Book reviews

Aid, development, In this case, the context is Andhra Pradesh (AP)

in South India, which in 2013 was the Indian state
and humanitarianism with the largest number of SEZs in various stages
of development. Between 2004 and 2011, Cross
spent twenty-six months conducting fieldwork in
Cross, Jamie. Dream zones: anticipating capitalism AP, based primarily in and around the economic
and development in India. 226 pp., maps, illus., zones in the state’s north coastal plains, outside
bibliogr. London: Pluto Press, 2014. £21.99 the city of Vishakhapatnam. Fieldwork covered
(paper) multiple sites, including villages and market
towns, resettlement colonies and industrial
Dream zones takes us into the realm of India’s townships, government, trade union, and NGO
Special Economic Zones (SEZs), iconic large-scale offices, and, most notably, work as a machinist on
industrial infrastructure projects that, over the last the factory floor of a sub-contracting company
twenty years, have come to represent both the operating inside the SEZ. This material is
promised land of growth and development and presented in five ethnographic chapters, each
highly charged flashpoints of protest and centred on a different mode of anticipation and
resistance across the country’s post-liberalization set of actors: regional politicians, planners, and
landscape. It is precisely against these polarized real-estate speculators (chap. 2); farmers and
ideological positions that Jamie Cross situates his agricultural labourers, dispossessed and resettled
important ethnographic intervention. Steering owing to land acquisition (chap. 3); the British
clear of both triumphalist narratives of India’s rise general manager of an Anglo-Dutch diamond
and dystopic counter-narratives of capitalist manufacturing company and his Indian
modernity, Cross responds to totalizing management team (chap. 4); young, unmarried
abstractions with grounded and open-ended male labourers who work on the factory floor
anthropological engagement, building on (chap. 5); and metropolitan and local anti-SEZ
influential works on ‘friction’ (A.L. Tsing, Friction: activists (chap. 6). The book is accessibly written
an ethnography of global connection, 2005), an with a number of well-chosen photographs,
‘aesthetic of emergence’ (H. Miyazaki, The giving us a view of vast and unfinished
method of hope: anthropology, philosophy, and infrastructures, filled in with intimate observations
Fijian knowledge, 2006), and, most centrally, of life in motion, the stuff of ethnographic
diverse ‘dreamed-of futures’ and their complex connection.
material effects. SEZs in contemporary India, the The chapters work in different ways.
book argues, are built on an ‘economy of Chapters 2 and 3 on visions and speculations
anticipation’ (chap. 1), and it is the relentless around agrarian land and its industrial (and
pursuit of diverse and often divergent dreams real-estate) futures are the most closely grounded
that continuously reconfigures relations of power in the regional histories, political economy, and
and makes spaces of global capital in particular developmental genealogies of Andhra Pradesh.
regional contexts and historical moments. This is where structural adjustment meets

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Telugu nationalism and where globally mobile might we theorize the work of deferment in
infrastructural projects like SEZs are mobilized into democratic practice and in an
movements for regional autonomy and processes investment-orientated economy? These are only
of state-making. The density and dynamism of some possible directions that such thinking might
the narratives here derive from an understanding take, and Cross certainly has the ethnography to
of the social and political histories of land, caste, take us further. In this sense, the book’s slim
commerce, and accumulation in AP, and from the conclusion feels somewhat like a deferral itself,
highly differentiated access to resources involved and yet, in keeping with its spirit, it gives grounds
in negotiating futures and adjusting to changing for hope that we may expect even more in the
circumstances, whether by Kamma and Reddy future.
politicians and industrialists, rich Velama and Mekhala Krishnamurthy Shiv Nadar University
Raju farming families, less wealthy Kapu farmers,
or Dalit communities of Mallas and Madigas.
Chapters 4 and 5 follow in the tradition of Ferguson, James. Give a man a fish: reflections on
industrial ethnography tracing the future- the new politics of distribution. xv, 264 pp.,
orientated strategies of management and labour bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press,
on an altogether more intimate scale inside the 2015. £17.99 (paper)
Worldwide Diamonds factory located in
Vishakhapatnam SEZ. Here, Cross argues against What would happen if everyone was simply
thinking of industrial workplaces only in terms of provided with an income, regardless of
exploitation and coercion, and makes the case for employment, and irrespective of their ability or
including sentiment and desires in our analyses of willingness to work? As James Ferguson notes,
both new management techniques and the thinkers on all sides of the political spectrum have
self-fashioning practices of industrial workers. often viewed this kind of proposal as sheer folly.
Interestingly, through their particular spatial Giving money to the poor with no strings
arrangements, both the resettlement colony and attached, it has been assumed, would be a recipe
the factory disturb long-standing caste for disaster. The money would just be wasted,
segregations, even as different individuals and recipients would lose any incentive to work,
groups respond to old prejudices and new status they would be reduced to an undignified
anxieties in precarious times. dependency – these and other well-worn
It is this diversity of dreams and effects that arguments have sustained the sense that income
motivates Cross, who is not interested in an uncoupled from employment poses fundamental
empirical accounting of the success and failures of problems.
SEZs, evidently much to the frustration of some of In Give a man a fish, Ferguson – with a regional
the urban, educated anti-SEZ activists, whose focus on southern Africa – charts the fact that
audit practices and anticipatory imaginations, of despite these entrenched objections, proposals
hurtling towards dystopian futures and hope for for this kind of ‘Basic Income Grant’ appear to be
better, alternative worlds, he addresses in on the increase, while a range of less radical forms
chapter 6. But failure looms large throughout the of unconditional welfare payment are actually
text – in vast empty stretches of publicly acquired being implemented; something that might come
land and unfinished and inadequately appointed as a surprise to readers familiar with narratives of
resettlement colonies, in lapsed investment a triumphant neoliberalism putatively antithetical
agreements and long-promised jobs, in to state provision, as Ferguson points out. The
disappointing management schemes and book comprises an extended meditation on the
dejecting employment conditions. And drawing implications of this emergent ‘distributive politics’
on important anthropological work, Cross argues for political thought, orientating itself particularly
that it is the renewing force of failure and towards traditions of the left. Advocacy of
unrealized futures that fuels capitalist modernity. I distributive politics, Ferguson argues, offers
therefore wish he had used the final chapter to progressive thinkers the possibility of overcoming
advance a more complete and compelling a tendency to remain entrenched in a purely
analysis of the generative powers of failure and oppositional mode.
perpetually deferred dreams – and their material, Central to the book’s argument is the
social, and political effects. What might it mean, assertion that politics rooted in a ‘productivist’
in the words of Raju, one of the three young men logic are inadequate to the times. Opposition to
Cross closely follows, to ‘dream without hope’ unconditional cash transfers often fixes upon risks
(p. 145)? How might this problematize ideas posed to employment. But Ferguson notes that
about what it means to consent (chap. 5)? How increasing levels of joblessness seen in southern

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African countries appear persistent, as Overall, the book stands as a compelling

technological advance allows industry to produce manifesto for an ‘inductive’ politics of distribution
ever more with ever less need for labour. Efforts grounded in ethnographic observation of ‘what
to improve the position of the poor primarily by the world’s disadvantaged actually do and say’
expanding and improving employment, Ferguson (p. 140). The writing is clear and the analysis lucid
argues, fail to acknowledge this basic fact: the throughout. Readers may be left wanting more
global economy no longer needs so many extensive ethnographic treatment of the way
workers. It is in this context that distributive existing cash transfer programmes are playing
politics are presented as taking on an urgent out, but the book comprises a powerful
relevance. Ferguson provides an amusingly literal theoretical intervention, and can be expected to
interrogation of the book’s eponymous slogan to provoke anthropologists to undertake such
make the point. Do people really need to be studies.
taught to fish in a world of high-tech fisheries that David Cooper University College London
shed jobs even as they increase production?
A closely related concern is an exploration of
the alternative basis of entitlement implied by Flynn, Alex & Jonas Tinius (eds). Anthropology,
distributive political initiatives such as the theatre, and development: the transformative
proposed Basic Income Grant. Conditional and potential of performance. xiv, 368 pp., illus.,
insurance-based welfare systems, revolving bibliogrs. London: Palgrave, 2015. £73.00
around the figure of the male breadwinner, have (cloth)
been bound up with a model of entitlement
centred on the exchange of labour for wages. Eugenio Barba wrote: ‘Theatre anthropology does
Legitimate beneficiaries in such systems show up not seek principles which are universally true, but
as those unable to work. Distributive political rather directions which are useful’ (‘Theatre
claims, Ferguson argues, fundamentally question anthropology’, The Drama Review 94,1982, p. 5,
this centrality of labour and exchange in original emphasis). This statement aptly
theorizing entitlement, along with the related summarizes the aims and utility of the edited
understanding of welfare as an unreciprocated volume Anthropology, theatre, and development.
gift. Drawing on anthropological analyses of ‘Development’, a term laden with divergent
‘demand-sharing’ in hunter-gatherer societies, understandings, is given useful direction through
Ferguson suggests that a contrasting model of the series proposal that readers think through
entitlement founded upon sheer ‘presence’, and ‘development as change’ (p. viii, original
related to an insistence upon a ‘rightful share’, emphasis), a theme that editors Flynn and Tinius
could provide the conceptual underpinning for a harness with effective centripetal force. This
practical expansion of unconditional cash multidisciplinary collection articulates
transfers into a potentially radical political project. transformation as the root of what ‘the theatre’
If political thought has much to learn from and political performances can and will do – not
cash transfer programmes, however, Ferguson just in terms of final outcomes and ‘impact’, but
makes clear that ordinary people in southern in how performers and audiences ‘develop’ the
African countries have long been developing their worlds they create together.
own forms of distributive claim. Dependence To unify the contributors’ myriad takes on
might be denigrated by productivist assumptions, transformations, the editors suggest employing
but Ferguson analyses a range of everyday an analytical tool: ‘relational reflexivity’ (p. 5).
livelihood strategies as explicitly seeking out forms Relational reflexivity demands an engagement
of dependency in order to facilitate distributive with performers’ internal processes of change as
flows. This ‘hard work of dependence’ (p. 94) – these impact upon, and are in turn impacted by,
described as playing out in social fields as diverse external processes of development, enabling
as landholding, migration, sex, and funerary examination of ‘radical changes in people’s
practice – serves to bind overlapping networks of conceptions of themselves and their
dependants into the income streams of those understanding of wider political subjectivities’
who do have access to cash. Wage labour may (p. 5). The collection’s articles mobilize relational
have previously been the central source of such reflexivity by unpacking: performers’ intensive
flows, but Ferguson describes new cash transfer processes of self-becoming; ways people
programmes as necessarily taking shape in the collectively interpret, manage, and perform their
context of these quotidian distributive pressures: imagined and ‘real’ worlds, particularly during
as pensioners, for example, come to be subject to moments of conflict and upheaval; and ways
the kinds of claim long aimed at migrant workers. performance praxis and process interact with

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institutions – state, religious, artistic – through these essays into ‘contextual’ versus ‘conceptual’;
entrenched rules and expectations. the collection is strongest in its moments of
The volume is presented in two parts: interconnection. Narratives are retold not only as
‘Ethnographies of political performance in a matter of ethnographic record, but, particularly
developing contexts’ (I) and ‘Theatre as paradigm in Dan Baron Cohen’s offering, as ethical,
for social reflection: conceptual perspectives’ (II), methodological engagement (pp. 73-80),
from which a selection is briefly highlighted here. echoing Gatt’s assertion that research theatre
Part I presents changes wrought through the enables ‘ways of knowing of the people we
processes of theatrically embodying protest. Flynn collaborate with to influence not only the content
cogently focuses on the practice of mı́stica of our anthropological work, but also one’s
performances as critical to the MST (Landless methods’ (p. 338). Breed’s presentation of
Workers Movement), ‘[envisaging] change within (invisibly) scripted ‘law-as-performance’ in
themselves and also collective change in the Rwanda’s post-genocidal gacaca courts (p. 127)
conception of political subjectivity’ (p. 13). Jeffrey juxtaposed with scripted theatrical counterparts
Juris examines ‘protest theatrics’ (p. 100) as ways (p. 142) seemingly answers Foster’s contribution
activists controvert institutional and social on the ‘collective meaning-making’ potential of
expectations using artistic confrontations. theatrical performance processes (p. 18) as well as
This section then looks to performative reflecting on similar challenges to those
engagements in rule and justice. Here, Jane presented by Rau (pp. 283-4) and Schuler
Plastow convincingly advances the concept of (pp. 294-300) regarding the institutional
theatrical performance as one of literally ‘taking restriction of social transformation.
space’ (p. 111), citing bodily transformation from Ultimately, mobilizing ‘change’ as the locus
a physicality of shrinking to one which expands – for what is otherwise a highly diverse
through revision of self-value and a greater interdisciplinary assemblage is compelling as a
expectation of recognition – filling both staged cohesive thesis because it defies division between
and everyday spaces. Plastow simultaneously contextual and conceptual. This volume therefore
problematizes continuance of ‘developed’ being not only challenges readers to question processes
represented as ‘correct’, and questions how this that typically nest under the term development; it
influences development projects and their demands re-examination of embedded
participants (p. 119). conventions concerning ethnographic practice
Part II scrutinizes the relationship between and representations. This yields deep implications
performers, audiences, and institutions, calling to for anthropological and theatrical practices,
mind Richard Bauman’s definition of providing very useful directions for future
communicative performance as ‘responsibility to thought.
an audience’ (Verbal art as performance, 1984, Kelly Fagan Robinson University College London
p. 11). The first three essays work well in concert:
Tinius discusses the tension between performer
developing ‘self’ as she affects (and is affected by) Malkki, Liisa H. The need to help: the domestic
institutional expectations, and aesthetical arts of international humanitarianism. x,
aspirations (pp. 192-8). Rafael Schacter examines 270 pp., illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke
‘allegiance to the social body’ (p. 216) through Univ. Press, 2015. £17.99 (paper)
processes of masking and revelation, an argument
Clare Foster’s piece furthers through her The need to
understanding of the performer-audience help is an ambitious book that aims to demystify
relationship as the ‘embodiment of a fractured, humanitarianism as an ideology and practice
multiple and contradictory “we”’ (p. 247). Artistic of selflessness. It is inspired by Liisa Malkki’s
objectification of transformations wrought by long-term engagement (beginning in 1996)
conflict is provocatively discussed through several with the Finnish Red Cross doctors and nurses
essays from arts writer Rolf Hemke (pp. 267-70, who worked with the International Committee
273). Ethnographic application is directly and of the Red Cross in Rwanda, Goma, and
persuasively addressed by Nicholas Long and Burundi (where Malkki previously conducted her
Caroline Gatt, both of whom look to theatrical ethnographic research, Purity and exile, 1995) and
praxis – verbatim theatre and research theatre, supplemented by data derived from an extended
respectively – as a potentially transformational participant observation in the humanitarianism
tool for anthropological representation. context in Finland. Malkki argues that,
The success of relational reflexivity becomes contrary to the popular assumption surrounding
apparent in the unease that results from dividing humanitarian motivation, and the work

