’s
language, a grammar, or a structure to exhibit an reductionist view of Tuvan music as mimesis
aesthetic domain. By focusing on the ontology of (Where rivers and mountains sing, 2006) collapses
listening, the author aims to get beyond the art back into its material; and that Steven Feld’s
isolatable fragments that create definable celebrated catalogue of musical expression
structures. He defines composition as repeated among the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea (Sound
listenings, since music as a work of art does not and sentiment, 1982) deprives music of its
exist before it is fixed through transcription or autonomy. This is the musician in Hodgkinson
performance; composition is cumulative, talking. It is a call to his fellow musicians to look
‘balancing the asymmetry of time against the into themselves and identify and assume their
asymmetry of the harmonic series’ (p. 141). The responsibilities; to strip away the formulaic and
issue that is being addressed is, in essence, that allow the flashes of diverse kinds of intelligence
we have long taken for granted that music equals that make them human to have life; and thereby
composed Western art music. There is a canon, to offer interventions that challenge the

dysfunction evident in the cul-de-sac of so much is a valuable resource that can be deployed in
current music-making. support of a wide range of development projects.
Keith Howard SOAS, University of London The book’s chapters explore this paradox in
multiple contexts. Chapter 1 examines the way
Luker, Morgan James. The tango machine: young musicians, such as the group 34 Puñaladas,
musical culture in the age of expediency. xiv, have used tango to construct and express their
218 pp., bibliogr. Chicago: Univ. Press, 2016. own generationally specific identity. Likewise,
£21.00 (paper) chapter 2 analyses the efforts of the group
Astillero to reinvent tango as popular music, a
Morgan James Luker’s new book offers a project that entails both musical innovation and
fascinating look at tango in contemporary Buenos institution-building. In these chapters, Luker
Aires. Readers interested in the revival of tango deploys his musicological expertise to excellent
dance will have to look elsewhere as Luker, an effect, specifying precisely what is musically
ethnomusicologist, focuses his analytical energy distinctive in the projects he analyses.
on the music, or, more precisely, on the multiple The second half of the book concentrates more
and often contradictory uses to which tango directly on cultural policy-making. Luker examines
music is put. Along the way, he articulates a TangoVia Buenos Aires, an arts non-profit
theoretical approach with the potential to modelled partly on Jazz at Lincoln Center,
illuminate musical cultures well beyond the which seeks to position tango as Argentina’s
Argentine case. most important contribution to world culture.
Following George Yúdice’s influential He dissects the multiple efforts that culminated
analysis of cultural globalization in The expediency in UNESCO’s formal recognition of tango as part
of culture (2004), Luker defines the contemporary of the ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’
moment as ‘the age of expediency’, in which the in 2009. Additionally, he explores the place
value and meaning of music are determined not of tango within the multiple and contradictory
by its internal characteristics, but by its usefulness efforts of the Buenos Aires municipal government
for advancing social, economic, or political to promote its local culture industries.
projects. He grounds his interpretation in a Perhaps because of his reliance on Yúdice’s
careful description and analysis of the ‘managerial conceptualization, Luker does not specify exactly
regimes’ that seek to mobilize music towards when the age of expediency began, nor does he
specific non-musical ends. Although other scholars clearly distinguish the present moment from
of music have recognized the central role played by earlier eras. In fact, he argues that his analytical
intermediaries such as record companies or radio focus on expediency ought to be applied to
stations, Luker considers the culture industries musical practices and genres from all periods. He
alongside local and national governments, is careful to situate all of the musical projects he
NGOs, and non-profit arts associations. By examines within the context of the 1990s’
treating all of these as ‘managerial regimes’, he is neoliberal polices, their socioeconomic
able to reveal how musical practices are enabled consequences, and the devastating economic
and constrained by both the capitalist profit crisis of 2001. However, his account might have
motive and other regimes of value. Luker provides benefited from a fuller description of tango
careful ethnographies of musical collectives, history. In particular, Luker dismisses the
arts organizations, cultural policy-makers, vanguardist tango projects of the 1950s, 1960s,
and heritage-making projects, demonstrating and 1970s in a couple of pages, and he ignores
how they function not merely as top-down, those that came before. He thus misses the
disciplinary bodies, but also as sites chance to locate the efforts of groups like Astillero
of engagement and contestation within a longer history of the struggle to reconcile
over the meanings and uses of tango. sophistication and popularity within tango.
Luker’s analysis of tango proceeds from his Notwithstanding these minor quibbles, this is an
description of the genre’s peculiar place in illuminating book and an essential resource for
Argentine culture: although tango is still seen anyone interested in contemporary tango or,
globally as Argentina’s pre-eminent national icon more broadly, intrigued by the various uses to
or brand, it has not been popular since the 1950s. which music currently is put.
Most Argentines do not listen to tango or feel any Matthew B. Karush George Mason University
particular connection to it. This produces, in
Luker’s oft-repeated phrase, a ‘dual trend of
detachment and connection’. Even though the Narayan, Kirin. Everyday creativity: singing
genre retains only a small, specialized audience, it goddesses in the Himalayan foothills. xxiv,

