BOOK REVIEWS / Sociocultural Anthropology 253

in Senegal, describing the contexts in which urban youth mobi-lize and contextualize notions of citizenship in the local ratherthan in nationalist terms. They also reject traditional relations,which have become intertwined with moralistic arguments thathave an authoritarian basis as opposed to representing culturaland ethnic modalities. Diouf thus describes the ways in whichthese areas are contested, fought over, and created, much in thesame way that Holston later describes in "Spaces of InsurgentCitizenship." When juxtaposed with Jacquemet's contribution,"From the Atlas to the Alps: Chronicle of a Moroccan Migra-tion," Diouf s strengths become more clear. Jacquemet' s contri-bution, while interesting in the ethnographic sense, is lackingfor its non-engagement of the meaning of the experience. Thedescription of a group that winds through Morocco, Spain, andFrance until their arrival in Milan, Italy, is well done. And yet, aswith the Gaonkar and Kamrath article, I found myself wonder-ing exactly where this fits in with the notion of citizenship andthe city. Does the experience relate to globalization? Kinship?Ethnicity? Is the focus on the lived experience in the city or onthe spaces in between them? Thus, unlike the Diouf article, it isunclear as to exactly what anthropological or sociological (oreven historical) context of citizenship/city Jacquemet's articleis set.

As a whole, however, this is a powerful collection of articlesthat re-examines notions of the city and citizenship in extremelycreative and rigorous ways. As an added benefit, its breadth ofdiscussion, both disciplinarily and geographically, adds signifi-cantly to the important continuing discussion of citizenship andthecity. m>

Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approachesto the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. Merete Demant Jak-obsen. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999. 274 pp.

JOAN TOWNSENDUniversity of Manitoba

Jakobsen addresses traditional Greenland shamanism andWestern contemporary neo-shamanism. In only 223 pages and a34-page appendix she tries to cover

1. adefinition of shamanism;2. accounts of early missionary, scientist, and explorer encounters

with Greenland shamanism;3. adetailed description ofGreenland shamanism of theeighteenth-

and nineteenth-century contact period;4. core and neo-shamanism with comparisons to traditional Green-

land shamans and to New Age;5. the revival of shamanism in other cultures.

Her interest is in the "structure of the belief systems and theircultural implications" through a presentation of the "patterns ofbehaviour both in traditional and modern societies vis-a-vis thespirit world" (p. xii). Descriptions of early Greenland Inuit (Es-kimo) shamanism from Danish-language sources are extremelyvaluable as are her experiences in contemporary neo-shamanworkshops with a leader who previously worked with MichaelHarner. She cannot, however, give the depth of analysis thateach of these topics deserves or fully address her objectives inthe limited space.

Early in her study, various definitions of shamanism are sur-veyed. She argues that shamanism is more complex than theahistorical descriptions of Eliade or neo-shamanic interpreta-tions would lead us to believe. For her, the prime criterion for ashaman is the control or mastery of spirits rather than such ele-ments as ecstatic experience. I agree that shamanism is a com-plex phenomenon, but a full definition of shamanism must in-clude a complex of elements rather than rest primarily on one.Further, I feel mastery is too strong a term. While a shaman usu-ally is "in control" of or, more correctly, in a symbiotic relationwith spirits, these spirits can turn on the shaman if she or he doesnot, for example, follow correct ritual protocol.

The Greenland Inuit were selected for study because theyhave been influenced only recently (late 1700s) by extensivecontact and missionization in contrast to Siberian and NorthAsian people's long contact with Buddhism and/or Christianity.Because this is "a more 'pure' form of shamanism untouched byother religions until very late, it leaves us with a possible indica-tion of what shamanism might have been in other parts of theNorthern Hemisphere before Christianity or Buddhism were in-troduced" (p. x). The same argument can be made for Alaskanand Canadian Athapaskan, Inuit and Yupik Eskimoan, andNorthwest Coast people until the very late eighteenth or nine-teenth centuries. While these versions of "undiluted" shaman-ism can be used as suggestive examples, they must not be takenas the only pre-contact form of shamanism or of "original,""primordial" shamanism.

The long account of traditional Greenland shamanism takenfrom explorers and missionaries is especially important. It notonly uses non-English materials rarely accessed by researchers,but also gives missionaries' personal feelings about the people,comments by shamans, and descriptions of the shamanic rituals,beliefs, and myths. Significant, in light of some anthropologicalclaims that shamans are "insane," are missionary and exploreropinions of shamans as intelligent, manipulators, "ignorant im-posters" (p. 26), or doing the work of the devil. Nowhere wasthere a suggestion that they were "crazy."

Using participant-observation for her neo-shamanism re-search, Jakobsen attended four workshops in 1995 and 1996thatwere held in England and Denmark. Unfortunately, she uncriti-cally merges Michael Harner's core shamanism with the muchbroader eclectic neo-shamanism and, worse, with the amor-phous New Age. While she identifies the workshops' leaderonly as the "organizer," her comments and course descriptionssuggest that the organizer was Jonathan Horwitz, whom she in-terviewed. Horwitz taught several years for Harner's Founda-tion for Shamanic Studies before he left in 1993 and continuedon his own. Her experiences appear derivative of Harner's coreshamanism method but might also reflect the conceptuallybroader neo-shamanism.

Neo-shaman participants are rightly characterized as intelli-gent, articulate, well informed, and well educated. Neverthe-less, she emphasizes that the individual isolation and stress ofmodern society and a sense of personal or societal crisis are themain reasons for involvement with neo-shamanism (e.g., pp.151,217,222). While these certainly can be important, intellec-tual curiosity, increased access to information, and interest inspiritual matters are equally significant factors particularlyamong the well-informed, educated seekers.