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of international aid workers in particular, arising 2006) afforded for many through ‘Red Cross
from a position of relative strength and power, Friendship Services’, the need for sociality and the
humanitarian ideals materialize in practitioners’ need to help are manifested through complicated
inter-subjective encounters at ‘home’ ‘techniques of selflessness’, on the one hand, and
where ‘affective’ neutrality and imagination ethical self-making, on the other. Malkki
entangle, and ‘in the field’ where professionalism persuasively posits that possibilities of ‘giving’ in
and ethical self-making blur – all revealing the international aid context are part of, rather
the profound ‘neediness of the helper’ (p. 8). than distinct from, cultivating imagination and
The book is divided into six chapters. The sociality in the domestic sphere. As a way of
introduction helpfully charts the argument in circling back to Malkki’s initial claim of neediness,
relation to the studies of critical humanitarianism chapter 6 asks how ethical limits generated in
and affect in anthropology. In the first half of the humanitarianism, or ‘zealous humanism’, provide
book, Malkki argues that the intertwined need for the condition of possibility for the (continued)
sociality at home and solitude during field work of aid workers: the enduring adherence to
missions – not dissimilar to anthropological ‘operational neutrality’ (p. 174) in politically
fieldwork – co-constitute aid workers’ fraught situations renders visible humanitarianism
professionalism, internationalism, and ethical as the ‘power of the mere’ (p. 122) in its raw
orientation. Chapter 1 situates aid workers’ intensity rather than the politics of ‘a certain
neediness and vulnerabilities in their desire to be moral high ground’ (pp. 74-5).
‘out in the world’ (p. 24) and declared The affective turn that
professional obligation. Chapter 2 explores an Malkki adopts in the book creatively advances
array of ethically difficult circumstances, or the anthropological debate on humanitarianism.
‘impossible situations’, confronting aid workers in As an eloquently argued and ethnographically
the field to richly draw out the ambivalences and grounded conceptualization of ‘humanitarianism
precariousness intrinsic to humanitarian work. inside out’, the book is an exemplary addition
Switching focus, Malkki elaborates on neediness to the emerging interest in institutionalized
outside aid workers’ individualized experiences knowledge production offering critical
and maps onto the broader humanitarian logic, perspectives on current and former aid workers’
institutionalized knowledge practice, and social complex negotiation within and beyond the
relations in the latter half of the book. Chapter 3 international humanitarian context. The complete
traces the histories of the construction of children absence of any deeper engagement with
as the ‘embodiment of a basic human goodness the robust anthropological literature on ethics
and innocence’ in ‘the West’ to argue that the and subjectivity is somewhat surprising, given
‘figure of a child’ as an ahistorical and apolitical the book’s key concern of ethical self-making and
subject fuels humanitarian sensibilities (a key inter-subjectivity in humanitarianism. None the
insight from her previous work, ‘Speechless less, its extensive exploration of and emphasis on
emissaries: refugees, humanitarianism, and the ambiguity between politics – as the context
dehistoricization’, Cultural Anthropology 11, for humanitarian institutions and aid workers
1996). Chapters 4-6 develop the – and neutrality – as the underlying principle
conceptualization of ‘the realm of the mere’ and for humanitarian affect, work, and motivation
present ethnographic evidence for universalizing – will be of interest to the general anthropology
and de-contextualized representations of audience and those invested in the specialized
children, animals, and inanimate objects doing debate on humanitarian ethics. These discussions
political work in the Finnish humanitarian context open up a wider re-evaluation of affect theory in
(p. 122). If, in ‘Bear humanity’, Malkki shows that anthropology as well as invigorating the discussion
cultural artefacts seemingly thought to ward off of humanitarian affect as politics in and of itself.
loneliness among elderly Finns are about the need Tina Shrestha Asia Research Institute at the
to ‘ward off thoughtlessness’ (p. 130) in the National University of Singapore
international aid scene, in ‘Homemade
humanitarianism: knitting and loneliness’, she
unfolds the intricate connection between the Walker-Said, Charlotte & John D. Kelly (eds).
Finnish Red Cross domestic services and Corporate social responsibility? Human rights in
international generosity. Whether affective the new global economy. bibliogr. 388 pp.,
sociality offered to one another by the volunteer Chicago: Univ. Press, 2015. £21.00 (paper)
knitters of ‘Mother Teresa Blankets’ or ‘stranger
sociality’ (E.A. Povinelli, The empire of love: toward The ethical positioning of economic growth in
a theory of intimacy, geneaology, and carnality, relation to human and social outcomes is fluid.

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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained compliance, noting the lack of effective sanctions
momentum during greater regulation of, and in the latter and reasoning that military systems of
public debate about, business practices. command could also safeguard corporates from
Corporates are not the only ones shaping the incurring liabilities.
ethical environment. This publication examines This interdisciplinary collection contains an
CSR, and its variants, in determining and interesting array of different outlooks, which
regulating those changes. includes some qualified support for CSR. For
Walker-Said’s introduction is a well-written example, although Rosenblum argues that the
summary of a good book, explaining most unexpected permeation of CSR into commerce
chapters in terms of key CSR challenges and has ignited positive changes to production
debates; the positive and negative contributions conditions, he warns us to engage with CSR, but
of corporates to the realization of human rights not trust it. Chapters by Kaeb, Wynhoven, and
agendas. The book is in three parts. The first part Aftab, influenced by Amartya Sen, look towards
considers the development of a CSR discourse non-legal mechanisms of compliance. In my
through practices of communication and mind, these latter readings are reminiscent of
coercion by corporations, NGOs, activists, and older debates in economic anthropology
academia. The second part address the legal (although in ways less predictable at that time).
platform of CSR, considering existing legislation, These authors suggest that the ‘institution’ of
the scope of liabilities, and enforcement. The final corporates not only maximizes profits but
part incorporates earlier material to examine the maximizes other values too. Core company
African context of international markets and values, like other ontologies, are imagined as
emerging political systems, including when consistent across a range of practices. Or at least
private corporations are seen as more responsible that is the idea. The evidence from other chapters
than governmental institutions. Extractive suggests that any corporate ontology might
industries represent the larger proportion of contain significant conflicts or contradictions and
evidence within the book. that the difficulties of legal accountability cannot
Benson’s chapter on the tobacco industry be understated.
reminds us that there are financial bottom lines to Although the language of CSR is examined
business function. In a theme repeated elsewhere, and the book reveals a variety of corporate
he observes that what corporates say and what practices, the actual corporation is too easily
they do can be quite different matters. The reduced to a monolithic, unitary actor (with
language of CSR also comes under scrutiny. In his similarly conceived shareholders). I am never
chapter (which is repeated in C. Dolan & D. quite sure what makes a corporate a corporate.
Rajak’s 2016 collection The anthropology of They cannot be identical, internally
corporate social responsibility), Hirsch highlights a homogeneous entities – there must be a
terminology of ‘strategically deployable shifters’. spectrum of differentiation incorporating
Phrases like ‘sustainability’ and ‘CSR’ are variations of structure, capacity, and ethos. The
mobilized to grow a jungle of virtuosity that corporate is too conveniently bounded. Evans’s
surrounds corporate prioritization of economic chapter on multi-stakeholders only covers a small
interests. As critics struggle to cut a path through aspect of this question. For example, since
to the economic operation, the higher education speaking to private security companies that offer
institute, with its own financial priorities and international corporates security analysis and
social-environmental ‘virtues’, colludes via protection services, I am mindful that the security
virtuous partnerships with corporates, thus sector can shape corporate operations. What
providing intellectual validity and making the happens to CSR when corporates outsource
virtuous jungle ever denser. expertise and knowledge to other companies?
Bush delivers a historical examination of the The questions that delved into ‘the state’, and
lesser known, and less successful, prosecutions of occupied much attention in the social sciences,
business entities in the Nuremberg Trials. With an have yet to be similarly applied to ‘the
eye on contemporary events, he highlights the corporate’ – a social process often reported as a
negative economic consequences of prosecuting fait accompli. In order to build upon the insights
big companies. Criminal accountability for past of scholarly work on CSR and the movement
actions is ‘only one of many interests to be towards corporate governance, ‘the corporate’
served’ (p. 145). Scheffler points to international needs further deconstruction to understand more
criminal courts holding corporates to account about the shaping of future human (and
along similar lines to war tribunals. Gilmore economic) rights.
compares systems of military and corporate Jonathan Newman University of Sussex

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Bodies and materials regarding the regulation of light, humidity, and

what they call ‘good housekeeping’, as well as
pest control. A persistent theme is the tension
Bacon, Louise, Vicky Purewal, Emilia Kingham between conservation, research, and display,
& Deborah Phipps (eds). The conservation of which no doubt applies to the conservation of
hair. vii, 120 pp., illus., bibliogrs. London: most museum objects. One also gets a sense of
Archetype Publications, 2015. £25.00 how the practices of conservationists are shaped
(paper) by various legislative guidelines such as the EU
Biocidal Products Regulation, the Convention on
The conservation of hair is a specialist publication International Trade in Endangered Species, and
which focuses on the particular conservation guidelines concerning the treatment of human
issues raised by hair. This category includes remains.
human and animal hair and fur (hair still attached Some contributors, most notably Charlotte
to the skin). The volume contains seven Ridley, offer wider anthropological insights into
contributions from a mixture of museum human hair’s frequent associations with ritual,
professionals, forensic scientists, and specialists in power, and remembrance. Ridley suggests these
pest control, all of whom have first-hand are universal associations, giving examples of
experience of the practical challenges Hawaiian necklaces, English mourning jewellery,
surrounding the identification and conservation of Taoist priests’ hats, Balinese and Japanese Noh
objects made of or containing hair. The selection masks, and Ugandan head-dresses all found in the
of artefacts discussed is testimony to the wide Horniman collection in London. Hair’s symbolic
range of practical and symbolic uses to which hair power is also highlighted in Kimberleigh
has been put in different times and places. We Collins-Peynaud’s fascinating essay about
move from goat hair tents, beaver hats, horse hair baroque Holy Child devotional sculptures in Spain
upholstery and human hair embroidery and and Italy, some of which have human hair wigs
jewellery to stuffed dogs, baroque religious made from the hair of devotees, reinforcing the
sculptures, and ancient human hair mats from a intimate bond between the sculpture and
sixth-century Sudanese cemetery. Fascinating worshipper. Such examples seem to suggest that
fragments of the biographies of these objects human hair has the capacity to animate objects,
emerge in passing but the authors remain but we should be wary of making generalizations
focused on the primary theme: conservation. purely from what we see in museum collections.
Detailed images of carpet beetles and moths Ethnography outside the museum reminds us
mingle with scientific diagrams of strands of hair that human hair is sometimes used as a fibre for
and photographs of artefacts ranging from a making rope, stuffing mattresses, and weaving
leopard skin-covered radio, an ancient Egyptian interlinings for suits (see my own Entanglement:
wig, and a bear’s head undergoing restoration. the secret lives of hair, 2016). Here hair’s potential
The colour images, many of which are powerfully for symbolic potency is subordinated to its
magnified, are highly effective for giving a sense practical attributes as a strong and elastic fibre.
of the material challenges, diversity, and intricacy For a book on something as specific as the
of hair conservation work. conservation of hair, the volume manages to be
The volume is successful at introducing the playful. Bob Child’s contribution on hair-eating
reader to the characteristics and specificities of pests is titled ‘Hair today gone tomorrow’, whilst
hair. It reveals that hair, which is composed of Kerri Allen’s essay on identifying different animal
keratin, a tough, fibrous, insoluble protein, is fibres is called ‘Splitting hairs’. Combined with
remarkably resistant to physical, chemical, and judicious images and a striking cover, these
biodegradation. The main threat comes from touches make for a welcoming volume. It is
moths and carpet beetles, which are attracted ironic, however, given the focus on conservation,
especially to keratinous material that is soiled by that the pages fall out with alarming ease.
substances such as sweat, urine, and dust. Returning to the content, one area the volume
Furthermore, many of the artefacts under fails to address is the fate of the extensive
discussion are only partially made of hair. Their collections of human hair samples that lie
deterioration is often linked to the degradation of neglected in museums of anthropology and
the materials to which they are attached. Many of natural history. These are currently attracting the
the contributors offer insight into the specific attention of different groups, including members
methods they have employed to overcome the of communities from whom hair was taken and
difficulties posed by particular objects. They also scientists wanting to use them for DNA research.
place emphasis on the need for vigilance They raise pressing questions concerning

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conservation, ownership, education, and ethics, empirical strengths in the archaeology of the
which might have further broadened the scope of Soviet era and ventures into the contemporary
this interesting volume. period, in which, he asserts, the relationality of
Emma Tarlo Goldsmiths, University of London the material and immaterial is being turned on its
head through 3D printing.
There are many things to admire about this
Buchli, Victor. An archaeology of the immaterial. book, and a few aspects that readers may find
xii, 189 pp., illus., bibliogr. London, New vexing. The central argument works against the
York: Routledge, 2016. £24.99 (paper) self-congratulatory narrative of modernity as
alterity and refreshingly finds a continuity
An archaeology of the immaterial is deliberately between antique and contemporary lives: ‘[T]he
paradoxical. How does one do an archaeology of immaterial is by no means a unique quality of late
the immaterial? And why? The answer lies first in capitalism or modernity but a thoroughly
the fact that this is not an archaeology of the “un-modern” aspect of human activity that has a
conventional sort. Material objects figure long, if poorly understood, history’ (p. 1). Buchli’s
episodically throughout, but what matters in this intellectual interrogations of specific objects are
book is a genealogy (in Foucault’s sense) of particularly engaging, such as the orthodox icon
Western intellectual movements that deny and (which viewers looked ‘through’ rather than ‘at’),
denigrate materiality while hailing an idea, an microscopes, and the camera obscura.
ideal, or an alternative reality that cannot be seen Throughout, his discussion of the senses of sight
or verified. Following philosopher Richard Rorty, (which are plural and change historically) is
Buchli calls such immaterial figurations particularly helpful. For the thick middle of the
‘incorrigible’. Rorty means to say they are book, one must have a native interest in
irrefutable, but one senses that Buchli wants to Christianity and a faith that its anxious
extend this to say they are obstinate, or, more experiments with making the divine present
literally, ‘headstrong’. The book deepens some through materiality pertain to capitalism’s
themes in the edited volume An anthropology of commodity fetish, communism’s utopian
absence: materializations of transcendence and loss aspirations to go ‘objectless’, and the digital
(eds M. Bill, F. Hastrup & T.F. Sørenson, 2010) world’s conviction that ‘code is all’. While a case
and engages critically with the new tradition of may be made that these connections, whether of
asymmetrical archaeology. Buchli’s answer to the a genealogical, archaeological, or parallel type,
‘why’ question is that the material/immaterial are significant, the reader is left to impute an
duality has permeated Western ontologies and association due simply to their ‘propinquity’ (a
epistemologies from Aristotle down to the favoured term in the latter part of the book). A
twenty-first century. He contends, convincingly, more anthropological argument could have
that while it is all fine and well for academics to been made about how iconoclasm and
be weary of binaries in the long poststructuralist anti-materialist movements dialectically relate to
period, we cannot understand past and even materiality if more diverse comparative cases had
present worlds without appreciating the cultural been developed (fundamentalist Islam and Zen
potency of such polarities for most actors. Buddhism are some obvious choices). Assertion,
Buchli recounts a long history of about 1,500 synthesis, and citationality are the tactics of the
years of European theology and political writing rather than evidentiary argument. That
movements that accentuated asceticism, said, some citations are strangely absent. Kant
iconoclasm, and anti-materialism. After a and Heidegger, for example, for all their attention
linguistically thick introduction that sketches to both ideals and objects, receive barely a
important abstractions and borrowed terms, the mention. Buchli frequently shifts registers
book progresses into three chapters focused on between theo-philosophical debates and actions
Christian theology and practice, from orthodox in the world (whether by saints or mobs), but it is
icons (unpacked in their full Peircean sense), to not clear which immaterialities are most pertinent
medieval ascetics who punished their body to to popular practice. These criticisms, however,
make heaven shine through their open wounds, arise out of a deep engagement with a serious
to the Reformation, with its spasms of iconoclastic thought-piece. Buchli’s erudition shines through
violence and ambivalent embrace of the text (the and one is left with the realization that all the
Word as written with paper and ink is, after all, many ways in which the immaterial is
material, and so ‘bibliophobia’ quickly followed). materialized may be variations on how
The fifth and final chapter, ‘Leninism, consciousness manages its bewildered self.
immateriality, and modernity’, returns to Buchli’s Shannon Lee Dawdy University of Chicago

