Friends of Friends

Anagnost, Ann, Andrea Arai and Hai Ren.2013. Global futures in East Asia: youth, na-tion, and the new economy in uncertain times.Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. 311pp.Pb.: $22.46. ISBN 978–0804776189.

Global Futures in East Asia brings togethervarious ethnographic studies on the conditionof young people in a post-miracle era. Espe-cially in the 1980s, the different economies ofEast Asia saw what was then deemed as theAsian miracle characterised by manufacturingand export. In such economies as Taiwan,Japan and South Korea, for example, themiracle of post-war economic growth meantlifelong job security for their citizens. Drivenby different crises from the 1990s onward,the economic landscape has changed dramati-cally. Job security for the young people of EastAsia has become an elusive dream.Complicating the situation is the region’s turnto neoliberalism in which welfare support forthe unemployed has gradually diminished. Thisturn has magnified the responsibility especiallyof young people to navigate the new conditionof economic uncertainties. To capture suchnavigations, the book’s well-written introduc-tion foregrounds the key concept of ‘life-making’: the act of investing in oneself to ensurea ‘forward career progression as embodiedhuman capital’ (p. 2).

Throughout the ten chapters, the volumeattempts to offer a glimpse of different modesof life-making in the context of global neolib-eralism and the loss of job security andwelfare. It thus draws attention to a fascinatingrange of cases from a shopping district inTaiwan (chapter 2) to a training school fordomestic helpers in Beijing (chapter 6) andworkplace TVdramas in Japan (chapter 9). Eachof these cases is preceded by an overview oflocal political and economic history, whichexplains the conditions of uncertainty contem-porary youth are confronted with. Someelaborate examples discuss the complicatedprocess of neoliberalisation in China (chapter 1),

the increasingly competitive environment ofuniversities in Taiwan (chapter 5) and SouthKorean responses to the Asian Debt Crisis ofthe 1990s (chapter 10).

One of the objectives of the volume is to‘demonstrate the power of anthropology totrace out the connections between people’slived experience with larger processes workingat the global scale’ (p. 3). This is a welcomeintervention in the literature, which eitherassesses the region’s problems from the macroperspective of economics or political scienceor entirely celebrates the successes of EastAsia, thereby glossing over its internal contra-dictions. Chapter 3, for example, provides athorough discussion of the case of childrenwith leukaemia who could not access medicalservices in Beijing because they are simplytoo expensive. Many impoverished familieswho come from rural areas thus seek the atten-tion of the media through which they hope togain public sympathy. The ethnographicaccount traces how a 10-year-old girl’s strugglewith leukaemia becomes a media sensation,which, ironically, does not lead to her treatmentbut to the construction of a paved road to hervillage. Local authorities have responded insteadto the sensationalised conditions of the child’scommunity. As a result, public attention hasbeen ‘directed not at the inadequacies of thehealth care system’ but on the road that thegovernment has deemed as embodyingdevelopment (p. 87).

One recurring theme throughout thechapters is that neoliberalism is not only aboutthe creation of a free market and the decline ofwelfare support, it also fosters an ethos thatmagnifies the individual’s burden to succeed.In other words, young people must become‘enterprising selves’ (p. 14). Indeed, thediscourses and practices employed by progres-sive intellectuals in South Korea (chapter 10),training and workshops in a pharmaceuticalcompany (chapter 8), and patriotic educationpolicies and textbooks in Japan (chapter 7) col-lectively celebrate individualism and personal

118 Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale (2014) 22, 1 118–142. © 2014 European Association of Social Anthropologists.doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12065

Reviews

achievements. The chapters, however, percep-tively critique these projects because thecelebratory tone ultimately conceals andreinforces the inequalities brought about byneoliberalism.

For a volume that is supposed to be acollection of studies on young people, itsdiscussion of fundamental ideas in youthstudies is lacking. What constitutes youth, forexample, in the context of East Asia? This isnot simply an issue of deciding on an agebracket. Different societies have their ownrhetoric and expectations concerning what itmeans to be young and when adulthoodcommences. In addition, the chapters areuneven in their treatment of youth as the ana-lytical focus. Some deal with them extensively,others only tangentially. Strongest is the workon university students (chapter 4) who exer-cise ‘self-management’ (p. 101) to preparethemselves for the competitive marketplace.Also, the fact that they are all growing up ina post-miracle era should compel observersto think of youth as a generational categorybecause of shared experiences of uncertainty.I understand that the chapters are idiographic.However, the very concept of ‘life-making’potentially adds a new dimension to thecharacterisation of East Asian youth as ageneration. In other words, young people, asthe chapters themselves show in differentways, do not simply succumb to alienation ordelinquency, but are actively involved innavigating their uncertain times.

JAYEEL SERRANO CORNELIOMax Planck Institute for the Study of Religiousand Ethnic Diversity (Germany)/Ateneo deManila University (Philippines)

Boissevain, Jeremy. 2013. Factions, friends andfeasts. Anthropological perspectives on theMediterranean. Oxford and New York: BerghahnBooks. 310pp. Hb.: $95.00. ISBN 978–0857458445.

An unread letter always carries news. Butwhat is new about a volume consisting of

essays and introductions to books that havebeen published before? On the one hand,this book deals with matters and questionsthat characterise Boissevain’s work onMediterranean themes, such as factionalismand patronage, religion and politics, networksof kin, friends and followers, and morerecently tourism and its aftermaths. On theother hand, it approaches key aspectsconcerning social anthropology both as a disci-pline and a source of critical imagination. Indeed,Factions, Friends and Feasts is the kind of workthat only a scholar with an outstanding back-ground could provide. Nurtured by long-termethnographic research and an ongoing commit-ment to theoretical development, this volume ismore than the reunion of chosen bits andpieces. Instead, it transcends the narrowschema of specialised expertise attached toethnographic loci, and shows that the mostimportant debates are sometimes easilyoverlooked.

The essays are mostly arranged chrono-logically, except for the opening ones, writtenin 1981 and 2001. These two chapters,arranged into Patterns, the title of the firstsection, ponder the relation between climateand social life, echoing classic scholarly inter-ests in the social and cultural implications ofthe environment. Boissevain extends thistopic to include certain ‘Mediterranean’unhealed scars associated with persistingstereotypes and prejudices concerning religionand ethnicity but also colonial dependence,wars and pogroms.

Communities, the following section,consists of a classic ethnographic-basedexamination of three communities: theMaltese village of Farrug, the Sicilian agrariantown of Leone, and the Italians of Montrealin Canada. These works were originallypublished in 1964, 1966 and 1970, respec-tively, and prove the force of anthropologyin the way Evans-Pritchard welcomed thebrilliant Julian Pitt-Rivers’ People of the Sierraby stressing that the abstractions of socialsciences are set forth and studied as relationsbetween persons and in terms of what those

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© 2014 European Association of Social Anthropologists

abstractions mean for them’ (1954: x). In otherwords, Boissevain reminds us that anthropol-ogy is not just about where and amongst whombut about how we deal with Questions andPuzzles. This is precisely the title of the nextsection – a hinge to the entire book. Its fivechapters approach several analytical problemsborn out of Boissevain’s ethnographicresearches but also within a broader dialoguewith his formation as anthropologist at theLSE and the intellectual environment of theBritish anthropology of that time. AlthoughBoissevain deals with the now classic critics ofthe homeostatic assumptions of structural-functional theories (enduring groups andrelations, values, norms and institutions, andso on), he focuses on the relations of powerbehind their paradigmatic strength: an utterlycurrent aspect of the university systems and livesof Homo Academicus (in Bourdieu’s terms).The dynamics and analytical understandings offactionalism developed here are ethnographicallythreaded with an examination of the senses ofbelonging, patronage and religion, and regionaland ethnic identities.

Ritual, Insiders and Outsiders, in turn, is a‘strange potpourri’ – as the author puts it – thatcould be renamed ‘With Elias in the Mediterra-nean’, for it blends an honest and rich expres-sion of Boissevain’s process of understandinglocal-level politics, inequalities and cultural di-lemmas posed by the so-called touristificationprocesses. This section does justice to theconsistent effort that runs throughout thebook of taking into account the developmentstaking place in the ethnographic fields, suchas links between crisis and migration, violence,commodification, environmental issues, andrelated economic and political processes asso-ciated with globalisation.

Finally, the section Reflections consists ofa single chapter where Boissevain delves intohis failed prophecies about the decline of festiand patronage in Malta. This very humbleaccount offers a remarkable way of concludingthe book. Through it we learn that a long-termperspective is as crucial as the detailedattention to what is actually going on in the

ever-fascinating emerging present for further-ing the critical capacity of the anthropologicalimagination.

In sum, the book provides many insightsand encourages the reader to wonder aboutthe extent to which current debates aboutotherness might be an impoverished versionof a less heroic and oft-neglected theme: thecultural disposition to regard difference asmere exoticism while the by-products ofdiversity (such as social, cultural and spatial-territorial inequality) are confined to thepoetic anthems of western remorse à la science.

ReferenceEvans-Pritchard, E. E. 1954. Foreword, inJ. A. Pitt-Rivers, The people of the Sierra, ix–xi.New York: Criterion Books.

JULIETA GAZTAÑAGAUniversidad de Buenos Aires – CONICET(Argentina)

Brinker, Helmut. 2011. Secrets of the sacred:empowering Buddhist images in clear, in code,and in cache. Lawrence: Spencer Museum ofArt, University of Kansas/Seattle: Universityof Washington Press. X+214pp. Hb.:$46.95. ISBN 0295990899.

In this work the lateHelmut Brinker (1939–2012),until 2006 professor of East Asian art at theUniversity of Zurich, studies the developmentand expansion of Vajrayāna Buddhism in

China in the first millennium CE and its transfer

to and transformation in Japan in the period

between the 10th and 13th centuries. His main

focus here is on iconography, tantric practice

and ritual (including consecration rituals of

sacred objects), and worship of sacred Buddhist

relics (by rulers, Buddhist clerics and the laity).

The first part of the book (chapter 1: ‘FromImage to Icon’) serves as a kind of historical andthematic introduction, which predominantlydiscusses the question of the actual and spiritualpresence of divinities in images. This is done froman interesting historical, interdisciplinary andcross-cultural perspective, connecting concepts

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contained in early Buddhist texts from Indiaand China with an investigation ofhistorically connected images and portraitsof Buddha Śākyamuni (such as King Udayana’s

‘Portrait’ of the Buddha, pp. 16–23, ‘The King

Aśoka Image’, pp. 23–33) based on sculptural

evidence from areas of northern and north-

western India, from various dynastic centres in

China and from Japan.