254 pp., illus., bibliogr. Chicago: Univ. Press, the auspiciousness that marriage bestows upon
2016. £19.00 (paper) them. Women invoke, learn from, emulate, and
become goddesses; here, these deities are more
Kirin Narayan’s previous books have introduced like ordinary mortals than paragons of womanly
us to the storytellers and story-worlds of Kangra; perfection. They act wilfully and also have
Everyday creativity similarly is an eloquent, problems, the situated meanings of their
enjoyable window into life in the Himalayan predicaments changing in relation to women’s
foothills, this time through women’s songs. For own situations.
these women, the songs and the stories they tell Fittingly for a book about how songs shape
are an enjoyable pastime: a sukinni (in Pahadi), or and are shaped by women’s lives, its structure
shauk (in Hindi). For Narayan, who approaches follows a metaphor about songs. Like plants – and
the songs ‘more as an admiring outsider than as a a person – songs grow from ‘base’ to ‘head’.
fervent singer’, songs are resources for singers’ Many songs end with a blessing that mentions
lives, as forms of ‘everyday creativity’ (p. xx). the ‘fruits’, or rewards, of singing; this verse often
Drawing on how creativity has been offers ‘fruits’ for each life-stage: girlhood,
conceptualized in the anthropology of wifehood, motherhood, and old age, as well as
performance, ethnography of communication, for listeners. Thus, the chapters follow a
and folklore scholarship on South Asia, this life-course. The introduction considers how
concept allows her to address the question of women tend their lives, like their agricultural
what the songs accomplish for singers, and to fields, through songs. The first chapter addresses
connect singing’s significance to other forms of the ‘base’, contextualizing Kangra as a region,
artistic and social enjoyment. While she examines and explaining Pahadi songs’ different genres.
particular performances and their significance to The next four chapters address singing’s ‘fruits’.
the singers in the immediate context, what she ‘Attaining’ examines daughterhood through the
explores here is less about performance’s songs of mountain goddesses; ‘Playing’ explores
immediate pragmatics, and more about the women’s lives as wives, mothers, and lovers
enduring pleasure of songs and singing as ways through songs related to Krishna’s play; ‘Going’
to beautify and bring further enjoyment to life. It centres on old age and widowhood through the
is a focus on process rather than product, on songs of Saili (the basil plant goddess). Finally,
making beauty rather than on making products ‘Bathing’ focuses on listening as fostering
valued according to ideas of individual brilliance purification and transcendence, as listeners attune
and innovation. to the divine through ‘bathing’ in the flow of
The research for this book spans Narayan’s sound. Once we reach the ‘head’, the conclusion
professional life thus far: her research village is and point of further growth, we have come to
both home and ‘field’, and she weaves stories of know these women.
her own learning process with the interpretations In the preface, Philip V. Bohlman brings up
of songs and descriptions of their performance. voice studies and folklore studies as fields that
The singers are mentors who tease, chide, and Narayan joins together in this book. This is clearly
help Kirin to understand how and why their songs a book about songs as oral literature, but without
are meaningful in their personal and collective analysing the sonic aspects of the songs, is this a
lives. Some interlocutors, like Urmilaji, are familiar ‘voice studies’ book? Broadly, yes, but in a literary
to us from Narayan’s previous books. Others we sense: the sense of lok sahitya, or folk literature,
get to know here through Narayan’s sensitive and with its emphasis on locality, mutability, and
evocative portrayals. availability to all. It addresses the multivocality of
These are high-caste women from an older the stories and songs, creatively enjoyed with
generation who grew up expecting to be wives manifold meanings, on multiple occasions. Voice
and mothers, living and working in rural as self-expression is also important here, as
joint-family households, marrying into nearby something that everyone possesses. Singing is a
villages within Kangra, and educated through the means of expression for women who lack access
wisdom of oral tradition. Their songs emerge out to the multitudes of choices that men have. Their
of, and help to forge, relationships among use of vocal arts allows them to find pleasure in
women and between women and divinities. The living. Songs are one of the resources through
subtitle, Singing goddesses in the Himalayan which these women develop their lives, and one
foothills, references both the goddesses sung into of the greatest joys of this monograph is getting
presence, and married women’s practice of to know them through their songs.
adding ‘Devi’ (goddess) to their names, marking Anna Stirr University of Hawai‘i

