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AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

BOOK REVIEWS
Special Review Section on The Seductions of Quantification by Sally Engle Merry
Review

Success through Failure: Translation, Temporal Tricks,


and Numeric Concept-Work
DOI: 10.1111/aman.13179 and conceptual relations; they reflect different assumptions
about causality, and, ultimately, as Merry powerfully artic-
Andrea Ballestero ulates, they reflect different social theories about how the
Rice University world works.
Another insightful contribution of the book stems from
In The Seductions of Quantification, Sally E. Merry provides Merry’s decision to explicitly account for how those social
a most welcome study of how international organizations theories are not only conceptual inspiration but part and
“use of numbers to describe social phenomena in countable parcel of the everyday work that brings indicators into ex-
and commensurable terms” (p. 1). She centers on the use istence. In the case of human rights indicators, the contests
of indicators, a subset of numbers designed to provide pre- between social theories, some legal and some economic,
cise meaning to complex social processes. Indicators aim result in the conflict between an approach that privileged
to bound the meaning of such processes, to prescribe the the attributes of a right, supported by lawyers, and an ap-
ways we understand them, and to narrow the options we proach that favored the structure-process-outcome theories
see as appropriate ways to intervene in them. Their pur- of development economists (p. 185). These observations
pose is to naturalize the scope of a social phenomenon as remind ethnographers that theory, as a form of abstraction
a measured and measurable concept so that comparisons in and generalization that explains relationalities in different
time and comparisons across cases can be made. Merry’s ways, is itself a lively part of the worlds we study. This
book centers on how these indicators are made in three approach allows Merry to map not only what specific under-
areas: human trafficking, violence against women, and hu- standings of the world become asserted via indicators but,
man rights. Using a “genealogical method,” the book traces most importantly, what dynamics make that assertion possi-
the decisions, hesitations, exclusions, and translations that ble. Here, Merry diagnoses a powerful theoretical dynamic
lead to the crystallization of particular ideas, data sets, and that entails a process of association—a linkage between a
boundaries as constitutive of those phenomena. Merry nav- number and certain social theory—and a process of repeti-
igates United Nations and governmental offices, excavates tion, made possible by the inertia that leads people involved
resolutions and precedents, and traces reports circulating in the creation and use of indicators to reproduce existing
between international bodies to show how indicators come data and knowledge. As indicators circulate, they solidify
to articulate the relation between international and national that dynamic until an indicator is naturalized and a number
contexts in the definition of these three areas of political comes to stand for a theory, and a theory for a number.
intervention. This intimate and intricate relation becomes unwavering.
One of the reasons Merry’s book is so welcome is that But despite this self-reinforcing dynamic, Merry shows that
it contributes to a growing anthropological literature that indicators are not as solid as they may seem.
carefully attends to the technical qualities of different num- For instance, one of the critiques of indicators that Merry
bering regimes (Ballestero 2014; Fiske 2017; Guyer 2004; mobilizes is that they rely on an aura of objectivity to get
Nelson 2015; Verran 2010). These studies of quantification away with standardizing highly diverse phenomena. By se-
and numbers in legal and political spaces avoid bracketing lectively translating that diversity into a homogenous expla-
the technical intricacies of different quantification schemas nation, indicators prescribe specific responses as the only
and their distinct implications. They avoid erasing the dis- appropriate ones to deal with worldly phenomena (p. 113).
tinctions between kinds of numbers and their consequences. Yet, despite taking advantage of that aura of objectivity and
Merry also avoids that gloss and goes further by offering a prescribing homogenous responses, most users of indicators
methodology, the genealogical approach, as a tool to trace share a “recognition of their superficiality, simplification,
the rich histories and struggles behind the making of indi- and neglect of context and history” (p. 139). Thus, while
cators. This method reveals how indicators based on counts capitalizing on the objectivity they supposedly entail, indica-
are different from those that are based on ratios, for exam- tors are also recognized as failures. In my view, it is precisely
ple. Differently calculated indicators embody different social this contradiction that makes them so successful. In other

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 121, No. 1, pp. 260–286, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. 
C 2019 by the American Anthropological

Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aman.13179


Book Reviews 261

words, indicators succeed by failing. That failure is intrinsic reach into worlds well beyond those where they have been
to the commensuration they attempt to effect, an impossible created.
dream of representing what has already transpired transpar- An indicator’s relation to the future is similarly flawed
ently. This impossibility to do what they claim requires because instead of capturing unknown future events, an in-
constant negotiation of what counts as the world and what dicator shapes their future happening so that any records
theories about the world count. produced out of their occurrence fit the social theory the
The case studies Merry analyzes present clear evidence indicator system has accepted as true. Thus, indicators re-
of that contradictory character. One after another, we see constitute what happens in the world, both in the past and
countries play the “technical game” of fitting in one cate- the future, while they claim to only describe such a world.
gory and not another. We see technical personnel deploy That is why their epistemological failure is the source of
actions to redefine phenomena in terms of what indicators their power, the impetus that makes them proliferate across
measure. Thus, as a way to capture the lives of women all sorts of social institutions. Indicators create the need for
experiencing violence, or the proliferation of human traf- new practical and material connections between political,
ficking operations, or the extent to which a country sees legal, and institutional spaces that have little to do with the
itself as a promoter of human rights, indicator systems fall density of the world events they claim to capture. In this
short. Yet, despite that failure, they still have the power sense, they are highly efficient world-making devices.
to unleash the work required to make the world formally The Seductions of Quantification allows us to see how fail-
adapt to and fit that which the indicator system measures. ure and proliferation are intrinsic to indicators’ curious ca-
This contradiction yields a rich social life. Those involved pacity to combine social theory and numbers to affirm the
in their making know that indicators fail to do what they scope and reach of a concept. Accessing the institutional
purport, and yet, given the inertia they help institute, coun- settings from which these figures have emerged makes con-
tries and agencies continue to invest energy, funding, and crete their genealogy and shows the specific locations and
intellectual efforts to change the semiotic reach of previous times where that concept work is done. This focus speaks di-
events and future happenings to strategically fall inside or rectly to the question of ethnographic theory. I take Merry’s
outside of what an indicator counts. Furthermore, amid all meticulous engagement with the technical worlds that make
of this creative work, the “information” indicators reveal indicators what they are—narrow definitions of complex
also incites political mobilization, support for victims, and phenomena, dependent on the inertia of expertise and data,
demands for social change. In other words, their epistemo- and failed attempts to translate events—as invitations to
logical failure—their incapacity to capture history, context, expand the reach of what counts as ethnography in the
and complexity—creates the need for more work, more phrase ethnographic theory. Her attention to what others
officers, more programs to continue perfecting them. Their (Riles 2005; Valverde 2009) have dubbed the technicali-
failure secures their reproduction rather than leading to their ties of social life, characterized by their dense, modern,
extinction. and sometimes state-centered forms of knowledge—such
That failure can be technically described by noting how as law, economics, and science—helps us reengage those as
the commensuration that indicators attempt is at its core a ethnographic fields. She shows how technical content, often
process of translation. The act of asserting the meaning of bracketed as of little anthropological interest except when
a concept through a set of indicators is an attempt to travel operating as diagnostic of injustice, colonizing schemas, and
back in time, to redefine what was so that it reflects what oppression, is itself a place of ethnographic theorization, a
has been agreed it should be in the future, once the indicator location of social life where worldviews are technical con-
has been accepted. This attempt to redefine the past fails, structions with far-reaching historical consequences.
particularly because of an indicator’s intrinsic incapacity to At a time when anthropology is grappling with all sorts
capture the full density of the world, something that is true of questions about its place in a world where academic jobs
for any form of representation. In other words, the fact are fading, Merry’s work reveals how what anthropology
that an indicator fails to capture history and context in all does best is not determined by its location, as if theory
their complexity is intrinsic to the translation process on happens in seminar rooms only, and applied work happens
which all representation depends. But beyond that repre- exclusively in nonacademic offices. This book reminds us to
sentational failure, the act of translation also performs an not take for granted the question of how concepts work in
interesting temporal trick. In its attempt to create commen- the world and how those theorizations shape the limits of the
surability, and once an organization adopts it, an indicator possible inside and outside the seminar room. It shows how
extends its reach back in history toward its factual precursor the everyday work of theorization and concept creation is of
to try to redefine what happened. That reach into the past interest for the academic and for the anthropologist beyond
is shaped not only by the particular theories of the world the academy as well. In this book, we see how techno-legal
that underlie the indicator but also, importantly, by its ex- theorization and concept work creates worlds. We also see
tension into new locations beyond the set of institutions, how conceptual definitions matter materially, as they open
offices, funding streams, blaming and shaming circles, and and close funding streams, institutional programs, and ad-
multilateral financial bodies where it was created. Indicators vocacy campaigns. Anthropologists have the skill to trace
262 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

those workings and show the matter for which they matter. Guyer, Jane I. 2004. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic
Merry’s book is thus a great resource for within and without Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
the seminar room. It shows us how the labor of theorization Nelson, Diane. 2015. Who Counts? The Mathematics of Death and Life
takes place in multiple and sometimes unexpected locations, after Genocide. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
under various labor regimes, and with different objectives. Riles, Annelise. 2005. “New Agenda for the Cultural Study of
As programmatic question and as cultural critique, The Se- Law: Taking on the Technicalities.” Buffalo Law Review 53:
ductions of Quantification is a book that opens space for thought 973–1034.
and action. Valverde, Mariana. 2009. “Jurisdiction and Scale: Legal ‘Technical-
ities’ as Resources for Theory.” Social and Legal Studies 18 (2):
REFERENCES CITED 139–57.
Ballestero, Andrea. 2014. “What’s in a Percentage? Calculation as the Verran, Helen. 2010. “Number as an Inventive Frontier in Know-
Poetic Translation of Human Rights.” Indiana Journal of Global ing and Working Australia’s Water Resources.” Anthropo-
Legal Studies 21 (1): 27–53. logical Theory 10 (1–2): 171–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/
Fiske, Amelia. 2017. “Natural Resources by Numbers.” Environment 1463499610365383.
and Society 8 (1): 125–43.