Certainly the most important and alsohighly fascinating finding discussed by theauthor is literally based on internal inspectionof some of these sculptures, which broughtto light an astonishing range of sacred depositsin a number of well-documented cases.Among others, coins, bronze mirrors, variouskinds of texts, graphic illustrations of holyscriptures (bianxiang) and even textile simula-cra of human intestines and organs werefound. In one case a small coil of silver andcopper wire was found installed inside thehead as an (invisible) one of the 32supreme marks of excellence of a Buddha.These findings led Brinker to the conclusionthat in addition to the eye-opening ritualduring the consecration of Buddhist images,‘[s]ecret caches and sacred enshrinements,special interior markings and hidden inscrip-tions transform images into icons’ (p. 50).

The historical analysis throughout themain part of the book (chapter 2: ‘Mysteriesof Buddha Relics and Esoteric Divinities’) isbased not only on a wide range of historicaltextual sources but also impresses on accountof the vast amount of art-historical material(drawings, paintings, sculptures, reliquarycaskets etc. from various archaeological exca-vations and museum collections), which ismeticulously scrutinised by the author.Detailed descriptive accounts are dedicated toselected topics, such as ‘The Esoteric Images ofAnguosi’ (pp. 54–59), ‘Ichiji Kinrin’ (pp. 63–71),‘Buddhist Relic Caches’ (pp. 85–98), ‘TheFamensi Finger-bone Relic’ and ‘The Re-enshrinement of the Relic’ (pp. 114–44). Thebook is illustrated by 90 excellent black-and-whitephotos and is accompanied by a very usefulglossary ofChinese and Japanese names andwords

with corresponding scientific transliteration andalso in Chinese or Japanese script. A section withnotes (containing mainly bibliographic referencesand short additional information), a comprehensivebibliography,whichprovides an excellent overviewon primary sources, secondary works in Chinese,Japanese and Korean as well as works in Westernlanguages and an index conclude this highly recom-mendable book.

From awider perspective and with regard to amore general theory of authentication ofBuddhist images, Brinker’s discussion of oneform (so far largely neglected or underrepre-sented in respective research) of the empower-ment of Buddhist images – ‘in cache’ – cannotbe overestimated. As the title of the bookindicates, the other two forms would berepresented by empowerment ‘in clear’(according to apparent or uncoded appearance)and ‘in code’ (according to simple or complexcodes for expressing images and symbols ofBuddhist divinities). One can certainly agreewith the author that (whenever possible) theanalysis of such cached deposits is critical forrevealing the original meaning and function ofa particular icon (and therefore is of consider-able help for clarifying the contemporary his-torical context of its creation), and that theinvestigation and understanding of rituals thattransform(ed) images into icons will remain animportant task. Froma social anthropological per-spective, itmay be added that (general) knowledgeof such rituals from texts must be complemented(whenever possible) by a reconstruction ordocumentation of the specific rituals performed.

Through the combination of art-historicalstudies (in this case mainly of ritual objects) withphilological, archaeological and historical anthro-pological research, Brinker’s work gives a valuableimpetus for further investigations in the field ofBuddhist art of Central Asia, China and Japanand at the same time opens up new dimensionsand a wider geographic and historical scope forinterdisciplinary research in Buddhist studies.

CHRISTIAN JAHODAInstitute for Social Anthropology, AustrianAcademy of Sciences (Austria)

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Déléage, Pierre. 2013. Inventer l’écriture: rituelsprophétiques et chamaniques des indiensd’Amérique du Nord, XVIIe–XIXe siècles. Paris:Les Belles Lettres. 248pp. Pb.: €25. ISBN978-2-251-15001-7.Déléage, Pierre. 2013. Le geste et l’écriture:langues des signes, amérindiens, logographies.Paris: Armand Colin. 145pp. Pb.: €20. ISBN978-2-200-28062-8.

These two short books by anthropologist PierreDéléage gather a series of studies exploring theboundaries of writing, from prophetic charts totranscriptions of Sign Languages. While excellentanthropological investigations have alreadyaddressed the topic (like Carlo Severi’s work onkuna picture-writing, an important influence onthe two books), Déléage’s inquiry stands out byits theoretical ambition. The two books succeedin combining detailed and erudite accounts ofNative American visual cultures with a broaderreflection on the nature and origins of writing.

Any author studying what used to becalled ‘pictographic’ or ‘ideographic’ symbolsmust deal with the legends that surroundthem. One such myth holds that there arewidespread, stable, all-purpose writing sys-tems that refer immediately to things and canbe understood in a language-independentway. (Today, Bliss symbols are the closestone can get to an ‘ideographic’ system; butsuch cases are as controversial as they are rare.)According to a second myth, ‘pictographic’systems are intrinsically incomplete forerun-ners of genuine writing. Like others beforehim, Déléage dutifully debunks the twomyths; but he does more than that. He showshow various transcriptions of Sign Languageswere influenced by the first myth – the viewthat writing might work as a language-independent medium. This is clearly the casewith Western attempts at writing the PlainsIndian Sign Language (PISL), described in LeGeste et l’Écriture. The invention, by somePISL users, of a pidgin used for tradingbetween tribes, meant that PISL couldensure language-independent communicationbetween two users who could hear and speak,

but could not understand each other, except bysigning. Pidgin PISL worked very much in thesame language-independent way that Chinesewriting was (mythically) supposed to work. Thisinterpretation of PISL influenced not just linguistsand anthropologists, but also PISL-imitators,from the US military to the Boy Scouts. Such apictographic view also informed many transcrip-tions of Western sign languages. Déléage, how-ever, is not so interested in purely pictorialtranscriptions. The transcriptions that he studiesin depth are logographic (Lewis Hadley’s forPISL or Joseph Piroux’s for the French Languedes Signes). Beyond their genesis, what intereststhe author in these writing techniques is theirultimate failure. Pictographic transcriptions wereuseful to compose dictionaries, and kinetographictranscriptions found their niche in the scientificliterature, but logographic transcriptions neverseemed to succeed.

The reason, according to Déléage, is thatlogographic writing systems usually begin,and survive, as ‘bounded’ writing systems(écritures attachées). In other words, their useis restricted to a handful of specific contexts:rituals and prayers. Since ‘bounded’ writingsystems do not need to possess the kind ofall-purpose generative power found in ‘un-bound’ systems, their semiotic structure canbe quite free. Pure logography, for instance,is much easier to apply to a bounded system– where only a handful of relevant words needto be encoded – than to an unbound one. InDéléage’s words, most bounded writingsystems will be ‘selective’ (i.e. unable toencode the totality of meaningful utterancesin a given language), while unbound writingsystems will always be ‘complete’. The prob-lem of bounded systems is that they usuallydisappear along with the practice they arebound to. In both books, Míkmaq logographsserve as the prototype of a ‘bounded’ writingsystem. These glyphs were invented by 17th-century missionaries in an attempt to helpnatives memorise bits of Catholic liturgywithout having to teach them the Latin alphabet(either to keep that knowledge for themselves,or simply to spare the effort). This goal, Déléage

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says, explains the structure of the system, whichwas extremely logographic. As a consequence,Míkmaq glyphs could hardly be used togenerate long, non-liturgical texts. Missionarieschose a logographic medium to attach Míkmaqwriting to a specific ritual context.

Inventer l’Écriture is devoted to suchbounded writing systems in the context of fiverituals invented by Algonquian prophets andshamans. Déléage distinguishes two main kindsof visual notation for ritual narration. On theone hand, Algonquian prophets made use ofelaborate maps to describe visions, cosmologicalor eschatological narratives. Though they wereoften called ‘books’ or ‘Bibles’ by the prophets’followers, these visual props appear to havebeen used in much the same way that childrenuse hopscotch patterns to recite certain rhymes:a perilous journey from earth to heaven issketched in a pattern that encodes the mainscansions of a recitation, otherwise known byheart. Déléage contrasts those highly ‘bounded’,highly selective symbols with two liturgicalnotation systems: Charles Meiaskwat’smnemotechnic for Catholic prayers, and thesymbols of the Ojibwe Midewiwin society.Compared with prophetic maps or charts, thosenotationswere used tomemorise texts of greaterlength, or variety, in much greater detail. Theyfitted a need for exact retention of relativelylong texts – a need created by the co-optationof an exclusive elite of medicine men, such asthe Ojibwe Midews. Interestingly, such minutetranscription techniques did notmake propheticmaps obsolete; both coexisted in theMidewiwintradition – the map being used to narratecosmological tales, the transcriptions serving tofixate therapeutic chants. Likewise, Déléagenotes that Cree prophets, who made use ofvision maps, were probably also using Evans’Cree syllabary, as ‘bounded’ writing, to reciteWesleyan hymns.

Déléage’s reflexions on bounded writingsystems do more than dispel the second mythof pictography – the view that something like‘pictography’ gave birth to modern writingsystems. He also sheds light on the reasonsthat made the myth plausible. Both Inventer

l’Écriture and Le Geste et l’Écriture forcefullyargue against vague categories like ‘pictogra-phy’ or ‘ideography’, and the outdated evolu-tionary theories that popularised them. Bothbooks, however, suggest that ‘bounded’ andselective writing systems are the right placeto consider if we want to understand howwriting was born. Inventer l’Écriture arguesthat complete writing systems were morelikely to arise in small communities of ritualspecialists, like the Midewiwin. Their ritualsplaced such high demands on human memorythat complex visual props became a necessity.Those esoteric societies, however, were alsothe least likely to propagate their inventionbeyond narrow boundaries – to unbind theirwriting. This intriguing view may help explainwhy the rise of writing systems as we knowthem – systems that were complete, unboundand massively diffused at the same time – wassuch a rare event in history.

OLIVIER MORINCentral European University (Hungary)

Dresch, Paul and Hannah Skoda. 2012.Legalism: anthropology and history. Oxford andNew York: Oxford University Press. 360pp.Hb.: $97.44. ISBN 978-0-19-966426-9.

An edited volume with two introductionssuch as Legalism: Anthropology and Historydeserves a closer look. The two editors, PaulDresch (anthropology) and Hannah Skoda(history), each address from their own disci-pline’s perspective the subject of the volume:legalism. They define the concept, at its sim-plest, as ‘a discussion of moral order’ (p. 13)and more specifically as ‘rules that are distinctfrom practice (rules that are “formulated”, inother words) and rules characterized by theclaim to be more than simply spontaneousimprovisations, but in some sense often system-atic’ (p. 39). The two introductions emphasisethat the meaning of these rules is ‘to order avision of the moral world and endow it withmeaning’ (pp. 39–40). As people worldwide goabout this endeavour in manifold ways, the

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editors argue, they have gathered a wide rangeof chapters that range from ancient Asia Minorto medieval England, classical India to 16th-century Burma as well as 18th- and 19th-century Algeria. By exploring legalism in thesedifferent locales, all chapters aim at investigatingbroad questions such as ‘What do we mean bylaw?What is its place in different forms of soci-ety? How is law contingent upon geography,economic considerations, religious and moraloutlooks, or political systems?’ (p. 42). Severalauthors set their findings against certaintrends within legal anthropological writing thatthey consider to have falsely overemphasisedthe role of ‘practice’ in the investigation oflaw to the disadvantage of the importance andcentrality of rules in people’s perceptions of‘law’.