254 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 103, No. 1 • MARCH 2001

Following the stressed, isolated argument, she maintains thatthe Greenlandic shaman contacted spirits when his or her soci-ety was under stress, especially from the forces of nature. This iscontrasted with the neo-shaman who uses shamanic methodswhen the individual is stressed in response to a complex materi-alistic, fragmented social system that provides little spiritualsupport.

Her fundamental comparison of shamanism with neo-sha-manism above all draws the distinction between shamanic ac-tions taken on behalf of the society in response to the dangers ofnature and the neo-shaman's more personal journeys under-taken primarily as individual searches for knowledge (e.g., p.190). While broadly true, this simplifies journey purposes ofboth groups.

Jakobsen's descriptions of the workshops and her "shamanicjourneys" do give us insights into neo-shamanic activities andbeliefs. Valuable also are her more specific contrasts of neo-sha-manism with traditional Greenland shamanism. For example,the existence of "evil" shamans documented for Greenland(and elsewhere) contrasts with beliefs of many neo-shamansthat shamans are always good, wise, and altruistic hierophants.The shaman's "sense of power," as a master of spirits, is trans-muted in neo-shamanism into a more benign relation withkindly spirits as benevolent helpers, and seekers are the benefi-ciaries. Some comparisons, however, are oversimplified.

Initially she asked "whether shamanism with its roots in tradi-tional societies can be the 'new revision' and fill the spiritualvoid which seems to be the price of modernity" (p. xi). Her con-clusions suggest that it could help. With this, I agree.

There are problems in detail and editing. For example,Harner's introductory courses are said to be large, up to "severalhundreds" (e.g., pp. 205, 222). According to Harner (personalcommunication), introductory courses he personally teachesmay be large at times but well under the implied several hun-dreds. His advanced courses are small. Jakobsen's indices aresparse and not complete. There are a number of redundancies.The list of manuals for neo-shamanism is uncritical, rangingfrom Harner's tightly controlled core shamanism method andother works by credible writers to the extremely eclectic booksby authors who merge "shamanism" with chakras, tarot, and arange of other non-shamanic elements. The increasing diversitywithin the contemporary Western shamanism movement is thereason I have argued that core and neo-shamanism should beconceptually separated even though some participants maymove between them and merge some elements. In spite of mycriticisms, there are valuable portions of the book, and it is worthreading, keeping in mind the caveats. •*•

Folkbiology. Douglas L. Medin and Scott Atran, eds. Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. 504 pp.

CECIL H. BROWN

Northern Illinois University

In the mid-nineties, Douglas Medin, a cognitive psycholo-gist, teamed up with Scott Atran, an anthropologist/ethnobiolo-gist, to bring an interdisciplinary focus to the study of folk biol-ogy. In addition to several important papers, the reviewed edited

volume is a product of their continuing collaboration. As theeditors note in their introduction, the strengths and weaknessesof psychology and anthropology counterbalance in their respec-tive ways of investigating the relationship between people andother living things. For example, psychology contributes sys-tematic controlled comparison, whereas anthropology lacks atight methodological approach, and anthropology casts its in-vestigatory net far beyond the university undergraduates typi-cally studied by psychologists. The reviewed book includes arti-cles by biologists and philosophers in addition to psychologistsand anthropologists. The perspectives are highly varied, butthere is a nice coherence to them beyond their common focus onethnobiological issues as attested by many cross-citations of oneanother's included papers.

The papers are organized by discipline, starting with anthro-pology/ethnobiology, followed by cognitive psychology, andending with philosophy. The paper by Diamond and Bishop,who are biologists, begins the anthropology/ethnobiology sec-tion with a description of folk classification and naming of birdsby speakers of the Ketengban language of Indonesian NewGuinea (Irian Jaya Province). They present and discuss a list of169 Ketengban vernacular bird names relating to 143 species. Inconcluding, they note that some of Ketengban knowledge ofbirds may be of commercial value to the rest of the world, writ-ing that this "makes it understandable why chemical and phar-maceutical companies find it worthwhile to hire ethnobiologiststo interview peoples about local plants and animals and to col-lect specimens for testing." Hopefully, this observation will notbe viewed as encouraging collaboration of scientists with cor-porate interests to exploit the intellectual endowments of nativepeoples.

Hunn (anthropologist/ethnobiologist) cites physical size asan important factor influencing the naming of organisms in a lo-cal environment. Using data from speakers of Sahaptin (Colum-bia River Plateau), Pima (U.S. Southwest), Tzeltal (SouthernMexico), Kalam (New Guinea), and Anindilyakwa (Australia),he determines that the larger the organism, the more likely it is tobe named. Berlin (anthropologist/ethnobiologist) examines thesystem of folk botanical classification of a Tzeltal Maya Indianfrom the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, as revealed in botanicalcollection notebooks compiled by Alonso Mendez Ton. Tonshows an inventory of 485 folk genera with distinct Tzeltalnames. These names are used in expressions such as "genuineX" and "related to X" (where X is the name) to identify approxi-mately 5,000 botanical items. Berlin finds Ton's view of theplant world to be perceptually based, highly consistent, andmostly accurate with respect to natural affinities of species.

Ellen (anthropologist/ethnobiologist) discusses how consid-eration of ethnobiological classification of both foragers andcultivators of the rain forests of Southeast Asia can contribute toan understanding of the association between mode of subsis-tence and folk biological knowledge as documented in theworks of Brown and of Hunn and French. Agriculturalistsstrongly tend to have more names for plants and animals in then-habitats than do hunter-gatherers. Ellen draws an important dis-tinction between names for organisms (lexical knowledge) andknowledge about those organisms (substantive knowledge),concluding that while foragers typically have less lexicalknowledge of plants and animals than farmers, their substantive