Magical Thinking
DOI: 10.1111/aman.13181 (Kotz 2011). Like a kind of trafficking Groundhog Day, simi-
larly fantastical claims circulated in the run-up to subsequent
Denise Brennan Super Bowls, even though police departments in cities that
Georgetown University had hosted previous Super Bowls had reported no uptick in
prostitution-related arrests (Mogulescu 2014). If 100,000
Doing research on trafficking is maddening. It means taking doesn’t pass the smell test, during the 2006 World Cup in
on sensationalized narratives and wildly exaggerated num- Germany, the media reported that one million women—
bers. Whether it’s Liam Neeson in a movie franchise that one million!—would be trafficked to meet the demands of
peddles caricatures of traffickers or laughable statistics on sex-starved fans (GAATW 2011; Landler 2006).
trafficking into the sex sector during the Super Bowl, nar- Merry calls this kind of feverish feedback loop of faulty
rative and numerical portrayals have produced knowledge claims that keep getting repeated the “puzzle” of indicators
about trafficking that has been difficult to unstick. Sally (p. 139). In the case of trafficking, the staying power of ob-
Engle Merry gives us an elaborate analytical tool kit for viously exaggerated claims (what I’ve called “zombie data”)
understanding the persistence of such fanciful claims. The lies with an obsession with sex work and the conflation of sex
Seduction of Quantification carefully wrestles with the power work and trafficking (Brennan 2017). There is a voyeuristic
and intended and unintended consequences of narratives and interest in trafficked persons. Because trafficking survivors
numbers. Merry’s insight that “those who create indicators rarely get to speak for themselves, the claims that circulate
aspire to measure the world” end up “creat(ing) the world about them often do not reflect their lived reality. When
they are measuring” is perfectly illustrated in the case of traf- survivors drive the narrative, they are quick to point out
ficking (p. 21). Her wonderfully lucid book helps explain that they are more than their experience in forced labor. At
why trafficking became known and unknown, measured and a press conference in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2016,
immeasurable. one of the trafficking survivors that sits on the US Advisory
The title says it all. By explaining why claims, no mat- Council on Human Trafficking passionately reminded the
ter how patently bogus, become seductive, Merry embarks standing-room-only crowd: “What makes us experts is ac-
on a detailed autopsy of the “magic” of numbers (Merry tually not—it’s not the telling of our stories. . . . We bring
2011, S84). She emphasizes the importance of simplicity perspective and knowledge and expertise . . . that literally
and clarity, which create a kind of truth “aura.” More baf- has nothing to do with our personal trauma stories” (US
fling, however, is the shelf life of claims that defy logic. Take Department of State 2016).
the preposterous claims about trafficking during the Super At the same time, trafficking survivors’ trauma stories
Bowl. Every January, antitrafficking scholars brace for yet are a form of capital. Trafficking survivors must provide
another round of claims by local police and nongovernmen- details of abuse to law enforcement, attorneys, and Home-
tal agencies about an expected rise in trafficking. Before the land Security officials to “prove” their victimhood to qual-
2011 Super Bowl in Dallas, police sergeant Louis Felini, for ify for trafficking visas to stay in the United States. While
example, predicted that 100,000 women would be trafficked some stories of abuse get “counted” as rising to the level
Book Reviews 263

of trafficking, other forms of abuse drop out. The salacious nonprofit sector, the TIP report is more of a list of the US’s
interest in certain stories of abuse—often involving sexual foes and allies than assessment of actual antitrafficking ef-
labor—distracts from attention to exploitation in other la- forts. Because it has sanctions attached to a failing grade, it
bor sectors. In other words, the hypervisibility of trafficking has positioned the US, as legal scholar Janie Chuang (2006)
into the sex sector causes other instances of migrant labor has observed, as a “global sheriff.”
exploitation to go unnoticed, normalized, and unaddressed. I wish Merry had been in the room when the first TIP
Herein lies the commensurability dilemma of indicators. report was drafted. With her there, maybe there would have
Using Merry’s sober analysis, we must confront the dif- been more careful selection of how data would be gathered,
ficulty of measuring degrees of exploitation in and across interpreted, and presented. She could have warned that the
labor sectors. As Anderson and O’Connell Davidson (2002, first report’s maiden attempts at data gathering and data
11) note, there simply is no “universal yardstick” to assess presentation likely would become “settled knowledge” that
degrees of abuse and thus worthiness of redress and assis- provides “a kind of unassailable truth” (p. 25). Of course,
tance. Entire industries, such as agriculture, rely on low she could have urged officials to include trafficking sur-
wages and also benefit from the current deportation regime vivors in the data gathering and writing process, the very
in which exploited workers fear reporting abuse. Operat- people whose experiences were “being measured” and who
ing in a kind of “labor purgatory,” many workers experi- “typically lack a voice in the construction of the categories
ence exploitation—just not enough to qualify as trafficking and measurements” (p. 25).
(Brennan 2014). The imperative for indicators to be clean, Instead, we live with an instrument that is deeply
clear, and compelling does not capture gray in what Merry flawed—and influential. When the thing measured is a ter-
identifies as an “indicator ecology” that only deals in black rible harm that provokes outrage and calls to do something,
and white. moralism, voyeurism, and politics can cloud reason and
Unfortunately, understanding how and why certain forms speed up what should be a careful process. In a landscape of
of knowledge gain traction doesn’t help with the herculean “indicator (il)literacy,” Merry’s The Seduction of Quantification
task of dislodging false claims and bogus data. A particular set offers a sane and sophisticated roadmap (p. 26).
of truth claims have come to dominate public discourse and
policy on trafficking. “Once established and recognized,” REFERENCES CITED
Merry writes, statistical knowledge “often circulate[s] be- Anderson, Bridget, and Julia O’Connell Davidson. 2002.
yond the sphere envisioned by their original creators” Trafficking—A Demand-Led Problem? A Multi-Country Pilot Study.
(p. 5). Once false claims and incorrect data take hold, Stockholm: Save the Children Sweden.
hysteria can follow. In the case of the fight to end traf- Brennan, Denise. 2014. Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in
ficking, there has been no putting the genie back in the the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
bottle. Sex workers have experienced the collateral dam- Brennan, Denise. 2017. “Fighting Human Trafficking Today: Moral
age (GAATW 2007). If trafficked persons are assumed to Panics, Zombie Data, and the Seduction of Rescue.” Wake Forest
be primarily in sex establishments, then raids on brothels Law Review 52 (2): 477–96.
and massage parlors have become the solution. Antiprosti- Chuang, Janie. 2006. “The United States as Global Sheriff: Using
tution activists have stretched antitrafficking campaigns far Unilateral Sanctions to Combat Human Trafficking.” Michigan
beyond the goal of ending forced sexual labor to eliminating Journal of International Law 27 (2): 437–94.
the sex sector. The conditions under which people work GAATW (Global Alliance against Traffic in Women). 2007. Collateral
in the sex sector might not be coercive, but attempts to Damage: The Impact of Anti-Trafficking Measures on Human Rights
rescue them can be. These “coercive rescues” result from around the World. Bangkok: Global Alliance Against Traffic in
the elision that a sex worker is necessarily a trafficked per- Women.
son (Brennan 2014). Sex worker rights groups around the GAATW (Global Alliance against Traffic in Women). 2011. What’s
world have vehemently rejected this conflation and rescue the Cost of A Rumour?: A Guide to Sorting Out the Myths and the Facts
logic. They argue that as sex workers try to work fur- about Sporting Events and Trafficking. Bangkok: Global Alliance
ther underground, their risks—of rape, HIV, and yes, even against Traffic in Women.
trafficking—increase. Moreover, this host of antiprostitu- Kotz, Pete. 2011. “The Super Bowl Prostitute Myth: 100,000 Hook-
tion policies touted as antitrafficking policies have thwarted, ers Won’t Be Showing up in Dallas.” Dallas Observer, January
contradicted, and undone the effectiveness of antitrafficking 27. https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/the-super-bowl-
efforts. prostitute-myth-100-000-hookers-wont-be-showing-up-in-
Beyond measuring who qualifies as “trafficked” and thus dallas-6424288.
who qualifies for assistance and immigration relief, the Landler, Mark. 2006. “World Cup Brings Little Pleasure to Ger-
mother of all trafficking measurements is the US Depart- man Brothels.” New York Times, July 3. http://www.nytimes.
ment of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. com/2006/07/03/world/europe/03berlin.html.
With terrific skill, Merry painstakingly dissects how this Merry, Sally Engle. 2011. “Measuring the World: Indicators, Human
report card on every country’s antitrafficking efforts is as- Rights, and Global Governance.” Current Anthropology 52 (S3):
sembled. Long pilloried by scholars and the international S83–95.
264 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

Mogulescu, Kate. 2014. “The Super Bowl and Sex Trafficking.” New US Department of State. 2016. “Panel Discussion on Annual Re-
York Times, January 31. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/ port.” October 18. https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/tip/rls/
01/opinion/the-super-bowl-of-sex-trafficking.html. rm/2016/264049.htm.