Several contributors to this volume,including Judith Scheele, criticise the conceptof ‘legal pluralism’ as having ‘watered down’the concept of law (referring to the two mostprominent critical texts by Tamanaha 1993and Roberts 1998) by declaring non-statepractices of negotiation or implicit regulationto be ‘law’, and thereby ‘implicitly smugglingthe state back in’ (p. 198). It is striking that intheir criticism, none of the more recent workon legal pluralism has been taken into account.Scheele herself speaks of giving but a ‘crudesummary’ of the tenets of legal pluralism inher chapter. It would have been worth engag-ing with more recent contributions from thisbody of literature, such as the work of Franzvon Benda-Beckmann (2006, 2011), whichclearly states that the problem is not whetherone takes into account non-state law as law,but rather the fact that ‘law’ itself is a politi-cally loaded concept. Being aware of the criti-cism brought forward against ‘legal pluralism’,von Benda-Beckmann argues that even in thosecases where ‘law’ is coupled with ‘the state’, onedoes not automatically get a definition of ‘law’(2011: 181). What constitutes ‘law’ and what doesnot is in the end not only always a political but,for legal anthropologists, also an empirical ques-tion. It is in this regard that the more recent workwithin the field of ‘legal pluralism’ and the volume

by Dresch and Skoda are actually striving formuch the same aim. The authors of thisvolume thus have no need to juxtapose theirfindings on legalism against ‘legal pluralism’ asthey are, in fact, arguing along similarlines. Their own definition of ‘legalism’ as ‘adiscussion of moral order’ entails a processual,interactional and practice-oriented dimension.Most authors of this volume urge us to directour attention to ‘who speaks the law’ or who‘claims to speak the law’, a point made byDonaldDavis Jr. in his chapter on ‘jurisdictionalpluralism’ in medieval India. And in her chapteron ‘Legal performances in late MedievalFrance’, Hannah Skoda herself speaks of ‘thefact that all law was a performance’ (p. 283).Rather than setting rules against practice, theauthors’ empirical studies might also be readand understood as fine-grained analyses of rulesas practice (if we understand ‘practice’ toinclude the act of speaking about rules or ofwriting rules down without necessarily havingto be executed). It is in this regard as well as inthe vast historical and geographical rangecovered in the nine chapters that I see thestrength of their volume.

This edited collection is of relevance to alllegal anthropologists, scholars of history with aninterest in legal issues and scholars of generalanthropology with an interest in understandingthe relationship between human sociality and law.

ReferencesBenda-Beckmann, F. von 2006. The multiple edges oflaw: dealing with legal pluralism in developmentpractice, in The World Bank (ed.), The WorldBank legal review. Law, equity, and development,51–86. Washington DC: The World Bank,Martinus Nijhoff.

Benda-Beckmann, F. von 2011. Recht ohne Staat imStaat: eine rechtsethnologische Betrachtung, in S.Kadelbach and K. Günther (eds.), Recht ohne Staat?Zur Normativität nichtstaatlicher Rechtsetzung,175–99. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag.

Roberts, S. 1998. ‘Against legal pluralism:some reflections on the contemporary enlarge-ment of the legal domain’, Journal of LegalPluralism 42: 95–106.

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Tamanaha, B. 1993. ‘The folly of the ‘socialscientific’ concept of legal pluralism’, Journal ofLaw and Society 20: 192–217.

JUDITH BEYERMax Planck Institute for Social Anthro-pology (Germany)

Ingold, Tim.2013.Making: anthropology, archeol-ogy, art and architecture. London and New York:Routledge. xii+163pp., figures, references,index. Pb.: $36.59. ISBN 978 0415567237.

What is it that anthropologists do? This is asimple question to which no simple answercan be given. Part of its complexity lies in theclimate of self-reflection that permeates publicdiscourses about anthropology in the last threedecades, and another part in the fact that manypractitioners, caught in the ongoing accelerationof the contemporary world, sometimes forget togo back to the basics. Going back to the basics iswhat Tim Ingold does in this short andbeautifully written book. Whether writingabout technology (including an important re-appreciation of French archaeologist AndréLéroi-Gourhan’s geste), environment, lines,sociality or simply ‘being alive’, the scope ofhis interest in the last few decades (mostlycorresponding to his move to the Universityof Aberdeen and the establishment of theanthropology department there) has beentoward exploring the ways in which humansinteract with their surroundings and developas the result of this interaction. The emphasisof the argument is on practice, on constantdoing and reshaping (‘making’ from the titleof the book), but also with practicalconsequences for teaching since: ‘[t]o teachanthropology is to practice anthropology; topractice anthropology is to teach it’ (p. 13).

The first chapter of the book begins with themaxim ‘Know for yourself!’ (p. 1). One isreminded of another maxim, reportedly fromthe oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, around2500 years ago, ‘know yourself.’ In this sense,the main purpose was for an individual torealise his/her limits: know that you are no

god. In Ingold’s work, it is an advice to practi-cally learn something that would help himunderstand the people he was studying. Thisis important because it leads to a crucialquestion: why do people do what they do?And the answers to that can be primarilylearned from listening to people and observingtheir interactions with the environment. Thisbook grew out of the advanced undergraduateand postgraduate course Ingold has beenteaching at Aberdeen since 2004 (he refers to itas the ‘4 As’). It connects anthropology witharchaeology, art and architecture. Ingold clearlydistinguishes anthropology (as a speculative, all-encompassing discipline) from ethnography(whose task is ‘to describe the things as theyare’; p. 4), and then proceeds to art, criticisinganthropologists’ tendency to treat art primarilythrough objects, and ignore the intricacies ofthe creative processes of creating works of art.Similar type of criticism is directed at anthropol-ogists mostly ignoring architecture as a field ofinquiry (at least with regard to traditions thatIngold explores; Mesoamerican anthropologistshave long ago learnedof the value of studying archi-tecture and incorporating it in theirworks).Archae-ology came to the equation as a result of Ingold’sown interests, as well as a field that connectedanthropology, art and architecture through ‘theirunifying themes of time and landscape (…) and intheir mutual concern with the material andsymbolic forms of human life’ (p. 10).

Chapter 2 introduces ‘materials of life’,while the next chapter presents an interestingoverview of how to make a hand axe. This mightsound more exotic to non-American readers, as Iremember being demonstrated the techniques ofmaking hand axes during my postgraduatecourse in Prehistoric archaeology at TulaneUniversity by Professor Harvey Bricker, backin 1991. Overall, the whole ‘archaeology+anthropology’ formula will be familiar to readerswith some knowledge of the ‘four field approach’in American anthropology. Perhaps the scale ofIngold’s project could be compared with theone that Franz Boas faced in the late 19thcentury – and the question will be to what extentare his colleagues ready to answer the challenge?

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Chapter 4 explores the concept of architec-ture through another specific activity, building ahouse. This includes distinguishing betweendifferent types of activities (as Leon BattistaAlberti wrote around 1450: ‘an architect is not acarpenter’; p. 49), understanding of practicalgeometry, but also some aspects of practicalknowledge that ancient masons and buildersacquired as they went along when they facedspecific problems. Dealing with life’s uncer-tainties, including a very brief discussion of ‘theargument from design’, is the basis of Chapter5. Human beings, according to Ingold, seem tobe forever caught in ‘between catching dreamsand coaxing materials’ (p. 73). All of thisleads, in the next chapter, to considerationsof howwe understand the physical characteristicsof the world we inhabit, beginning with themound.Chapters 7 and 8 dealwith bodies: takingas an exampleHenryMoore’s sculpture ‘Warriorwith Shield’, Ingold guides the reader throughbodies’ different movements, shapes and endur-ances. Developing further ideas first proposedby Léroi-Gourhan, he introduces the reader tothe complex ways of interactions, for example,between gestures and speech (‘telling by hand’;p. 109). The final chapter, ‘Drawing the line’,creates an interwoven summary based on delineat-ing forms and shapes through which the acts ofknowing take place. However, these acts are nevercomplete since knowing (and, in a wider sense,understanding) is an ongoing process, just ashuman beings are constantly making the worldand themselves as part of that world.

ALEKSANDAR BOŠKOVIĆInstitute of Social Sciences and University ofBelgrade (Serbia)

Khazanov, M. Anatoly and Günther Schlee(eds.) 2012. Who owns the stock? Collectiveand multiple property rights in animals. Integra-tion and Conflict Studies Volume 5. New Yorkand Oxford: Berghahn Books. 342pp. Hb.:$95.00. ISBN 978-0-85745-335-8.

Edited by two of the foremost authorities onpastoralism in Eurasia and Africa respectively,

this volume re-examines the classic relationbetween nomadic peoples and large stockanimals styled here as a property relationship.This evolutionist idea has been reframed in thisvolume with an accent on the complexity ofthese relationships, with eleven highly detailedcase studies showing how property relation-ships are ‘multiple’ and ‘overlapping’ to thisday and not the unambiguous type of individualownership that we are told everyday shouldpredominate. The volume forms part of a seriesfrom Berghahn that, up until this time, hasfocused on regional politics in East Africa.

The book is divided into three sections:‘Tundra and Taiga’, featuring primarily reindeerpastoralists [5 chapters]; ‘The Eurasian Steppe’,examining so-called multiple animal propertysystems in Kazakhstan and Mongolia [2chapters]; and ‘Africa’ [4 chapters – 3 on Fulbein Northwest Africa and 1 Eastern]. Therelatively large collection on reindeer societiesfrom Eastern Siberia and Northern China makesthis collection rather unique.

All seven of theEurasian chapters are sophis-ticated studies based on long-term fieldwork byspecialists and up-to-date with the most recentchanges in the wild post-socialist reallocation ofresources. Patty Gray examines how ownershipmodels have become ‘confused’ and ‘alienated’among Chukchi by several decades of stateownership and now a corporate subsidised‘privatisation’. Aimar Ventsel and FlorianStammler give two nuanced chapters from Yamaland Anabar. Ventsel puts his emphasis not onprivate property rights but on personal relation-ships of reciprocity that are key to maintainingherding collectives. Stammler’s chapter has a rarefocus on differing notations of ownership –

earmarks and furmarks – in Nenets society.Stammler uses his data to correct an assumptionin the literature that tundra pastoralists do nothave complex forms of relationship to herd animalsby showing how kinship, corporate and stateobligations are balanced in the body of oneanimal. Brian Donahoe (Tozhu/Tofa) and HughBeach (Alouguya Evenki) examine the difficult-to-access border region between China andRussia, where reindeer pastoralists keep their

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animals for transport, for milking and for antlerproducts while maintaining complex relationshipswith hunted animals. Donahoe, while focusing ona degradation of pastoral skill among Tofa, pointsto the important role of taiga spirits in mediatingpastoral relations. Beach’s account of state-financedantler harvesting is again one of the only suchethnographic accounts in the literature.