Theory and method In part 2, ‘Engagements’, we encounter

various publics seeking anthropological
engagement. Neiburg (chap. 5) recounts being
Fassin, Didier (ed.). If truth be told: the politics of asked to intervene in local conflicts in his Haitian
public ethnography. 358 pp., bibliogr. Durham, field-site, both opening up new possibilities for
N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2017. £21.99 (paper) ethnography and increasing his sense of
precarity. Bessire’s (chap. 6) work among the
In the last half of the twentieth century, owing in Ayoreo Indians identified tensions between
large part to the professionalization of the ‘tactical’ ethnographic authority used in the
discipline (cf. R. Borofsky, Why a public defence of a traditional society and an
anthropology? 2011), anthropology largely ‘indigenized’ ethnography giving voice to
withdrew from public engagement. However, individuals and lived experiences rather than
today anthropologists are increasingly categories. Benthall (chap. 7) recounts the
contributing their knowledge in politically scrutiny to which he was subject while providing
charged arenas as well as being expected to court testimony and affidavits in the United
demonstrate the public impact of their work by States. Dubois’s ethnographic findings on the
funders. Drawing on the experiences of workings of a French welfare office (chap. 8) are
anthropologists who have engaged diverse better received, partly owing to a national
publics in a variety of ways – from informing appreciation of social sciences.
policy-making to simply publishing their work – ‘Tensions’, part 3, charts how anthropologists
this edited volume explores the public afterlife of have dealt with problematic reactions to their
ethnography. The contributors present some of public work. Wikan’s chapter 10, on the public
the consequences of public ethnography for controversy surrounding her work on
researchers, for the people among whom they multiculturalism and honour killing in Norway,
work, and for the research itself. Fassin’s demonstrates the fragility of balanced debate in
introduction encourages an extension of both public and academic spheres. Abu El-Haj
ethnography beyond fieldwork through to (chap. 9) details the practices of censorship and
‘publicization’, which he argues is composed of self-censorship within the context of scrutiny by
processes of ‘popularization’ and ‘politicization’ Zionist scholars wishing to discredit her work on
(p. 5). Palestinian archaeology. Forms of ‘silencing’ are
While many of the volume’s authors agree also prevalent in Biehl’s (chap. 11) collaboration
that anthropologists have a responsibility towards with public bodies, adding texture to his data on
the public, from whom they receive so much, this the judicialization of healthcare in Brazil. Finally,
book is not a call for greater public presence, nor Hamdy’s presentation of her research on Egyptian
does it frame anthropologists as guardians of the healthcare at an Islamic bioethics conference in
‘public good’ – a view criticized by Sarah Pink and Qatar (chap. 12) is met with personal attack and
Simone Abram in Media, anthropology and public nationalistic rhetoric.
engagement (2015). Instead, we encounter the Fassin compares publicization to a form of
‘difficulties, complications, and contradictions, as dispossession or alienation: ‘We have not only
well as dreams, expectations, and imaginations little knowledge, but little hold on what becomes
this public presence involves’ (Fassin, p. 4). of our work in direct or indirect encounters with
The first of three parts, ‘Strategies’, publics’ (p. 7). Paradoxically, engagement
demonstrates how anthropologists have appears to necessitate detachment, a
negotiated the blurring of the scholarly and the surrendering by the anthropologist to contextual
public. Coleman (chap. 1) inhabits alternative forces. The productive nature of detachment
personas when communicating with journalists underpins many of the chapters and builds on
and her interlocutors who are members of the previous work by Matei Candea et al. in their
hacker group Anonymous. During a public edited Detachment (2015). In presenting some of
lecture, Hage (chap. 2) seizes the opportunity to the possibilities and challenges that ‘going public’
challenge conventional tropes of the resilience entails, this volume is essential reading for
discourse in the Palestinian context. Cunha researchers embarking on public ethnography,
(chap. 4) explores the potential for ethnography and for departments and funders who encourage
to reframe policy, but we also see how Gillespie’s engagement beyond academia. If truth be told is
(chap. 3) attempt to question a commission’s equally important for those who do not see their
response to vigilante violence in South Africa work as being particularly public-facing; any
results in ethnographic counter-knowledge being published work can take on a public afterlife
simultaneously co-opted and tactically ignored. beyond the author’s intentions. The collection’s

focus on often highly charged political contexts group to study are chosen; how foci for research
leads to a question: how can one measure more are found in the field; and embodiment and the
subtle repercussions of anthropological role of anthropologists’ gender, generation,
engagement such as gradual shifts in public ethnicity, as well as relationships. Some highlights
attitudes? An ethnography of public ethnography, include: Joanna Overing’s struggle to find a
as proposed by Fassin, could achieve precisely this fieldwork site at a time when anthropologists had
if extended beyond moments of contention to carved up Australia amongst themselves; Iranian
broader anthropological public engagement. children teaching Sue Wright local kinship
Laura Haapio-Kirk UCL relations during her study of politics as a way to
avoid putting herself and her hosts in danger;
Malcolm McLeod’s ending up in Ghana owing to
Okely, Judith. Anthropological practice: fieldwork his misunderstanding of Evans-Pritchard’s original
and the ethnographic method. 200 pp., suggestion; and Helena Wulff’s almost being
bibliogr. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. £18.99 caught by the police when working with street
(paper) children in London, which improved her standing
among them. We hear how anthropologists,
Concerns over increasingly prescriptive ethical including Okely herself, use their body and their
guidelines and the governance of research have senses to learn about local people’s lives and to
been at the centre of many irked conversations in participate, whether breaking metal (Okely),
anthropology departmental corridors. The dancing (Wulff, Nancy Lindisfarne), slashing
worried question is usually what this means for undergrowth (Brian Morris), rolling tent felt
the future of ethnography and, with that, for (Lindisfarne), or milking cows (Okely). We also
anthropology. The impact of these developments learn how these bodily practices enabled insights
on ethnographic practice is what Judith Okely beyond what could be observed. The various
seeks to address with this book. stories, anecdotes, and comments reveal the
Anthropological practice begins by offering a real-life actualities of what Okely aptly calls the
highly critical perspective on audit culture, for ‘living of fieldwork’, in contrast to the ‘doing’ of
example, in relation to what Okely sees as it. They highlight how this method resides in the
funders’ and universities’ growing attempts to anthropologists’ own selves and depends on the
regulate research through preferences for negotiation of multiple relationships and trust,
particular methods; misunderstandings of which in turn requires instinct rather than
ethnography’s epistemological value; and pre-conceived objectives.
requirements to foreshadow research findings in Much of this confirms what seasoned
proposals, which runs counter to open-ended fieldworkers already know about the tacit
exploration. To address the threat she sees in character of the knowledge that ethnography
these developments, Okely opens up the often produces and which informs rich, textured
opaque practice of long-term fieldwork. She does writing. Nevertheless, the wealth of experience
so through the presentation of excerpts from over that comes together in this monograph is greatly
twenty interviews she conducted with illuminating. This begins with the introductory
anthropological colleagues on their fieldwork chapter, which brings together a large number of
experiences. These data are presented in five past, recent, and contemporary ethnographies
chapters, which are prefaced and interspersed by from which readers can draw suggestions for
one historical and one theoretical chapter on reading. The interview data highlight the diversity
ethnography and participant observation (chaps 1 of experiences and their transformative impact on
and 4, respectively). Okely separates these two, the anthropologist (p. 153). They also help
which is methodologically correct, but given their confirm that working around problems and
close connection in anthropology, this results in a making decisions appropriate to oneself and one’s
degree of overlap. The five chapters that contain relationships in the field is a necessity; and they
details from the interviews are divided into a large encourage us to engage more deeply, with all our
number of sub-chapters, allowing Okely to senses, in any future fieldwork.
explore a raft of issues, although this somewhat This insightful book will be reassuring for
fractures the overall argument. those students who are embarking on their first
The interviewed anthropologists comprise a fieldwork, and will help supervisors teach them
diverse range of researchers working in many before they leave. Some of the stories, however,
parts of the world and on an array of topics. The especially in the chapter on the location of
subsequent frank and honest conversations allow fieldwork, also provide glimpses of practices from
Okely to explore, for instance, how a place or before funding guidelines began to delimit