A Measure of the Measure of Measuring


DOI: 10.1111/aman.13182 glorious detail that all measurements are not the same and
that every indicator has its own genealogy and life. Most
Nayanika Mathur importantly, she demonstrates why it is important to focus
Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford on different forms of quantification and how one might
ethnographically do so.
On being asked to comment on The Seductions of Quantifi- Within anthropology and its cognate disciplines, there is
cation, my instinctive response was to undertake a mental a general consensus that quantification is political, problem-
calculation: atic, and doesn’t capture reality adequately. Quite unlike
the public policy or governance worlds and disciplines like
Q: Is this piece REF-able? (REF is the research excellence frame- economics, there is no romance for numbers or indices that
work, a periodic assessment of the publications and outputs of all
members of the UK’s higher education system.) can be whiffed out. However, Merry’s work takes us much
A: No. deeper into this dizzying world of numbers, measures, indi-
Q: Then how much time away will it take from my “REF outputs”? cators, and audit cultures in at least three distinct ways.
(REF counts publications, or “outputs,” and then measures and First, Merry develops the concept of an “indicator cul-
ranks them according to slippery and constantly shifting metrics.)
A: Given that it is exam season and I am drowning in student
ture,” which in one respect is, as she notes, a dimension of
scripts and essays, this would mean X number of hours/days away audit culture, but I think it captures a whole range of dis-
from that “output” that I need to get in by X date in order for it tinct social and political practices. Indicator culture refers
to be potentially published in time for the REF 2021 cut-off date. to this now widespread assumption that “all things can be
Q: Then why should I do this commentary? measured and that those measures provide an ideal guide
A: In REF terms, this isn’t a particularly worthy labor-time ex-
penditure, so I should, regretfully, say no. to decision making” (p. 10). Indicator culture is what al-
lows for, for instance, transparency in India to be com-
I did, evidently, accept the—as it turns out, delightful— pared with transparency in Mexico, or for “policy makers
task of writing this comment. In order to do so, I had to to compare freedom in Mauritius and Mauritania, poverty
willfully combat the above calculation on the basis of the in Sweden and the Sudan, and human rights compliance
arguments that (1) I really wanted to read this book, and in Russia and Rwanda despite the vast difference between
(2) I genuinely enjoy the intellectual labor of reading full these countries” (p. 10). In addition to this foundational
monographs and being forced to articulate a coherent, indi- belief in the measurability of all things, ranging from do-
vidualized response to them. Somewhat shamefully, I have mestic violence to trafficking to academic success, is this
to admit, however, that the clinching argument really was belief in the comparability across social domains, spaces,
that I hold a permanent post and, mercifully, have no plans and constructed trends. Indicator culture, as elaborated by
to return to the unforgiving UK academic job market that Merry, is what allowed for the growth and popularity of
hinges so fundamentally on “REF-ability”—that is, number what is called “evidence-based governance,” or, simply, “new
and quality of publications as measured by what Merry terms governance.”
an “indicator culture.” Despite job security, I remain haunted Second, Merry elaborates on how the unmeasurable
by the audit culture of UK higher education that is so pro- comes to be measured. For me, this was the most eye-
foundly seduced by quantification and is going deeper down opening aspect of the book. For instance, in the discussion
an Orwellian path of quantifying, measuring, and assessing of the measurement of violence against women, Merry dis-
everything ranging from publication depth to teaching qual- cusses the way in which the problem came to be “defined”
ity to policy outreach. In addition to the constant lamenta- and the forms of relationships and events that were allowed
tions of UK academics, there is some powerful work that has into the field that eventually led to the construction of certain
shown the destructive and coercive effects of these exercises modalities of counting and measuring violence. This some-
in quantifying knowledge, teaching, and research (Shore and what clinical exploration is juxtaposed with a first-person
Wright 2000; Strathern 2000). narrative of a woman suffering from long-term intimate-
Merry’s work, similarly focused on quantification, takes partner violence. The narrative is chilling on its own, but the
us down an unexplored ethnographic path of how indicators starkness of the contrast between the two accounts endures
and measures were devised in the case of human rights, on. Similarly, Merry shows how it is actually impossible to
gender violence, and sex trafficking. As such, she shows in measure human trafficking for various complicated reasons,
Book Reviews 265

while also showing how trafficking still comes to eventually education in the UK. In other words, the world would be
be quantified. a better place without this indicator culture. Similarly, in
Third, Merry creatively combines the ethnography of my own work in India on corruption (Mathur 2017), I have
bureaucracy, expertise, numbers, and the spread of tech- been struck by how faulty and problematic all measurements
nologies of measurement. The ethnographic material of The of corruption—be it by organizations like Transparency In-
Seductions of Quantification is remarkable for the depth with ternational or the Indian state—are. Corruption perception
which it showcases different sites, dramatis personae, and indices or lack/fullness of transparency measures in India
institutions. It covers widely different practices—human are not just not measuring accurately; by creating highly
trafficking, human rights, and violence against women— distorted indices, they are also having a profoundly negative
and finds a way to tell the story of how they came to be impact on the functioning of the Indian state. Once again, my
rendered measurable and comparable by networks of ac- ethnographic material suggests strongly that the objectives
tors and institutions. As such, this book does the hard labor of arresting corruption or ensuring effective governance in
of backtracking on the audit-culture assumption that things India might be better served if there was a wholesale halting
get measured and are being constantly quantified in falla- of the measurement of corruption and/or transparency.
cious/problematic manners to show how particular metrics Why, then, does The Seductions of Quantification stop
came to be in the very first place. short of taking its argument to what could be a conclusion—
Ultimately, The Seductions of Quantification is a brilliant that these pretty measures that simplify complex realities
example of how power comes to be obscured through the and re-present them in accessible modes through numbers,
projection of objectivity and technical expertise. It unmasks graphs, rankings, and even brightly colored maps—are not
the processes through which we measure violence against just products of power and far less effective/representative
women or human rights violation, and the revelation is not than we originally considered them to be and, perhaps just
one of falsity or artifice but rather contingency, power, perhaps, we should abandon them entirely? One possible
expertise, knowledge making, and good intentions. We reason could be that this slightly moralizing pronouncement
are walked through incredibly complicated processes and or policy recommendation is not the objective of this re-
micro-histories of how an indicator is arrived upon, gains markable book. The ambition of this work is to chart out
widespread acceptance, and is ultimately taken on by a range how the production and use of global indicators are shaped
of powerful actors and organizations. You see both the ar- by inequalities in power and expertise. It accomplishes this
rogance of international organizations and the crucial role objective with a remarkable level of detail and analytical
played by feminists; the importance of localized practices, precision. Another reason could be that the ethnography
but also the role of large international summits where agree- deals largely with the processes through which indicators
ments are struck and indicators embraced. are created and embraced, not so much with how they affect
The focus on the ethnographic and the process of for- the lives and souls of those who are being indicatored, so to
mation of metrics has the effect of making one see that not say. I return to the domestic violence contrast that Merry
all indicators are created equally. There are certainly some briefly drew out: the distance between the manner in which
that appear to bear a closer approximation of reality and violence against women was defined and statistically made
others that are largely unreliable. Throughout the book, real, and the short narrative account of a woman who had
Merry follows a familiar narrative structure. We are told experienced years of brutal violence is almost unimaginably
of a new quantification assessment, how it was conceived, vast. The unbridgeable distance is not just between making a
acted upon, and finally gained some form of legitimacy. In (mere) statistic speak to a firsthand account but also between
each of these substantive ethnographic chapters, we see how the ethnographic project of elucidating the construction of
the fantasy of objective depiction of reality through a process the former and the living of the latter. In this book, Merry’s
of quantification and making commensurable and compara- concern is with the former. Given that there remains a
tive is arrived upon. Yet, toward the end of each assessment paucity of ethnographic work on how experts make exper-
of the construction of an indicator, it feels as if the book tise, how politics and power get converted into objectivity
pulls back from taking the ethnography to its full potential and accessible simplifications, and how bureaucratic bodies
by noting that these indicators might not be effective and actually function as they attempt to govern and regulate
are, in fact, deeply produced by power relations, yet hold the world, this is an incredibly important task. It is also,
salience for governance purposes. in critical ways, a more difficult anthropological task due
In the REF example above, or the quantification and to the methodological challenges of space, sites, knowledge
measurement of academic productivity, creativity, and pol- production, and ethnographic-writing mores that it poses.
icy impact in the UK, there is absolutely no redeeming Let me, nevertheless, end with a provocation: How
feature. It is not just that this system of indicators is plain might we come to be unseduced by quantification? Is there
wrong or that it is creating neoliberal subjects that are con- a politics of the possible that might draw upon anthropo-
stantly enmeshed in acts of measuring and indicating and logical skills—particularly that immanent in the power of
very little else. It is also the fact that this indicator culture fine ethnographic writing—that could be marshaled to chal-
might well spell the death of the entire system of higher lenge the simplicity and comfort that the quantified provides
266 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

for us? Utopian as it may appear, can indicator culture be Shore, Cris, and Susan Wright. 2000. “Coercive Accountability: The
undone through a sensitive and engaged form of writing cul- Rise of Audit Culture in Higher Education.” In Audit Cultures:
ture? The seeds of such an endeavor surely lie just at the cusp Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy,
of Merry’s brilliant measure of measuring. edited by Marilyn Strathern, 57–89. New York: Routledge.
Strathern, Marilyn. 2000 “Introduction: New Accountabilities.” In
REFERENCES CITED Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and
Mathur, Nayanika. 2017. “Eating Money: Corruption and Its Cate- the Academy, edited by Marilyn Strathern, 1–18. New York:
gorical ‘Other’ in the Leaky Indian State.” Modern Asian Studies Routledge.
51 (6): 1796–817.

The Gender of the Number


DOI: 10.1111/aman.13177 The Seductions of Quantification draws powerfully on
the decades of research and writing that went into “mak-
Diane M. Nelson ing Merry,” Sally’s indispensable body of work. From her
Duke University early studies in the United States on “urban danger” and
working-class consciousness of the law and popular justice to
exploring law in colonizing Hawaii and its role in Fiji, China,
India, and the United Nations, NGOs, treaty making and
If Clarence took fair Gwendolyn out for an auto ride monitoring, this book is a wonderful culmination to all this
And if at sixty miles an hour a kiss to capture tried “sallying forth.” It resonates with her earlier explorations
And quite forgot the steering gear on her honeyed lips to sup of the abstraction of wordsmithing and the corporate and
How soon could twenty men with brooms sweep Clare and Gwen-
nie up?
developmentalism-infused production of indicators, as well
Oh . . . as the deeply felt hopes vested in human rights’ promises of
Put down six and carry two freedom, recognition, and social justice. Throughout, she
Gee but this is hard to do pays compassionate attention to the dogged efforts across
You can think and think and think till your brains are numb. vast scales to make good on that promise, attending care-
I don’t care what teacher says, I can’t do the sum.
–“I Can’t Do the Sum,” Babes in Toyland (Herbert and MacDonough fully to gender, to global power inequalities, to relations
1903) between the universal and vernacular, and to the labors of
translating. She sees the powerful possibilities for struggles
This epigraph, like Sally Merry’s book, is about seduction, for rights through law and number while being exquisitely
and one that ends rather badly. The songwriters are min- aware of their problematic genealogies and heartbreaking
ing the same gap as Merry does, among, on the one hand, limits. She is eminently qualified to open the Latourian black
narrative, ethnography, storytelling, the qualitative, and, on box of quantification in human rights struggles and to de-
the other, the numeric, statistics, indicators, the quantita- fetishize the way numbers seem to stand alone. She shows
tive. These are C. P. Snow’s (1959) “two cultures,” where the labor involved in producing something that looks so sim-
one side laments being unable to do the sum and the other ple, “objective,” “neutral”—in other words, like a “fact”—
kind of shrugs, “I don’t do human (or women’s) rights.” revealing instead incredible uncertainty, competing inter-
The song seems to come down on the side of the qualifiers ests, power struggles, and effort. Condensing “innumerable
since anyone concerned with timing the cleanup is clearly meetings and workshops” (p. 8), Merry mistressfully shows
missing the most important thing, the terrible disaster en- the frameworks, implicit templates, and embedded theories
suing from Clarence’s thwarted desire, the horror of two undergirding quantification that are too often hidden in the
young lives cut short. This is not to say, of course, that we siren call of efficiency when activists seek to influence wider
should not be concerned with the workers and their labor publics.
hours. Merry is quite clear this is not a mathphobic book. When I say Merry is qualified, I mean, of course, in the
She consistently shows the usefulness of numbers and their dictionary sense of having the requisite skills, knowledge,
kin—ratio, percentages, indicators. They are powerful tools and experience that fit her for this position. But I also mean
to bring attention to abuse and violation, to aggregate (one to echo her concerns that, as important as numbers are, they
car accident is a tragedy, traffic deaths increasing 6 percent can easily obscure qualitative forms of knowing, “sacrificing
to 40,200 is cause for action) and disaggregate (how many the insights of rich, ethnographic accounts” (p. 2). This is
of those deaths were caused by a man harassing a woman? important for many reasons, including knowing what num-
Are there gender- or race-based pay gaps in the wages of bers are actually enumerating. For example, what “counts”
highway sanitation employees? Does a cop killing a Black as violence against women in different cultural contexts?
motorist count as a traffic death?). Do activists “treasure what is measured” because numbers
Book Reviews 267

