626 BOOK REVIEWS psychology than it isin the traditionally experi ‘mental journals” (p. 170). Stil, one can cavil, Danziger sees the ancients (for which read Aristotle) as bequeathing to early ‘moder times a view of “reason” as noninstru- ‘mental and objectively teleological. The British empiricists demolish this position, substituting a subjective and individualist view of good (of motive and emotion) and an instrumental view of reason, all supposedly natural to propertied English gentlemen, But Aristotle credited him- self with discriminating final causes (teleology), thus recognizing an older physicalist tradition that disdained such explanations (as did the early modems) in favor of material and efficient ea salty, When John Stuart Mill claims that his uti itarianism 1s a modern version of Epicureanism, he is not being wholly silly; nor is Bertrand Ru sell beg wholly silly when he exclaims that Aristotle's Ethics expressed the views of a mid- dle-aged, propertied businessman: nor is it fool- ish to observe that Aristotle's belief that Persians ‘were “natural slaves” and that Greek women and “the (Greek male] many” were the passive recip- dents of reason delivered by Greek men of wis- dom (assisting their wealthy and powerful pa- trons) manifests ideological interests. Moreover, Kantian practical reason is far from instrumental, a 1s equally true of reason in the soctal Darwa ist tradition as it conceived itself (itis objectively 00d and thoroughly teleological that the most adapted survive) and in the intustiomst moral Philosophy that dominated Anglo-American moral philosophy for the frst half of this cen- tury. Finally, there is a strong Marxist colonng to much of Danziger's analysis. American Psy- chology rationalizes the corporate/class power structure. Fine. Undoubtedly true. But Marx thought there is a human nature, one distorted by ideology and exploitation, waiting to be freed the conceptions ideology and exploitation do rot make sense unless there isa reality that pow- erful interests distort in order to usurp natural benefits). Is that what Danziger needed to ex- plain to his Indonesian colleague? Would that insight allow fim to understand and demystify his Indonesian colleague's ideology? Or 1s ide- logy a concept, s0 to speak, only locally expli- cable as a sort of antithesis or deconstruction of capitalism asa unique Western industrial config- uration, without then any expectation of appli cation to any other human economic or cultural configuration? 1 do not think Danziger gives a clear answer to this question. But I think the logic of his argument requires that he do so. JUSTIN LEIBER ISIS. 9031999) Clifford Geertz. After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. (Jerusalem- Harvard Lectures.) xi + 198 pp., index. Cam- bridge. Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995. $2295, After the Fact 1s a sort of memoir. It is about how Clifford Geertz sees his anthropological field experiences over four decades in postcolo- mal Indonesia and Morocco, (wo Islamie coun- mes that underwent, in differing degrees, the revolutions of modernity and the upheavals of political unrest. The book, however, is not just about Geertz’s fieldwork. Iti also a commentary ‘on developments he helped fashion in anthro- pology, and why. It includes snapshots of the social science world of the 1950s as i was emerging from individual studies of more or less discrete societies, evolving an interdisciplinary team approach to local global interpenetrations, and, finally, promoting self-examination to help lus understand why we do what we do in the way we doit Readers encountering Geertz for the first ume here may enjoy these retrospective commentar- ies of a well-known scholar, Those Familiar with Geertz, however, will experience a feeling of having already been there, Wading through Geertz’s verbiage 1m an attempt to epitomize this, book. one finds that the essential message turns ‘out to be simple, although profound (as any phi- osopher of science well knows): memories are fallible, facts are elusive, generalizations have limited value. meaning is central, description takes pronty over explanation and metaphors of culture over reliable data. Geertz is a literary an- thropologist. Having myself left literature for an- thropology, I expect more. Geertz's career extends from the 1960s to the 1990s, from. that is, a decade of optimistic de~ velopment 10 a period when we must face some devastating realities, For Geertz, as for Weber before him, culture 1s at the center of Western economics, which is itself a cultural construct The work of this literary anthropologist e braces economic development (reflecting volvement with MIT modernization economics), religion (reflecting the influence of Weber), and ‘grand social science projects Geertz has been ambivalent about science throughout his career. He is troubled by the nat- ural science model of knowing, his reservations probably exacerbated by his encounters with po: litwcal machinations at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Science methodology is tI- lusory. What do anthropologists (generic) know and how, and how