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Drazin, Adam & Susanne Küchler (eds). The poverty in the Philippines (McKay); the ritualized
social life of materials: studies in material and interactions surrounding transactions between
society. xxviii, 301 pp., illus., bibliogrs. diamond miners and traders (Calvão); the
London: Bloomsbury, 2015. £19.99 (paper) development of sustainable materials such as
improved PVCs (Wilkes); the success in China of
fragrances promoted as quintessentially Chinese
According to the editors in the introduction and (Wah); and contemporary artists’ appropriation of
conclusion to this volume, we are undergoing a the meanings of the humble woollen blanket
‘materials revolution’: innovations in materials are (McDonald).
transforming our world, and possibly even Overall, this is a welcome volume that offers a
changing the very nature of capitalism. This wealth of insights, extends current debates in
revolution is not simply a scientific or material culture, and brings us to a better
technological one – involving the disciplines of understanding of the way materials affect and
materials science, engineering, manufacturing, transform our daily lives.
and design – it is also cultural and social, yet these Geoffrey Gowlland Museum of Cultural History,
dimensions remain poorly understood. The University of Oslo
volume proposes a reflection on the role that the
social sciences can play in this materials
revolution, notably questioning artificial divisions Rosenblatt, Adam. Digging for the disappeared:
between science and society and proposing forensic science after atrocity. xxi, 278 pp.,
methodological approaches to understand illus., bibliogr. Stanford: Univ. Press, 2015.
materials use. £20.99 (paper)
The title of the volume is of course a reference
to the seminal collection of essays edited by Arjun Digging for the disappeared is an exploration of the
Appadurai, The social life of things (1988). This is growing use of forensic science, particularly the
not the first volume that proposes to revisit excavation of mass graves, in the investigation of
Appadurai’s collection of essays, but the volume war crimes and human rights abuses. Rosenblatt
edited by Drazin and Küchler is notable in at least is not a forensic practitioner but a social scientist
two respects. First, it broadens Appadurai’s with first-hand experience of human rights
methodological scope to include the trajectories investigations. His primary focus in this book is to
of materials before they are transformed into fully interrogate the political, intellectual, and ethical
formed objects and throughout their decay. framework in which these investigations are
Another interest of the volume is that it conducted and the many challenges they pose.
incorporates and expands upon current debates The core substantive chapters are effectively a
in the anthropology of material culture, including group of stand-alone essays, structured around
on materials versus materiality (with reference to important illustrative case studies or key debates
Tim Ingold’s provocative writings on materials), within the forensic investigation of atrocity. These
the agency of objects (and of materials), and the include an in-depth analysis of the search for the
social critique of science and technology. desaparecidos in Argentina and a chapter on the
What all chapters have in common is a prohibitions surrounding the disturbance of
rejection of a clear separation between pure, ‘raw’ human remains of Jewish victims of the
materials and the social. A quick overview of the Holocaust. These cases are well chosen and very
contributions to the volume can attest to the well researched. The wealth of factual detail is
variety of disciplinary approaches and range of handled with a light touch, in a highly readable
materials addressed. These cover subjects as style. Those unfamiliar with these case studies will
diverse as the history of ‘New Zealand flax’ find this an excellent source, and those already
(Were); pharmaceutical molecules (Barry); immersed in the discipline will find the analysis
materials libraries (Miodownik); anthropologists’ and discussion of the cases goes far beyond the
ability to change the way industries conduct descriptive or empirical reports that have been
consumer research (Howes); the properties of wild covered in other sources.
silk (Douny); the ubiquity of plastics (Fisher); the There is an interesting discussion, much
apparent paradox of a Hindu religious group that needed within the discipline, of how the
promotes detachment from the material world exhumation of mass graves fits into a broader
yet for which materials such as cloth are central in contemporary discourse on human rights, and
teaching new devotees (Mohan); the failure of the interrelationship between forensic
the fairtrade and fairmined gold movement archaeology and the burgeoning sector of human
(Oakley); the relationship between plastics and rights professionals and organizations. The

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somewhat facile manner in which some forensic upon encountering human remains for the first
investigations reference a monolithic notion of time. He touches on his family’s experience of the
‘human rights’ as the ethical framework for Holocaust and writes movingly about how this
exhuming the dead, and the unproblematic way has informed his work. This is to be commended,
that the human rights sector references the ‘hard’ particularly writing in a field in which so many
or physical evidence furnished by scientists, is a scientific practitioners have aspired to a radically
source of unease for some working in this field. detached tone and style, in order to underscore
This book is one of the few to identify and their claims to objectivity and authority.
problematize the link between the dead and Rosenblatt maintains a humane, sensitive, and
human rights discourse. The key question, of self-aware authorial voice throughout the book,
whether the dead can meaningfully said to be and this is one of its major strengths. Although
bearers of rights, is explored very thoughtfully critical and clear-eyed, his compassion for all the
here. It is a fundamental question both for those stakeholders in these cases emanates from the
engaged directly in this work, and for those text.
interested in the investigation of atrocity as a Digging for the disappeared is an informative,
cultural phenomenon of our times. moving, and enriching read, well written and
Despite the clear, case-based focus of each perceptive. This book will serve as a great student
chapter, they have somewhat elliptical titles, introduction to the politics and ethics of
suggesting a thematic or theoretical progression exhumation, as it manages to be highly readable
through the volume which, ultimately, is not fully and accessible, without glossing over the
realized. The book begins with a factual complexity of these investigations in the real
introduction mapping the history and world. It will also be helpful to scientific and
organizational background of these forensic practitioners, offering a more reflective
investigations, which is useful for those new to perspective than those standard case reports that
the topic. However, a clear theoretical or thematic emphasize protocol and best practice. For those
introduction, sketching out the intellectual working in dead-body politics, it is a key text,
landscape, would be more helpful to the main which will stimulate further debate.
aim of this book, which is a deeper critical Layla Renshaw Kingston University
engagement with the complexity of post-conflict
investigation. The structure is also somewhat
artificial, as in reality the same issues cross-cut the Weiss, Elizabeth. Paleopathology in perspective:
distinct cases presented here. The volume would bone health and disease through time. xiv,
have benefited greatly from a really substantive 249 pp., illus., figs, bibliogr. Lanham, Md:
conclusion, drawing together the preceding Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. £37.95 (paper)
chapters, and tackling head-on some of the rich
theoretical or metaphysical questions raised here. As a discipline, palaeopathology, the study of
Although the book is sensitive to dead-body diseases in ancient human remains, has
politics, there is a less profound consideration of developed a long way from the early days of
belief and the very real metaphysical questions describing unusual pathological case studies to
posed by exhumation: the importance of the population-based approaches, discussing the
body, individual and collective identity in death, occurrence of diseases within their biological,
and the possibility of an afterlife. In the chapters cultural, historical, and social context in order to
on Argentina and the Holocaust, Rosenblatt inform broader questions about what life was like
engages with the different stances on exhumation for past human populations (D.J. Ortner, ‘Human
taken by various stakeholders as if these were skeletal paleopathology’, International Journal of
primarily strategic or instrumentalist positions in Paleopathology 1: 1, 2011). Recent years have
the power struggles surrounding the dead. At seen another shift towards addressing the
times, I detected his own stance (which might be relevance of the field not merely with regards to
characterized as broadly rationalist, redemptive, history but more importantly to modern medical
and pro-exhumation) colouring his assessment of science (M.K. Zuckerman, B.L. Turner & G.J.
the tensions that surface in these cases. The book Armelagos, ‘Evolutionary thought in
is well supported and erudite but occasionally paleopathology and the rise of the biocultural
eclectic in the literature cited, which is a pleasure approach’, in A companion to paleopathology, ed.
but also a limitation. A. Grauer, 2011). Studying ancient human
The preface to this book includes some remains has the potential to provide unique
self-reflection by the author on why he was drawn long-term perspectives on the evolution and
to this subject area and his own visceral reactions development of many diseases affecting

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humanity today, some of them, such as cancer or sections are only very lightly referenced, and
cardiovascular diseases, far more than they did in references to medical literature are particularly
the past, on a level otherwise unavailable to limited. (If using or reviewing clinical data,
medical science. Consequently, it is more than publications should not simply be cited from
timely that Weiss aims to ‘explain . . . categories other palaeopathological studies or textbooks.)
of traits and review data drawn from both ancient Furthermore, it is surprising that cancer, rising to
and more contemporary populations to explore become one of the most common causes of
how global trait trends have changed over time’ death worldwide over recent decades, is not
in order to ‘provide clues not just about how addressed at all. This is unfortunate as adopting
ancient humans once lived, but also how biology an evolutionary approach – to which
and behaviour, lifestyle and health, remain palaeopathology is key – is particularly relevant to
intrinsically linked’. cancer research (R.M. Nesse, ‘How is Darwinian
In eight well-structured chapters, Weiss medicine useful?’, Western Journal of Medicine
discusses the main categories of disease markers 174: 5, 2001). The book provides a good
and bone traits manifested in skeletal human overview of the potential of human remains as a
remains, such as bone growth, childhood health, source of information on diseases in past human
infections, metabolic diseases, osteoarthritis, populations and will be an interesting read for a
dental health, and congenital disorders. Each general audience. The author is to be lauded for
chapter provides a brief introduction of the his efforts in compiling a large amount of clinical
category and reviews data on the occurrence and and palaeopathological research and for taking an
frequency in past and present populations. The innovative approach that broadens the scope of
chapters further describe epidemiological traditional palaeopathology. Nevertheless, the use
changes in each group of disease marker over the of the book is sadly limited for students owing to
past fifty to sixty years and seek out to find its lack of appropriate referencing and thus poor
underlying reasons for these temporal trends. An scientific practice, as well as its factual and
opening section introducing the basics of bone terminological errors.
biology increases the accessibility of the text to a Michaela Binder Austrian Archaeological Institute
non-specialist audience. It further discusses the
nature and problems associated with using
clinical databases and different types of skeletal
Memory and violence
collections as a source of comparative data,
highlighting the fact that comparisons of modern
and past data need to be undertaken with caution Lehrer, Erica T. Jewish Poland revisited: heritage
owing to potential biases towards age, gender, tourism in unquiet places. xvi, 274 pp., maps,
ethnic origin, or social status. The final chapter illus., bibliogr. Bloomington: Indiana
provides an outlook towards health threats that University Press, 2013. £22.99 (paper)
are likely to shape the spectrum of morbidity and
mortality over the next fifty years, such as obesity, This is an excellent long-term ethnography
longevity, or food fortification. A glossary adding to the ‘New Anthropologies of Europe’
explaining important scientific terms used in this book series by Indiana University Press. Erica
book and highlighted in bold throughout the Lehrer gives a detailed, extensive, and fascinating
book is a useful addition, improving its usability account of the making, unmaking, and remaking
to readers unfamiliar with medicine or biological of Poland’s Jewish heritage, primarily in
anthropology. Kazimierz, a historical district in old Kraków
The general approach is innovative and of renowned for the interpenetration of Christian
great relevance to students and specialists in and Jewish cultures. It is now a restless, arresting
biological anthropology and medicine, and even space for engaging with hybrid ideas of post-
to a more general audience. However, the book Holocaust Jewishness. What are the many
suffers from several weaknesses which limit its use present, unidirectional gazes the ethnographer
as teaching material or reference work. The (Lehrer), local Jewish and Christian Poles, and the
author misuses scientific terms (e.g. pp. 80-1: tourists make of themselves and each other, as
confusion of lumbarization and sacralization) and well as the absent imagined gaze from those
wrongly diagnoses conditions (e.g. p. 92, denied a life there? How is identity re-signified
Figure 6.4 (top): fusion of the spinal processes of after national trauma, and what contortions and
two thoracic vertebrae is unlikely due to convolutions take place in post-atrocity
osteoarthritis; a differential diagnosis of reconciliation? Lehrer bravely addresses these
congenital fusion should be considered). Many topics in her nuanced, sensitive, and intimate

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portrayal of contemporary life haunted by Jewish life – and not just Jewish death – in Poland:
Nazism, Communism, and now capitalism. of raves in synagogues, cultural and youth events,
In the introduction, Lehrer positions her case locally supported bookshops, Yiddish classes,
study within debates surrounding subaltern and Krav Maga martial arts. The strength of this
histories and a reconciliation of heritage and sensitive salvage-like ethnography is its ability to
memory: Kazimierz is a bellwether destination, a shift between the needs and goals in the itinerary
conciliatory landscape that is approached by of the visitor and the subtle, sometimes shifting
(mission) tourists, pilgrims, and (Jewish) reception given by the local stewards of the place,
nationalists from different directions and left often whom Lehrer refers to as the ‘Jewish memory
in unexpected and different ways. The place has workers’ – whether ‘Jewish’ or not (shabbos goyim)
been a historical centre for Jewish settlement in (p. 23). Working both sides of the engagement
Poland for over a thousand years; a ghetto during takes time, requires acceptance from all quarters,
the Second World War for many of the 64,000 and allows us to see backstage, so to speak, and
local Jews; a postwar Eastern European slum; a to understand the misunderstandings at work.
UNESCO-listed heritage site from the late 1970s; Chapter 5 presents post-Jewish culture in a
and a poignant movie tourism destination commercial context with a narrative approach to
following the filming of Spielberg’s Schindler’s list Polish-made Jewish figurines, one exploring the
in 1993. But as Lehrer so ably shows, Kazimierz is biographies of makers and buyers and the
about the people present as well as the people journeys made by the display objects themselves.
absent, and so much more than a kitsch tourist Lehrer looks at Polish depictions of
destination for Hasidic wooden figurines and Fiddler-on-the-Roof-styled Hasidic figurines in
Yiddish-singing Poles or a site for some godawful various poses (praying, music-making, teaching,
‘necro-nostalgia’ (p. 8). The choice for the Jewish being deported to the death camps). Uniquely,
tourist should not be between a death or Disney we learn how and why they are made; which sell
binary (p. 51). Post-Communist Poland is mixed, best; who commissions them and what internal
vibrant, and re-assimilating. feelings are at play; and how the figurines are
Chapter 2 concentrates on mission tourism, stored by the maker and displayed by the buyer
with Jewish American teenagers visiting the locale back home in the United States. Here we have
to enact the March of the Living, a diasporic national suffering blended with religious
memorialization as part of the 100,000 annual persecution, self-conceptions executed in a
American and Israeli Jewish visitors. Ten-day creative Polonization of the past. For Lehrer, this
heritage tours from Israel and America are used exchange is a slow-motion memorial dialogue,
as political instrumentalizations of culture to instil self-reimagination in resistance to the erasures of
an embattled sense of identity in the participants. the recent Communist era. Kazimierz and the tour
The goal is to inspire memory of the Holocaust guides are the frontline in this cultural awakening,
and so produce a present-day experience of a creative and often unexpected self-conscious
trauma. The visits are full of heightened emotions, heritagization that is emboldening (with the
victimhood construction, tension without ‘Never Better’ slogan replacing the ‘Never Again’
release, and the desire to seek out antisemitism epithet [p. 203]). The end result is a surprising
to subsequently be able to confront it physically. agora of Jewish/non-Jewish engagement.
Lehrer then moves on to look at quest tourists Jonathan Skinner University of Roehampton
to Poland (the hyper-centre of the Holocaust),
who differ from mission tourists. They are carriers
of post-memory shards, fragments, inherited Mookherjee, Nayanika. The spectral wound:
anger, scraps of language from parents and sexual violence, public memories, and the
family. If, as Lehrer points out, mission tourists Bangladesh War of 1971. xxiv, 325 pp., illus.,
aim for traumatic repetition in their experiences bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press,
of Poland, quest tourists pursue resolution (p. 97). 2015. £21.99 (paper)
Why does Nate wear his ‘I’m a Jew. Fuck You.’
T-shirt during his visit? What sort of subjunctive Following the violence of partition, east Bengal
identity – his unlived life over here; what might experienced a second traumatic event as it
have been – does he carry? This is traumatic suffered the intervention by (west) Pakistani
inheritance writ across the backs of visitors military forces in 1971. While Pakistan lost the
coming out in visits to the locale and attempts war, enabling the emergence of the new state of
to commandeer the local tour guide narratives, Bangladesh, it was not without considerable
challenging the locals and also being challenged damage to the citizens. Many women were
locally by the hybrid, non-binary nature of subjected to rape, a form of violence that is