are so expensive and hard to come by rather than measuring order, and the reduction of events to numbers abstracted
that more elusive quality of what we treasure (p. 196)? What from time and place, double entry fostered a new view of
does a number mean when it represents something as illegal, the world as being subject to quantification . . . the heart of
ambiguous, and shadowy as trafficking? the scientific revolution” (167). So perhaps it’s not surprising
But to qualify also means to modify, restrict, limit. that human rights activists would find such tools seductive—
While I strongly agree with the conclusion that “the and virtuous. Here we see many of the components of
narrative ethnographic account provides an important com- the “magic of numbers” (p. 127) that Merry engages, and
plement to quantification” (p. 222), we should not lose sight perhaps some solution to what she calls the “puzzle” that they
of the innumerable ways qualitative representation is also a are “used and even considered reliable despite widespread
product undergirded by implicit templates and unexamined recognition of their superficiality, simplification and neglect
assumptions. We anthropologists and activists who deploy of context and history” (p. 139).
both numbers and stories face the Borges map problem from It was not a scheming patriarchal cabal that transformed
“On Exactitude in Science” (1999). Neither can fully and major determinants of gain and loss like haggling, labor, and
faithfully cover the entire terrain. Both are forms of con- uncertainty into excess, trivial details. But it was also no ac-
densation. Both require loss and sacrifice. That odd little cident that these became associated with women and youth,
librarian Borges leads me to the question, can one write who were gradually effaced from the books. The idea that
about bureaucrats and their quantifying without mimicking numbers are “hard, even crystalline, mathematical and . . .
their style? empirical” (Gleeson-White 2011, 161), and that such at-
This brings me to two points I find implicit in Merry’s tributes “count,” has infrastructured the gender, race, and
book but worth drawing out. The first concerns the gen- class relations of the post-1492 world while consolidating a
dered resonances of the title. A seduction is often ambigu- particular version of individualist masculinity.
ous and shadowy: against one’s better judgment, a slip into But numbers don’t stand alone: tropic links between
unreasonableness, “your brains are numb.” It often implies disjunctured scales allow for what Jane Guyer (2004) calls
a power differential, a seducer and a victim. While some- “marginal gains,” “profit” of various kinds drawn from and
times it’s (the male fantasy of) a femme fatale, more often a across those edges. For example, number and morality seem
dominant man leads a less worldly female astray. The title to belong to totally different scales (how can a number be
seems to ask how much we (feminized victims?) “decide” to “good”?), yet Poovey (1998) says “Virtue” came into play
trust quantification. in the ledger, because the system created writing positions
This returns me to the song’s lament (sung by a woman, that subordinated personality to rules. Just as Merry finds
as if I need to tell you!). This contrasts with the (often with human rights statistics, these numbers are comparable
well-meaning) statistician or detective who wants “just the and checkable via arithmetic, following those formal, disin-
facts, ma’am.” These mimic how the rich ethnographic con- terested rules, thereby constituting a system in relation to
text often becomes feminized and the efficient, reasonable which one could judge right from wrong. “To the extent that
number takes on a masculine (i.e., more powerful) cast. numbers were considered disinterested because transparent
Such gendered assumptions are the result of a long his- to their object, so too were those who produced numerical
tory of Western numbers that might be dated to Luca Pa- knowledge” (Poovey 1998, 71).
cioli’s introduction of double-entry bookkeeping to Venice Meanwhile, mirrors, chairs (instead of benches), por-
in the 1490s. His how-to guide describes a series of books traiture, and autobiography were beginning to produce (al-
through which everyday transactions are successively dis- beit differently for different classes, races, and genders) a
entangled through abbreviations and translations until in generalizable individuality (Stone Allequere 1996). West-
the final account only credits and debits appear, each ap- ern philosophy began to settle into what Carolyn Merchant
pears twice, and as the accountant balances the sums “on (1992, 49) calls the “mechanical model,” which sees/makes
each set of facing pages . . . virtue was made visible” (Poovey the world as dividable and rearrangeable (because com-
1998, 43). posed of particles), based in a natural order from which
The first book, the inventory, in which women and knowledge and information are abstractable (i.e., context-
young people were allowed to write, was full of homely independent), and in which problems can be analyzed into
details like precious things, IOUs, family heirlooms, com- parts that can be manipulated by mathematics. Production
monplace sayings, money, stock, jewels, lands, risk, and practices and liberal property theories based in an individ-
even pirates (Gleeson-White 2011, 98). The second book ual’s labor transformed what had been dense interactions
remained prolix, noting names of parties, terms of payment, of human and nonhuman actants into extractible and own-
and the details of merchandise. In the last book, the ledger, able “natural resources.” Long-standing gender inequalities
each transaction was entered—now by men alone—as only mixed with racial formations and merged with imperial labor
a credit or a debit, allowing profit and loss to appear “at extraction to overtly enslave millions of people and inden-
a glance” (p. 100). Pacioli has been compared to Coperni- ture millions more. Thus, humans (some more than others)
cus because of the momentousness of this move: “through also came to function as ownable and exploitable “resources.”
its encouragement of regular record-keeping, mathematical Useful companions to Merry’s book, Melinda Cooper’s Life
268 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

as Surplus (2015) and Michelle Murphy’s Economization of Life subject positions produced by such histories, this book is
(2017) brilliantly chart the ways these accumulated assump- a powerful and indispensable oar, but we’re gonna need a
tions undergird and may undermine current-day practices bigger boat.
meant, like the human rights efforts Merry engages, to en-
hance life. REFERENCES CITED
Without asking for more than Merry’s concise and wide- Borges, Jorge Luis. 1999. “On Exactitude in Science.” In Collected Fic-
ranging book already does, I think it is useful to remember tions, translated by Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin Books.
these genealogies. That might reduce our surprise when Cooper, Melinda. 2015. Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in
these gendered numbers have paradoxical effects as they the Neoliberal Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
are turned to the tasks of making gender violence and sex Gleeson-White, Jane. 2011. Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice
trafficking count. Second, it would counteract the creeping Created Modern Finance. New York: W. W. Norton.
binarism of “two cultures”—with one stronger and more Guyer, Jane. 2004. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic
seductive. Quantification is always already qualified (both fit Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
for a job and modified, restricted). This is because, as Jane Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology,
Guyer reminds us, quantity (number) and quality (kind) and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simi-
are both scales, unanchored in any foundational invariant. ans, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Women. New York:
They do, however, share linkage points, or thresholds that Taylor & Francis.
connect them to each other. Significant performances and Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the
institutions, as Merry shows us, can “settle” those linkages, Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
transforming one into the anchor of the others (Guyer 2004, Herbert, Victor (music), and Glen MacDonough (lyrics). 1903. “I
12, 49–60). But this also means that it may not be enough Can’t Do the Sum.” Babes in Toyland.
to “add” ethnographic accounts. Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which Is Not One. Translated by Cather-
My second, briefer, point follows Luce Irigaray (1985). ine Porter and Carolyn Burke. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Numbers also have a masculine cast in that they seem to Press.
be “one,” singular and universal. But as I’ve learned work- Merchant, Carolyn. 1992. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable
ing with Mayan activists in Guatemala (Nelson 2015)—and World. New York: Routledge.
from Donna Haraway (1991)—one is not enough. The quan- Moore, Jason. 2014. “Introduction: World-Ecological Imaginations.”
tification of double-entry bookkeeping that inaugurated the Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 37 (3–4): 165–72.
“modern fact” so seductive to human and women’s rights Murphy, Michelle. 2017. The Economization of Life. Durham, NC:
activists is powerful. But it is a numeric system “which is Duke University Press.
not one.” It’s an ethno-mathematics forged in a particular time Nelson, Diane M. 2015. Who Counts? The Mathematics of Death and Life
and place through a system that has also created what Har- after Genocide. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
away (2016) and Jason Moore (2013) call the Capitalocene. Poovey, Mary. 1998. A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge
So, the problem seems to be not only quantification but the in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago
specific kind of quantification. Is it individualistic—having a Press.
hard time with structural reasons for rights violations and Snow, C. P. 1959. The Rede Lecture: The Two Cultures. Cambridge:
trafficking? Is it imperial—when it can function in aggregate Cambridge University Press.
it imposes capitalist, environment-wrecking, rights-denying Stone Allequere, Roseanne. 1996. The War of Desire and Technology at
“development”? If we are to think and think and think from the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Counting Uncountables
DOI: 10.1111/aman.13180 istics are “trust in technical rationality, in the legibility of
the social world through measurements and statistics, and
Katherine Verdery in the capacity of numbers to render different social worlds
Graduate Center, City University of New York commensurable” (pp. 9–10). The book is the culmination of
lengthy engagement with the topic, having been preceded
Sally Merry’s excellent book The Seductions of Quantification by three coedited volumes on it. Even though her subject is
is a devastating critique of the ever-increasing use of num- very complex, the book is written with exemplary clarity.
bers for all manner of purposes for which they are rarely If you have ever been skeptical about the use of
appropriate. The book results from the emergence of “indi- statistics—and we all should be—this is the book for you.
cator culture,” which overvalues numerical data as a form Merry writes: “There are no objective numbers: these
of knowledge and basis for decision making. Its character- numbers are clearly interpreted at every step of the way.
Book Reviews 269