flexibility. The question with which Okely begins, and ‘Writing across genres’. There are sixteen
how the neoliberal governance of research will essays in addition to Wulff’s lucid introduction,
impact epistemologically on anthropology, and each of the pieces reflects on a different
remains unanswered. Nevertheless, aspect of the writing process.
Anthropological practice is a publication that also All of the essays are insightful in their own
can be used to make the case for open-ended, unique and compelling ways. Dominic Boyer’s
long-term fieldwork, whether in grant proposals ‘The necessity of being a writer in anthropology
or in arguments with committees. Moreover, it today’ discusses the political-economic context of
may provide the impetus for upcoming the academy in late capitalism and elucidates
generations of anthropologists to explore how how ‘one’s professional survival depends on the
audit culture is changing the production of capacity to communicate in writing’ (p. 25).
anthropological knowledge, and what this may Don Brenneis’s essay on ‘Reading, writing, and
mean for our understanding of human sameness recognition in the emerging academy’ is a
and difference in the future. depressing read about the hyper-quantification of
Anselma Gallinat Newcastle University scholarly productivity. As a writer of monographs,
I was disheartened to read that (according to the
Danish Higher Education Reform Act) academic
Wulff, Helena (ed.). The anthropologist as writer: books only count as the equivalent of 2.5 articles
genres and contexts in the twenty-first century. and do not contribute to a scholar’s ‘bibliometric’
viii, 279 pp., bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: prowess. Only articles are counted in citation
Berghahn Books, 2016. £92.00 (cloth) rates; books and edited volumes are quantitatively
invisible. Since anthropology is traditionally a
After I accepted my first tenure track job offer, a ‘book discipline’, ethnographic work not
Berkeley friend gave me a wire-bound journal published in the form of journal articles will be
with blank lined pages. Embossed in silver increasingly devalued in a world ever more
metallic letters on a smooth matte black cover obsessed with impact factors.
were three words: ‘Publish or perish’. The gift was Essays by Paul Stoller, Alma Gottlieb, and Kirin
meant as a joke, but as I spent the next six years Narayan all admonish ethnographers to explore
of my life clawing my way up the precarious their creative sides – to break out of ethnographic
rungs of the academic career ladder, those words writing’s normative and narrow confines. Stoller
stopped being funny. All of my fieldwork, recounts his own decision to make his writing
reading, and research amounted to naught if I more accessible, and Gottlieb explores the
could not sit down in a chair and pump out the dangers that junior scholars face when trying to
prose. You will perish if you do not publish, but write for more popular audiences.
you cannot publish if you do not write. One of my favourite essays is Ulf Hannerz’s
For many of us, writing is a lonely, tedious, ‘Writing otherwise’, which speaks to senior
and frustrating task, one that requires Herculean scholars who find themselves crushed by an
feats of concentration and creativity. Yet as ever-expanding load of administrative
scholars we rarely talk about the writing process, responsibilities in the neoliberal university.
the grunt work that transforms one’s field notes Hannerz begins by recalling a conversation with a
from raw observations into the polished text senior colleague who claimed that while
needed for a published article or book. Helena anthropologists generally establish their
Wulff’s outstanding edited volume, The reputations while they are young and then slowly
anthropologist as writer, addresses this middle fade into retirement, historians demonstrate the
stage of scholarly production, collecting opposite pattern. Most historians enjoy their most
reflections from a gaggle of the most prominent significant fame and reputation towards the end
anthropologists in the field today. This timely and of their careers. Hannerz explains this
much-needed volume ruminates on the phenomenon by interrogating the specific
neoliberal context within which much academic demands of fieldwork, and argues that many
writing is produced, providing a variety of tips anthropologists age out of extended jaunts in
and strategies for navigating the tumultuous seas foreign lands. This results from a wide variety of
of academic knowledge production. factors; parenthood being chief among them. He
The volume emerges from the fifth Stockholm admonishes senior anthropologists to ‘write
Anthropology Roundtable in 2009. It is divided otherwise’, engaging in comparative analysis
into four sections: ‘The role of writing in using the works of other anthropologists or
anthropological careers’, ‘Ethnographic writing’, finding innovative ways to explore cultures
‘Reaching out: popular writing and journalism’, without relying on new fieldwork.