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particularly insidious as the effects can be both The second half of the book is taken up with
lasting and socially ramifying. The story in public responses. A series of chapters describe,
Bangladesh took a twist in that the new respectively, rehabilitation programmes, the
government decided to take a proactive stance to gendering and racializing of depictions, and a
celebrate the women as war heroines. At first lengthy analysis of representations found in the
hearing, this sounds positive, but in fact the press, the arts, and among activists in the three
results were paradoxical, if not distinctly negative, decades following the war. This ends with an
for the women concerned. (I am trying to avoid account of the subjectivities these discursive
using the word ‘victims’ because the word is forms imagine and possibly induce, including the
already loaded; indeed, one of the lessons of this transformation of the ‘war heroine’ into ‘traitor’
nuanced account is that it becomes impossible to or ‘whore’. These chapters proceed primarily by
speak publicly about such matters without using means of discourse analysis, thereby showing the
language that is freighted in one way or another.) different strengths of this procedure in
Thus the book is in large part about what comparison to fine-grained ethnography. One
happens when the subjects of violence are conclusion that is evident is that matters of class
appropriated as national symbols, itself another and social mobility have played a big role both in
form of unasked-for subjection, and about the the representations of the raped women and in
unacknowledged gap or wound that opens up what happened over the life-course. Another is
between public persona and private experience. that the effects of state intervention are far from
The first half of the book traces the effects of consistent as the representations become subject
the state policy on rural women. In a compelling to intense party politics. A third point is that the
and tactful account, Mookherjee follows the vivid symbols and coherent plots of public
experiences of a few women whose marital and representations differ from the uncertain,
domestic lives suffered initially after their rape, fragmented, and diverse ways women recount,
even though people came to understand that the understand, and live their lives. Here Mookherjee
women were not at fault. Their circumstances might have enhanced her fruitful conversation
became immeasurably worse once the women with Veena Das (who offers a foreword) with
followed the request of the state and publicly reference to her distinction between the voluble
acknowledged what had happened. Although the and the voiceful. Mookherjee herself draws on the
intent was to honour them, to fellow villagers this metaphor of combing. A famous photograph
was at least as shameful as the original attacks, shows a woman entirely covering her face with
and something for which the women did bear her hair. Combing, by contrast, straightens and
responsibility. Hence they were shunned and reveals, a form of violently rendering visible even
insulted. It was, in effect, as if they were violated a as it simultaneously conceals and searches
second time or lived a life of recurrent social through the past to make sense of it.
violation. The women did not understand the In the concluding chapters, Mookherjee brings
roles they were expected to play on the public the story up to date, noting the relevance of her
scene, received little material compensation, and account for the recent new wave of violence in
experienced much more dishonour locally than Bangladesh. She asks, ‘What would it mean for
honour in the capital. Indeed they could not win; the politics of identifying wartime rape if we were
had they received compensation, this would only to highlight how the raped woman folds the
have directed further ire against them. experience of sexual violence into her daily
Despite this unhappy picture, Mookherjee socialities, rather than identifying her as a horrific
insists the women are not victims. She shows their wound?’ (p. 251). That is the central question of
attempts to live with their situation and address this powerful and perceptive book.
the state. And she shows how on the domestic Michael Lambek University of Toronto
scene in some respects they gained an upper
hand over their husbands, or at least how both
sides suffered, as everyone took time to come to Schäuble, Michaela. Narrating victimhood:
terms with what had happened. Mookherjee gender, religion and the making of place in
offers a very subtle account, and my only post-war Croatia. xvii, 374 pp., map, illus.,
suggestion is that she might have complemented bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books,
it with more attention to the ostensibly 2015. £75.00 (cloth)
unsympathetic sisters-in-law, who appear
somewhat as stock characters, and explored the ‘The main problem of our country is that we
possibilities for and impediments to female always look back. It’s all about history, never
solidarity and friendships. about the future. The past, the past . . . And we

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are always the victims . . . ’ (p. 146). A slightly partisan troops during the Second World War. Yet
irritated man whispered these words to Michaela ethno-nationalist sentiments are expressed not
Schäuble during a ceremony commemorating only during national and religious holidays, but
Croatian victims of massacres committed during also in the realm of the everyday, where they are
the Second World War. The comment speaks to negotiated in complex and gendered ways.
central themes in Schäuble’s excellent Schäuble critically analyses how villagers
ethnography, namely the ways in which glorify and celebrate their male war heroes and
present-day rituals commemorating past events veterans for their manliness, honour, and heroism
are utilized by rural Croatians to present while, at the same time, silencing their
themselves in history, generate narratives of involvement in war crimes during the Homeland
victimhood, and shape local identities. Unlike the War. However, as this discourse is built up, it is
commentator, however, Schäuble argues that concomitantly undermined, since many who
these processes are not so much about the past, returned as war heroes are now physically and
but rather strategies to comment on present psychologically disabled, receive little state
sociopolitical developments and to negotiate the support, and often live in poverty. At the same
country’s future status within Europe. These time, women who had taken on male roles
complex interrelations are very well researched during the war are relegated to perform
and presented through detailed ethnographic traditional gender roles and, thereby, obscure the
examples that bring to light how concepts such fact that their husbands do not live up to national
as ‘history’, ‘locality’, ‘economic globalization’, ideals of manliness and national honour. As such,
and ‘transnational political integration’ become the families themselves are constructed into sites
meaningful in the everyday as people mobilize of memories that mirror their country’s marginal
them to establish a sense of belonging and status and perceived existence of victimhood
formulating aspirations for the future. while, simultaneously, holding up Croatia’s
The book begins with a complex historical mythico-history, celebrating religious traditions,
overview discussing wars and border disputes and safeguarding the unity of their community in
fought out in Dalmatia since the fifteenth century a time of political and economic insecurity.
when the Turks annexed the region into the Schäuble’s book is a thick and critical
Ottoman Empire. Particularly remembered is how description of complex interplays of
in 1715 the Turkish army attacked Sinj to ethno-nationalism, religion, and social
recapture its fortress from the Venetian Republic. communication through which rural Croatians
Although greatly outnumbered, the inhabitants present themselves in history. This history, in
defeated the Turks; a victory that could only be turn, is based on collective memories pertaining
described as miraculous. And so it is: a Friar is to cyclical (self-)sacrifice, (self-)victimization, and
believed to have prayed for days with his (self-)defence, on the one hand, and the
congregation in front of a Marian painting when emergence of taintless Croatian victors, on the
suddenly a lady in white appeared floating at the other. Schäuble convincingly shows that what
fortification wall, forcing the aggressors to flee. In could be dismissed as the self-mythologization of
honour of the divine intervention and successful a marginalized people is in fact a powerful means
defence, the inhabitants developed a chivalrous to create and strengthen ethno-national identity,
game known as the Sinjska Alka. Schäuble vividly political self-positioning towards Europe, and
describes the Alka as an annual event performed resistance to foreign domination. I highly
by men demonstrating their capabilities in recommend the book for courses and projects
combat. It has become a symbol of Croatian dealing with political transformation processes in
heroism, self-defence, and national southeastern Europe, but also more broadly with
independence, and an arena associated with the anthropology of ethno-nationalism and
resistance to the authority of the state, which is identity as well as collective memory studies in
blamed for trading in the country’s hard-won contexts of war, violence, and trauma.
independence for domination by Europe. Hanna Kienzler King’s College London
Besides politics, the Alka includes important
elements of Marian devotion as citizens pay Shepler, Susan. Childhood deployed: remaking
respect to the painting depicting Our Lady of Sinj child soldiers in Sierra Leone. xiv, 207 pp., map,
and remember its role in the legendary liberation table, figs, illus., bibliogr. New York: Univ.
of their region. The interactions between politics Press, 2014. £17.99 (paper)
and Catholicism also become apparent at other
key events such as the ceremonies During the Sierra Leonean civil war of
commemorating the massacres committed by 1991-2002, when the contending forces needed

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logistical support for their respective war efforts, themselves: Shepler documents how they
they found it natural to recruit children and displayed and developed their own forms of
deploy them in this role. This was the product of agency as they struggled to negotiate what she
local concepts of who and what children are, and calls ‘a very tricky social landscape’ (p. 90).
of a society in which children were expected to Agency was needed to deflect consciousness of
perform useful labour. Children who were forced one’s role in atrocities, for example: this meant
to bear arms and commit atrocities were also claiming non-agency, through claims that there
located within that wider cultural conception of had been no possibility of acting other than how
children’s work. As Susan Shepler comments in one did. To understand the relationship between
her excellent new ethnography: ‘[E]ven those structure and agency, Shepler employs ‘practice
children who did more soldierly things – shooting theory’ to grasp ‘the sum of practices, where
guns, chopping hands – were doing it within a practices are habits of thought, or action, or
system in which it made sense for children to body’ – habits deployed in this or that particular
work alongside adults’ (p. 32). When children ‘field’, in which institutional structures and
were compelled to do these ‘soldierly things’, individual strategies meet (p. 7).
however, this was deeply traumatic for them, This conjunction of the individual and the
their victims, and for the wider society. It was in institutional in postwar Sierra Leone could be
this context that ‘childhood’ was first ‘deployed’ difficult. First, although eyewitnesses estimate
in ways that challenged older concepts of youth, that ‘roughly equal numbers of girls and boys
childhood, and adulthood. This deployment of were abducted by the rebels, the percentage of
childhood continued into the postwar era, as new girls in forced demobilization programs was
efforts (both local initiatives and those of foreign about 5 percent of the total’ (p. 150). Girls
non-governmental organizations) to rehabilitate seeking reintegration found little in formal
and reintegrate child soldiers proliferated. programmes that could help them. Their goals of
Children’s participation in war involved a restored ‘respectability and marriage potential’
terrifying inversion of normal social hierarchies, were better served, it appears, via strategies of
and this created major challenges for postwar ‘secrecy and hope’ (p. 150). Secondly, little
Sierra Leonean society. appears to have been done for those former child
An early chapter of Shepler’s book is therefore soldiers who fought against the rebels, even
devoted to an exegesis of what ‘child’ and ‘youth’ though they, also, may have burdensome
mean, and have meant, in Sierra Leone, and what memories of acts they saw or committed. Postwar
they meant for the country’s postwar agency is here impeded by persistent cultures of
reconstruction. Local cultural concepts of children youth subordination to elders. These points
and childhood, she argues, were in many cases complicate the postwar scene, and emphasize
incompatible with the models of children and one of Shepler’s fundamental arguments: that in
their reactions to trauma which foreign the post-civil war dispensation, ‘new definitions of
non-governmental organizations brought to youth are being forged in contradictory and
Sierra Leone. Many of the therapeutic extremely political ways’ (p. 154). Her account of
interventions offered by such NGOs in postwar these struggles will not only be of relevance to
Sierra Leone relied on definitions of trauma and Sierra Leone. It will also be highly relevant to
the self which were by no means consistent with those parts of the world where, unlike in the case
local cultural definitions, thus impairing their of Sierra Leone today, the use of child soldiers in
effectiveness. Shepler documents how efforts for war still persists, bringing new challenges (social,
the rehabilitation and reintegration of child political, theoretical) in its wake.
soldiers have highlighted the strong disjunctions David O’Kane Max Planck Institute for Social
and differences, and even contradictions, which Anthropology
exist between local conceptions of the child (as
expressed, for example, in local programmes for
child soldiers’ rehabilitation) and those offered to Steedly, Mary Margaret. Rifle reports: a story of
Sierra Leone by foreign NGOs. Indonesian independence. xvii, 396 pp., maps,
In other words, as Shepler notes, the concept illus., bibliogr. London, Berkeley: Univ. of
of the ‘child soldier’ was a diverse and contested California Press, 2013. £24.95 (paper)
one, produced via an interplay of structures and
strategies. These in turn determined the way child In Rifle reports, an ethnographic history of
soldiers were and are conceptualized, the results Indonesian independence in the Karo Highlands
of efforts to help them, and their efforts to help of North Sumatra, Mary Steedly sets herself the
themselves. And children did seek to help task of retelling the struggle for Indonesian

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independence from the ‘outskirts of the nation’ her son as a consequence, to illustrate the
(p. 67). As an ethnographer, Steedly finds her unresolvable tensions between alternate sites of
attention drawn not only to the content of the ‘desire and responsibility’ (p. 207) that feminine
stories, songs, conversations, and local histories sexuality presented to nationalist imaginaries. In
that are the basis of her revisionist account of the doing so, Steedly presents us with the cruel irony
struggle for independence at the fringes of the of independence in Karoland, and that is the
nation, but also to the power relations that shape degree to which the nationalist movement
the forms that these narratives take, and the sustained itself through the ‘extraction of an extra
particular subjectivities that they serve to surplus of women’s economic and social value to
reinscribe through their telling. sustain itself’ (p. 202).
Examining storytelling ‘both as memory A further highlight of the book is Steedly’s
practice and ethnographic genre’, her aim is not sensitive analysis of Sinek beru Karo’s sung
the accurate retelling of events, people and narrative of the 1947 evacuation, through which
places. Rather, as she puts it, it is to show ‘how she shows the ways in which collective memory is
stories inhabit social space and how sociality mapped onto a scorched landscape of suffering
abides in stories’ (p. 27). She does this and the loss of homes and villages burned to the
wonderfully well, artfully weaving together ground in the retreat from Dutch military
ethnographic insight and reminiscence to bring advances. The experience of independence, she
to life the hardship and struggle of her argues, marks a rupture with a traditional past,
interlocutors, and reflect on the ways in which and thus constitutes a transitional moment for the
they made sense of their experience of Karo through which they locate their ‘collective
independence. In the retelling of these accounts, move to modernity’ (p. 282) – a temporal shift
Steedly embraces her ethnographic made tangible through loss. Steedly concludes
sentimentality. On her account, she was ‘seduced the chapter with a glimpse of her own imaginary
by the narrative’, and making this plain is more of a Karo past experienced with friends as they
than just an act of anthropological contrition on listened to a tape she played them of Sinek’s
her part. Methodologically, the relatedness that performance. In doing so, she reminds the reader
she shares with people in Karoland is the reason of the possibilities of remembered pasts
why she is able to tell these alternative histories, generated through their communal retelling.
and to do so with such grace and compassion. Rifle reports is an important book: not just
The book title is taken from a patriotic Karo because of the ways in which it gives voice to
song popularized by the independence narratives of Indonesian nationhood occluded
movement, a tale of romantic sentimentality in a from official state histories; or because of the
time of war with which Steedly foregrounds her considerable theoretical and methodological
account of nationhood in Karoland. In doing so, contribution that it makes to the study of social
she highlights a ‘male-dominated historiography history through remembered pasts. Rather, it is a
and nationalist hagiography’ in which tales of wonderful example of the craft of ethnography,
masculine prowess and heroic sacrifice are central and of the importance of storytelling made
to accounts of Indonesian independence. Rarely possible through long-term commitment to
are women associated in these histories with people and place.
anything other than passive domesticity (p. 53). Lee Wilson University of Queensland
Steedly thus lays bare the gendering of wartime
experience to offer a more balanced account of
‘an entire population, male and female, in a Nationalism, ethnicity,
period of intense political mobilization’ (p. 54).
One of the most important contributions this
and identity
book makes is to reposition women in narratives
of Indonesian independence to overcome their Bernal, Victoria. Nation as network: diaspora,
thematic elision in nationalist accounts of the war. cyberspace and citizenship. 199 pp., bibliogr.
The moving story of Nandé Ndapet illustrates the Chicago: Univ. Press, 2014. £17.50 (paper)
double burden that family and national struggle
placed upon women, both being dependent on The study of the role of websites in the
the ‘productive and reproductive labour of constitution of identity amongst a diaspora
women’. Steedly cleverly positions Nandé population is now a well-established topic of
Ndapet’s retelling of the trials of leadership anthropological inquiry. But the situation of the
during the struggle for independence, and the Eritrean diaspora stands out as extraordinary in a
personal cost to her, including the tragic loss of number of respects. It would have been enough