What appears to be an objective, scientific process of data its models for classifying data). As she proceeds, she comes to
collection and analysis has important political dimensions the conclusion that “violence against women is itself an inter-
and consequences but works largely outside the sphere of po- pretive category” (p. 89). We have entered a hall of mirrors.
litical debate and contestation. As such, it constitutes a key Comparing the four different solutions with their
dimension of power in the new global governance” (p. 111). various efforts at quantification, she concludes: “This
Although this is not news, what she is doing with it is new. comparison shows that even the apparently simple question
Many people have written about the place of numbers in the of what to count is a fundamental dimension of the power
creation of nation-states, but Merry is pioneering the study of quantification to shape public knowledge. Discussions
of how international governance is being created through about creating indicators often focused on the clarity of the
numbers. It is a much more complex, and fascinating, story. concept and the measurability of the behavior, but there
The book’s subject is “indicators,” but what is an indica- were also important political considerations concerning what
tor? It is “a named collection of rank-ordered data that pur- was included [or] left out. Although the four approaches
ports to represent the past or future performance of different claim to be measuring the same thing, they are clearly
units” (p. 12). The hallmark of indicators is the simplification using different categories and counting different things.
of information. Making them is a highly interpretive and po- In practice, they are not measuring the same thing, even
litical process involving the creation of categories, which rest though they are calling it by the same name” (p. 107).
on unarticulated theories and, once formed, tend to remain Nevertheless, she adds, the very effort to quantify vi-
stable over time. Making indicators, then, entails creating olence against women had the positive effect of giving it
named concepts used in measuring. Indicators are used espe- greater visibility. Are we then to eschew their use altogether?
cially by governments and international organizations, such Whereas the VAW discussion shows an indicator process
as NGOs, the UN, and so on. Some examples she gives that is both internationally and institutionally collaborative,
are the UN Human Development Index, the ranked lists Merry’s next case—concerning measures of progress on
of Transparency International, and the World Bank’s Ease human trafficking—is very much a hegemonic US project.
of Doing Business index. Often, indicators appear in color- Probably for this reason, she suggests, the indicators de-
coded maps, with “good” countries in green, “bad” in red. veloped have proved very unsatisfying. These indicators
The book’s core question is: How are the production present trafficking as a dyadic relation of trafficker and vic-
and use of indicators shaped by inequalities in power and tim, rather than being the product of social relations and
expertise? That is, how come the people who make them political/economic structures. That is, the indicators sub-
generally come from the “Global North”? To explore this ordinate the complexity of people’s entry into sex work,
question, she presents three cases: indicators developed to replacing it with shortcuts that enable ranking states against
measure violence against women, human trafficking, and one another.
human rights. For each, she looks at their different insti- Merry’s fascinating chapter on human rights shows the
tutional sponsors, the resource base that aliments work on remarkable complexity of the indicators developed so as to
the indicators, and international collaborations underlying rank states on their compliance. A total of fifty-three indica-
it. She broadens her work by frequent reference to other ar- tors measure a “right to health,” eleven measure structural
eas, such as science and technology studies and the emerging factors, thirty-two cover “process,” and ten measure out-
literature on standards. comes. The attempt to implement them, however, revealed
Merry’s material comes from extensive ethnography difficulties in deciding which were which. Merry finds that
in numerous organizations dealing with these subjects, but these indicators were imported from economic development
especially the United Nations organizations responsible for and public health—that is, not a legal but a development
creating many of the indicators for them. She not only spoke framework—so as to make human rights concerns more
with many people in UN organizations but also went to understandable to the development community. Therefore,
numerous conferences and meetings, such as those of the UN the entire process of making these indicators was biased to-
Statistical Commission, and she read numerous reports. Like ward a particular group of end users so as to recruit them
the process it examines, her research itself was transnational into the categories employed.
and de-territorialized. Another captivating discussion concerns the idea of com-
It was also extraordinarily systematic. Let me use one mensuration: how the categories of social life are made com-
extended example to illustrate, from chapter 4 on the vi- mensurable across contexts. Concerning violence against
olence against women indicators (VAW), which is a tour women, for example, it turns out to be easier to make and
de force. In this chapter, she shows that those wishing to compare lists of violent acts (punching, shooting) than to try
reduce the occurrence of VAW use one of four different to get at the victim’s experience (loss of dignity, violated sense
frameworks, each of them incorporating a solution that re- of self, fear), which indicator builders regard as too hard to
quires being able to count and measure VAW, as well as to measure. If the constructed categories are to be commen-
create categories that are commensurable. She shows that surable, these must be left out. That is, the indicator cre-
each proposed solution has five features (such as its institu- ators, rather than those who suffer from trafficking, are the
tional support, its theory about violence against women, and ones who decide which acts are more severe. Indeed, the
270 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

emphasis on commensurability can nullify the effort ex- the world but actually create the world they’re measuring.”
pended on comparing cases. What this book does is show exactly how numbers lie, and it
In conclusion, Merry underscores that the theories does so in disciplined, clear prose, supported by extended
standing behind the indicators assign responsibility for ethnography. In this sense, the book teaches an important
problems to individuals or states rather than to structural form of literacy. If she returns to this subject, she might
or systemic factors. The politics of indicator making are further expand on the notion of global governance and its
visible in decisions about what to count, how categories are relationship to the capitalist elites currently active in trans-
constructed, whose expertise is drawn on (largely that of forming governance altogether.
the Global North), the failure to include local knowledge I would like to end on a more personal note. With her
or victims’ experience, and so on. Indicators, she contends, numerous books, papers, edited collections, and remarkably
“provide a way to know a world that is unknowable and to extensive professional service, Sally Merry is a treasure of our
govern a world that is ungovernable” (p. 139). Therefore, discipline, who amply merits recognition. She has devoted
we must insist on including not just quantitative knowledge copious amounts of time and energy to maintaining and
but also qualitative, ethnographic knowledge—of the cat- improving our organizations and to carrying out research
egories enshrined in the numbers, of people’s experiences that truly matters, such as this book. It should be required
(say, of domestic violence), and of their practices. Her reading for any course on research practice, or any person
final sentence: “We rely on numbers alone at our peril” who thinks of using numbers, or anyone who reads in that
(p. 222). vast literature (especially in the policy arena) that relies on
The idea that numbers lie is, of course, not new. As quantitative indicators. Read it: You’ll never think about
she writes, “Those who create indicators aspire to measure them the same way again.

Response

Anthropology and the Perils of Quantification


DOI: 10.1111/aman.13178 sympathetic responses to this argument in many different
disciplines and discovered a growing number of scholars
Sally Engle Merry joining in the critique of governing by numbers from fields
New York University as diverse as economics, political science, and philosophy.
I was even invited to speak at the World Bank as they
Like many anthropologists, I am always asking myself what considered redesigning their governance indicators. There is
anthropology can contribute to making a better world. I have clearly a need for anthropologists to continue the campaign
watched with despair as the social sciences have become to qualify numbers. This set of comments and responses
ever-more quantitative, while ethnographic knowledge is to The Seductions of Quantification wonderfully expands and
described as “anecdotal” and less important. The conceit deepens the argument. We clearly have a lot of important
that we can know the world better if we count it is only work to do as anthropologists.
growing, and the advent of big data and its huge increase In talks on this book, audiences constantly asked me:
in what Ian Hacking (1990) has called the “avalanche of So, are some numbers better than others? How can we
numbers” is only adding to this idea. I wrote this book to make better numbers? When I began this research, I was
push back against this movement, to insist that the detailed convinced that indicators needed to be eliminated in favor
and microlevel analysis of social situations, relationships, and of qualitative work, but I came to see that there are ways
contexts provides invaluable insight into the world, and more that counting things provides an important antidote to dis-
specifically into relations of power. Ethnography provides an criminatory practices, prejudice, and failure to recognize
essential source of knowledge that quantification is unable important social issues. Moreover, it was clear to me that
to grasp. Numbers can help us see how widespread are quantification as a dimension of governance is here to stay.
the situations that we study ethnographically, and they are So, I turned to the idea of indicator literacy: encouraging
important in developing social issues and social movements. more skepticism about what can be learned from quantifica-
Numbers are also fundamental to modern governance. But tion and its limitations.
their limits are too rarely addressed and recognized, as is the In her commentary, Katherine Verdery does an ex-
damage caused by the misleading picture they draw of social cellent job of articulating this position and showing its
life. importance for how we see and govern the world. I am
Under these conditions, ethnographic accounts are ever- deeply appreciative of her astute reading of the book and her
more important in providing a counterpoint to a quantified assertion of its value. Although I have given many talks
picture of social life. Since publishing this book, I have found on this topic, writing a book is in the end an isolated
Book Reviews 271