Overall, the collection should be a mandatory turbines. The initiative’s death was not due to lack
reference for all working ethnographers in the of effort on his part, but rather due to the toxic
social sciences, and required reading in all combination of local corruption, endless red tape,
graduate courses on ethnographic methods. and the desire for immediate and spectacular
Kristen R. Ghodsee University of Pennsylvania results demanded by the international community.
Coburn cleverly uses Locke’s missteps to
illustrate the disconnect between those sent to
War’s aftermaths
assist and the society which was to be the
recipient of that assistance. He uses the failed
Coburn, Noah. Losing Afghanistan: an obituary wind farm to contextualize the many projects that
for the intervention. xii, 246 pp., illus., bibliogr. Coalition forces attempted to construct, often
Stanford: Univ. Press, 2016. £17.99 without the advice of the local population, which
(paper) in the end knew best what was needed. This
disconnect doomed even the best-intended
Having spent nine years in Afghanistan, I found projects.
Noah Coburn’s book a true and factual account Coburn also examines the tribes of Western
of the international community’s years in the workers, volunteers, and soldiers, which were
country. It is an intervention that still has no end often at odds with one another. He points out
in sight and has garnered less than stellar grades their unwillingness to understand or work with
regarding improving the daily lives of Afghan each other. This dysfunction, of course,
citizens. It is not an uplifting story. hampered the internationals’ understanding of
Afghanistan has been referred to as the the Afghans and their needs – the reason they
graveyard of empires, an aphorism well known to were present in Afghanistan in the first place. The
British and Russian decision-makers. Now three author’s accounts of international tribes’
US presidents can be added to that list. After interactions are hilariously spot on. On top of this,
reading Coburn’s account of the intervention, many aid workers, journalists, and those, like
however, perhaps a more appropriate sobriquet wind-power enthusiast Locke, who floated
would be that Afghanistan is a graveyard of between tribes, created confusion. When various
dreams. Western diplomats dreamed that tribal members did come into contact with one
democratic ideals would rise from the valleys of another, it was often only under the auspices of
Tora Bora; aid workers dreamed that by building the few international gathering places which
thousands of new schools, a new generation of discreetly served alcohol, where entrance was
educated Afghans would grow up to lead the forbidden to Afghans.
nation; NGO workers dreamed of constructing a Time and again, Coburn details the challenges
new society. In the end, all of the above of accomplishing even the most elementary
encountered a society they failed to fully projects. Among these were massive Afghan
understand and could not help. government exploitation; US government
Coburn accurately portrays both the lofty regulations and restrictions on aid projects; the
goals and everyday life of many of the ‘tribes’ in ebb and flow of insurgency activities; and the
Afghanistan. These tribes, however, are not the competing agendas of aid organizations, which
indigenous peoples of the region. They consist of often took precedence over the local population’s
Western aid and NGO workers, internationals welfare. These challenges not only doomed
working in security, and the various military units Locke’s dream of bringing a cheap and consistent
making up coalitions sent to bring peace and flow of energy to rural populations, it also
stability in Afghanistan. destroyed dreams such as a justice centre in Khost
Differentiating from the familiar sweeping province (built but never used); as well as the
generalizations in other recent works on this construction of over 1,600 new schools, half of
subject, Coburn introduces the reader to William which were designated for girls. These were not
Locke, a young, industrious entrepreneur who set utilized because they became a target for Taliban
up an Afghan-led wind-power company in 2009. atrocities.
This was on the threshold of the Obama surge in Diplomats, journalists, aid workers, and
Afghanistan and Locke’s company hit all the right members of various international military units
notes with that president’s White House: it was arrived in Afghanistan with visions of making
Afghan-led, advocated green energy, and aimed a positive difference for the Afghan people. Noah
to create new jobs in the never-ending endeavour Coburn’s Losing Afghanistan systematically details
to win hearts and minds. Nevertheless, it failed; why many of these dreams died. Sometimes
Locke’s dream died alongside the unused wind this was fault of the dreamer, other times these

