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Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale (2014) 22, 1 118142. 2014 European Association of Social Anthropologists.
doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12065
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achievements. The chapters, however, perceptively critique these projects because the
celebratory tone ultimately conceals and
reinforces the inequalities brought about by
neoliberalism.
For a volume that is supposed to be a
collection of studies on young people, its
discussion of fundamental ideas in youth
studies is lacking. What constitutes youth, for
example, in the context of East Asia? This is
not simply an issue of deciding on an age
bracket. Different societies have their own
rhetoric and expectations concerning what it
means to be young and when adulthood
commences. In addition, the chapters are
uneven in their treatment of youth as the analytical focus. Some deal with them extensively,
others only tangentially. Strongest is the work
on university students (chapter 4) who exercise self-management (p. 101) to prepare
themselves for the competitive marketplace.
Also, the fact that they are all growing up in
a post-miracle era should compel observers
to think of youth as a generational category
because of shared experiences of uncertainty.
I understand that the chapters are idiographic.
However, the very concept of life-making
potentially adds a new dimension to the
characterisation of East Asian youth as a
generation. In other words, young people, as
the chapters themselves show in different
ways, do not simply succumb to alienation or
delinquency, but are actively involved in
navigating their uncertain times.
JAYEEL SERRANO CORNELIO
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious
and Ethnic Diversity (Germany)/Ateneo de
Manila University (Philippines)
Boissevain, Jeremy. 2013. Factions, friends and
feasts. Anthropological perspectives on the
Mediterranean. Oxford and New York: Berghahn
Books. 310 pp. Hb.: $95.00. ISBN 978
0857458445.
An unread letter always carries news. But
what is new about a volume consisting of
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ever-fascinating emerging present for furthering the critical capacity of the anthropological
imagination.
In sum, the book provides many insights
and encourages the reader to wonder about
the extent to which current debates about
otherness might be an impoverished version
of a less heroic and oft-neglected theme: the
cultural disposition to regard difference as
mere exoticism while the by-products of
diversity (such as social, cultural and spatialterritorial inequality) are conned to the
poetic anthems of western remorse la science.
Reference
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1954. Foreword, in
J. A. Pitt-Rivers, The people of the Sierra, ixxi.
New York: Criterion Books.
JULIETA GAZTAAGA
Universidad de Buenos Aires CONICET
(Argentina)
Brinker, Helmut. 2011. Secrets of the sacred:
empowering Buddhist images in clear, in code,
and in cache. Lawrence: Spencer Museum of
Art, University of Kansas/Seattle: University
of Washington Press. X + 214 pp. Hb.:
$46.95. ISBN 0295990899.
In this work the late Helmut Brinker (19392012),
until 2006 professor of East Asian art at the
University of Zurich, studies the development
and expansion of Vajrayna Buddhism in
China in the rst millennium CE and its transfer
to and transformation in Japan in the period
between the 10th and 13th centuries. His main
focus here is on iconography, tantric practice
and ritual (including consecration rituals of
sacred objects), and worship of sacred Buddhist
relics (by rulers, Buddhist clerics and the laity).
The rst part of the book (chapter 1: From
Image to Icon) serves as a kind of historical and
thematic introduction, which predominantly
discusses the question of the actual and spiritual
presence of divinities in images. This is done from
an interesting historical, interdisciplinary and
cross-cultural perspective, connecting concepts
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References
Benda-Beckmann, F. von 2006. The multiple edges of
law: dealing with legal pluralism in development
practice, in The World Bank (ed.), The World
Bank legal review. Law, equity, and development,
5186. Washington DC: The World Bank,
Martinus Nijhoff.
Benda-Beckmann, F. von 2011. Recht ohne Staat im
Staat: eine rechtsethnologische Betrachtung, in S.
Kadelbach and K. Gnther (eds.), Recht ohne Staat?
Zur Normativitt nichtstaatlicher Rechtsetzung,
17599. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag.
Roberts, S. 1998. Against legal pluralism:
some reections on the contemporary enlargement of the legal domain, Journal of Legal
Pluralism 42: 95106.
2014 European Association of Social Anthropologists
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JUDITH BEYER
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany)
Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: anthropology, archeology, art and architecture. London and New York:
Routledge. xii + 163 pp., gures, references,
index. Pb.: $36.59. ISBN 978 0415567237.