experience, and it is very comforting to know it has pro- These reactions show how important indicators are to
vided some insights that are valuable. I also appreciate her particular political projects. It is clear they are recognized
recognition that a scholarly life involves many other activi- as ways to exercise power, either to promote more schol-
ties, such as mentoring students, working with professional arly “excellence,” as in Britain, or to increase human rights
organizations, and building a field. I have found all of these compliance. There is clearly a difference between the view
activities rewarding and opportunities to learn more from of indicators by those who are using them and those who
students and colleagues. are being used or measured. The beleaguered British faculty
In her commentary, Diane Nelson suggests we need cri- feel overwhelmed by having to account for everything they
tique of this kind, but we also need to untangle the way the do, while the beleaguered human rights advocates feel over-
turn to quantification is connected to racialized, gendered whelmed by the difficulty of holding states accountable for
inequalities rooted in imperialism and the historical trans- their human rights violations.
formations of capitalism and labor. In her recent book, she Mathur suggests moving to an analysis of good indicators
offers an analysis of how the historical turn to quantification or bad ones, or, more precisely, to examining the effects of
is rooted in the increasing role of the individual in social indicators. But it is very hard to know the effects of indica-
life, the penchant for ordering and number in economic tors. Some indicators are used for decision making, where
transactions, the growth of science, and the development of it is easier to see what difference they make, while others
capitalism (Nelson 2015). She argues that the growth of a simply influence public opinion. As an example of decision-
particular kind of numerical knowledge, based on Western making indicators, the Trafficking in Persons Reports by the US
ideas of number, is fundamental to the imperial, capitalist State Department determine the application of sanctions by
world we inhabit, and buttresses racialized and gendered the US government, while the REF in Britain determines
inequalities as, over time, numerical knowledge has become university funding, as I understand it. But most indicators,
masculinized and qualitative knowledge feminized. even those with direct impact on decisions, act through
Clearly, articulating the relationship between qualitative far broader processes of knowledge production. This is very
and quantitative knowledge is essential. But, as Nelson notes, hard to measure or even to know ethnographically. Some in-
qualitative knowledge is also an abstraction and representa- dicator producers collect examples of changes governments
tion. Qualitative work, even ethnography, is largely a project make on the basis of their indicators, such as the World
of the Global North seeking to understand the Global South. Justice Project’s list of countries that improved their rule of
Qualitative and quantitative accounts are not distinct forms law in response to their measures. The World Bank’s Ease
of knowledge but are already deeply intertwined through of Doing Business report claims it has pressured some gov-
similar processes of restricting the subject, importing social ernments to change their modes of economic activity (Davis
theory, and working with a commitment to a scientific no- and Kruse 2007). How these indicators shape general pub-
tion of representing the world accurately. Nelson suggests lic ideas about which universities are good, which countries
that instead of viewing the problem as either/or, we see have a strong rule of law, and which countries support hu-
these forms of knowledge as mutually constituted. Indeed, man rights is far harder to find out. Assessing the full range
my book shows how the construction of indicators is a deeply of effects and deciding which indicators are constructive for
social and political process, shaped by the worlds of expert particular ends and which ones are not is very hard. Some
group meetings, statistical knowledge and technique, United are clearly better representations of the world than others
Nations ideas of action, conceptions of accountability in gov- and more carefully drawn. But all efface difference, lump
ernance, and Global North/South power relations, to name different things together, and express an underlying political
only a few of the surrounding social and cultural factors. agenda.
Intriguingly, I received Nayanika Mathur’s contribution, Denise Brennan’s (2014) sensitive ethnographic account
framed by her frustration with the REF-indicator project in of trafficking exemplifies the approach that I think is needed
British academia, on the same day I received a preprint of to counteract the wash of misinformation, generalization,
an article critically reviewing my book. It was written by and crisis talk that galvanizes the antitrafficking movement
two human rights practitioners and is now published in a and has produced wildly divergent numbers. As she suggests,
law review (Bello y Villarino and Vijeyarasa 2018). While if trafficking victims had been consulted in the processes of
Mathur wonders why I didn’t simply say that indicators are data collection and measurement, a far better set of numbers
inherently destructive, as she sees them to be for British might have been produced. One aspect of better numbers
universities, the law review article claimed that I was far too is careful disaggregation of forms of exploited and unfree
critical of human rights indicators. The authors argue that labor—separating exploited labor, coerced sex workers,
these indicators are intended to hold states accountable for forced-marriage brides, debt-bondage workers, and state-
their human rights violations. Moreover, because univer- imposed forced laborers, to name a few categories. Instead,
salism and homogenization are fundamental dimensions of we have vast numbers of trafficked victims and modern-day
human rights themselves, criticizing human rights indicators slaves all lumped together.
for the same traits seems unfair. Moreover, they complain Clearly, these bold, aggregated numbers are more dra-
that I failed to distinguish between good and bad indicators. matic and attention grabbing than a detailed breakdown of
272 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

kinds of unfree labor. They are a clarion call for saving vic- accurately measure these goals will probably be blamed on a
tims, positioning the rescuer in the powerful role of savior. lack of resources rather than the conceptual impossibility of
They are also less expensive to collect because they involve accurate measurement. Meanwhile, the effort to promote
simply combining estimates for each of these distinct viola- these admirable goals may well flounder given their immea-
tions, all of which are hard to define and count. They provide surability. More concrete and less ambitious goals will likely
a far more attractive way for members of rich countries to draw all the attention.
conceptualize the problem of trafficking (including forced I am very honored by all these thoughtful and insight-
labor) than more structural analyses of capitalism and global ful commentaries about my book and hope anthropologists
inequality, which point to the complicity of rich countries will continue to use the discipline’s formidable ethnographic
and populations. To confront the problem of exploited la- skills to challenge the dominance of the numerical in our
bor, we need more ethnography and more disaggregated contemporary world.
and thoughtful numbers, but the politics of trafficking and
the funds to support it seem to be pushing in the opposite REFERENCES CITED
direction. Ballestero, Andrea. 2015. “The Ethics of a Formula: Calculating a
Andrea Ballestero makes an excellent point that the Financial–Humanitarian Price for Water.” American Ethnologist
failure of indicators to provide contextual, historical, and 42 (2): 262–78.
complicated accounts of social life does not lead to the elim- Bello y Villarino, Jose-Miguel, and Ramona Vijeyarasa. 2018. “The
ination of indicators but rather to an escalation of effort: Indicator Fad: How Quantifiable Measurement Can Work
demands for more staff, more resources, more programs Hand-in-Hand with Human Rights—A Response to Sally En-
for measuring and counting. Yet, as she points out and gle Merry’s The Seductions of Quantification.” International Law and
shows in her own work, all numbers or numerical devices Politics 50 (3): 985–1020.
are modes of representation and translations of social life into Brennan, Denise. 2014. Life, Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced
other forms. Whether one examines a device, such as a for- Labor in the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University
mula for calculating the price of water in Costa Rica (Balles- Press.
tero 2015), or the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals Davis, Kevin E., and Michael B. Kruse. 2007. “Taking the Measure
(SDGs), which are currently shaping international develop- of Law: The Case of the Doing Business Project.” Law & Social
ment efforts, numbers are inevitably translations and flawed Inquiry 32 (4): 1095–119.
representations. The difficulty of measuring the broad and Hacking, Ian. 1990. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge
aspirational goals of the SDGs, such as access to justice for University Press.
all, reducing inequality within and among countries, and Nelson, Diane. 2015. Who Counts? The Mathematics of Death
providing decent work for all, has generated a call to expand and Life after Genocide. Durham, NC: Duke University
the measurement apparatus itself. The inevitable failure to Press.

Single Reviews (reviewer in parentheses)

Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research


World by Crystal Biruk
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. 277 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13164 data—good and bad, clean or tainted—are always already


“cooked.”
Noémi Tousignant Cooking begins at conception, for “data need to be imag-
University College London ined as data to exist” (p. 44). Even after the survey, once
numbers have been sourced, coded, entered, “crunched,”
In this book’s title and opening vignettes, the “cooking” of and released, data are still cooked because they “continue to
data suggests an illicit act: a conjuring of facts without regard undergo transformations and critical evaluation” (p. 170).
or respect for truth. This is somewhat misleading, given that The book is ordered along this birth-to-afterlife course.
the focus of Biruk’s ethnography of AIDS-related household Its first chapter takes us into the (field) office, as sur-
surveys in Malawi is on the making of “clean” data. That is, vey questionnaires are finalized by foreign and Malawian
Biruk focuses on the accepted, albeit not always prescribed researchers. Its last chapter follows data into debates about
and acknowledged, processes and practices—imaginative, the evidence on which HIV policy should be based. Three
material, and relational—by which people’s lives are middle chapters are about fieldwork and fieldworkers,
converted into numbers and evidence. In this approach, all spotlighting the people, expertise, transactions, exertions,
Book Reviews 273

things, and concessions without which good(-enough) data and 4 as being about fieldworkers’ “largely invisible labor,”
could not be made and yet which are often erased from its conceptualized by Biruk as knowledge work (p. 69). Yet
presentations. chapter 1 is also attentive to how the imaginative work of
Along the way, this ethnography demonstrates how not foreign and Malawian researchers (the latter as “local col-
only data but also sites (the field, the household), subjects laborators”) orders and is unequally positioned within socio-
(the fieldworker, the research subject, described as “not spatial and epistemological hierarchies. In chapter 3, Biruk
fixed or pre-existing actors but as emergent workable forms describes a “discourse of labor” by which survey respondents
that . . . are assembled in research words [p. 102]), and describe their participation and critique the terms on which
forms of expertise (i.e., “local knowledge”) are brought it is performed.
into being by and for data practices, the practical exigencies The introduction makes an intriguing observation that
of surveys, and their epistemological dreams. For example, I would have liked to see pushed further. Survey actors—
chapter 2 explores how local knowledge is neither stable nor investigators, fieldworkers, and subjects—are aware of gaps
possessed but is “a set of techniques and self-presentations, between, on the one hand, the compromises (epistemolog-
a habitus” (p. 83) that fieldworkers acquire and perform ical, ethical, economic) by which data are made, and, on
through their engagements with data. Indeed, this book’s the other hand, its labeling as “clean.” Biruk explores how
main strength is its finely textured and thoughtful account of these actors live with/in this gap, thus sharing, to some ex-
how “data and their social worlds [are] coproduced” (p. 6). tent, the ethnographer’s “critical gaze” (p. 17). In chapter 2,
In directing its observations at the (social) life of data—the fieldworkers acknowledge survey work as precarious and un-
relations, work, and infrastructures that bring data into derpaid but value it for the futures it allows them to imagine.
being—rather than looking “behind” data (for what they fail Chapter 3’s wonderful analysis of soap-for-data transactions
to capture), or further up—and downstream to the politics attends to how “cleanliness” depends on putting up with
of the demand for and “consumption” of numbers (though the “mess,” such as the unequal and long-standing relations of
last chapter makes a contribution to the latter by attending to exchange in which soap gets entangled. Yet, overall, I would
the arbitration of evidence for evidence-based policy), Biruk have liked to read more about how, like soap, data have mul-
makes an original contribution to the growing literature on tiple and sometimes contested and competing meanings and
quantification in Africa, development, and global health. qualities—at once stable and fragile, for example—and on
Although not proclaimed as such, Cooking Data is, among how survey actors manage this coexistence, keeping these
other things, an ethnography of labor. Cooking—or, put less meanings apart or in tension in ways that likely vary ac-
provocatively, “caring for” (p. 5)—data is hard work, and cording to circumstances and concerns. Perhaps a less linear
Biruk pays close attention to how this work is distributed, structure, and an ethnography less tightly bound to data—
performed, credited, and rewarded (or not), as well as to freer to follow people as they move around and away from
what it generates: evidence and expertise but also claims, data and between its varied meanings—would have allowed
obligations, meaning, critique, and aspirations. This is ad- for such exploration, ultimately obtaining an even richer
dressed most explicitly in the introduction of chapters 2, 3, account of the politics of cooking.