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simply to dwell on the extreme elements of this debates have progressed since the time of
story. But this excellent book manages instead to Benedict Anderson’s Imagined communities
use this more particular perspective to make a (1983). It is a valuable contribution to any
series of general observations that could pertain contemporary discussion as to the nature of
much more widely as foundational ideas in sovereignty and the on-line public sphere. As the
studying on-line as an arena of citizenship and author notes, on-line is often seen as a space
sovereignty. apart and less tangible than physical territory, but
Central to this work is the idea of infopolitics the passion revealed by the quotations and the
based around the management of information. In levels of contestation, including humour and
this case, we pit an unusually strong state that satire, help exemplify the substantive nature of
demands complete subjugation of its own this phenomenon. She shows how websites can
population justified by almost continual war and a make things concretely manifest that territory
desperate struggle for survival. It commands an cannot. There is a strong section on gender that
ideology where only martyrdom fully develops as the book progresses which needed
encompasses the duty of its citizens. This is what sustained research partly because, as in so many
helps sustain what the author calls an outsourced areas, women are under-represented in this
citizenship that has identity cards and continues public domain.
to pay tax to the state while living abroad. As is often the case with the strongest
Against this is set a diaspora that, constituting contributions to studying on-line phenomena,
a third of the population of Eritreans, is an this book never tries to reduce this to a reflection
increasingly powerful component of that nation. of the off-line; rather it shows how people exploit
The infopolitics in question therefore concerns the particular nature of this very different kind of
what in effect are the political remittances of the space. It is not just that the text is clearly and well
diaspora, which are reflected in the website that is written, but the author provides us with a good
the initial focus of the book: Dehai, which number of genuinely helpful new terms and
proclaims the continued responsibilities of the phrases, which, along with several of her
diaspora to the state. But, not surprisingly, over academic insights, could and should be employed
time the diaspora also exploits its greater capacity much more widely in such studies in the future.
to question a state which internally proclaims Daniel Miller University College London
itself as unquestionable, and the book gradually
shifts to an emphasis on two other websites,
Asmarino and Awate, which become important Creak, Simon. Embodied nation: sport, masculinity,
for the ensuing debates. But in order to do so, and the making of modern Laos. xiv, 327 pp.,
they retain much of the underlying ideology. So map, tables, illus., bibliogr. Honolulu: Univ. of
one chapter is devoted to the establishment of an Hawai‘i Press, 2015. £49.95 (cloth)
alternative memorialization of dead soldiers,
whereas the final chapter shows a still deeper split At first glance, a historical account of sport in a
that one assumes will become more extensive country that has seldom played above the lower
over time, concerning the sexual ill-treatment of levels of sporting mediocrity, whose athletes have
female soldiers within the state army. yet to win a single medal in Olympic competition,
Bernal convincingly displays the potency of might seem an unpromising venture. Fortunately,
this sacrificial citizenship and the pervasive and this misapprehension is dispelled by this
continued adherence, which is important in perceptive and richly documented study of the
showing just how far the Internet today, in certain social and political implications of state-promoted
instances, can retain a sense of statehood athletic practices and physical culture in
notwithstanding a highly dispersed population. twentieth-century Laos. In this inquiry into the
The book is not faultless. Although the linking of sporting practices and political
ethnography was not exclusively on-line, I would objectives, the reader is deftly guided through a
have liked to see more balance between the on- series of Laotian sporting and political events,
and off-line components. For example, in London, initiatives, and spectacles mounted between the
Eritreans now commonly claim asylum status by 1920s and the early twenty-first century. What
recasting their army service as a form of modern ensues is a work that will interest a broader range
slavery, which is alluded to but not really given its of readers – anthropologists included – than
due as a counter-narrative of the off-line world. might initially have been anticipated.
Generally, however, this book serves as an Unconcerned with athletic accomplishments
important update of debates about how the or disappointments per se, the author asks why
media constitute community and how far such and how sport and physical culture came to be

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promoted so diligently by leaders of successive meaningful terms. His judgement about the
Laotian political regimes. Organized sport, Creak importance of sport in Laos not relying upon
shows, afforded French colonial authorities, their conventional measures of sporting success sets
Vichy successors, and subsequent nationalist, him on collision course with an oft-cited, yet
socialist, and postsocialist Lao governments with problematic, thesis within the interdisciplinary
popular expressive means for materializing field of sport studies. This occurs as an outcome
preferred identities, ideologies, and sociocultural of Creak’s detailing of how Laotian sporting
imaginaries. In Laos, athletic victories and medals pastimes – including the game of tikhi – have
have remained secondary to the elaboration of been systematically merged with the political
sporting relationships, meanings, and dispositions spectacles and doctrines constructed upon them.
that have literally embodied representations of This point casts doubt on the merits of preserving
the Laotian nation as a coherent and sustainable a formulaic distinction between the sacred and
social and political entity. the secular in modernist depictions of sport.
Creak touches on an array of anthropological Perhaps, he suggests, sport can be and do more
concerns. In addition to engaging with than one thing at a time.
approaches to physical cultures and sport that The strengths of this book rest on Creak’s
range from the insights of Marcel Mauss on ability to combine varied documentary sources on
techniques of the body to those of John Laotian sport and physical culture with a nuanced
MacAloon on sport as spectacle, he carefully reading of pertinent regional, historical, and
dissects the interplay between colonialism and anthropological literatures. None the less, a
early ethnographic studies of sport in Laos. question that remains unasked is how ‘ordinary’
Despite differences in Charles Archaimbault’s and Laotians – those outside the ranks of the political
Paul Lévy’s anthropological accounts of the leadership corps – actually experience and think
indigenous mallet game of tikhi, Creak points out about sport. When and how do individual
that both served to advance the interpretation of Laotians make sport a part of their everyday lives
tikhi as a uniquely Lao game. Not merely a matter or instead give it a wide berth? While Creak’s final
of ethnological debate, this finding buttressed the chapter offers some personal observations of the
colonial claim that since the precolonial Lao 2009 Southeast Asian Games staged in Vientiane,
kingdoms comprised a ‘particular’ civilization, underlying distinctions between textually based
France was justified in acting to maintain the and ethnographic depictions of sport remain to
territorial integrity and cultural distinctiveness of be tackled.
Laos rather than leaving it to be merged with Noel Dyck Simon Fraser University
either Siam, to the west, or the rest of Indochina.
At the core of this study is an extended
assessment of the capacities of sport and other Graham, Laura R. & H. Glenn Penny (eds).
forms of embodied practice to inform and Performing indigeneity: global histories and
reinforce national consciousness and, through it, contemporary experiences. ix, 431 pp., illus.,
state power. What was nurtured through officially figs, bibliogrs. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska
sponsored practices of sport and physical culture Press, 2015. £21.99 (paper)
in Laos during the twentieth century is likened by
Creak to an evolving, hybrid form of ‘muscular To be indigenous or to perform indigeneity – that
Buddhism’ that sought to produce bodies that is no longer the question. The multiple branches
would be rich, abundant, and disciplined. Yet as of constructivism have taught us that there is no
well as resonating with Buddhist monastic values, national, ethnic, or gender identity without the
the emerging form of Lao physical culture also effort to imagine and to invent it. Identities are
reflected aspects of nineteenth-century British largely self-declared, and so largely indisputable,
muscular Christianity, a credo that spilled over but the concept of performance leads us to a
into French sport and colonialism. Creak notes social theatre where all audiences are expected to
that although colonial and postcolonial sport and bear a judgement about casting, acting, and
physical culture ‘stemmed from and informed a script. Every performance has its discontents, and
new type of physical awareness, it did not this book deals with a wide array of them.
facilitate wholesale epistemological When the matter is indigeneity, a good deal of
transformation’ (p. 15). these discontents focus on unlikely actors. This is
Taking a critical approach, Creak urges that the case for Randy Borman (Cepek’s essay), the
attention be directed to the particular and varied son of a Christian missionary couple, who was
historical circumstances that create raised in a Cofan village (in Amazonian Ecuador),
conceptualizations of sport and ritual as speaks the Cofan language fluently, and acts as

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an outstanding spokesperson of Cofan people. intended to express this. In the cases examinated
Ironically, Borman, who is not a Cofan from white by Baglo, the performers – well paid and well
people’s point of view, is seen as such from the hosted – envisaged their performances in a very
point of view of many Cofans. Identity, for many positive and proud way: they were a chance to
indigenous peoples, must be permanently built show their culture at its best, to reinforce or
and sustained. On their side, the German regain ethnic pride after a deep crisis. These old
hobbyists described by Penny do not pretend to exhibitions provided a tool for empowerment and
be Plains Indians; however, they spend weekends a chance to communicate with other native
and holidays disguised as Indians, performing peoples. This assessment invites us to adopt a
Indian dances, and practising Indian crafts, not careful evaluation of indigenous agency in these
for an audience but for their own enjoyment, or episodes of colonial history. Moreover, the
as a hands-on way to acquire knowledge of the blurring of the differences between old and
other. Penny focuses on the relationship between contemporary ethnic exhibitions can be
hobbyists and real Native Americans, which interesting the other way around: I wonder
started in the immediate post-Second World War whether some activities in contemporary
period by means of some Native American US multicultural forums might be seen in a few years
troops who were invited to their meetings. Not with a much more critical eye. Many
uncommonly, such special guests – as has also contributions to this book indeed present, here
been the case in more recent times – lost their and now, some uneasy approaches to them.
initial distrust and came to acquire a more Myers examines the harsh controversy around
sympathetic view of the hobbyists, admiring their Australian Aboriginal art, whereby ethnic militants
intense research work, their care for accuracy, claim that too much esoteric knowledge has been
and, not the least, their enthusiasm devoted to a revealed in exhibitions open to non-initiated
borrowed tradition that ‘real’ indigenous people subjects, especially women, thus breaking the
had often lost. most sacred norms. His essay makes a point
Real indigenous people, indeed, can find the against Michael Brown, who envisaged this
performance of indigeneity a cumbersome duty, controversy as part of the contemporary and
as long as ethnic identity, it seems, must abusive trend to amplify intellectual property
transcend, and must remain identifiable, in a way rights. In Myers’s opinion, what is at stake in this
other identities do not have to. This is, I think, the controversy about the rightful use of native art is
main issue at stake in the essays by Perley and not property as such, but the continuity of
Hodgson. Maybe performance is overrated? agency. The controversy about the limits of
Johnson’s essay manifests discontentment with artistic expression continues on a wider (indeed,
the saliency that performance bears in current global) stage the same search for strength and
anthropological descriptions of ethnic prestige that it embodied prior to its
movements. He suggests a difference between objectification as ‘art’.
skin and bone performances: that is, the Postcolonial performances of indigeneity can
spectacular happenings with plenty of indigenous be subject to appropriation by national states or
garments, dances, and video cameras, and the societies, and to sheer misrepresentation. This is
more discrete political or legal actions needed to the case with Hakka, the Maori ‘war dance’,
substantiate ethnic pleas. which in recent years has been adopted as a
The same anthropology that celebrates prominent sign of New Zealand national,
present-day ethnic demonstrations as specifically male, identity. This male bias is to be
achievements of indigenous peoples’ political wit found in many ethnic performances, a feature
depicts past-time performances as a murky intended to balance what some ethnic militants
spectacle of the worst colonialist and racist perceive as the feminization of autochthonous
prejudice. The essays by Perrone Moisés and cultures (see also Tengan on the Hawaiian case).
Baglo focus on some early, ground-breaking In fact, ethnic performances are not bound to a
examples: the two Tupinambá festivals celebrated narrow iconography of nature, spirituality, and
in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth warrior courage. Graham’s essay explains how the
centuries; the nineteenth-century Sami exhibits; Xavante – a famously warlike ethnic group in
and the well-known Buffalo Bill Wild West shows. Central Brazil – are able to conceive two very
Should they be seen as displays of colonial different performances of their culture, one of
domination or infamous human zoos? Perrone them a classical show of male assertiveness and
Moisés reminds us that the Tupinambá and the bellicosity, allied with a taste for primitive scenery,
French were economic and political allies against and the other a wholly diverse one, gender
the Portuguese, and both performances were balanced, cosmopolitan, and set against an urban

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background. Ethnic performances, indeed, do not various historical periods and locations.
need to be set in some version of Arcadia, or to Nevertheless, in Chinese official and even
deal with a glorious past. Watson’s essay, for academic discourse the idea of linearity and
instance, addresses urban ambiances and the ethnic unity, based in common ancestry and
re-signification of negative symbols. cultural heritage, continues to rule. By the late
Performing indigeneity is a book as diverse as 1950s, the Communist party-government had
the ethnic landscapes on which it focuses. completed its national project of ethnic
Sometimes the engagement of the authors in classification and the identity of ‘the Han’ as the
ethnic politics – nowadays largely an ethical and ultimate ethnic majority of China was formally
political prerequisite of ethnographical research – sealed.
favours a sort of anthropological assessment of This sets the context for Joniak-Lüthi’s
performances, discussing how they should be investigation into the multiple ways in which
rather than how they are. As a whole, this book individuals talk about their own and other
shows us – and I consider this to be its main people’s Han-ness. She points to highly flexible
interest – how many hidden angles remain in premodern markers of Han-ness, such as
these overt displays of ethnic agency. patrilineal descent and family name, script,
Óscar Calavia Sáez Universidade Federal de Santa home-place, and occupation, as a backdrop for
Catarina understanding also how contemporary Han
identity is perceived and formulated. Most of her
informants in Beijing and Shanghai come from
Joniak-Lüthi, Agnieszka. The Han: China’s different areas of China, and have education at
diverse majority. xiii, 186 pp., bibliogr. least at high school level, which implies that they
Washington: Univ. Press, 2015. £41.00 cloth have been thoroughly imbued with the official
discourse on ethnic groups and differentiations in
Do the 1.2 billion people called ‘Han’ in China China. Through a careful interpretation of
constitute the world’s largest ethnic group? ‘Yes’, interviews in which people were asked, for
if we regard the Chinese state’s official instance, what in their view characterizes the Han,
categorization of its population into fifty-six minzu and if they have enough in common to be
as representations of ethnicities. ‘Maybe’, if we officially recognized as one minzu, Joniak-Lüthi
listen to how Chinese citizens with ‘Han’ stamped finds that the categorization of Han as a majority
on their ID card talk about their own ethnic minzu is internalized by Han themselves. Most
belonging. Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi is one of the interviewees agree that there is such a people as
few scholars who have traced what – if anything – ‘the Han’ and that this category is as justified as
it means for an individual Chinese citizen to be any of the minority minzu. This, Joniak-Lüthi
categorized as a member of the overwhelming argues, is not enough to understand what it really
Han majority. While many studies of ethnic means to be Han today. I particularly enjoyed
identities in China have argued that the reading the chapter about home-place identity,
characteristics of the majority Han are which shows clearly, and with a lot of nuance,
constructed, first of all, through the contrasting how complex notions of nativity continue to play
image of the minority ‘Other’, Joniak-Lüthi has a major role in people’s understanding of
explored the meaning of being Han through belonging. Home-place could be a person’s
more than 100 interviews and observations birth-place, a place of ancestors, and even a
mainly with Han living in Beijing and Shanghai. recently adopted home, but it has always
The book starts with a good overview of the suggested a place of belonging rooted in a sense
existing literature on how the ethnic entity of of primordiality. For the majority of interviewees,
‘Han’ was re-created as part and parcel of the Han-ness was grounded in attachment to such a
state- and nation-building process from the late home-place, and, interestingly, the sheer size of
nineteenth century. The category of Han goes the Han minzu prompted quite a few of them to
back to the time of the Han Dynasty (206 state that since there are ‘too many Han’ –
BCE-220 CE), but it was the nationalist regional nativity is what really counts.
revolutionaries during the late Qing Dynasty Joniak-Lüthi convincingly concludes that at
(1644-1911) who actively sought to bolster the one level the state-driven nationalist Han-making
identity of Han as a major ethnic force against project has been successful. People who are
Manchu rule. As Joniak-Lüthi reminds us, themselves officially categorized as Han seem to
Han-ness is by no means the result of a find that since ‘the Han’ are not only the largest
continuous linear history. Who was Han and what ethnic group in China but also the most
it meant to them has differed profoundly in widespread and ‘modern’ one, they should be at