dreams fell victim to the chaotic and contradictory constructions organized by the state and
environment that is Afghanistan today. international organizations. The theme of food
Milan S. Sturgis Royal Anthropological Institute scarcity and the suffering it causes is advanced in
the chapters that consider the cluster bombs and
Collinson, Paul & Helen Macbeth (eds). Food landmines that immobilize farmland (Oyeniyi &
in zones of conflict: cross-disciplinary Akinyoade, chap. 2); damaged irrigation systems
perspectives. xvi, 235 pp., maps, figs, illus., (Kent, chap. 4); and how immobilizing people
bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, limits their ability to access food, resulting in
2014. £60.00 (cloth) malnutrition, related diseases, and starvation
(Cwiertka, chap. 10).
Food and warfare have often been regarded as This volume also makes various valuable
disparate areas of inquiry. The analysis of food has proposals for stakeholders to consider. In their
tended to emphasize layered meanings ranging analysis of refugee camps, Henry and Macbeth
from nutrition to its symbolic and social (chap. 3) advocate the local production of food,
importance, along with its capacity to embody which they argue is more accessible and can be
memory and history. Studies of warfare, produced at a lower cost. They note that the
conversely, have highlighted the disruption of benefits for the local economy where the camp is
lives and the destruction of infrastructures on situated cannot be underestimated. Focusing on
varying scales determined by their sociopolitical the role of international religious organizations,
contexts. However, there are very few works that Kimaro (chap. 5) highlights the role they can play
bring together the intricate relationships between in creating safe havens. Campbell’s work on
food and conflict. Food in zones of conflict throws American soldiers fighting during the Second Gulf
into relief the fact that people’s ability to cultivate War (chap. 11) is intriguing, demonstrating how
and procure food is undermined by warfare and the soldiers adopted ‘the enemy cuisine’ in order
that these problems continue after the conflict is to assert their agency in a situation where they felt
assumed to have ended. The sixteen contributors, disempowered. Such are the paradoxes of war.
along with the editors in the volume’s Observations on how images of starvation can
introduction, advance the argument that be politicized to bring about peace and
humanitarian and development interventions will reconciliation (Collinson, chap. 13; Talton, chap.
run short of achieving their goal of addressing 14) prompt the reader to pay attention to the
food scarcity unless they consider the relationship complex connection between food and zones of
between conflict and food insecurity. The conflict. Messer’s observation in chapter 16
complexity of this relationship is highlighted by encapsulates the substantive issues explored in
the fact that food can give rise to conflict and also this volume: ‘Food insecurity as a result of conflict
can be used as a weapon of war. In any case, and conflict resulting from food insecurity are
armed conflict affects a population’s ability to dual sides of food war analysis’ (p. 219).
procure food in a sustainable and meaningful The strength of this edited collection lies in the
way. This is the theme that forms the backbone of breadth of case-studies from different parts of the
this cross-disciplinary volume, which covers a world. Employing methodologies based both on
range of case-studies from different parts of the ethnographic fieldwork and historical sources,
world. these chapters effectively demonstrate the
In chapter 1, on food and war in Sierra Leone, diligent work required in order to explore the
Shelper brings to light two critical themes. First, ongoing conflicts taking place on the global
food is one avenue through which we can acquire stage. The volume could have put more emphasis
a palpable understanding of human suffering. on two critical issues: (a) women’s role in
Second: ‘Food has the uncanny ability to tie the procuring and preparing food during times of
minutiae of everyday experience to broader conflict and beyond; and (b) the divide and the
cultural patterns, hegemonic structures and unequal relationship between the Global South
political-global economic processes’ (p. 289). and the Global North that devastatingly affect
These insights lead Shelper to conclude that food food supplies on a long-term basis. Other than
is ‘literally everyday’ (p. 289). Other authors these omissions, this book successfully illustrates
substantiate the point that while food sustains us, an under-recognized relationship between
it is also part of social reproduction, an insight warfare and food.
that makes us realize that the personal experience Parin Dossa Simon Fraser University
of war is grounded in everyday life. Hence the
authors argue that the importance of food cannot Moss, Pamela & Michael J. Prince. Weary
be overlooked in situations of post-war warriors: power, knowledge, and the invisible

wounds of soldiers. xv, 270 pp., tables, faradization (electroshock therapy), the brutal
bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, conditions for transporting severely mentally ill
2014. £60.00 (paper) US soldiers home from the Pacific theatre of the
Second World War, and late twentieth- and early
Military veterans’ psychological suffering is twenty-first-century pastoral and religious
arguably foundational to the meaning, character, counselling in North American and UK militaries.
and moral and political significance of modern The monograph’s second valuable
warfare: its importance spans the late nineteenth intervention is an exhaustive mining of Foucault’s
century and today’s global network of imperial, oeuvre, along with poststructuralist feminist
humanitarian, and counter-insurgency wars. theory and science studies, for theoretical
Service members and the societies in which they articulations that speak directly to questions of
are embedded rely on cultural and scientific military embodiment and psychiatric knowledge
understandings of psychic life to make sense of production. Moss and Prince posit the ‘weary
war’s complex moral, political, and existential warrior’ as a ‘fourth type’ of deviant alongside the
entailments. All this makes Pamela Moss and criminals, incorrigibles, and perverts enumerated
Michael Prince’s project in Weary warriors in Foucault’s Abnormal lectures (1974-5). The
absolutely essential. This interdisciplinary book – notion that ‘power produces ill soldiers’ (p. 61),
the authors’ areas of expertise include geography, while not wholly novel, is tremendously
sociology, political science, and gender studies – productive when applied at the scale and in the
takes on fundamentally multifaceted topics, not detail of this book. It reveals diagnosis as both
the least being how the titular ‘weary warriors’, regulatory regime and ‘mangle of practice’
transformed by war’s emotional and (p. 64) for clinicians; considers modes of military
psychological toll, have been inhabited as subjectification; parses the contrapuntal
subjects, managed as problems, and produced as militarization of psychiatry and the
possibilities across diverse historical and national psychiatrization of the military; and illuminates
contexts for the past century and a half. ‘Culture’ the intimate, interpersonal, and gendered afterlife
gets rather short shrift as an analytical frame here, of war trauma among soldiers. The book situates
but anthropologists studying war trauma and war’s psychological casualties and the categories
military institutions will learn much from this by which they are organized as mutually
volume. constitutive rather than reducing either to the
The book’s contribution is welcome and ground, context, or ontological precondition for
distinctive in two important ways. First, it places the other.
the paradox of military psychiatry at the centre of Weary warriors’ broad scope and military focus
its analysis. Soldiers are intentionally, not just are its strengths but are not without some
incidentally, exposed to violence. Military weaknesses. The authors deliberately employ an
psychiatry exists not solely to heal them, but also eclectic range of terms to describe war-related
to maintain their discipline and utility for future psychic distress and its sufferers (p. x), from
use and exposure. To my knowledge, Weary ‘psychological wound’, ‘war-related neurosis’,
warriors is the first survey of modern war trauma ‘invisible wound’, and ‘trauma’, to ‘ravished
orientated around this distinctive biopolitical mind’, ‘emotional distress’, being ‘burned out’,
positioning. The volume attends to it by mapping ‘nervous exhaustion’, and ‘breakdown in battle’.
gradual changes, recurrent themes, and However, these terms are not synonyms, and the
surprising reversals that are not linked to specific analysis’s compelling critical constructivism is
conflicts or national contexts. Historically and undermined by their seemingly indiscriminate
ethnographically minded readers may be use. War trauma’s ascribed status as ‘injury’ or
frustrated or disoriented by the close ‘neurosis’, as ‘emotional’ or ‘psychological’, is, for
juxtaposition of examples that are nations or all the reasons the authors elaborate,
decades apart – in chapter 4 (p. 98), for example, fundamental to its ontology.
a compelling recitation of terms used to describe The choice of ‘weary warrior’ as the focus of
‘malingerers’ lumps together a century’s worth of the investigation appropriately encapsulates the
vocabulary from both sides of the Atlantic, but is specificity of military experience, but it also
presented in the present tense. Just as often, confines the stakes of military violence solely to
however, this approach enables the authors to soldiers, veterans, and the people close to them.
draw out provocative and compellingly rendered Weary warriors scarcely refers to the sundry other
historical resonances, as in chapter 6, between weary subjects of ‘precarious life’, to use the title
the spatial and institutional governance of phrase of Judith Butler’s 2003 book, who also
mentally disordered First World War soldiers’ experience the global-scale sovereign and