valid is the knowledge they Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedBOOK REVIEWS—ISIS. 90 have obtained? Geertz’s answer 1s a rejection of positivism. Yet in drawing the reader into the vortex of his uncertainties and doubts, Geertz of- fers no specifics. Instead, he borrows the pow- erful if elusive models provided by Suzanne Langer, Ernst Cassirer, and Wittgenstein, who was the rage when Geertz was at Harvard. Geertz appears frustrated by his inability to understand his four decades 1n his discaphne; the ground has shifted under his feet. His compari- son of his field sites— Pare in Indonesia and Sef- rou in Morocco —n tandem with changes mn the world and in the academy conveys some idea of the limits of his vision, But why is this able an- thropologist so incapacitated? After forty years he can recall only images, remarks, “shreds and patches.” The subtitle—"Two Countnes, Four Decades, One Anthropologist” — may provide a clue. According to Geertz, there was in fact more than one anthropologist: “I have never worked in the field alone for more than a month or so, and doubt very much that I could have managed at” (p. 115). In both sites he worked with his “then wife.” as he refers to Hildred Geertz, a respected fieldworker and ethnographer. Perhaps ‘we need (wo anthropologists 10 look back One sees glimmers of a sociology uf knowl edge throughout this volume Anthropology 1s about ethnographic skills, but also about pub- lishing, journals, funding agencies and --Geertz ‘might have added—the Cold War Geertz went to Indonesia as part of a modernization project to fight communism, But these reflections on economic and political change, on cultural sta bilities, and on the nature of anthropological knowledge often suggest that Geertz is unable to deal with political and economic power In his, summary statement about the 1966 massacres in Pare he says that by 1986 the massacres were “hardly... a memory at all” (p. 10). Geertz may advocate a humanistic, reflexive, situated knowl edge, but does he himself possess it? Laura Naber Michael A. Cremo. Forbidden Archaeology’ Impact: How a Controversial Book Shocked the Scientific Community and Became an Under ground Classic. Foreword by Colin Wilson. xxxiv. + 570 pp., bibl. index. Los Angeles Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing. 1998, $35 (cloth). Every scientific discipline has fringe theories, but the fringes of archaeology are especially crowded. Archaeology focuses on human affairs. uses seemingly familiar objects as data, and has — Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved - 3.4999) 627 4 long tradition of amateur participation. 1t thus provides abundant opportunities for would-be scientific revolutionaries who reject the ideas of ‘mainstream archaeologists 1n favor of more col- orful ones involving alien visitors, Jost conti: nents, and various forms of divine intervention Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson's book Forbidden Archacology (Bhaktivedanta Insti tute, 1994) fell squarely within that tradition, It argued that anatomically modern, tool-making humans have walked the earth for tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of years and that they— not the far younger hominids studied by main- stream paleoanthropologists —are our tue an- estors, The truth has been obscured, Cremo and Thompson argued, by scientists too wedded to existing theories of human ongins to give a fair hearing to data that challenged them, Forbidden Archacology’s Impact 1s Cremo’s effort to document the reception of hus earlier book. It reprints published reviews and Cremo's (mostly unpublished) responses to them, letters 1 and from Cremo, transcripts of radio and tele- ‘vision interviews, and postings to Internet news- groups Most of this matertal appears in its en= ‘rely, and Cremo’s use of quotation 1s (judging from hus treatment of my own brief correspon: dence with him) scrupulous. His responses ex- tend, but do not substantially alter, the positions he staked out in Forbulden Archaeology: Forbidden Archaeology ys fmpact 1s not. in ite self, a work on the history of science, The raw data 11 makes available could, however, inform studies of such topies as disciplinary “boundary work,” fringe seience, popularization. and the in- nce and religious belief (in Cremo’s case, Hinduism) Cremo’s explicit use of social constructionist ideas to cast doubt on mainstream archaeology’s conclusions also in- vites closer analysis — especially in relation to the strict Bacontan empiricism that he promotes as proper sctentific methodology. A. BowDotn Van RIPER tersection of sci Allan Mazur. A Hazardous Inquiry: The Rash. ‘omon Effect at Love Canal. xw + 256 pp..illus., figs.. tables. bibl.. index Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 198. $26 (cloth). One way (0 tell the Love Canal story 1s that a greedy Hooker Chemical Company carelessly dumped ity toxie waste, which then leaked out and caused a lot of sickness, Hooker, und a cal lous New York state health bureaucracy, were set against Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal Homeowners’ Association, who fought the good