What is it that anthropologists do? This is a
simple question to which no simple answer
can be given. Part of its complexity lies in the
climate of self-reection that permeates public
discourses about anthropology in the last three
decades, and another part in the fact that many
practitioners, caught in the ongoing acceleration
of the contemporary world, sometimes forget to
go back to the basics. Going back to the basics is
what Tim Ingold does in this short and
beautifully written book. Whether writing
about technology (including an important reappreciation of French archaeologist Andr
Lroi-Gourhans geste), environment, lines,
sociality or simply being alive, the scope of
his interest in the last few decades (mostly
corresponding to his move to the University
of Aberdeen and the establishment of the
anthropology department there) has been
toward exploring the ways in which humans
interact with their surroundings and develop
as the result of this interaction. The emphasis
of the argument is on practice, on constant
doing and reshaping (making from the title
of the book), but also with practical
consequences for teaching since: [t]o teach
anthropology is to practice anthropology; to
practice anthropology is to teach it (p. 13).
The rst chapter of the book begins with the
maxim Know for yourself! (p. 1). One is
reminded of another maxim, reportedly from
the oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, around
2500 years ago, know yourself. In this sense,
the main purpose was for an individual to
realise his/her limits: know that you are no
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god. In Ingolds work, it is an advice to practically learn something that would help him
understand the people he was studying. This
is important because it leads to a crucial
question: why do people do what they do?
And the answers to that can be primarily
learned from listening to people and observing
their interactions with the environment. This
book grew out of the advanced undergraduate
and postgraduate course Ingold has been
teaching at Aberdeen since 2004 (he refers to it
as the 4 As). It connects anthropology with
archaeology, art and architecture. Ingold clearly
distinguishes anthropology (as a speculative, allencompassing discipline) from ethnography
(whose task is to describe the things as they
are; p. 4), and then proceeds to art, criticising
anthropologists tendency to treat art primarily
through objects, and ignore the intricacies of
the creative processes of creating works of art.
Similar type of criticism is directed at anthropologists mostly ignoring architecture as a eld of
inquiry (at least with regard to traditions that
Ingold explores; Mesoamerican anthropologists
have long ago learned of the value of studying architecture and incorporating it in their works). Archaeology came to the equation as a result of Ingolds
own interests, as well as a eld that connected
anthropology, art and architecture through their
unifying themes of time and landscape () and in
their mutual concern with the material and
symbolic forms of human life (p. 10).
Chapter 2 introduces materials of life,
while the next chapter presents an interesting
overview of how to make a hand axe. This might
sound more exotic to non-American readers, as I
remember being demonstrated the techniques of
making hand axes during my postgraduate
course in Prehistoric archaeology at Tulane
University by Professor Harvey Bricker, back
in 1991. Overall, the whole archaeology +
anthropology formula will be familiar to readers
with some knowledge of the four eld approach
in American anthropology. Perhaps the scale of
Ingolds project could be compared with the
one that Franz Boas faced in the late 19th
century and the question will be to what extent
are his colleagues ready to answer the challenge?
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Chapter 4 explores the concept of architecture through another specic activity, building a
house. This includes distinguishing between
different types of activities (as Leon Battista
Alberti wrote around 1450: an architect is not a
carpenter; p. 49), understanding of practical
geometry, but also some aspects of practical
knowledge that ancient masons and builders
acquired as they went along when they faced
specic problems. Dealing with lifes uncertainties, including a very brief discussion of the
argument from design, is the basis of Chapter
5. Human beings, according to Ingold, seem to
be forever caught in between catching dreams
and coaxing materials (p. 73). All of this
leads, in the next chapter, to considerations
of how we understand the physical characteristics
of the world we inhabit, beginning with the
mound. Chapters 7 and 8 deal with bodies: taking
as an example Henry Moores sculpture Warrior
with Shield, Ingold guides the reader through
bodies different movements, shapes and endurances. Developing further ideas rst proposed
by Lroi-Gourhan, he introduces the reader to
the complex ways of interactions, for example,
between gestures and speech (telling by hand;
p. 109). The nal chapter, Drawing the line,
creates an interwoven summary based on delineating forms and shapes through which the acts of
knowing take place. However, these acts are never
complete since knowing (and, in a wider sense,
understanding) is an ongoing process, just as
human beings are constantly making the world
and themselves as part of that world.
ALEKSANDAR BOKOVI
Institute of Social Sciences and University of
Belgrade (Serbia)
Khazanov, M. Anatoly and Gnther Schlee
(eds.) 2012. Who owns the stock? Collective
and multiple property rights in animals. Integration and Conict Studies Volume 5. New York
and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 342 pp. Hb.:
$95.00. ISBN 978-0-85745-335-8.