The literature on the Eurasian steppe is thinin this volume. These two chapters also, as in thefirst section, focus on new forms of post-socialist property relationships in Kazakhstanand Mongolia. Unlike the taiga/tundra section,this reason is styled as a place where herding isonly possible with multiple animals (camels,horses, cattle, sheep, goats). One is tempted toask why this is not also the case in SouthernSiberia, where horses, reindeer and hunting dogsare usually kept together. It may be the casethat human–animal relationships, like propertyrelationships, are also multiple and overlapping.

The four North African examples, heldhigh by the editors, place their emphasis onhow kinship estates mediate individualstewardship. There are three chapters on Fublesocieties. Here the main debate between thethree authors is the differing way thatcommercial markets undermine the traditionalway that complex hierarchies of age andgender create differential rights to cattle.Günter Schlee has contributed an epicoverview of East African pastoral systems.To a great degree this concluding chapterserves as an introduction to the volume withhis account of why the study of multiple rightsis important (pp. 247–51). His ethnographicsynthesis, which will be of interest to manyspecialists, examines the complex way that gifts,bridewealth and inheritance function in thesesocieties.

This is a rich volume, with thick ethnogra-phy, which puts the classic issue of ownershipof so-called ‘stock’ animals back on the agenda.For my part I wonder why the editors did notgo further to challenge the definition of propertyitself. At some point, as many of the contributorsdemonstrate, the old definition of property asexclusive individual access folds into a complex

social landscape where reciprocity, relations withspirit entities and the volition of the animalsthemselves come into play. Even with the level-ling of international markets and regulations,most of these hunters and pastoralists carry outcomplex relations with both wild animals andother types of domestic animals (horses and dogsperhaps the most important of them).Would notan idiom of entitlement, or social responsibility,be a betterway to compare this ethnography thanthat of a classic form of exclusive accessfragmented among the lines of multiple obliga-tions? Although a rich collection, the focus onthe animals that ‘should’ be property seemsforced and a bit old-fashioned given what weknow about these complex contexts.

DAVID G. ANDERSONUniversity of Aberdeen (Scotland)

Lenclud, Gérard. 2012. En Corse. Unesociété en mosaïque. Paris: Editions de laMaison des sciences de l’homme. CollectionEthnologie de la France. 272 pp. Pb.: €21.ISBN 978-2-7351-1430-6.

This book is a collection of previously pub-lished articles by Lenclud on his ethnographicwork on Corsican pastoralism, conductedprimarily in the 1970s. In a robust Forewordto the book, Lenclud frames the interest ofthe volume in historical terms: as sheddinglight on the ethnographic past that he exploredthrough his study of past practices as theywere recounted in the ethnographic present,reflected in archival materials and refracted inboth continuity and change in practices andexplanatory/ideological frames on the ground.One of the strengths of this ensemble of workis its detailed and nuanced treatment ofhow principles of social organisationthat have their origins in a particular social,economic, political and cultural context produce,under conditions of economic and politicalchange, ‘des effets contradictoires seulement enapparence: d’une part, de conservation desformes anciennes d’organisation et, d’autre part,d’ébranlement puis de dislocation de la société

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que, justement, elles organisaient’ (p. 15). In thisrespect, the book is a valuable resource forunderstanding some of the profound changes thathave taken place on Corsica since the early part ofthe 20th century, in particular, economic decline,and ‘indivision’ of property.

The first chapter of the volume writtenwith François Pernet shows how, in the heydayof Corsican shepherding (the late 1800s, upuntil the First World War), forms of socialorganisation and practices maintained an equi-librium between pastoralism and agriculturalcultivation of land. These included practices thatkept diverse property holdings ‘intact’(undivided) in a family, as well as comparable,exclusive control of local communities overcommunal resources that sustained bothagricultural and pastoral activities. Property incommon – whether within a family or within acommunity – was conceived of not as ‘owned’ –and thus divisible – in equal shares by differentmembers, but as a ‘sorte de bien laissé à ladisposition commune, “un patrimoine resté dansl’indivision”’ (p. 63). This principle of collective,but indivisible, rights of use organises, as severalof the following chapters illustrate, Corsicanapproaches to property, inheritance, householdsand marriage patterns. Although persistent, italso comes under pressure from Corsicanemigration, the decline of the agropastoraleconomy and the privatisation and sale of coastal(formerly grazing) lands and it has dysfunctionalresults, visible today in the deterioration andabandonment of houses and property.

Chapter 3 uses the case of household andfamily structure and composition in the Nioluregion where Lenclud did his research toillustrate the way in which bureaucraticdefinitions and categories of ‘households’(foyers/feux) fail to account for the widevariety of principles and circumstances thatdefine ‘families’ and (conceptually distinct)‘households’. He also points out that Stateinterests in individuating ‘owners’ come intodirect conflict with the principles organisingcollective rights. He goes on to explore thevaried (and thus non-determinative) relation-ships between household and processes of

production and consumption. The chapterends with a section ‘Etre Parents’, whichfocuses on the definition of ‘family’ indepen-dent of co-residence and its cultural role asan anchor for identity, action and prestige.

Chapter 4 investigates principles and prac-tices of transmission/inheritance as both formsof social reproduction and cultural/symbolicmodels. In addition to material analysed in thefirst two chapters, it includes an interestinganalysis of discourse/terminology and a detailedfocus on marriage strategies and their role inperpetuating a lineage and its undivided owner-ship and exploitation of property. The chapterconcludes with a reflection on the articulationbetween the representation of the inheritancesystem as ‘egalitarian’ and the differentialaccess seen in practice to the fruits of familyproperty. These themes are also pursued inChapter 7 which explores the ways in whichthe Corsican case can complicate distinctionsbetween ‘private’, ‘communal’ and ‘personal’property.

Chapters 5 and 6 take up the ‘clan’ as a sys-tem of political action and influence. Chapter 5identifies clanism as associated with fourinterlocked historical features of the society: (1)bipartisanism; (2) obligatory affiliation withone party or another; (3) clientelism and (4)partisan exercise of power between actorsconceptualised/idealised as equal and autonomous(in what is seen as a zero-sum game). These fea-tures organise (and personalise) communication,identities, alliances and action along principles ofsegmentary opposition at all levels of Corsicansociety. The clan, writes Lenclud, is both a ‘prod-uct of the society’ and a ‘cultural invention’, orideology. This does not prevent the clan fromplaying a central, mediating role in relation withthe State, whose actions define its field of influ-ence; a field in turn conditioned and transformedby the clan and a uniquely Corsican systemof practices and values it incarnates. The State,therefore, is not a ‘separate’ and all-powerfulentity, but can only exercise its power and begrasped in its local manifestations, mediated bythe clan. This perspective undergirds Chapter 6,a critical review of José Gil’s analysis of the

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relationship between the clan and the State in his1984 book La Corse: Entre liberté et terreur. Inthis critique, Lenclud calls on Gil and otheranalysts to go beyond the argument that the clanin Corsica is generated both from within (‘d’ici’)and from without (the State, ‘d’ailleurs’) toconceptualise the logic and interests of both Stateand clan as ‘compatible’ (p. 206).

Notwithstanding the many strengths andinterests of this volume, its relationship with thepresent (ethnographic and theoretical) issometimes uneasy and not fully satisfactory. Tobe fair, Lenclud makes it clear in the Forewordthat he has not continued to do fieldwork onthe island and cannot therefore provide an ethno-graphically grounded analysis of the last 40years.However, one cannot help but wish that hewould lend his analytical perspective to contem-porary legal and cultural debates, such as thosesurrounding special regimes for property inheri-tance and transmission on Corsica, and bothnationalist and recent ecological movementsresisting ‘outside’ land speculation. Instead ofaddressing these areas in which he has specialistknowledge, Lenclud makes a brief foray in theForeword into the issue of Corsican nationalismthat falls outside of the scope of expertise demon-strated in the book. Similarly, the republication of‘S’Attacher’ with the most recent original publica-tion date (which first appeared in Terrain in1993), which proposes ideas about agency, struc-turation and the integration of ‘psychological’ orindividual-centred accounts of action with struc-tural ones as though there was no precedent forthese ideas in the discipline at the time of writingis disappointing. Overall, however, this is a richand rewarding book for all those interested in cul-tural, social and economic continuity and change,and the contradictory consequences of change tak-ingplace at different paces across these domains.Byreading this compendium of Lenclud’s work, Ifound my understanding of contemporaryCorsican society and culture in domains both nearand far from his ethnographic focus enriched.

ALEXANDRA JAFFECalifornia State University, Long Beach(USA)

Lianos, Michalis (ed.) 2013. Dangerous others,insecure societies. Fear and social division.Farnham: Ashgate. 174pp. Hb.: £49.50. ISBN978-1-4094-4399-5.

Dangerous Others gathers a series of originaltexts, offering various analyses on the increas-ing public concerns for security in the Westernworld. Several approaches are represented,ranging from speculative articles on new socialbounds to more empirical researches. Relyingon political philosophy, sociology oranthropology, these texts explore the classicaland critical ideas of domination (inheritedfrom Bourdieu) and social control (fromFoucault) under the scope of ‘late modernity’and ‘neo-liberalism’.

Some chapters in this book aim at a moregeneral, conceptualising scale. In his article on‘council estate youth’ in France, Robert Casteldeconstructs the public discourses on thisstigmatised population of suburban, poor ethnicminorities. In the aftermath of the 2005 urbanriots, he stresses that this construction reliedon post-colonial stereotypes in a general contextof fear and insecurity. Castel shows that whilereferring to an exotic exteriority on the ‘margin’these discourses reveal in fact the constructionof the ‘centre’, i.e. of ‘French identity’. The text,which was published the year Robert Casteldied, illustrates his unique creativity andoriginality. In the following chapter, JacquesDonzelot analyses the transformations of theWelfare State focusing on the idea of an‘investment state’ coined by Anthony Giddens.He examines policies of ‘social cohesion’ inwestern countries, showing how politicalmeasures such as affirmative action, deterrencein the prevention of delinquency or sociallymixed real estate are constitutive elements ofthese transformations of the Welfare State.Under the banner of ‘equal opportunities’,Donzelot sees the transition to neoliberalpolicies, favouring competition over freemarket. In his chapter, Michalis Lianos exploresOtherness under a global, geopolitical scope.Analysing the notion of the ‘right to intervene’and of ‘collateral damages’ in international

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policies, he concludes that dangerousnessbecame the ‘sound criterion of otherness’(p. 83). Indeed dangerousness has eclipsed theolder xenophobia or racism. Yet, this newcriterion targets the same population of young,poor males, adjusting reluctantly to a world ofcompetition. In a similar perspective, AntonelloPetrillo studies the reshaping of Europeanracism into differentialism or negationism. Andboth chapters by Jan Spurk and John D. Cashexamine the new social imaginaries based on theidea of ‘malaise’ and ‘enemies’. AlexanderNewman focuses on the new authoritarianmovements, especially in France while PatrickCingolani explores how the inscription as ‘Other’hinders emancipation for dominated groups.