biopolitical violence of modern warfare. Soldiers’ and modernization (Truman’s Point IV, 1949)
and veterans’ trauma and weariness are directly gave rise to the foundation of agencies such as
implicated in the governance, preservation, and USAID and SEADAG.
disposability of these foreign enemy and civilian The second part, ‘Anthropologists’
lives. Addressing the nature of this relationship is articulations with national security state’, quotes a
undoubtedly challenging, addressing it fully is 1966 private letter written by the anthropologist
perhaps the task of a different book, but it is Elizabeth Bacon, who warned that
disappointing that the politics of the violence at ‘anthropological research is certainly being
the heart of warriors’ weariness receives no endangered by the activities of CIA’ (p. 139). It
attention here. includes nine chapters and examines the
Kenneth MacLeish Vanderbilt University connections between the US security system and
anthropologists. Chapter 6 and 7 delve into the
relations of anthropologists with the CIA. The
Price, David H. Cold War anthropology: the CIA, documentation of anthropologists employed by
the Pentagon, and the growth of dual use the CIA is extremely difficult, as chapter 6 shows.
anthropology. xxxi, 452 pp., tables, illus., However, Price does an excellent job of
bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, illustrating how the collaboration with the agency
2016. £20.99 (paper) for some anthropologists was a natural
continuation of their wartime links. What emerges
Discussing the relation between anthropologists as significant for the post-war period is the
and colonialism, Gough argued, ‘We tended to proliferation of funding for anthropologists
accept the imperialist framework as given because working in areas of interest for the United States;
we were influenced by the dominant ideas of our as well as the launching of subsidies for ‘native’
time, and partly because at the time there was anthropologists to join the AAA and its
little anyone could do to dismantle the empire’ journals.
(‘New proposals for anthropologists’, Current One of the most chilling aspects of Price’s
Anthropology 9, 1968). Cold War anthropology is a book is the exploration of how ignorance was
good reminder of how links between often used as an excuse for the lack of
anthropology and the state do not concern only accountability. Chapter 8 examines how
British colonialism. Price’s book is an exhaustive anthropological research was misappropriated by
account of how military and intelligence agencies the CIA to develop interrogation methods.
strongly affected the formation of anthropological However, the most extreme form of these
research in the United States from the post-war connections were the cases of collaboration in the
period. The book, benefiting from the Freedom of field. Chapter 9 explores some of these dubious
Information Act, is based on meticulous cases in Southeast Asia. Although certain aspects
research in governmental as well as private of these cases remain to be disclosed, it seemed
archives, published sources, and personal that anthropological work had ‘dual audiences
communication with some of the period’s and dual uses’ (p. 246).
protagonists. The next three chapters discuss the issue of
The first part, ‘Cold War political-economic counterinsurgency and how the methods used to
disciplinary formations’, consists of five chapters. retrieve ethnographic data were adapted for
The first chapter delves into the post-war military use. Chapter 10 examines how
reorganization of the intelligence agencies, ethnographic cultural indexing systems were
whereas chapter 2 discusses how anthropologists, adapted by the US army; these adapted
except for a few radical leftists, followed the taxonomies simplified and reduced ethnographic
‘mainstream consciousness’ (p. 52) of Cold War data and cultural knowledge for intelligence
American imperialism. Chapter 3 examines how purposes. These activities worried the AAA, which
the American Anthropological Association tried to develop a code of ethics (chap. 11).
(hereafter AAA) benefited from the emerging Chapter 12 gives an example of how good
funding opportunities tied to private intentions could end badly by focusing on the
organizations with strong links to the state and its case of Gerald Hickey and his work in Vietnam in
intelligence agencies, like the Ford Foundation, the 1960s. The social movements of the 1960s
the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie and 1970s led to the emergence within the AAA
Institute. Chapter 4 discusses how these links led of voices against the militarization of
to the formation of various area studies centres anthropology, which were mostly comprised of
(MIT, Harvard). The final chapter considers how young radical anthropologists and students, but
the US post-war dogma for world development also including some older, established