The Importance of British Material Culture to the Historical


Archaeologies of the Nineteenth Century edited
by Alasdair Brooks
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and the Society for Historical Archaeology, 2015. 369 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13169 nineteenth-century British trading networks and colonial


power means that British material culture, typically but not
Michael Nevell exclusively ceramics, glass, and metal objects, can be found
University of Salford in abundance beyond the narrow confines of contemporary
British rule. It is therefore appropriate that authors discuss
This collection of eleven edited papers, based on a session at research from Australia, Britain, Holland, and the United
the Society for Historical Archaeology’s 2010 conference in States of America.
Florida, is a landmark in understanding the material culture In terms of industrial production, Chris Jarret, Morag
of nineteenth-century Britain and its global impact. The Cross, and Alistair Robertson look at the results of an ex-
collection provides a series of detailed case studies following cavation on the site of the late nineteenth-century Caledo-
British material culture from its localized manufacture to nian Pottery at Rutherglen in Glasgow. Analysis of wasters
global use and then disposal or reuse. The dominance of from a large dump to the east of the factory enabled the
274 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

characterization of its fabrics (blackware, whiteware, porce- bining zoological evidence (principally animal bones and
lain, stoneware, and Rockingham-type ware) and products shellfish) with documentary material, he was able to look at
(bowls, chemical wares, dishes, jugs, stoppers, tankards, the role of food in reinforcing secular and religious relation-
teapot, and teacups), most of which were exported inter- ships through a study of the age of animals and use of body
nationally. It was also possible to develop a typology of parts relating to high-quality meat products. Three chapters
molded marks on jars for W. P. Hartley, a later owner of deal with lesser-studied objects. Carolyn White looks at the
the site. Jennifer Basford looks at the branding of stoneware changing fashion for hair curlers, and Ralph Mills studies
bottles manufactured in Britain in the period 1812–1834 miniature objects from excavations in Britain and how these
in response to the imposition of excise duty on earthen- reflect class, consumption, and the spread of intellectual
ware bottles. Using examples excavated from Hungate in ideas. Finally, Harold Mytum looks at consumer choice in
York, she notes that products manufactured for export were mortuary practices. He reviews coffin designs and fittings
stamped with the letters “EX,” while bottles intended for as well as commemorative memorial in graveyards, looking
the blacking industry fell outside the remit of the excise at the impact of artistic and architectural styles current in
and so were stamped “Blacking Bottle,” providing a useful the nineteenth century. All three of these studies show how
dating aide. the biographies of these artifacts are as important as more
The distribution of these mass-produced objects is dis- traditional archaeological material, such as ceramics and
cussed in several chapters. Alasdair Brooks, Aileen Connor, animal bone.
and Rachel Clarke review a late eighteenth- and early The introductory and concluding chapters discuss the
nineteenth-century finds assemblage from Huntingdon town current state and theoretical framework of nineteenth-
center in Britain, looking at international contacts. They century British material studies. Alasdair Brooks provides
focused their research on post-1750 refined white-bodied an excellent overview of current archaeological approaches,
earthenwares and their decorative techniques. In partic- both within and beyond Britain. He welcomes the plurality
ular, they use the evidence recovered to discuss diver- of approaches to the study of “ordinary household domestic
gences in the consumption of different decorative styles material culture” in the volume. James Symonds highlights
between British and overseas markets. Taking up this theme, the role of the “mundane materiality of day-to-day life” as
Penny Crook contrasts domestic artifact assemblages from a democratizing counterweight to more elite studies of the
London and Sydney in the nineteenth century. She notes period.
the close similarities between the two cities in terms Archaeological analysis of nineteenth-century British
of source, pottery styles, and quality in the assemblages material culture has tended to focus on just one of three
excavated. features—increasing specialization, mass production, and
Broader consumer studies are looked at in two consumption—seldom acknowledging that the artifacts of
chapters touching upon the role of food as material culture. the period involve all three aspects. This has meant that
Annie Gray studies the material culture of elite dining archaeological studies of the material culture of the period
practices, discussing issues of food preparation and diet often suffer from being fragmentary or narrow in focus.
in a domestic context using multidisciplinary approaches A great strength of this work is that it includes case stud-
that include food history as well as artifact studies. Richard ies from production to consumption. This allows linkages
Thomas’s analysis of the wider archaeological evidence to be made among the research approaches of industrial,
for food, from an assemblage from the Chapter House in postmedieval, and historical archaeologists and those in allied
Worcester Cathedral, is a good partner to this chapter. Com- subject areas.

Words of Passage: National Longing and Imagined Lives


of Mexican Migrants by Hilary Parsons Dick

Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. 283 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13159 thoughtful analysis of discourses about Mexican migration


from the perspective of nonmigrants. Based on fieldwork
Marjorie Faulstich Orellana and ethnographic interviewing in Chester County, Penn-
University of California, Los Angeles sylvania, and Uriangato, Mexico (a rancho/small town
in the central state of Guanajuato), Dick analyzes talk
Words of Passage: National Longing and Imagined Lives of Mex- about migration by those who “stayed behind.” Connect-
ican Migrants, by Hilary Parsons Dick, offers a “thick” and ing, as well, to larger circulating discourses—for example,
Book Reviews 275

political speeches revealing “state-endorsed imaginaries of more difficult to identify just what it is. Various possibilities
moral mobility” (p. 75)—she considers how ideas about are offered: “an ethnography of the imagined lives of Mexican
migration have been central to nation-building and the pro- migrants” (p. 5); a “multi-sited ethnography” examining “in-
duction of inequality within Mexico: how migration shapes terconnections between the present and various historical,
nonmigratory processes, especially for working-class Mexi- imaginative, and geographical ‘beyonds’” (p. v); or a “close
cans. textual analysis of discourse as interaction” (p. xxii), us-
This is not a book about contemporary migration or even ing interview data to probe “meta-discursive rationalization”
about contemporary discourses about migration in Mexico. (p. xxv), interwoven with ethnographic analyses of other
As she makes clear in her introduction, Dick’s fieldwork semiotic practices (e.g., home building and the Catholic cult
was conducted almost twenty years ago, in a significantly of saints). Focusing mostly on close analyses of talk and text,
different sociopolitical era: before the rise of drug cartels, the book still offers some sense of the material realities of
the US or global economic downturn, and the scaling up of life in Uriangato at the time, but readers who want more
deportations from the US under the presidency of George of the ethnographic details should jump from the opening
W. Bush (which deeply intensified under Obama and now vignettes to the second half of the book.
Trump). The bulk of the ethnography was done between Dick is a linguistic ethnographer by training, and her
2000 and 2002, with two follow-up visits in 2003 and 2005 strengths lie in the analyses of text and talk. She did not have
(and two earlier visits in 1997 and 1999). Dick notes that access to the coin of the realm of linguistic anthropology
the dangers of the drug wars have kept her from returning (everyday talk) because she was unable to secure permission
to Uriangato. The book captures a particular period of time to record beyond interviews, a fact that she recognizes
in this Mexican rancho area as well as in Dick’s own life. was “alarming” to her linguistic sensibilities. Nevertheless,
Indeed, Dick situates herself actively in her fieldwork, she suggests the power of interview data for revealing
using her racialized/gendered presence as a young, single, how people rationalize their beliefs, and she deploys her
solo-traveling gringa to elicit local ideologies about “proper skills to consider these data as few interviewers do—for
womanhood” as well as moral imaginaries of life in the United example, by gendered patterns of pronoun use. She also
States. In doing so, she goes beyond many ethnographers’ reflects meta-cognitively on her own “words of passage” as
rather surface-level reflections on their own positionalities, an interviewer at a time when she was quite young and still
instead using her embodied presence as an ethnographic tool. learning to be an “expert.”
She gives considerable attention to the pressure she felt to Whatever we may call it, the book is an impressive
display herself as a “good girl” in order to counter negative tome, seemingly having distilled and matured in the twenty
stereotypes about loose American women. years since the fieldwork was begun. It is theoretically
In this theorizing around gender, respectability, and dense, using both top-down and grounded theorizing, and is
family values, I found myself wanting to caution the reader strongly anchored in relevant literature. Dick’s impressive
about the dangers of the “ethnographic present.” Like the bibliography brings migration studies into dialogue with dis-
discourses Dick examines around migration and nation- course analysis and linguistic anthropology. She shows the
building, these ideas were circulating some twenty years power of words to shape material lives, giving rare atten-
ago, and they surely have changed in that time, given social tion to constructions of difference among Mexicans along
media and return or circulating migration, as well as shifting dimensions of class, gender, and migration trajectories. It is
sociohistorical conditions. This does not diminish the value a “heady” book—perhaps appropriate given the title. While
of the analyses Dick conducts; it’s just a call for researchers some of the discourses the book unpacks do seem to be
to examine how and in what ways those discourses and their words of passage, the power of Dick’s work lies in having
attendant practices may differ now. captured them in their historical and social context, creating
While Dick is very clear about what this book is not, and a roadmap for contemporary researchers to examine new
the constraints she faced in gathering data, I found it a little discourses that circulate now.