The other contributions have a narrowerfocus relying on first-hand empirical material.Konrad Pedziwiatr’s study of the ‘new brokersof Muslim identity’ in Brussels and Londondeconstructs the Otherness of these youngMuslims, against a general background of‘moral panic’. Pedziwiatr depicts a new Islamof empowered citizens, primary socialised inEurope, as opposed to a pre-existing,stereotyped Islam of downgraded immigrants.Yet his findings only concern a relatively smallelite compared with the large Muslim majority.In the context of increasing anxietiesfor security in Greece, Marina Petronotidescribes how a tolerant, multiculturaldiscourse hides subtle lines of distinctions anddomination towards others. Her chapter usestwo empirical materials: a media analysis ofthe daily press on immigration, and an ethno-graphic study of interactions between Greekand Eritrean refugees.

The notion of the ‘Other’ gives consistenceand unity to the volume. It highlights theuncertainty related to the essence of this notion,relying on both material and less material bound-aries. This broad idea, however, becomes lessconvincingwhen it leads to vague statements suchas ‘maintaining control over globalized capitalistcompetition’ (p. 3) or when the rhetoric of‘recuperation’ and ‘manipulation’ becomespervasive in the analysis (p. 69). Yet, Othernessappears to be a useful tool for exposing

unapparent discriminations and it raises questionsabout the otherness ‘from the inside’, such as thementally ill or the disruptive youth. One couldexamine thus the role of medicine and especiallypsychiatry in the management of such ‘dangerousindividuals’ against the neoliberal backgrounddiscussed in the book. The intimate, expandingconnections between dangerousness andvulnerability are to be explored further. Even ifDangerous Others does not address all thesequestions, it has the great merit of raising them.

YANNIS GANSELIRIS, EHESS (France)

Lindenfeld, David F. and Miles Richardson(eds.) 2012. Beyond conversion and syncre-tism: indigenous encounters with missionaryChristianity, 1800–2000. New York and Ox-ford: Berghahn Books. 328 pp. Hb.: $95.00/£55.00. ISBN 978-0-85745-217-7.

This edited volume points out how differentunderstandings of ‘true’ religion, especially asrelated to native or ‘primitive’ beliefs, determinethe conceptual discussion around conversionand syncretism to this day. The book doesexactly what is proposes in its title: it goesbeyond the concepts of conversion and syncre-tism using a historical perspective that mainlydraws on the period of European Colonialismbut also including the recent past. Conceivedas an interdisciplinary endeavour, it recognisesand overcomes the shortcomings of three differ-ent disciplines: history and its lack of attentionto religion, anthropology and its bias towardscelebrating cross-cultural mixing and its keeneye for cultural authenticity, and the selectivityof focus in religious studies.

The book deals with conversion andsyncretism in separate sections. The sectionaddressing conversion shows the limits of thisconcept, especially when understood as anindividual experience. For example, bothmissionary activity and individual conversionsneed to be considered in the larger context ofcolonial power. Furthermore, missions oftenhad contradictory positions in the fabrication

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of colonial cultures, as Saurabh Dube suggestsin his chapter. Converts reflected these tensionsthrough conflicts between the old and new wayof life. Conversions, understood as a process,are important resources for understanding bothpersonal and social tensions, Dube argues.Building on this discussion in Chapter 2,Samson conceptualises conversion as an in-between space where the tension of individualchange resides. As the interpretation of conver-sion takes place through culture and the blur-ring of boundaries between different spiritualsystems, he proposes ethnography as a propermethodological choice. Furthermore, bound-aries between cultures and religions are just asimportant as geographical ones. In Chapter 3,Elbourne draws attention to the specificities ofconversion to Christianity in frontier zones,arguing that the degree of power available tocolonised groups and the specific stage ofimperial conquest influenced both the role ofreligion and the importance of conversion.The military, she explains, needs to beconsidered as one of the main forces shapingthe interaction between missionaries andthe colonised. Certainly, conversion in somegeographical areas had more impact on theconverts and their cultures than in others. Ona more theoretical tone, Fox Young engages inChapter 4 with Horton’s ‘intellectualist theory’to understand what is specific about SouthAsian cases of conversion.

The second section of the book engagescritically with the concept of syncretism. Inthis section attention is given to processes ofborrowing, incorporating and reshapingreligion and belief. In Chapter 5, Murphyexplores the coexistence of African andCatholic elements in Cuban spiritual life,arguing that a continuous reintegration ofAfrican cultural traits takes place and shapesan ever-changing folk Catholicism. Tran, inChapter 6, explains how a fluid boundarybetween religious and spiritual traditions inVietnam ensured historically the borrowingand cross-fertilisation among them. Christianmissionaries and priests adapted their teach-ings to the new environment, highlighting

aspects of the faith that could be recognisedby the Vietnamese. However, the balancebetween the new and the old beliefs isnecessarily equal. In the following chapterLindenfeld draws attention to what he callsselective inculturation: foreign Christianelements are absorbed into the Chinese andWest African cultural matrix without becom-ing predominant. Furthermore, the adoptionof new elements is neither wholesale noruncritical. Religion is shaped, among othersby the dynamics of race and gender. InChapter 8, Frey shows how a different under-standing of faith added to an African racialbackground has provoked institutional divisionswithin the American Catholic community inNew Orleans. Last but not least, Kearybrilliantly compares missionary and indigenousencounters in northwestern America and easternAustralia, showing how the impact of colonialconstructs on indigenous identity affected theinteraction, the nature of communication andultimately the character of one’s religious life.

Through its historical exploration of theconceptual trajectories of conversion andsyncretism, this book is an importanttheoretical addition to the library of any spe-cialist or student of religion. Furthermore,the empirical examples on which the differentcontributions draw are rich, varied andamply engage the reader with a wide varietyof historical and geographical contexts. Thisis a great book to delve into, especially forthose interested in conversion.

CAROLINA IVANESCURotterdam University (The Netherlands)

Livingston, Julie. 2012. Improvising medicine.An African oncology ward in an emerging cancerepidemic. Durham: Duke University Press.248pp. Pb.: $23.95. ISBN 978-0-8223-5342-3.

This ethnography of a (or more accurately the)cancer ward in Botswana is beautifully written,uncompromisingly honest and an uncomfort-able read. I’ve always thought that the hallmarkof great ethnography is that it transcends the

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specificities of time and place, of the particular,to offer a glimpse of the universal. I think thisbook qualifies; the quality of the writing andthe limpidity of the ethnography make it apath-breaking work of anthropology tout court.They give the reader the sense of being allowedto behold a truth otherwise not accessible.

The first part of the book lays out how‘cancer’ as a clinical entity in Botswanaemerges when exposure to environmental andinfectious carcinogens intersects with a bio-medical apparatus able to biopsy, diagnoseand treat. The site of this co-production isthe oncology ward, to which pain and otherphysical symptoms drive sufferers. There theirbodies become available to bio-medicalscrutiny and intervention. Biology and societyare always already entangled, Livingston tellsus. Carcinogenic exposures are not purelybiological events, because they are themselvesconditioned by flows of capital and a globalarchitecture of regulation that together divertdangerous toxins away from the wealthytowards those who are the least shielded.Nor are pains, growths and tumours merelythe result of DNA gone awry; they arerevealed through perceptions, norms andeconomic conditions that factor into decisionsabout when and where to seek care. Evenwhen a lesion is brought to clinical scrutiny,biology and society continue to co-produceeach other. Diagnosis and treatment are theproduct of an elaborate choreography, as STSscholar Charis Thompson might put it, thatbrings together aspirates, slides, microscopesand the sharp eyes of Dr P.

A number of important points are beingmade here. The first is a fundamental,epidemiological point about the rise of cancerin the global South and its causes. This isimportant and only beginning to be discussedin enlightened public health circles. Thesecond point, conceptualised as ‘improvisa-tion’ (which I critique below), refers to theconfigurations of people and objects thatmake cancer ‘real’ and amenable tointervention. And the third is an implicit cri-tique of social suffering, and the strong

position held most noticeably by Paul Farmer,that more bio-medicine is needed to addressissues of profound human suffering. Takentogether, a broader argument that remainsunderstated is being advanced here: bio-medicine is not made in the West and appliedto the Rest. Rather, to understand bio-medicine as a global enterprise we have to doaway with the core/periphery model – andnotions of diffusion of biomedical technolo-gies – to face how biomedicine is assembledthrough practice: ‘oncology as a set ofgrounded practices’ (p. 29). What is beingassembled in Gaborone is not a derivative ofsome purer, metropolitan form of bio-medicine (or even oncology), but an integralpart of a global practice of healing. This isnot explicit in the ethnography, but we aretreated to a vision of travelling practitioners(at least the physicians) whose diagnostic andtherapeutic subjectivity has been honed acrossmultiple sites – in the case of Dr P, Germany,Zimbabwe, Botswana – and a glimpse of howbiotechnologies are honed across multiple sitesin order to consolidate their efficacy.

There is a tension between the ‘anti-humanist’ ontology of the STS stance and thehumanist engagement that blossoms from theinterlude and from Chapters 4–6. After havingjust finished the book, I was most struck byhow powerfully this section conveys theembodiment of care. I am still haunted, not bythe accounts of suffering, but by the passageswhere the author describes the changing ofbandages and the incredible ability the nursesand even doctors have to redeem what wouldseem irredeemable. This account of a cancerward brings alive the sociality of the body,through its accounts of pain, laughter,empathy and exhaustion. These twodimensions of embodiment and sociality speakto a broader, universal dimension of moralexperience and human dignity, wherein lieswhat is most beautiful and moving about thisbook. We have however clearly left the worldof non-human actors and assemblages. I don’tthink it is necessary to resolve any fundamentalontological inconsistencies between these two

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parts but there might be a better way to tieeverything together.

In addition to its suitability for courses inmedical anthropology and African studies, theaccessibility of the ethnographic material makesthis book a leading candidate for assignment inintroductory courses for medical students thatrelate to the dilemmas of clinical practice andthe social dimensions of biomedicine. I thinkhere of ‘introduction to the physician–patientrelationship’ or ‘medicine and society’ typecourses now routinely offered inmedical schoolsacross North America.

VINH-KIM NGUYENUniversité de Montréal (Canada) and Collèged’études mondiales (France)

McDougall, James and Judith Scheele (eds.)2012. Saharan frontiers. Space and mobility innorthwest Africa. Bloomington, Indiana:Indiana University Press. 306pp. Pb.: $30.00.ISBN 978-0-253-00126-9.