anthropologists, such as Marshall Sahlins Recast as meek and docile ‘oriental’ women, they
(chap. 13). were seen to need the United States’ help to
Chapter 14 concludes that the history of Cold emancipate themselves from patriarchy. This
War anthropology should be remembered, chapter succinctly works out how double
especially in times of crisis. Cuts in funding and standards were applied – as American women
departments’ budgets; the privatization of had yet to be granted the equal rights in law that
universities; high unemployment rates among were given to their Japanese counterparts.
anthropology postgraduates; the promulgation of The second part, ‘Transnational memory
paradigms that take our attention away from the borders’, includes possibly the monograph’s most
exigencies of political economy – all are markers complex chapter – its chapter 3 examines the
of such eras. Accountability is a prerequisite roots of Japanese society’s historical revisionism
of any anthropological research, and and its ramifications. Yoneyama situates this
anthropologists should be vigilant at all times. within Cold War politics and a narrative of Japan’s
Cold war anthropology reminds us of these ‘liberation’ by the United States, one which did
important principles. not deal with America’s own actions during the
Eleni Sideri University of Macedonia; Hellenic war. Through the example of the Atarashii rekishi
Open University kyōkasho o tsukuru kai (Textbook Reform
Society), she outlines how its mission to rewrite
Japanese history textbooks was undertaken to
Yoneyama, Lisa. Cold War ruins: transpacific instil patriotism in Japan’s post-war generations,
critique of American justice and Japanese war since, according to the society’s members, the
crimes. xi, 320 pp., illus., bibliogr. Durham, textbooks commonly used provided a
N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2016. £19.99 (paper) ‘masochistic’ view of Japan’s past. In chapter 4,
Yoneyama looks at efforts at redress by Asian
Lisa Yoneyama’s timely book examines how Cold Americans, including their attempts not to be
War politics dominated the discourses on forgotten. The key example is the Californian
commemoration, remembrance, and redress in legislation that would allow US citizens to sue
Japan and the United States. The work is situated Japan for being used as slave labour, which,
‘in the genealogy of transpacific critique that has however, is trumped by federal legislation that
emerged at the interstices of Asian studies, sees all accounts as settled through the Peace
American studies, and Asian American studies – or Treaty, making it virtually impossible for victims
more broadly, area studies, ethnic studies, and to find justice.
postcolonial studies’ (p. ix). The introduction, The fifth, final, chapter could serve as a
‘Transpacific Cold War formations and the conclusion. Here, the focus is set on the
question of (un)redressability’, sets the book’s Smithsonian dispute, an argument between
tone, both proposing theoretical considerations various political actors as to how much context
about ‘justice’ and explaining America’s grand was needed for the Enola Gay, which dropped the
narrative of the ‘good war’. It also considers how first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, to be included in
broader geopolitical formations influenced the an exhibition commemorating the end of the
lack of reparations. These narratives are central to Second World War. Yoneyama describes how an
the following chapters, in which the complex attempt to make it a balanced exhibit went
relationship between Japan, Asia, and the United against the United States’ dominant narrative of
States is viewed from the angle of Cold War having ‘saved Japan’ by dropping two nuclear
power politics. bombs, and this eventually resulted in a change in
The book’s five chapters are divided into two the exhibit’s layout. Ironically, as she argues, Cold
parts. Part one, ‘Space of occupation’, consists of War power politics required the support of Japan’s
two chapters. The first deals with Okinawa and its conservative forces, and this, combined with the
situation of having been ‘liberated’, while United States’ own rewriting of its wartime
remaining occupied. A close reading of Tatsuhiro narratives, helped further Japan’s amnesia about
Ōshiro’s novel The cocktail party (1967) is central its own atrocities. The book ends with an epilogue
to the argument, since Yoneyama sees each of his in which the choice of cover picture is explained,
characters as symbolizing a particular relationship and which seeks to answer the questions of how
with Okinawa, Japan, and the United States. The ‘the Cold War impaired postwar transitional
second chapter deals with the United States’ justice’ and to what extent we can ‘understand
appropriation of Japanese women: seeing itself as renewed calls for historical justice since the 1990s
their ‘saviour’ and forgetting that only recently as facilitating or disrupting the transpacific
they had been portrayed as female warriors. entanglement that are rooted in post-World War

II institutional and epistemic formations’ should have been caught, especially in relation to
(p. 205). post-war Germany. Lastly, Cold War ruins is not
While chapters are compelling and just about Japan, or Asia, or the United States, but
convincing, as well as theoretically well about the wider region, demonstrating that
grounded, it remains unclear how the material history, memory, and redress are complex issues
was chosen: it is not apparent why the book that are not limited by national borders. This
makes use of novels alongside court rulings and book therefore demonstrates that it may be time
media coverage, or why certain examples have to re-evaluate area studies by broadening its
been selected over others; thus the question of scope and focus, reinvigorating the discipline by
‘counter-discourse’ is never really raised. studying complex transnational phenomena.
Furthermore, there are some minor errors that Griseldis Kirsch SOAS, University of London

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Book and film reviews

Childhoods Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 16: 4, 1988)

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

workshop of artisans engaged in mirror put, Gallaga M. and Blainey’s book is an

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

This detailed analysis is based on anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

managed in contemporary India. To this end, juxtaposes the Western dichotomy of

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Theory and method In part 2, ‘Engagements’, we encounter

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 24, 389-423

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