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the centre-stage in the making of the larger local people between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ areas
Chinese national narrative. At the same time, as along this highway denoted their quest for
Joniak-Lüthi rightly points out, the minzu identity upward mobility, and challenged
of the Han is clearly too abstract and fragmented MAS-promulgated notions of the rurally rooted
to mediate the profound divisions of power, class, campesino living in bounded communities. The
and the rural/urban that constitute the core of shifting forms of Sacaban personhood that
daily lives (also) for the people called Han. The materialized in different sites along this highway
book shows beyond doubt that while monolithic set the scene, she argues, for the hybrid identities
representations of ‘the Han’ have served an enacted by those she calls ‘middling’ Bolivians.
important political purpose, people’s lived and However, after the introduction, the highway,
perceived identity as Han remains fluid and both as trope and as infrastructure, recedes. This
relational – and, we may add, it is often is a pity, since tracing the shifts between the
insignificant. distinct forms of social and political practice that
Mette Halskov Hansen University of Oslo play out as Sacabans travel along the road
might have served as a powerful lens onto the
material and spatial dimensions of middle-class
Shakow, Miriam. Along the Bolivian highway: hybridity.
social mobility and political culture in a new A particular achievement of Shakow’s book is
middle class. 259 pp., maps, figs, tables, illus., its tracking of the disjunctures between the
bibliogr. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania abstract representational framings of political
Press, 2014. £42.50 (cloth) processes and rhetorics at national scales and the
complexities that arise as they interact with local
This richly detailed monograph offers a welcome life. The new MAS government as projected via
insight into the role of the emergent middle national television emerged as a rather different
classes in the production of political life in late animal to the party politics unfolding in Sacaba.
twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Bolivia. There, hopes that the MAS would herald a better
Given the prevalence of polarizing national politics were disappointed as it became clear that
narratives that posit ‘two Bolivias’, contrasting its local face continued to be shaped by the
‘wealthy whites’ with the ‘poor indigenous’, clientelism and envidia that had long
Shakow evokes the complexities that imbue local characterized the politics from which the party
attempts to live out ‘middling’ pathways. In the distinguished itself. Yet Shakow is careful to show
absence of idioms that attest to this middle how clientelistic practices in Sacaba could not
ground, how do those who identify with neither readily be differentiated from the actions
of these poles, but locate themselves somewhere associated with a healthy grassroots democracy.
between them, narrate their aspirations and craft For example, where individual Sacabans who
their social and political relationships? In deployed client-patron relations for self-interested
particular, Shakow shows how such middling folk purposes were often derided, acts of collective
negotiate the ambiguities of their position in clientelism – as when a women’s group expected
relation to the political claims of the MAS resources in return for their loyalty to a particular
(Movement for Socialism) party, which entered politician – were seen as a laudable means of
government with Evo Morales at the helm in ensuring that disadvantaged Bolivians gained
2006. She argues that MAS rhetoric, orientated access to jobs and funding. Such contradictions
towards shaping a new form of collective life that point up how Sacabans drew on multiple and
elevates the Bolivian campesino and celebrates often paradoxical frames of reference in narrating
equality, fails to acknowledge the ambivalent political life. But they also attest to the ways in
positioning of Bolivia’s middle classes, minutely which MAS idioms of grassroots democracy and
describing the often painful tensions that emerge political leadership mimicked and reworked prior
as they attempt to marry their aspirations for models of patronage. Shakow’s authoritative
individualistic, upwardly mobile professionalism grasp of Bolivian political history supports an
with the MAS’s emphasis on collective well-being astute analysis of the difficulties of constituting a
and wealth redistribution. new kind of politics within contemporary
Shakow focuses on the municipal zone of formations of power that are shot through with
Sacaba and its rural localities, which lie on the the shaping effects of prior and long-standing
fringes of Cochabamba, and are strung along the political practices.
highway that heads northeast from the city If the juice of Shakow’s monograph lies in the
towards the coca-growing Chapare region. Her quality and richness of her ethnographic
introduction observes that the movements of storytelling, it is perhaps not quite matched by

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the book’s theoretical contribution, which seems Protests, social movements,

somewhat conservative in its reach. Perhaps the
most thoroughgoing theoretical intervention
and political performance
concerns the need to recoup the multiplicitous
ways in which patron-client relations are Fosshagen, Kjetil (ed.). Arab Spring: uprisings,
conceived and practised. Yet Shakow’s powers, interventions. vi, 115 pp., illus.,
ethnographic work on the matter could prompt bibliogrs. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books,
conclusions more compelling than those she 2014. £6.00 (paper)
gives, which sometimes tend towards the generic:
‘One of the lessons we can learn from Sacabans’ The Arab Spring is still an ethnographic unknown.
frustrations with envy and self-interest is that An increasing number of political analysts have
there is no way to eliminate self-interest from attempted to unpack the uprisings of 2011. Only
political life’ (p. 153). Shakow is scrupulous in a few anthropologists, however, have tried to do
pinpointing the contradictions that imbue the same. Fosshagen’s edited volume thus stands
Andean political life, but she might have done out as a brave, though succinct, attempt that
more to explore the conditions of possibility they deserves praise. The work – a collection of six
open up – as diverse scholars of Latin America chapters by different authors – is highly
have shown (e.g. P. Harvey, ‘The materiality of informative. Descriptions are delivered clearly,
state-effects: an ethnography of a road in the and the analysis takes nothing for granted. Actors
Peruvian Andes’, in State formation: and events are thoroughly contextualized,
anthropological perspectives, eds C. Krohn-Hansen making the book a valuable resource for
& K.G. Nustad, 2005; K. Hetherington, Guerrilla anthropologists.
auditors: the politics of transparency in neoliberal The strongest aspect of this publication is its
Paraguay, 2011; D. Poole, ‘Between threat and broad geographical scope. The authors touch not
guarantee: justice and community in the margins only on areas commonly associated with the
of the Peruvian state’, in Anthropology in the revolts, but also on contexts that have been
margins of the state, eds V. Das & D. Poole, 2004). informed either by the aesthetics or by the
Similarly, whilst the ethnography makes it clear politics of the insurrections: Spain and Botswana,
that the ambivalent forms of personhood that amongst others. This approach is developed
constitute ‘middleness’ are not stable, emerging particularly in the chapter by Werbner, Webb,
through a variety of relational encounters, the and Spellman-Poots, who trace a web of
tension between this continually shifting ground interrelations between these different milieus. In
and the stabilization implied by the term ‘middle doing so, the authors shed light on how
class’ merits more discussion. A closer protesters in different locations borrowed audio
engagement with the work of de la Cadena and and visual material from each other, thus
Weismantel on race and hybridity would perhaps presenting the Arab Spring as a transnational
have supported this, whilst also helping to clarify exercise in intertextuality and citation.
how Shakow constitutes class in relation to The desire to read the local through
Andean scholarship on race (M. de la Cadena, the global is shared also by other authors.
Indigenous mestizos: the politics of race and culture Sabour, for instance, dextrously documents
in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991, 2000; M. Weismantel, the impact of the uprisings on Palestinians,
Cholas and pishtacos: stories of race and sex in the showing how the revolts reignited hopefulness
Andes, 2001). in their consciousness. Conversely, in an attempt
However, these are small complaints given to reverse the approach and read the local
the depth of Shakow’s ethnographic work, which through the global, Humphrey capably explains
meticulously evokes the shaping effects of class how in response to the Libyan case Western
(and racial) ambiguities on everyday interactions, powers devised new modes of international
the morally freighted nature of political claims law aimed at exporting neoliberal values.
to legitimacy, and the incursions of politics into These reflections are also developed by
the intimate spaces of Sacaban lives, embodied Fibiger, who demonstrates that the measure of
in locals’ perplexities regarding marriage partners success of the protests in Bahrain – a country
and conflicting aspirations. This impressive, often forgotten by analysts of the uprisings –
well-crafted ethnography will be of enormous fluctuated according to the different responses by
value to scholars interested in citizenship, the international community. In a similar vein,
class, and everyday political life in the Fosshagen successfully shows how the West has
Andes. conveniently elected Turkey to be the exemplary
Annabel Pinker James Hutton Institute model of the modern Muslim state: an outcome

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that neoliberal powers wished for the North missed the opportunity of developing its true
African uprisings as well. potential, perhaps owing to a brevity dictated by
The volume is rich. It presents some editorial necessities
limitations, however, particularly in the Igor Cherstich University College London
introduction. In this piece, Fosshagen offers a
comparative framework, tracing a similarity Lavie, Smadar. Wrapped in the flag of Israel:
between the Arab uprisings and the riots that Mizrahi single mothers and bureaucratic torture.
took place in Europe in 1848. The comparison has 216 pp. New York and Oxford: Berghahn
already been proposed by Alain Badiou (The Books, 2014. HB £49.99
rebirth of history, 2012). Fosshagen, however,
does not engage in detail with the Marxist Wrapped in the flag of Israel is an important and
philosopher. More importantly, he presents a provocative book that deserves to be widely read
model of comparison that, though interesting for well beyond anthropology. The central question it
the historian, is potentially misleading for the addresses – the relationship between the rise and
anthropologist. fall of social protest movements in Israel, and the
Fosshagen argues that both with the Arab wider conflict in the Middle East – is of crucial
Spring and with the European Spring the importance not only for people interested in the
revolutionary spirit of the riots was hijacked by region, but for all those with a concern with
the liberal upper-middle class. Even though this progressive politics more generally. The central
analysis is difficult to disagree with, the vocabulary event in the book is the march of Vicky Knafo, a
in which it is framed is highly problematic. The 43-year-old single mother of three, from her
various actors that took part in the Arab revolts home in an impoverished town in southern Israel
are portrayed merely as forces that did not to Jerusalem. Knafo is part of the 50 per cent of
develop a unified political consciousness, failing Israeli citizens known as Mizrahim: Jews with
to offer an alternative to the regimes they origins in the Arab and Muslim world, who have
attempted to overcome. Throughout the volume, long been pushed to Israel’s economic and
the Arab Spring is therefore described as a political margins (p. 4). Knafo was marching to
disappointment: a missed opportunity. But this Jerusalem to protest against welfare cuts against
conclusion is reached from a distant point of view single mothers. And she did so wrapped in the
informed by European expectations. flag of Israel.
The volume thus fails to make the most The book focuses on the ‘failure’ of social
natural contribution an anthropologist could protest movements against the neoliberal
make: analysing indigenous conceptualisations of restructuring of the Israeli state that has taken
revolution, and local parameters of success and place over the past fifteen years. In particular, it
failure. Though never explicitly stated, the volume focuses on the role of Mizrahi single mothers,
makes use of a classic Marxist definition of asking why their loyalty to the state remains
revolution. This is refreshing given that liberal undiminished, even though they have faced
analyses of the subject dominate both the media decades of deep-seated exploitation and
and political science departments. It is through discrimination. One of the central arguments of
this framework that the book succeeds in voicing the book is that the Israeli state produces a ‘divine
the tales of the Arab working class, as in the cosmology’ that effectively excludes any form of
chapter by Abenante, which provides a skilful meaningful agency by those on the margins.
portrait of the artistic expressions of an Egyptian This is a deeply personal text – written as a
carpenter in Tahrir. However, there is no account contribution to ‘World Anthropologies’ – ‘refusing
of the tension one encounters when comparing to reappropriate informant vignettes’ (p. 86) in
one’s own understanding of revolution with that order to build an abstracted theory, and is all the
of the informants. more thought-provoking for that. Running
In addition to this, the volume does not through the text is an account of Lavie’s own
engage with other authors of Marxist proclivities struggles on welfare, which coalesce with and
who have proposed convincing and more diverge from people like Knafo. Lavie is a scholar
optimistic analyses of the Arab Spring (e.g. with a global reputation, an anti-Zionist, and a
H. Dabashi, The Arab Spring, 2012). At times, leading Mizrahi feminist activist. She is also, like
these failings overshadow the strength of the Knafo, a single mother and forced onto the
book. Even though the volume is a very valuable margins of institutional academic life in Israel,
contribution, one cannot help thinking that – relying on welfare to support herself and her son.
regardless of whether the Arab Spring was a The book’s six chapters take us through the
missed opportunity or not – the book itself has tensions of Mizrahi protest in Israel. Chapter 1

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provides a general background on the history of together her greatest hits from the past thirty
Mizrahi single mothers and then shows why years into a single accessible volume which will be
Mizrahis have historically supported right-wing appreciated and treasured by all of those who
political parties. Chapter 2 shows how the work on Japan. These include her two classic
Israeli-Palestinian conflict constantly eclipses other studies of the Ainu in Hokkaido (first published in
forms of politics that might challenge that Israeli 1974 and 1981); her analysis of illness and culture
status quo – the protests of single mothers in Japan (1984); her examination of the symbolic
amongst them. Chapter 3 argues for the similarity role of the monkey, particularly in relation to
between the bureaucratic experiences of single Japan’s untouchable (burakumin) community
mothers and torture. Chapter 4 is a ‘thickly (1987); her study of how rice has traced symbolic
described’ version of an op-ed written for an transformations in understandings of Japanese
Israeli daily newspaper looking at welfare identity over more than ten centuries (1993); her
discrimination in Israel. Chapter 5 is a much more interrogation of the role of cherry blossoms in the
personal account of the bureaucratic pain construction of Japanese nationalism in the
experienced by single mothers in their encounter Second World War (2002); her extraordinary
with Israeli welfare bureaucracy. Finally, chapter 6 exegesis of the diaries of the kamikaze pilots who
returns to the ways in which the Israeli-Palestinian flew – not, as we have been led to believe,
conflict trumps all other forms of protest through willingly – to their deaths (2006).
an account of the fall of social protests. Ohnuki-Tierney’s oeuvre has a number of
The book has two main contributions. The first distinctive features which make it instantly
is to take us away from the Israel-Palestinian recognizable. She takes apparently mundane
binary in the study of Israel/Palestine. In doing so, features of Japanese society (monkeys, rice, cherry
the volume provides an analysis of the potential blossom) and examines how their symbolic
and limitations of forms of identity politics that meaning has been contested, imposed, and
move beyond the opposition between Arab and manipulated over the breadth of Japan’s recorded
Jew, Israeli and Palestinian. The second, major history. As well as providing historical depth and
contribution is to add political economy to our geographical breadth, Ohnuki-Tierney
understanding of the religiosity of the state. It incorporates ideas from across the
does so by showing how enchantment and anthropological field. Her list of
discrimination are intricately linked to the acknowledgements for Flowers that kill is a
shrinking of state welfare and the economic veritable Who’s Who of the past thirty years of
restructuring of the state. This is, of course, an anthropology in North America, Europe, and
issue that is not simply limited to Israel/Palestine. Japan: Edmund Leach, Stanley Tambiah, Terry
There is no easy take-home message by the Turner, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Sidney
time you get to the end of the 202 pages. There Mintz, Eric Wolf, Tim Ingold, Ernest Gellner,
are no neat and easily summarizable analytical Marc Augé, Pierre Bourdieu, Irokawa Daikichi,
points. There is no moment of redemptive hope Amino Yoshihiko – among many others. These
in the text. Instead, we are left with what Lavie acknowledgements are not in any way gestures
calls ‘ragged edges’ that highlight the tensions only. Ohnuki-Tierney has a gift for incorporating
and contradictions of the region, showing why complex theoretical ideas into a seamless
we have ended up as we are, and why it is going narrative which does a great service to those
to be so difficult to make progressive changes – upon whose work she draws. Indeed, in some
and the book is all the stronger for that. Wrapped cases, her examples make the idea of others more
in the flag of Israel is recommended to researchers, accessible than their original accounts. For those
postgraduate students, and undergraduates who of us who work on Japan, she has provided
are interested in Israel/Palestine, political protest, another great service, which is to have brought
discrimination, and the anthropology of the state. the study of Japan into the mainstream of
Tobias Kelly University of Edinburgh anthropological analysis, from which, perhaps
with the exception of the work of the medical
anthropologist Margaret Lock, it has generally
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. Flowers that kill: been omitted.
communicative opacity in political spaces. xv, The origins of the current book can be found
270 pp., illus., plates, bibliogr. Stanford: Univ. most clearly in Kamikaze, cherry blossoms and
Press, 2015. £18.99 (paper) nationalisms, which Ohnuki-Tierney published in
2002. In that book, she showed how cherry
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney is the doyenne of symbolic blossoms have played an important symbolic role
studies of Japanese society. Flowers that kill brings in Japanese society for a long time, a role which