This volume offers an important contributionto the regional study of the Sahara, an area thatmostly falls through conceptual grids sinceAfrican Studies are generally concerned withthe Sub-Saharan region, and the Middle Eastand Arab world considers the Sahara to lieon its outer edge. The Introduction questionswhether the Sahara is a barrier, a bridge or aborderland, and deals with the relationshipbetween ecology, exchange and connectivity,and the frontiers of mobility. The authorscharacterise the Sahara with a ‘high degree ofmicro-regional specialisation and hencelarge-scale, long-distance, and long-termpatterns of connections and interdependence’(p. 12), and pursue an analysis by comparisonwith the Mediterranean (following FernandBraudel). There, climatic and geographicalconditions are such that small areas tend tospecialise and seasonal instability has to be takenfor granted. Life depends on connectivity andthe places of production, habitation or exchangeare made and maintained by regional interac-tions. To this effect, the 14 contributors explore

in four parts Sahara’s ‘islands’ and ‘shores’ interms of connectivity, linkage, networks andrelationships. Most contributions stress thepresent, but are also rooted historically.

The first part, ‘Framing Saharan Africa’,deals with historical and theoretical ap-proaches. Peregrine Horden’s contributiontakes a critical look at the comparison of theMediterranean and the Sahara and comes tothe conclusion that the Sahara might bebetter put in a category with the area of theGreat Lakes or the Philippines instead of itsnorthern neighbour (p. 36). Ann McDougall’schapter follows with the question of what itmeans to be Saharan, as a geographic spaceand as a marker of identity. Without aimingfor a definitive answer, her approach examinesthe Sahara as a dynamic historical construct,which is not stable but remains very muchpart of a global nexus. Katia Schörle providesdata on the Garamantian kingdom in theFezzan (South Libya) and the Saharan tradein antiquity. Archaeological evidence provesthat the Sahara of antiquity consisted ofnetworks of contacts, ‘if only to cope withthe instability of the Saharan environment’(p. 70). James McDougall relates the Saharainto world history. Although until moderntimes the Sahara has been recognised as alimit, the edge of the unknown, or a space inbetween, he argues for its integration intolong-term history: ‘The Sahara had alwaysbeen extraverted within its own relations ofconnectivity, but now […] it was newlysubordinated from the outside, its peoplerelegated to frontier outbacks and no longerable to dictate the term of exchange, ofmobility, or of alliance with […] politiescentered elsewhere’ (p. 87).

Part two, ‘Environment, Territory, andCommunity’ comprises in-depth local casestudies. Fatma Oussedik describes a ritual oftwo Ibadi groups in the Mzab in Algeriathrough which they consolidate their origin,social status and hierarchy. AbderrahmaneMoussaoui follows with a celebration of thebirth of Mohammed, in Timimoun, Algeria,which establishes a synergy, brings together

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local histories and unites different times withdifferent places. Charles Grémont shows howthe colonial French invented the concept ofterritory to segregate Tuareg nomads from thesedentary population in Mali. Subsequently, theTuareg put all efforts into territoriality andestablished settlements that changed forms ofpower, restricted access to natural resourcesand strengthened the symbolic and practicalimportance of spatial control. OlivierLeservoisier deals with the historical construc-tions of Moorish and Haalpulaar territoriesin the Senegal valley emphasising theirinterdependence and the social and economic tiesbetween them that are essential for their self-definition.

Part three, called ‘Strangers, Space andLabor’, starts with Armelle Choplin’s chapteron the consequences of the European migrationpolicies inMauretania and turns our attention tosub-Saharans who are stuck in Nouadhibou inthe ‘post-transit’ situation. Laurence Marfaingobserves the relationship between long-termresidents and newly arrived in Nouakchott byconcentrating on the labour market. Sheconcludes that ‘the new socioeconomic configu-rations in the Sahara cities call existing urbanhierarchies into question, risking conflict […]and pose a challenge to urban and municipaladministrators […] (and) to national policymakers’ (p. 196). Dida Badi turns our eye tothe local economy in Tamanrasset in SouthAlgeria, highlighting cultural interactions interms of revival and transformation, like foodservices and small restaurants of Sahelians, thespecial ‘manufacturing’ of recycled materials,or artisanal products of Tuareg blacksmiths(inadan).

The last part of the volume dedicated to‘Economies of Movement’ opens with MohamedOudada’s analysis of the informal economy insouthern Morocco. The organisation of smug-gling livestock, cigarettes, gasoline, consumergoods and basic commodities reflects andreactualises long-standing patterns of exchangeas ‘the Sahara continues to function as acoherent commercial transit zone despite theexistence of borders’ (p. 221). Judith Scheele’s

description of the Malian border village of al-Khalil, a centre of trading, smuggling andcontraband, presents it as a ‘cosmopolitanplace where solidarities are transnational ratherthan local, and where identity, power, andmovement are closely linked’ (p. 234). JulienBrachet, finally, draws attention to localimpacts and the dynamics of migrationtoward and through the Sahara. The activitiesaround the smuggling routes have hadan important economic impact on relay townsthrough structural and monetary incentives.

This edited volume presents a compilationof coherent, well-structured case studiesaddressing highly significant issues for thecontemporary Sahara. Although the casestudies give priority to the western Sahara(Morocco, Mauretania) without including itseastern parts (today’s Libya, Chad and Sudan),the volume still offers a groundbreaking studyof the Sahara. What becomes clear throughoutis that its historical and contemporary connec-tivity is not limited to the Sahara as ageographic, climatic or environmental entitybut characterises it as a fluid extending itsfrontiers into its neighbouring areas andpulling them, in turn, into its economy,policies and social and cultural expressions.

INES KOHLInstitute for Social Anthropology, AustrianAcademy of Sciences (Austria)

Müller, Birgit (ed.) 2013. The gloss of har-mony. The politics of policy-making in multi-lateral organisations. London: Pluto Press.272 pp. Pb.: $40. ISBN 978-0-7453-3374-8.

Birgit Müller’s edited volume addresses a vitalquestion for global governance: how interna-tional organisations that have no constraintmechanisms at their disposal ‘find ways andmeans to make the world governable withoutdirectly governing it’ (p. 7). The nine studiesundertake in-depth, multi-level and multi-sitedethnographies in United Nations (UN) agenciesor are related to the UN from a historicalperspective. The studies do not seek to evaluate

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the performance of such international agencies,but rather address a three-dimensional tensionbetween ‘the normative idealistic aspect of theorganisation (do good, bring peace, be just), themechanistic technical one (order, control, audit)and the political and economic interest that areplayed out there’ (p. 2).

The first three chapters of the book lookat mechanisms that make the worldgovernable beyond official documents. Thestudy of Regina Bendix at the UN agencyWorld Intellectual Property Organizationreveals how important verbal and non-verbalcommunication is for the dynamics of negotia-tions, and how translation becomes interpreta-tion and couples with rhetoric in thenegotiation fora. Marion Fresia looks at themaking of global consensus around the normsof refugee protection at the UNHigh Commis-sioner for Refugees. The study reveals thatconsensus over international norms is not asliberal as it is often assumed in the bulk ofgovernance literature, but rather ‘divergentpolitical interests, bureaucratic strategies andcultural views’ (p.70) shape consensus. PeterLarsen’s study stresses how the technicality ofinternational environmental guidelines displacesor re-qualifies power relations among local actorsin the Peruvian Amazon.

The next section looks at how internationaland local conflicts are diluted under certain‘technicalities’ and how this contributes tocreating the impression of global harmony. JaneCowan’s study combines long-term historicalinquiry with ethnography in analysing a shiftin the logic of international surveillance fromexternal supervision of human rights withinthe interwar League of Nations to the UN’smechanism of Universal Periodic Reviewcharacterised by a self-accounting ‘audit culture’articulated around values, such as objectivity,cooperation, best practice that are impossibleto argue against without suspicion of losingdemocratic credibility. Tobias Kelly continuesthe discussion on human rights, bringing in thecase of the UK in the UN Committee AgainstTorture in the context of the present-day ‘waron terror’. The study concludes that the

mechanisms of ‘shame of torture’ produced byinternational monitoring ‘easily dissipates withinbureaucratic regimes’ (p. 134). Last, Hauser-Shäublin analyses UNESCO’s advocacy in thedispute among various national states aroundcultural artefacts. The study concludes that therelationship between the offensive claimant anddefensive holder of a particular cultural artefactcan be switched with the help of law expertswho can dictate the terms of the return.

The last section looks at what enables theparticipation of political actors across scales.Irène Bellier shows how an internationalmovement for indigenous rights was madepossible during the 25-year negotiation of theUnited Nations Declaration of the Rights ofIndigenous People. Birgit Müller brings theconcrete case of how FAO’s ‘technical advice’conflicts with ‘food sovereignty’ in Nicaragua,while Kenneth MacDonald shows howinterventionist global nature conservationpractices contribute to the trans-local ideologi-cal production of nature in northern Pakistan.

What is missing in this edited volume isthe articulation of individual contributions toa common theoretical frame. Birgit Müllerand Irène Bellier use Foucault’s dispositif, amachine analogy to institutional socialisation,while the other authors float theoreticallyunbidden. A link to recent studies fromneighbouring disciplines such as politicalscience and sociology would have benefitedthe collection. However, the strength of thisbook relies on the advanced methodology,the ethnographic investigation of internationalorganisations and the relevance of the casesselected. Few studies in the field oforganisational and global governance studiesask the just question. By tearing apart the veilof harmony that surrounds global governance,and to which so many academics from variousdisciplines mimetically contribute, this bookrepresents a laudable act of courage thathopefully will be emulated in the future.

LIVIU MANTESCUHumboldt University (Germany) and FranciscI. Rainer Institute of Anthropology (Romania)

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Palmié, Stephan. 2013. The cooking of his-tory. How not to study Afro-Cuban religion.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 368pp.Pb.: $21.91. ISBN-13 978–0226019567.

Palmié’s book is a coming of age, not only ofhis personal intellectual course, but also of a‘school of thought’ that has been developingover the last decades on the Americancontinent and, especially, in its Northern‘half’. This ‘school’ is hardly a single approachon a theme but, rather, it is more revealing ofthe theme itself. This is precisely the broadercontribution of the book that offers richinformation on the building up of the themeas an overarching and recurrent Americanpreoccupation.

The immediate focus of the book is ‘Afro-Cuban religion’. The inverted commas hereare of importance because they indicate that,whatever else the phenomenon might be, it isalso an object of study and a very particularkind of discourse that implicates both practi-tioners and ‘outsiders’, such as researchers. Infact, Palmié’s point is that it is hard to drawthe line between ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’because they are interactive producers of‘Afro-Cuban religion’ as a discursive object.As Asad did for the concept of ‘religion’, Palmiéperforms skilfully a genealogy of the term‘Afro-Cuban religion’ and the various actorsimplicated in it. The closest ones are practi-tioners and scholars (often the two roles collaps-ing into one individual), with a widegeographical span, from the Caribbean, Braziland North America to Europe and Africa.