Edited by two of the foremost authorities on
pastoralism in Eurasia and Africa respectively,
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description of the Malian border village of alKhalil, a centre of trading, smuggling and
contraband, presents it as a cosmopolitan
place where solidarities are transnational rather
than local, and where identity, power, and
movement are closely linked (p. 234). Julien
Brachet, nally, draws attention to local
impacts and the dynamics of migration
toward and through the Sahara. The activities
around the smuggling routes have had
an important economic impact on relay towns
through structural and monetary incentives.
This edited volume presents a compilation
of coherent, well-structured case studies
addressing highly signicant issues for the
contemporary Sahara. Although the case
studies give priority to the western Sahara
(Morocco, Mauretania) without including its
eastern parts (todays Libya, Chad and Sudan),
the volume still offers a groundbreaking study
of the Sahara. What becomes clear throughout
is that its historical and contemporary connectivity is not limited to the Sahara as a
geographic, climatic or environmental entity
but characterises it as a uid extending its
frontiers into its neighbouring areas and
pulling them, in turn, into its economy,
policies and social and cultural expressions.
INES KOHL
Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian
Academy of Sciences (Austria)
Mller, Birgit (ed.) 2013. The gloss of harmony. The politics of policy-making in multilateral organisations. London: Pluto Press.
272 pp. Pb.: $40. ISBN 978-0-7453-3374-8.
Birgit Mllers edited volume addresses a vital
question for global governance: how international organisations that have no constraint
mechanisms at their disposal nd ways and
means to make the world governable without
directly governing it (p. 7). The nine studies
undertake in-depth, multi-level and multi-sited
ethnographies in United Nations (UN) agencies
or are related to the UN from a historical
perspective. The studies do not seek to evaluate
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Palmi, Stephan. 2013. The cooking of history. How not to study Afro-Cuban religion.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 368 pp.
Pb.: $21.91. ISBN-13 9780226019567.
Palmis book is a coming of age, not only of
his personal intellectual course, but also of a
school of thought that has been developing
over the last decades on the American
continent and, especially, in its Northern
half. This school is hardly a single approach
on a theme but, rather, it is more revealing of
the theme itself. This is precisely the broader
contribution of the book that offers rich
information on the building up of the theme
as an overarching and recurrent American
preoccupation.
The immediate focus of the book is AfroCuban religion. The inverted commas here
are of importance because they indicate that,
whatever else the phenomenon might be, it is
also an object of study and a very particular
kind of discourse that implicates both practitioners and outsiders, such as researchers. In
fact, Palmis point is that it is hard to draw
the line between outsiders and insiders
because they are interactive producers of
Afro-Cuban religion as a discursive object.
As Asad did for the concept of religion, Palmi
performs skilfully a genealogy of the term
Afro-Cuban religion and the various actors
implicated in it. The closest ones are practitioners and scholars (often the two roles collapsing into one individual), with a wide
geographical span, from the Caribbean, Brazil
and North America to Europe and Africa.
Out of the term Afro-Cuban religion,
the analytical and deconstructive emphasis is
put on the signier Afro, because this is what
hides or reveals the semiotic ideologies (p. 11)
Palmi is after. In essence, it is a discourse on
origins and the complex issue of continuities
and discontinuities that has preoccupied so
intensely generations of African Diaspora
scholars, most famously of North American
formation. Palmi amply demonstrates the
constant preoccupation with this overarching
theme among such scholars; what changes is
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Reference
MacGregor, Neil. 2012. A history of the
world in 100 objects. London: Penguin.
MARTIN SKRYDSTRUP
University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
Williams, Robert Lloyd. 2013. The complete
codex Zouche-Nuttall: Mixtec lineage histories and political biographies. Austin: University of Texas Press. 456 pp. Hb: $54.00.
ISBN 9780292744387.
Robert Williams The Complete Codex ZoucheNuttall belongs to a small but highly informative body of work aimed at presenting the
contents of Postclassic and early Colonial
Mixtec codices to modern readers. It is not an
introduction to the Mixtec culture or codical
tradition for which readers should turn to
Elizabeth Boones Stories in Red and Black
(2000) and Bruce Byland and John Pohls In
the Realm of Eight Deer (1994) but it extends
the work of those scholars and is a worthy
contribution to indigenous Mesoamerican
historiography. Its subject, the Codex ZoucheNuttall, is a screenfold manuscript produced
between ca. 1350 and 1450 in the present-day
Mexican state of Oaxaca. The two documents
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References
Boone, E. H. 2000. Stories in red and
black. Pictorial histories of the Aztecs and
Mixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Byland, E. B. and J. M. D. Pohl 1994. In
the realm of eight deer: the archaeology of the
Mixtec codices. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press.
NICHOLAS P. CARTER
Brown University (USA)