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has always been the subject of multiple revolts. It includes Arab states, Europe, and the
interpretations around poles that stretch from life United States, as well as India and Africa. The
to death and from reproduction to introduction argues that this wave of protests
non-production. By the end of the feudal period displays the emergence of ‘a new embodied and
in Japan in the 1860s, cherry blossom had aesthetic way of doing politics worldwide’
become a dominant symbol for the Japanese (p. 13) that necessitates new analytical
people as a whole, in opposition to the Chinese conceptualizations of politics. In line with this, the
use of the symbol of the plum. Indeed, it collection is declared to be part of an emerging
became so interconnected with ideas of Japanese anthropology of protest movements.
national identity that some Japanese today still The five first essays analyse Arab uprisings
believe that the cherry tree is unique to their (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya), with a focus
country. on the role of imagery, iconic and constitutive
Ohnuki-Tierney’s study of cherry blossom was space and time, music and poetry in mobilizing
originally intended to be a companion volume to people and constituting new political imaginaries.
her book Rice as self (1993). In the process of Hawkins provides a particularly thought-
researching it, however, she came across the provoking analysis of the complex tension
diaries of those who took part in the tokkotai between local and international audience
(kamikaze) operations at the end of the Second orientation through the shifting mediated
World War and shifted her attention both in that imagery in the Tunisian revolt. Caton et al.’s
book and her subsequent 2006 book to those article likewise stands out, tracing the changed
who had written the diaries. In Flowers that kill she contexts, technological mediation, and role of
extends her original study by introducing a direct tribal poetry and its impact on the Yemeni
comparison with the use of flowers in times of revolt.
war and conflict elsewhere, specifically the rose in The second section of the book deals with the
Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. She aesthetics and organization of uprisings in Israel,
is somewhat nervous about making the India, and Botswana. Three essays stand out as a
comparisons, fearing that ‘[e]xperts in other result of their intriguing ethnography and
cultures and societies might well find my material analyses: Pinney on mediation and citationality
too thin’ (p. 203). But this fear is misplaced, since in the Indian anti-corruption movement; Webb
the comparisons do indeed give us a great on mediation, branding, and self-reference in the
amount of material ‘to think with’. same movement; and Werbner on tradition,
As Ohnuki-Tierney shows, the power of flowers innovation, and the transformation of labour
as symbols lies in their opacity. Different flowers strikes into a ‘new social movement
carry different meanings in different spaces at unionism’.
different times, but those meanings always The third section concerns American and
appear immutable and unchallengeable. Flowers European protests. The essays deal with
that kill gives us multiple examples of how those Wisconsin Labour rallies, the Occupy movement,
meanings are constructed and then made to look performance activism in London, and
so natural in the political sphere, and hence why ‘indignation’ protests in Spain and Greece. The
they carry so much power. It is a fine example of first three essays emphasize carnivalism,
political symbolic anthropology, a tradition which performativity, and humour as constituting
can indeed trace its roots back to Edmund Leach’s experiences and imaginaries of the political.
and Victor Turner’s work in the 1960s and is as Postill’s analysis of the mediated aesthetics in the
important a part of the anthropological project Spanish Indignados movement presents a
today as it has ever been, if not more so. fascinating, although mainly empirical, account of
Roger Goodman University of Oxford the aesthetics and the organizational,
imaginative, and experiential impacts of social
media dynamics. Theodossopoulos’ analysis of
Werbner, Pnina, Martin Webb & Kathryn the poetics of ‘indignation’ shows how people’s
Spellman-Poots (eds). The political aesthetics political discontents are grounded in established
of global protest: the Arab Spring and beyond. political moralities.
xxxviii, 410 pp., illus., bibliogrs. Edinburgh: The introduction and many of the
Univ. Press, 2014. £24.99 (paper) contributions argue that aesthetic and embodied
performances create experiences of unification
This edited volume presents fourteen empirical and new political imaginaries, with varying
analyses of the popular uprisings that occurred theoretical references, in a broadly American
around the world in the wake of the Tunisian postmodern landscape. In the heated debate over

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the revolutionary potential of the uprisings, the Religion and belief

book positions itself alongside celebratory
analysts who consider the mass occupations and
temporary unifications as creating new powerful Lin, Wei-Ping. Materializing magic power: Chinese
potentialities and imaginaries, despite their failure popular religion in villages and cities. xiv, 203
to produce lasting organizations or changes. The pp., maps, tables, illus., figs, bibliogr.
book does not situate the uprisings in a single Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2015.
metaphysical historical or anthropological scheme £29.95 (cloth)
but has an ethnographic approach, and that is its
great strength. Its common analytical claim is The profound socioeconomic transformation in
nevertheless that the political is constituted both mainland China and Taiwan has
through performative and embodied aesthetics significantly impacted Chinese popular religion
that creates a sensory experience and imaginary and contributed to the formation of its new
of unity and an alternative social order, however features. This has attracted wide interest from
vague and transient it may be. The protests are both Chinese and Western scholars and
filled with references to other protests, creating a triggered numerous publications. Among these is
‘cosmopolitan’ awareness. Most of the essays Wei-Ping Lin’s Materializing magic power, which
draw mainly on postmodern theories of researches a form of popular religion practised by
subjectivity, imagination, and emotions and focus Taiwanese people in both rural and urban social
less on the social formations underlying the settings and examines its reinvention
claimed political potentialities. To this reader, during the process of industrialization and
the essays that most convincingly argue for urbanization.
significant protests are those that demonstrate In the first part, the author takes a close look
the grounding of protest forms in existing social at the way popular religion is followed by
dynamics that prefigure and surround Wannian villagers. It reveals how the rural
them. populace materialize deities into statues
The central claim of the book is that the mass and form a long-term relationship with them in
occupations, non-violence, transitory unifications, order to overcome life’s difficulties. In the process
aesthetics and humour, ‘citational travel’, and of materialization, the locals conceptualize gods
cosmopolitan awareness characterizing these by personalizing and localizing them. This, as Lin
protests constitute a new form of doing politics. points out, is based on traditional Chinese
This claim can be disputed, however. Firstly, the thought, as personalization is associated with the
1848 People’s Spring seems to parallel all these Chinese idea of body/soul and the social person
aspects. Secondly, E.P Thompson’s The making of in which kinship relations are stressed, and
the English working class (1963), which is localization is built upon the traditional
curiously absent from the discussions, describes cosmological model. In this part, the author also
non-violence, music, sarcasm, caricatures, and demonstrates the role that the spirit medium
international references in the mass riots in Britain plays in associating deities with their adherents.
from the eighteenth century onwards. The By examining initiation ceremonies and
impact of the French Revolution on the Haitian consultation rituals, Lin reveals how the spirit
revolution and European riots was also medium enables deities to take human form and
formidable. enter the social context of their devotees, who
This is not to deny the novelty of anything in can then concretely sense the existence of the
the revolts. What intrigues this reader is the intangible god.
audience consciousness, the extensive and Taiwan’s rapid economic development from
intensive mediation of events, the branding of the 1970s onwards, as Lin suggests, has
protests, the technological means to mobilize led to the rise of the individualism and
and evade state control, and the international utilitarianism which have reshaped the popular
power assemblages that the mediation religion brought by people from the villages to
mobilizes. the cities. When a large number of the rural
These critical remarks aside, the volume is a populace moved to urban areas, the traditional
valuable contribution to the literature on form of popular religion was forced to modify
protests. It presents a collection of intriguing itself in order to adapt to the new sociocultural
ethnographic analyses that are consistently environment. In the second half of the book,
co-ordinated, but sufficiently different to therefore, the author focuses on the way in which
provoke critical thinking. popular religion is being reinvented by its
Kjetil Fosshagen Bergen University College practitioners – both ordinary people and spirit

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mediums. It is very interesting to see how for Despite this limitation, Lin’s book still deserves
migrants in the city of Bade traditional a strong recommendation as it provides fresh
kinship-based social relationships have become data and a fresh analysis of the new phenomenon
less important; instead, people intimately of Chinese popular religion and can inspire
associate with each other and re-enhance their further research in the area that will help people
social coherence by joining a religious understand this rapidly changing society from a
worshipping group. religious perspective.
The author also shows how the spirit medium Lan Li University College Dublin
in the city modifies village religious practices to fit
the needs of the adherents’ new urban situation.
This is perhaps the most interesting and Palmié, Stephan. The cooking of history: how not
important discussion in the book. In the city, as to study Afro-Cuban religion. xii, 360 pp.,
Lin points out, petitioners’ social relationships or bibliogr. Chicago: Univ. Press, 2013. £19.50
places of residence frequently do not overlap with (paper)
the shrine or with the shrine’s core members. To
avoid the risks entailed by his unfamiliarity with One can describe Stephan Palmié’s masterful
the shrine followers’ social contexts and homes, contribution to the anthropological debate about
the spirit medium reinvents the traditional cultural continuity and change as an attempt to
religion and attributes misfortunes to accidental take the image of the book’s title – that of
causes, rather than those associated with kinship, cooking – as far as it will go. As Palmié explains,
marital, and ancestral problems as well as factors the image is owed to Fernando Ortı́z, the
related to place of residence. Also, unlike a towering intellectual of the twentieth century in
traditional spirit medium, who apprehends the Cuba, who famously compared his country to an
deity’s messages through dreams and then racks ajiaco: a seasoned dish made of various legumes
his mind to guess and fathom the divine will, the and pieces of meat cooked at length to produce a
urban medium utilizes divination blocks in order thick and heterogeneous stew. This was Ortı́z’s
to obtain the cause of misfortune quickly. answer to twentieth-century debates in the
Moreover, the spirit medium uses substitutes anthropology of Afro-American culture about
in the place of persons who are unable to such ideas as ‘acculturation’ and ‘mestizaje’ (in
attend rituals and commands talismans in more recent debate, ‘syncretism’ and ‘hybridity’),
advance for use during his extended which tend, paradoxically, to reaffirm as cultural
absences. essences the traditions (‘African’, ‘European’,
All these details show how Chinese popular ‘indigenous’) that social life in the Americas is
religion is constantly reinvented by its seen as blending. Ortı́z’s point was not just that
practitioners in an ever-changing sociocultural cubanidad, as he called it, could be compared in
environment. In this sense, Lin’s book has made a its heterogeneity to an ajiaco (an image often
significant contribution to anthropological studies contrasted to the North American homogenizing
on popular religion in contemporary China. notion of a ‘melting pot’). It was also that the
However, it seems to me that a wider and deeper process of its cooking provides a better metaphor
analysis of the new phenomenon could have for the inherently dynamic character of Cuban
been developed in the book. Industrialization and cultural becoming: different elements cooking at
urbanization mark a significant socioeconomic different speeds, their tastes and substances
development in society as they change migrant blending into each other, producing varying
people’s lives in many ways, such as their textures and consistencies in different parts of the
sociocultural concepts, the way they are pot, with new ingredients and seasonings added
organized, and the social relationships they form over time to produce novel and unexpected
among themselves as well as with others. It would effects.
have been better had the book provided readers Drawing lightly but to good purpose on
with a richer and thicker description of how science studies theorists such as Ian Hacking and
migrant people deal with new sociocultural Bruno Latour, Palmié extend’s Ortı́z’s image to
settings, how their religious needs have altered, include in the ajiaco, as one of its prime
what the driving force is behind the urban spirit ingredients, the very process of its study. The
medium’s modification of traditional popular story of the emergence of such a thing as
religion, and how the reinvention of popular ‘Afro-Cuban religion’, then, is told as a complex
religion has impacted on the process of Taiwan’s interaction involving ‘looping effects’, as Hacking
industrialization and urbanization over the past calls them, between all the different cultural and
few decades. social constituents that make up the historical

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trajectory of these sociocultural forms (e.g. Space, place, and environment

different and changing ritual practices and
structures, wider political and economic
transformations, and, not least, the circumstances Li, Fabiana. Unearthing conflict: corporate mining,
of slavery and so-called ‘emancipation’ and the activism, and expertise in Peru. x, 265 pp.,
racial politics to which it gave rise, or particular maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.:
personalities that influenced the course of what Duke Univ. Press, 2015. £16.99 (paper)
came to be objectified as a form of ‘religion’) and
the work of an array of scholars whose Fabiana Li’s innovative ethnography breaks new
century-long transnational conversations have ground in conceptualizing the political ecology of
helped to give form to ‘Afro-Cuban religion’ as an mining controversies. Across Latin America,
object of study. Ortı́z, and the trajectory of activist networks disrupt government and
research he stimulated in postcolonial and then corporate plans to expand and develop new
revolutionary Cuba, alongside the work produced mineral projects. Although mining conflicts are
by scholars from West Africa, Europe, and the often understood as a clash of political ideologies
United States, including Palmié himself, are all or development priorities among what appear to
ingredients that have made this ajiaco what it has be internally coherent groups (i.e. peasants,
come to be. corporations, and the state), Li skilfully illustrates
The significance of Palmié’s argument lies as the role that agentive landscapes play in
much in the story it allows him to tell as in the organizing such disputes.
broadly (Latourian) constructivist point it allows The multi-sited ethnography traces the
him to make – as he says at the outset of the proliferation of mining conflicts in the central and
book, his main concern is empirical rather than northern highlands of Peru, focusing primarily on
theoretical. The book is nothing short of a the Yanacocha mine, one of the largest gold
game-changer for anyone who wants to find out mines in the world. Li argues that modern mining
how such subjects as ‘African origins’ and their has ‘unearthed new entities’, whereby nonhuman
‘New World adaptations’, initiation and the ritual agents such as water, pollution, and mountains
kinship structures it produces, cosmological have become visible and politically relevant (p. 4).
transformation and ritual competition (not least These entities are central actors in the expansion
between prominent initiates as well as of conflicts as they organize collaboration and
anthropologists), and language, food, and ritual opposition around mineral extraction. Moreover,
can be understood as effects rather than just Li suggests that mining conflicts are never
objects of multiple and historically mutable resolved, but, rather, they proliferate because the
representations and practices. Indeed, mechanisms that corporations use to address
notwithstanding Palmié’s modest proviso, the problems only generate more conflicts.
book’s theoretical contribution certainly lies in the The book is organized into three parts –
original and thoroughly ‘solid’ way in which it ‘Mining past and present’, ‘Water and life’, and
marries up the ‘flat’ sensibility of science studies ‘Activism and expertise’ – with some chapters
with the sheer richness and depth of his historical that are more ethnographic than others. Each
and historiographical scholarship and chapter is well framed conceptually to illustrate
expertise. how entities such as pollution or water come to
Perhaps one question that could be raised is ‘matter’ both materially and politically.
whether the notion of history, which in this Collectively, the chapters focus on dynamic
historiographical argument serves as a container contests over knowledge practices, illustrating
for its own ‘cooking’ (a meta-cooking pot!), could how people come to know and understand
not rather (or at least also) be treated as itself an entities such as pollution or contamination in
ingredient of the ajiaco. After all, Palmié ways that have different social and political
presents the cooking of history as a process that is implications. Landscapes, including bodies of
itself historical – a story that unfolds over time. water, are not pre-existing and natural, but
So one wonders what would happen to the emerge through contested knowledge practices.
argument if it were freed of its historicizing The book is particularly exciting in those
temporal moorings, treating the very notion of ethnographic moments where the conceptual
‘history’ as an object rather than just a premise of drive emerges from the everyday lived
the analysis. But perhaps such a move would experiences of the author’s field collaborators. For
only get in the way of a story extremely well instance, in chapter 3, Li visits the community of
told. Porcón, who depend upon water from Cerro
Martin Holbraad University College London Quilish, which is slated for mineral development.