Out of the term ‘Afro-Cuban religion’,the analytical and deconstructive emphasis isput on the signifier ‘Afro’, because this is whathides or reveals the ‘semiotic ideologies’ (p. 11)Palmié is after. In essence, it is a discourse onorigins and the complex issue of continuitiesand discontinuities that has preoccupied sointensely generations of African Diasporascholars, most famously of North Americanformation. Palmié amply demonstrates theconstant preoccupation with this overarchingtheme among such scholars; what changes is

the content and value of the term ‘African’,revealing not a stable, ‘natural’ state but adynamic and often conflictive process of the‘politics of representing’ (p. 114), ‘identity politics’(p. 121), ‘cultural legitimacy (p. 133) and ‘dis-course on power’ (p. 147), among others.

Palmié demonstrates in detail how ‘Afro-Cuban religion’ can become the idiom andvehicle for the extremely complicated issuesof race, ethnicity and cultural identity. Hereinlies an intense kind of ambiguity, both in therelation between race and ethnicity andPalmié’s own approach. In light of the first,there is undoubtedly a strong connection,although one has to acknowledge the widediffusion of Afro-Cuban religiosity outsidethe sociological limits that could be strictlydesignated (whether internally or externally)as ‘Afro’. A very interesting and astute obser-vation concerns the contrast between Cubanand North American understandings of raceand ethnicity. While North American under-standings tend to conflate and equate race withethnicity – in this case ‘Africanity’with ‘black-ness’ – Cuban understandings don’t make thisstep. This leads to a quite different identityformation through ‘Afro-Cuban religion’. InNorth America, the phenomenon oftengoes together with a more general politicalradicalisation of ‘blackness’, its historicalsubalternity and a subsequent adoption of an‘African’ way of life as an oppositional stanceto the dominant culture that has marginalisedAfro-Americans. On the contrary, Cubanunderstandings do not automatically equate‘Africanity’ with ‘blackness’. For instance,Cubans of white complexions might inti-mately identify with an African heritageand even lineage, through and due to a rituallink to a strand of Afro-Cuban religiosity.

The element of ambiguity that permeatesPalmié’s own approach rests on the fact that,although the book makes us over-consciousof the machinations, political and identityagendas, and, thus, lack of neutrality of theterm ‘Afro-Cuban religion’, Palmié’sgenealogical approach (as any genealogicalapproach) falls prey, as it were, to its own

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deconstructive intentions. Apart from thesemachinations forwarded, we actually get toknow very little of what Afro-Cuban religionis, not just as a mere discursive ideology, butas a unique cosmological and practical poolof knowledge of a wide sociological signifi-cance, at least in Cuba, which goes beyondconventional notions of race and ethnicity tobecome a way of life or understanding of theworld. I am sure Palmié is conscious of suchambiguities, wittingly placing the subtitle: hownot to studyAfro-Cuban religion. It is high time,perhaps, to engage with how to do so.

ANASTASIOS PANAGIOTOPOULOSCRIA/FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa(Portugal)

Pedelty, Mark. 2012. Ecomusicology. Rock,folk, and the environment. Philadelphia: Tem-ple University Press. 242 pp. Pb.: £18.99.ISBN 978–1439907122.

Music’s relationship within societies and culturesis a complex topic of research, one that rarelyseems to be agreed upon between disciplines.However, we do know that music can be goodmaterial for social inquiry as it mediates issues,debates and potential solutions. In his bookMarkPedelty asks the question of how music can beused to promote sustainability. He takes usthrough the political ecology of rock, usingexamples in a geographic exposition from global(Live Aid megaconcerts), national (politicalmusic in USA), regional (bioregions in NorthAmerica) to local music. Taking an ethnographicapproach, Pedelty interfaces these geographicalcomponentswith an analysis ofmusic as commu-nication, advocacy and to a lesser degree as art.

Reflecting on the relationship betweenmusical genre and environmentalism, Pedelty’secomusicology emerges throughout the book.We learn that it includes, among other aspects,environmentally engaged popular musicians(e.g. those who partake in carbon offsetting oftheir tours), certain musical timbres or instru-ments, or musicians with ‘environmental intent’,who are considered as having ‘environmental

musicianship’ (p. 35). These musicians, arguesPedelty, empower audiences by raising environ-mental awareness and providing opportunitiesfor action, reconnecting people with nature inboth imagination and activism. However, wesee little evidence of how this actually occursbesides a handful of trite survey responses andbrief analysis of fan blogs (pp. 61–3).

And why rock particularly? Pedeltyasserts that rock has become the soundtrackfor the world system (p. 22). His argument isthat rock de-territorialises consciousness viadigital technologies of production andconsumption. This leads us to engage andthink less at a local level. The scale of the musicindustry is at the same time its potential in thatit affords ‘global networking’ (p. 43). Rockand pop are therefore seen as ‘placeless meta-genres’ that ‘may begin to feel more ecologicalrelevance when generated in specific environ-mental contexts’ (p. 126). Accordingly,Pedelty’s support of local music making is tiedto music as a place-making device, mediatingspace into meaningful place.

The benefit to communities when musicis made locally is alluded to in Chapter 4through description of his band in Minneapo-lis, for instance by telling us how theiraudience is often made up of ‘family, friends,neighbors, and colleagues’ (p. 171). Unfortu-nately the opportunity for ethnographicinsight is lost in the writing style and lack ofrobust, well-worked examples, which seemmore appropriate for a blog, especially whenPedelty engages in self-effacing commentsabout learning or performing music: ‘Mymicrophone technique is crap’ (p. 144).Moreover, the musical learning process neveremerges, rather Chapter 4 tells the readerhow he became a musician, which includesdetails of how long it takes to set up for a gigand the cost of his band’s first CD, along withnumerous photos of him performing that onlyserve to document a musical event rather thanto develop a visual ethnography.

Pedelty states his commitment to under-standing music in social, historical and materialcontexts (i.e. an ecological approach to studying

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music, not to be confused with ecomusicology,which concerns music, sound and the environ-ment). Music’s indexical nature is at the crux ofan ecological approach to music, yetEcomusicology vacillates on this point, or it is ig-nored completely, as evidenced by the author’sdiscomforting opinions. For example, Pedeltysnubs ‘bubblegum pop’ and easy listening(p. 19), explains away electronic music as‘facilitating escape’ (p. 41), declares Muzak and‘puritanical art’ as boring (pp. 18–19), labelsclassical musicians ethnocentrists and braggarts(pp. 135–6) along with unverified claims such as‘baritone [voices] don’t work in rock’ (p. 180)or ‘what music does best is provide pleasure’(p. 171) and more. There is no supportingevidence to these assumptions and moreover itis far from being an ecological understanding ofmusic’s potential within situated contexts ofpeople, places, materials and discourses.

Descriptions as such reinforce genreboundaries, which is an inhibitor in thinkingabout collective action, communities and theenvironment. If the goal is to promote sustain-ability, then divisions as such should be thefirst to go, particularly since these genres resultfrom corporate distribution, market forces andrecord label number-crunching in order tocategorise and maximise sales, underpinningneoliberal thinking and consumerist practicethat Pedelty critiques throughout the book.However, Pedelty is unashamed of these‘normative judgments about music’ and asserts,‘music should be able to play some role in fos-tering environmental sustainability, biodiversityand human well-being’ (p. 202). Music needn’tdo anything, but it does anyway.

TREVER HAGENUniversity of Exeter (UK)

Prébin, Elise. 2013. Meeting once more. TheKorean side of transnational adoption. NewYork: New York University Press. 231 pp.Hb.: $44.10. ISBN 978–0814760260.

Between 1958 and 2008 more than 160,000South Korean children were adopted abroad.

When in 1988 media attention focused onSeoul as the venue of the Olympic Games,international criticism of this seemingly easyway of dealing with problems of abandon-ment, broken homes and single motherhoodcaused a remarkable change in official policyand a definite commitment to increase thenumber of domestic adoptions. During these50 years, South Korea also changed from beinga poor country with a backward economy toone of the leading industrial nations in Asiathat is concerned to position itself advanta-geously in a globalising world. Koreans livingabroad have become recognised as part of adiaspora that can be of use to the mothercountry. Although international adoptees nolonger have any legal ties with their birthfamilies and have acquired a different national-ity, it is considered important to re-establish arelationship with them when they return forshorter or longer periods.

The author, who was adopted by aFrench family, experienced what this meantwhen in 1999 she participated in a regular3-week programme organised by the Korean-based agency through which she was sentabroad. Apart from lectures on Korean lifeand training in selected aspects of Koreanculture, she was also put in contact withmembers of her birth family under the guid-ance of social workers who had been able totrace them. Having spent most of the rest ofher summer holidays with these people,she decided to redirect the focus of her studyof social anthropology to Korea andcompleted a dissertation on ‘les revenants deCorée’ in 2006.

In French revenants can refer to returneesbut also to ghostly apparitions. In the presentbook Prébin shows that the oppressive andsad feelings Korean mothers may have aboutchildren who died (or aborted foetuses) canfind relief in shamanistic rituals that have theirparallel in the way returned adoptees areexpected to behave when they once again meettheir family, and especially their birth mother.Typically these returnees express their lackof resentment and their goodwill that are

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celebrated with a communal meal and sealedwith a ritual offering at the grave or gravesof common ancestors. Whether the re-established relationship continues and how itdevelops are, however, largely dependent onindividual temperaments and contingentcircumstances.

A large part of the book is devoted to apopular weekly television programme that aimsat bringing relatives who have lost contacttogether again. The programme had its originsin a major telethon in 1983 that expressed andrevived memories of sufferings caused by theKorean war and its aftermath. The programmestarted in 1997 and was still being broadcast in2003 when the author investigated severalproductions. Carefully screened people wouldpresent cases of ‘lost’ relatives whom theywould like to see again. Older participants toldstories of separation of children from parentsand siblings due to poverty, single parenthoodor widowhood. The options had been childservitude, fosterage, adoption by a relative oracquaintance or (temporarily) an orphanage.Narratives of a younger generation (18–35yearsold) showed a preference for internationaladoption as the usual solution in an urbanindustrialised setting. When the search issuccessful, the reunion is staged during a laterbroadcast or, if that is impossible, filmed andshown by flashback. Much of the appeal of theprogramme is the dramatic structuring of astereotypically tearful encounter with the lostrelative that evokes strong feelings of identifica-tion in the studio audience and viewers at homewith the protagonists.

In this and other ways the book succeeds inpresenting the birth parents’ side of meetings withtransnational adoptees. Anthropological readerswill admire the innovative way in which theauthor uses various recent anthropologicalperspectives when dealing with a topic that didnot even exist a generation ago. She also invitesus to rethink the supposedly fundamental distinc-tion between the anthropologist and ‘the other’that dissolves in her case. However, one wondersif the theoretical sophistication of her book mightnot interfere with her aim of defusing ‘potential

confusion and misunderstandings that stem fromthe inevitable cultural gaps between transnationaladoptees and their birth families’ and of helping‘adoptees rethink their adoptive ties in compari-son not only to imagined biological ones – ascommon representations have taught them – butalso to concrete post-meeting ties with birthfamilies’ (p. 181).

JAN DE WOLFUtrecht University (The Netherlands)

Were, Graeme and J.C.H. King (eds.) 2012.Extreme collecting: challenging practicesfor 21st century museums. Oxford and NewYork: Berghahn Books. 238 pp. Hb.: $90.ISBN 9780857453631.When Neil MacGregor, the Director of theBritish Museum, takes us on a world Odysseyin A History of the World in 100 Objects(2012), he deals with many ‘difficult objects’from Britain’s imperial and colonial record.MacGregor tells bold world histories ofsingular objects from 2,000,000 BC to AD

2010 carried by an ethos of Faustian curiosity.His work is perhaps the most eloquent plea forthe role encyclopaedic museums can play inserving the Enlightenment project. However,most of the darker and uncomfortablehistories of ‘extreme collecting’ on which theBritish Museum was partly built are oftenmuted, repressed or left out in MacGregor’snarrative. Such institutional silences are whatWere and King’s volume discerns.

The book originates from a series ofworkshops held at the British Museum in2007–8 debating why some objects resist beingcollected and how such objects at the marginsof acceptable collecting practices challengemuseological expertise and authority. Thesedebates have materialised into 12 chaptersframed by an introduction by Were, whichmasterly reviews the topical literature oncollecting, and a brilliant interview with the‘extreme collector’ Robert Obie by King. Thecollection falls within the genre of criticalmuseology, moving the central perspectivefrom the front stage of public displays to the

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back stage of acquisition departments andbasements. It thus affords a rare insight intothe making of collections and the underbellyof a quintessential public institution.

What do the following material objectshave in common: 26 skeletons, Heinz bakedbean cans, late 19th century glass eyes fromthe eugenic collection of Sir Francis Galton,Navajo jewellery, representations of navalwarfare, such as an 18-inch gun, recycledplastic loft insulation and time capsules? Well,they all resist musealisation in various ways.The material scope of the anthology is broad,perhaps too broad? We find ourselves in arather confusing exhibition offering a myriadof perspectives on the challenges of curating‘difficult objects’ from an institutionalperspective. On the other hand, we learn alot about how museums think and work andby implication the self-representation ofsocieties.

In the case of the eugenic collection of SirFrancis Galton, McEnroe argues somewhatsurprisingly in her chapter ‘Unfit for Society?’that the curation of this controversial materialrequires a ‘deep-seated and ongoing processof consultation and negotiation with usersand stakeholders’ (p. 89). This argumentwould lend itself well to interesting compari-sons with the curation of indigenous materialand relations to source communities. Moregenerally, there seems to be a great potentialin developing connections between thechapters and/or the material collections inquestion that is overlooked by both editorsand contributors (for example, between theprojections of race by the eugenic collectionand the shoes worn by an Auschwitzsurvivor in Suzanne Bardgett’s originalchapter on how to showcase the Holocaust).Given the disparity in material, the completelack of cross-references between the chaptersdoes not help the unity of the volume andmay seem somewhat odd for an anthologyemanating from a series of workshops.

If the scope of materiality is broad, sois the theoretical ambition in the variouschapters. Some contributions are explicitly

theory-driven, such as Pearce’s chapter‘Knowing the New’, which provides thecollection with a lucid theoretical and histori-cal overview of different collecting taxonomiesand epistemological commitments. In ‘Awk-ward Objects’, Geisbusch is more preoccupiedwith the definitional question of what exactlyrenders objects extreme, arguing that suchobjects ‘challenge our conceptions of bound-aries and definitions’ (p. 127). A commonthread running through the volume concernsthe implications of the global market forcollecting practices. Tubb’s chapter on illicitantiquities, Wilk’s on Japanese woodblockprints and Lidchi’s contribution on NativeAmerican crafts and arts centre on theconundrums between the methodology ofcollecting, connoisseurship, circulation andauthenticity in an ever-more intensive market-place. Tubb advocates for transparency in theantiquities trade, Wilk labours over what eBaydoes to standards, pictorial genres and legitimacyof Japanese prints and Lidchi takes her cue fromAnnette Weiner’s re-configuration of exchangetheory to argue that ‘keeping-while-giving’offers a refreshing theoretical perspective on herfield relations in the American Southwest.However, a theoretical answer to what exactlyrenders an object ‘extreme’ beyond the sheerscale and material ontology seems to escape theanthology as a whole.

King’s conversation with Robert Opie –

the director of the Museum of Brands, Packingand Advertising in Notting Hill, London –

stands as the true gem of the collection:personal, engaged, humorous and original.Opie has been collecting objects, which theconventional museum world has ignored:packaging, cans and other items representingconsumer culture. Showcasing the evolutionof consumer society from Victorian times tothe present, Opie’s aim is nothing less than arenewed understanding of trade, commerceand the role of technology in history. Take,for example, what is widely considered to bethe most masculine accessory for the contem-porary man: the wristwatch. When clocks gotsufficiently small to go on wrists, they were

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only intended for women; a man wearing awristwatch would be considered quaint, evenqueer. What changed that? According to Opie,the trenches of the First World War, whereofficers had to wear a watch around the wristto synchronise charges across the front. King’sinterview is abundant with such stories ofsurprise and suspense, and ultimately evokesa new horizon of interpretation, where therelations and transitional spaces betweenobjects are made into captivating displays andcompelling story telling. This chapter, in placeof a Conclusion, gets the key message of thewhole volume across, namely that assemblagesof cans and packaging – the muted relationalspaces between difficult objects – can be asenlightening as MacGregor’s encyclopaediclessons of singular objects.

ReferenceMacGregor, Neil. 2012. A history of theworld in 100 objects. London: Penguin.

MARTIN SKRYDSTRUPUniversity of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Williams, Robert Lloyd. 2013. The completecodex Zouche-Nuttall: Mixtec lineage histo-ries and political biographies. Austin: Univer-sity of Texas Press. 456 pp. Hb: $54.00.ISBN 978–0292744387.

RobertWilliams’TheCompleteCodex Zouche-Nuttall belongs to a small but highly informa-tive body of work aimed at presenting thecontents of Postclassic and early ColonialMixtec codices to modern readers. It is not anintroduction to the Mixtec culture or codicaltradition – for which readers should turn toElizabeth Boone’s Stories in Red and Black(2000) and Bruce Byland and John Pohl’s Inthe Realm of Eight Deer (1994) – but it extendsthe work of those scholars and is a worthycontribution to indigenous Mesoamericanhistoriography. Its subject, the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, is a screenfold manuscript producedbetween ca. 1350 and 1450 in the present-dayMexican state of Oaxaca. The two documents

in the codex (the obverse side is more recent)are concerned principally with the royal lineageof Tilantongo, especially the deeds of theconquering hero Eight Deer.

Williams’ primary aim is to provide the firstclose reading and explication of the full CodexZouche-Nuttall in the English language, a taskhe unquestionably succeeds. The broader appealof this volume, however, derives from Williams’engagement with questions of meaning andcommunication: how certain can modern readersbe of what this codex says, when it relies almostexclusively on narrative pictography and sym-bolic tableaux rather than linguistically specificsigns? How were the Codex Zouche-Nuttalland other documents like it used in their originalsocial contexts, and to what extent did competentreadings depend on information not encoded inthe text itself? By showing how much of thecodex’s content can still be accessed, Williamscontributes to scholarly understanding ofcommunication technologies.

Following a summary historiography of thecorpus of Mixtec codices, presented in the firsttwo chapters, Williams introduces readers tothe techniques of graphic representation andstructural organisationMixtec scribes employed.This background is crucial for readers who hopeto follow Williams’ commentary, whichcomprises the meat of the book. In it, Williamsanalyses in turn each of the tableaux presentedin the codex, summarising historical narrativesand justifying potentially controversial interpre-tations with careful reasoning and close attentionto the conventions of Mixtec narrative pictogra-phy. The last chapter situates the CodexZouche-Nuttall in the context of the other surviv-ing Mixtec screenfolds, explaining differences intheir accounts of some of the same historical eventsin terms of the divergent political interests of thepolities in which they were produced.

Epigraphic specialists will appreciateWilliams’ deep knowledge of the entire Mixteccodical corpus. Non-specialists will need tohave some familiarity with pre-HispanicMesoamerican cultures and societies: Williams’commentary, like the Codex Zouche-Nuttallitself, demands both careful reading and

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knowledge of background information. Yet hisprose is clear and accessible, supplemented byappropriate illustrations, genealogies and sum-mary tables throughout the text. The colourreproduction of the codex presented at the endof the volume is valuable in its own right andinvites readers to explore Mixtec codical historyfirst hand, with Williams as an expert guide.

Williams never loses sight of the CodexZouche-Nuttall’s nature as a physical object,and his presentation of its content is informedby considerations of how the screenfold pagescould have been folded or stretched out to omitnon-essential parts of the narrative, or to fore-ground an episode bracketed by two parts of alarger story. This attention to physical interactionwith the codex points to the social context of itsuse, discussed in the second and final chapters,as a mnemonic aid in oral recitations of history.

A persistent typographical error, techutlifor the Nahuatl teuctli, is distracting but notdamaging. Deeper and broader considerationsof how meaning can be extracted from non-linguistic texts, in and apart from their originalsocial contexts, would have been welcome –

perhaps in the concluding chapter, which endsa bit abruptly. Yet allotting too much text tosuch considerations would have taken spaceaway from Williams’ practical, and admirably

detailed, demonstration of how to extractthat meaning. Readers can draw their owntheoretical conclusions from what remains aconvincing exegesis of a difficult pair of texts.More problematically, the volume lacks a mapshowing the locations of the sites mentioned inthe codex, some (though not all) of which canbe identified with archaeological sites or livingcommunities.

Every serious student of Mesoamericananthropology or epigraphy should own a copyof this work. More generally, scholarsinterested in semiotics, literacy, memory andperformance will find in The Complete CodexZouche-Nuttall a fascinating example of howa past society recorded its history in a linguis-tically ‘open’ script.

ReferencesBoone, E. H. 2000. Stories in red andblack. Pictorial histories of the Aztecs andMixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Byland, E. B. and J. M. D. Pohl 1994. Inthe realm of eight deer: the archaeology of theMixtec codices. Norman: University ofOklahoma Press.

NICHOLAS P. CARTERBrown University (USA)

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