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She describes first-hand conversations with political and social history of peasants in the
peasants to illustrate how Cerro Quilish emerges Peruvian Andes should consult previously
as a boundary object whose capacity to published works in the region. The book makes a
‘accommodate diverse viewpoints and significant contribution to the field of political
interpretations enabled alliances across ecology by rethinking the ways in which
geographical and political divides’ (p. 111). For landscapes take on political significance. It is
some, like Margarita, Cerro Quilish is at once a highly recommended reading for students and
former child-eating mountain that her scholars interested in environmental politics,
grandfather told her stories about and the aquifer corporate social responsibility, and social
that scientists (aligned with the NGO campaign) movements.
talked about on the radio (p. 132). Although the Teresa A. Velásquez California State University,
multiplicity of relations and connections to Cerro San Bernardino
Quilish enabled a victorious alliance against
Minera Yanacocha’s expansion plans, activists Li, Tania Murray. Land’s end: capitalist relations
underscored Cerro Quilish as an aquifer, setting on an indigenous frontier. 225 pp., maps,
the stage for the mining company to provide tables, illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke
counter-claims to concerns over water. Univ. Press, 2014. £16.99 (paper)
Through contested knowledge practices,
water is transformed into an important actor, In lucid and compelling prose, Tania Murray Li
becoming, as Li suggests, an ‘obligatory passage tells a poignant tale in Land’s end. Set on the
point, obligating all sides to make their respective Indonesian island of Sulawesi, the book traces
arguments with reference to water’ (p. 98). This is how Lauje highlanders’ adoption of a new cash
evident in Chapter 4 where Minera Yanacocha crop, cacao, catalysed the privatization of
addresses peasant concerns about reduced water common land and the displacement and
quality and quantity by providing them with impoverishment of those Lauje who did not
treated water. Here, the limitations of corporate manage to accumulate land and capital.
social responsibility practices are exposed through The book is based on twelve months of
the logic of equivalences: ‘the forms of scientific research undertaken in multiple short stays
and technical tools used to make things stretched over a twenty-year period. As such, it
quantifiable and comparable’ and ‘the constant may provide inspiration and serve as a
negotiation over what counts as authoritative methodological model for ethnographers who
knowledge’ (p. 149). Peasants reject the technical find professional and familial demands
equivalence between treated water and ‘natural’ constraining them to brief stints of fieldwork.
water by pointing to visual and sensory changes. During her visits over two decades, Li was struck
Collaborative frictions multiply as more people by the emergence of capitalist relations, a
are enrolled in the registry of canal users and socioeconomic shift that highlanders themselves
deploy their affiliation to demand compensation found banal (p. 17). The book’s title reflects the
benefits. New opportunities are incommensurable turning-point that Lauje found more significant:
to what is lost, but provides them with a the end of land. In the highlands, Lauje
compromised future. conventionally understood land as temporarily
Li’s skilful use of actor-network theory attached to individuals who expended their
generates a new understanding of collective labour power on it; left to fallow, land reverted
politics that accounts for complexity, back to a collective and potentially claimable
heterogeneity, and ambivalence without status. Once highlanders began planting
undermining the diverse political agenda of long-term cacao trees rather than annual crops,
activists. This is largely achieved through a critical however, land became the property of individuals
view of how corporate practices, even those that with the labour, capital, and political power to
purport to address health and environmental claim and maintain it. This effectively spelled the
problems, tend to impede efforts of rural and ‘end of a customary system of land sharing, and
urban activists. For instance, in chapter 5, the end of the primary forest that had served as
Yanacocha’s Environmental Impact Assessment highlanders’ land frontier, the place in which they
(EIA) forums incorporate mining critics without could expand when need or opportunity
fundamentally addressing their concerns. presented’ (p. 2).
Since the approach focuses on the roles of Those Lauje who did not secure land for
nonhuman entities in mining conflicts, including agricultural commodity production faced a dire
the knowledge practices that bring such entities predicament: capitalism displaced them from
into view, readers interested in understanding the their subsistence resource base, but it did not

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absorb them as wage labourers. Surplus to the Meddens, Frank, Katie Willis, Colin McEwan
requirements of capital for rural labour, they & Nicholas Branch (eds). Inca sacred space:
faced a bewildering dead end. Their plight is landscape, site and symbol in the Andes. vii, 309
figured in the rickety home and fatigued and pp., maps, tables, figs, illus., bibliogr. London:
malnourished bodies of Kasar and his son in the Archetype Publications, 2014. £65.00 (paper)
first pages of the book. Later we learn of other
highlanders who have managed to enrich Interestingly, the title of the volume under review
themselves through cacao production, building does not actually include the key term that drives
solid homes and gaining access to forms of the text: namely the category of the ushnu. For
consumption that allowed them to reverse the the uninitiated (i.e. those not especially familiar
stigma that lowlanders conventionally applied to with Andean archaeology or ethnohistory), this
highlanders (including stereotypes of highlanders word is usually understood to refer to a kind of
as wild, backward, unproductive, violent, Inca ritual platform or altar, or a conduit for
primitive, and generally inferior, pp. 32, 40, libations set inside such a structure. In the
43-4). This newfound prosperity is, however, archaeological imagination at least, it is
insecure, resting as it does on the fate of a tree archetypically represented by the masonry-
crop that is vulnerable to weather, disease, pests, retained platforms found at sites like Huánuco
and price volatility. Pampa and Vilcashuamán in the southern
In attending to the Lauje desire for access to Peruvian highlands. However, as the volume in
roads, schools, and health clinics, as well as more question makes clear, there can be no simple
general inclusion in the national mainstream, Li definition of the ushnu phenomenon. Essentially,
(p. 33) calls into question James Scott’s depiction then, the volume offers a detailed consideration
of Southeast Asian highlanders in The art of not of the category of the ushnu from a
being governed (2009) as resisting the state and multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on insights
seeking autonomy, and his focus on the coercive from archaeology, ethnography, and
dimensions of state practice to the exclusion of ethnohistory.
the attractive and channelling elements that work The volume has twenty-four chapters in all, so
to ‘produce subjects who desire particular ways of even the briefest summary of each would exceed
living’. Li’s discussion of Lauje desires is part of an the space available. Generally, however, the
analytical framework that attends to the specificity various authors seem interested in the ushnu less
of the conjuncture in question: the economic as an architectural entity (the traditional framing)
inducements and constraints of Lauje life; the and more as a focal point within a wider ritualized
material qualities of the milieu; the character of landscape – with an especial emphasis on
crops; social boundaries, values, and meanings; documenting lines of sight and ritual connections
customary and official rules and institutions; and to other important topographic features,
the actions of unseen spirits (pp. 4, 16). In this especially mountains. The chapters by Gutiérrez
layered account, land enclosure and capitalism and Fernández and by Zuidema, Meddens,
emerged in a gradual and piecemeal fashion, by Moyano, and McEwan all stand out in this
stealth rather than by a scheme orchestrated by respect. This landscape approach is a welcome
an obvious villain (e.g. a rapacious agribusiness one, and provides a strong connective thread that
corporation, a state department, or a misguided runs across many of the chapters. Several
development programme, p. 9). chapters also look at the ushnu stratigraphically:
The book is meant to challenge both that is, in terms of its internal (often highly
development programmes that treat primary heterogeneous) soil composition. In this regard,
commodity production as a recipe for poverty Ferreira’s discussion in particular of what he terms
reduction, and social movement agendas that fail ‘ritual mixing’, whereby materials from diverse
to recognize disenfranchised rural subjects who geographical contexts are recombined within
do not fit into alternative development narratives ushnu platforms as a microcosmic iteration of
as potential heroes or victims. Li calls in the material flows, is especially interesting. In a
conclusion for a new politics of distribution that related fashion, Ogburn’s essay considers the
would shift the current conjuncture (p. 185). more general logic underpinning the movement
Land’s end is an engaging and of ritually potent substances around the Inca
thought-provoking contribution to ongoing Empire, thereby offering a useful bridge between
debates in international development, agrarian the broader landscape scale and the narrower
studies, Asian studies, history, geography, and stratigraphic scale. A rather different tack is taken
anthropology. in Arnold’s chapter, which provides an
Marina Welker Cornell University ethnographic treatment of ushnus in the social

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memories of schoolchildren in present-day Bolivia Quayson, Ato. Oxford Street, Accra: city life and
– and it is a marker of the degree to which the itineraries of transnationalism. xii, 297 pp.,
volume’s editors have sought to cover their topic maps, illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke
as comprehensively as possible. Univ. Press, 2014. £17.99 (paper)
It is difficult not to compare Inca sacred space
with another recent edited volume, namely Oxford Street reconceptualizes the African city by
Tamara Bray’s 2014 collection of essays on The arguing that ‘ephemera’ – fleeting moments of
archaeology of wak’as. Another fundamental Inca oral, aural, visual, and social interaction – are the
category, wak’as are often thought of as shrines, primary undergirdings of space, rather than the
particularly in the form of modified rock outcrops visible built environment. While drawing on
– although, like ushnus, the exact nature of the current literature about infrastructure, informality,
wak’a is hard to pin down. The usage of terms like and theory from the South in work by AbduMaliq
wak’a and ushnu can often be rather loose in Simone, Filipe de Boek, Rem Koolhaas, and Jean
archaeological scholarship and it is therefore to and John Comaroff, Quayson argues that these
be applauded that we now have two volumes approaches remain restricted to understanding
that do justice to their complexity and range of the ephemera of daily life as a creative response
manifestations. Still, it is perhaps worth drawing a to what is usually framed as the principle shaper
contrast between Inca sacred space and Bray’s of urban space, namely the material built
aforementioned volume on wak’as, since the environment. Quayson turns this assumption on
latter is much more heavily invested in its head, exploring how histories and
contemporary theoretical debates, including contemporary analyses of urban spatial
those around questions of ‘animism’, ‘nonhuman production can be more richly undertaken by
persons’, and ‘relational ontologies’. This is accepting these ephemera as having equally
generally not the case with the volume presently significant weight to the descriptions of decaying
under review, with the notable exception of the infrastructures. The result is a book which, by
chapter by Allen (who, incidentally, contributed a melding literary analysis with anthropological
chapter to the wak’a volume as well), whose approaches, rethinks the relations of space,
chapter links the ushnu phenomenon to the capitalism, and self-making by focusing on the
increasingly influential concept of Amazonian taken-for-granted quotidian practices and
perspectivism as articulated by Eduardo Viveiros aesthetics of urban life.
de Castro. A central methodological intervention
Speaking as an archaeologist or an in Oxford Street is the framing of Accra
anthropologist (rather than an Andeanist), to me as a transnational and hybrid space, so as to
the volume feels very much like a text written for understand how a uniquely African urbanism
regional specialists. It contains few gestures to a emerges at the articulation of local and global. To
comparative analysis, and a relatively limited do this, Quayson extends Accra’s hinterland to
number of citations to the broader theoretical include the migratory circuits of the Atlantic,
literature on sacred space and ceremonial contemporary soundscapes, and literature. These
landscapes. To be clear, this is not a criticism: themes are most obviously explored in chapters 1
there is nothing wrong with articulating research and 3, which interrogate ‘the processes by which
around problems that are geographically a stranger group becomes African’ (p. 63, original
restricted. None the less, while universally emphasis). Chapter 1 considers the integration of
relevant themes could certainly be drawn from Tabon, Afro-Brazilian returnees, into the Ga
the various chapters, these remain largely ethnic group. By maintaining a distinct identity
implicit, and it is for the reader to connect them within the Ga, Tabon hybridize the historical
to global archaeological debates. As an Inca constitution of Ga ethnicity and index Accra’s
scholar, however, I found myself both fascinated transnational history. Chapter 3 explores the
and better informed by the rich and detailed history of Euro-Africans in the Osu area, home to
studies included within the volume. I therefore present-day Oxford Street, showing how they
suspect that although it will have a more limited impacted the area’s spatial and aesthetic
appeal beyond the Andes, for scholars working in constitution.
that region it offers a comprehensive treatment It is precisely the articulation of global
of the ushnu phenomenon, for which it will processes with local worlds that is the focus of
immediately become the indispensable chapters 4 through 6, which exemplify Quayson’s
reference. understanding of the relation between structural
Darryl Wilkinson University of processes and the sensorial experiences and
Wisconsin-Madison everyday practices of urban life. Quayson is

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interested in how seemingly unconnected spatiality is defined by ‘multi-synchronicity’. By

ephemera are manifestations of the same global this, Quayson means that different historical
structural processes. Thus, in chapter 4, the book moments of urban planning do not subsume one
approaches Oxford Street as an archive of another, but continue to coexist in unevenly
neoliberal policies. Quayson probes its visual, oral, integrated ways. The result is a spatial
and aural records to reveal how the slogans of reorientation away from vertical relations
tro-tro (lorries used for public transport) and between planners and users, towards a vision of
billboard advertisements intersect with spatial production which places these actors in
megachurch prosperity gospels to create a spatial the same sphere so that spatial relations are made
sensorium of enchantment whose roots lie in the horizontal. This reveals how discrepant
impact of structural adjustment programmes on space-times are created and coexist with one
urban space and life. Chapters 5 and 6 show how another in everyday life. In chapter 7’s analysis of
the seemingly unrelated scenes of salsa dancing Ghanaian literary representations of urban space,
and gymming are equally products of the consequences of ‘multi-synchronicity’ are
contemporary capitalism’s influence on the use most tellingly explored. Quayson traces how
and understanding of time, articulated with local middle-class characters grapple with the
class differentiations. Salseiros are immersed in the contradictions induced by their confrontations
offerings of middle-class transnational leisure with Accra’s slums. In showing their difficulties in
practices and spaces. In contrast, the gymmers, tackling the coexistence of slum conditions with
mostly young men, are trying to manage the their privileged experiences of urban space, he
burden of free time that accompanies chronic illustrates the consequences of Accra’s material
unemployment. differentiations on everyday life and the
The fragmented quotidian manifestations of emotional, social, economic, and psychological
contemporary capitalism produce urban space contradictions induced by spatial difference. He
and are haunted by remnants of earlier moments thereby explores the internal contradictions of
of spatial planning and production. Chapters 2 urban self-making by rendering space as
and 7 examine the material, affective, economic, constituted through multiple ephemera rather
and social aspects of urban planning. Key here is than only the built environment.
the argument made in chapter 2 that Accra’s Claudia Gastrow University of the Witwatersrand

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