White Gold: Stories of Breast Milk Sharing by Susan Falls


Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. 270 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13166 still distinctly local in its practice. White Gold digs into a
“counternetwork” of gift giving and gift receiving among
Kristin Wilson mothers in a Southern US city and its environs. This new
Cabrillo College community is “powered by a politics of pragmatics” (p.
202) that selectively borrows from existing frameworks
Informal breast-milk sharing is an increasingly widespread of motherhood, science, and capitalism. Falls writes,
phenomenon in North America, aided by the Internet but “Milk sharing is not a rejection or dismissal of science or
276 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

technology but rather a calculated, embodied engagement building? (Conforming to Southern norms of “visiting,” the
with it” (p. 150). donors and recipients in Falls’s network spend significant
Falls’s account of her own bodily engagement as a time performing the appropriate social niceties during milk
mother procuring human milk for her adoptive infants car- exchanges.) Or, in the case of milk recipients, are they feel-
ries the reader deep into the emotional and material dimen- ing somewhat desperate, like failures as mothers because
sions of the practice. As she discovers the tacit rules of milk they cannot produce enough milk to feed their own ba-
sharing—buying or selling milk is verboten, for example— bies? The detailed accounts in this ethnography make it clear
we get to see her grapple with the layered and contested that all of these narratives are valid representations of the
meanings of “white gold” as a precious and not-yet-fully- milk-sharing experience.
commodified substance that is also daily food for her chil- The real genius of this singular ethnography, though,
dren. The perspectives of medical providers act as both foil is Falls’s invitation to the reader to exercise their imagina-
and support for the milk-sharing participants. These moth- tions. With thirty-one illustrations that include art images,
ers invest in the “breast is best” ideal promoted by many of ad posters, and even the author’s own sketches and pho-
their providers and backed by official bodies like the World tographs, Falls makes space in her exposition for thought-
Health Organization and yet take a dubious view of conserva- ful pauses. Between research chapters, she presents slices
tive public health worries about the milk’s safety (a discourse of art history, architectural theory, and film criticism that
that distrusts mothers). The milk sharers’ aims and “instincts” engage with breastfeeding and milk-sharing themes. She
as highly committed mothers take precedence, and their new means these to inspire “oblique engagements” that will in-
motley village (from hippie donors to educated yuppie go- fuse feelings into the rational arguments she constructs.
getters to church-going, working-class, stay-at-home moms) It is an exercise that helps the reader recognize the emo-
promotes and protects this maternalism. tional textures interwoven into the practical work of pro-
But, as Falls states, “It’s unremarkable to back-engineer ducing, pumping, freezing, shipping, and offering human
agency on the part of milk sharers: I assume they, like me, milk.
have subjectivities and that those subjectivities, like mine, in- The transitory quality of infancy and the short-term
clude intentions (or at least what feels like intentionality) that need for the milk-sharing counternetwork (which arguably
seem to motivate various (apparently) goal-oriented actions” has an enduring impact on individual lives) make for a rivet-
(p. 173). She notes that a glass of cow’s milk on the kitchen ing example of how need-based, politically charged move-
table is unlikely to unleash ruminations about subjectivity ments can arise. A provocative, transportable theory of “free
and ideology and agency and consciousness. The powerful spaces,” inspired by the architecture of Lebbeus Woods, in-
meaning-making around pumped-and-portable breast milk tersects with the intimate stories of White Gold. These free
and milk sharing is anchored by mundane “want and surplus” spaces, not unlike the book’s vignettes, allow for discovery
(p. 90). and contemplation. Woods’s design includes unprescribed
Falls’s work avoids the trap of neatly summarized de- gaps that are “discovered by chance or only by those who are
scriptions and instead allows for the nuance and contradic- looking for them” (p. 198). Similarly, breast-milk sharing
tions of real life. Her arguments are compelling and firmly and its subterranean counternetwork are discovered fortu-
grounded in historical context and contemporary debates itously by the participants who make their own meaning of it.
on breastfeeding in North America, the stories of her in- This “sweet spot between the visible and invisible, in which
terlocutors, and the actions she observes and in which she large numbers of participants creatively negotiate alterna-
participates. Are the milk sharers enacting a “mode of dis- tive relationships” (p. 200) surely exists in other emergent
sent” (p. 89) against commercial interests like infant formula, communities that also benefit from “quiet encroachment”
or are they taking an informed approach to feeding their ba- on official structures and hegemonic ideologies. Falls sug-
bies given the data on the nutrition of breast milk? Are they gests, correctly, I think, that these interstices offer a way to
experiencing a life adventure and delighting in community imagine different futures.
Book Reviews 277

Archaeology and Identity on the Pacific Coast and


Southern Highlands of Mesoamerica edited by
Claudia Garcı́a-Des Lauriers and Michael W. Love
Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016. 226 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13173 pilgrims at an associated marketplace. While Henderson


convincingly demonstrates the importance of the landscape
Jeffrey P. Blomster and pilgrimage to identity construction, identity may be less
George Washington University tied to this specific place than the entire pilgrim experience.
Janine Gasco examines the impact of linguistic patterns and
Identity construction permeates all modes of social action. changes in material culture on identity shifts from the late
It is a particularly salient issue on the Pacific Coast and fifteenth to early twentieth century in Soconusco. The trade
southern highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala due to the and influx of outsiders led to a multiplicity of ethnolinguis-
coastal route’s enduring importance for trade and resulting tic backgrounds; Gasco argues these multilingual indigenous
influx of people, materials, and ideas—and, as the editors people responded by speaking Nahuatl as a lingua franca,
suggest, new identities shaped by this interaction. In ten which was replaced in the twentieth century by Spanish. She
brief chapters, ranging from the Middle Archaic to Postcolo- concludes that people coped with this heterogeneity by be-
nial periods, and informed by a diverse range of theories, coming more like each other; the impact on material culture
most explicitly evolutionary psychology, practice theory, remains unknown.
and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), participants contribute Michael W. Love explores identity constructions and
identity-focused studies that will resonate in scholarship be- negotiations at La Blanca, which he persuasively argues was
yond this region. an urban center from 900 to 600 BC. Cities were places
The editors provide a substantive introduction that con- where new identities were formed at multiple levels of soci-
textualizes identity, which they view as most usefully con- ety; the tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces,
ceived as fluid and situational. Their emphasis is on the as well as innovative practices and enduring structures,
contexts in which identity construction is performed, ne- underscored the inclusion and exclusion in daily action that
gotiated, and contested; they characterize previous research was fundamental in the structuration of identity. In the for-
as overly focused on ethnic and linguistic identity. While mation of a community identity at La Blanca, rituals instilled
identity is most often explored through public spheres, they both a sense of groupness while also reinforcing ranking and
favor the domestic spaces where gender, status, and cultural exclusion. Similar themes of inclusion and differentiation
identity are negotiated and replicated in everyday practice, are expressed in two chapters that move forward in time to
which they link to habitus and embodiment of identity. the Classic, when Teotihuacan enters the picture. Claudia
Hector Neff considers identity construction through the Garcı́a-Des Lauriers examines the role of architecture at
lens of costly signaling theory, in which the “wasteful” prac- Los Horcones in forming a space that structured the perfor-
tice of identity construction must have some fitness payoff, mances of rituals and identity. She contrasts the six ballcourts
which Neff links with the origins of prestige and increased at the site, interpreted as arenas for more heterodox and lo-
reproductive benefits. Less about identity and agency than cal identity discourses, with Group F, where elites created a
psychological predispositions that drive humans to attain “Teotihuacan identity” by citing that great Mexican city
the maximum prestige possible given local conditions, Neff through spatial organization of architecture. Oswaldo
takes readers on a whirlwind tour of prestige advertising Chinchilla Mazariegos interprets sculpture from Cotzumal-
from the Archaic to the Terminal Classic. Two other chap- huapa as reflecting elite identity by how they chose to both
ters encompass large spans of time. Lucia R. Henderson represent and differentiate themselves from competing
argues that the paired loci of Lake Amatitlán and Volcán groups. The imagery, he argues, shows the elites citing
Pacaya formed an enduring pilgrimage location that fostered ancient, local roots while rejecting the kind of Teotihuacan
identity construction for pilgrims. From Middle Formative identity on display at the competing center of Montana.
to Colonial times, these paired landscape features, probably Central Mexican groups also play a role in two chapters
associated with the juncture of the three vertical levels of that employ ethnohistory and ethnography to explore iden-
the Mesoamerican cosmos, drew pilgrims whose offerings, tity formation during the Postclassic, primarily of the K’iche’
mostly lacking archaeological context, have been dredged Maya. Rudd van Akkeren sees “Mexican” influence arriving
up from the lake. While ceramics invoke foreign styles, they through mercantile activity and guilds. He argues for the chi-
appear to have been produced locally, perhaps obtained by namit (lineage clusters) as most important in an identity that
278 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

crossed ethnic and linguistic boundaries; each lineage within as well as more explicit deployment of ANT, would be
the chinamit was materialized as a longhouse on a plaza. In useful.
contrast, Geoffrey E. Braswell sees the K’iche’ as more of From his perch as discussant, John E. Clark critiques the
a confederation, united by military and economic domina- chapters, raising useful questions and introducing additional
tion. Much of Braswell’s chapter is an idiosyncratic polemic concepts. Beyond looking at past persons as constructed
on archaeological theory, with provocative assertions that agents, he urges researchers to imagine them in Mesoamer-
both intrigue and frustrate, as many are unsupported or lack ican lifeworlds of their own making, challenging ANT’s
citations. Practice theorists, for example, are charged with perspective that agency only emerges through interaction;
employing habitus to understand ethnicity, related to the he argues instead that Mesoamerican phenomenology grants
essential qualities of the individual, while he characterizes things agency independent of humans. Clark also eschews
ethnicity as only existing in states (contradicted by examples overly Durkheimian views on public ritual as promoting so-
in this volume). Braswell deploys ANT to explore K’iche’ cial cohesion; instead, he argues, rituals are a tool of alterity,
paradoxes through three concepts: cultural totems, House and we should be more focused on what kinds of identity they
society, and differences among legitimizing, resistance, and affect. Clark’s chapter is engaging and challenging, inspiring
program identity. More attention to the K’iche’ case study, future research into this important topic.

Transforming the Dead: Culturally Modified Bone in the


Prehistoric Midwest edited by Eve A. Hargrave,
Shirley J. Schermer, Kristin M. Hedman, and Robin M. Lillie
Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2015. 369 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13168 The volume is divided into four sections focused on cul-
tural groups. Section 1 examines modified human bones from
Mallorie A. Hatch Woodland cultures, particularly those dating to the Middle
Arizona State University Woodland (ca. 200 BC–AD 500). Successfully demonstrat-
ing the variety of analytical approaches that may be used
In Transforming the Dead, artificially modified human bones to investigate the past, three contributions explore the dis-
are taken out of site-report appendices and brought to the tribution and possible uses of Middle Woodland artificially
forefront of bioarchaeological investigation. The studies in modified jaws. Nawrocki and Emanovsky employ a forensic
this volume are critical for reconstructing how death and taphonomic approach for reconstructing the manufacture
the afterlife were viewed and experienced by precontact and use of these jaws, while Cobb views these artifacts
peoples of the US Midwest. But, moreover, this volume as intrinsically tied to their temporal and regional contexts.
recognizes that modified bone objects were imbued with Johnston tests hypotheses about modified human jaws as tro-
lifecycles of their own, perhaps linked to the person they phies, revered ancestors, or memento mori using a scientific
were from, or perhaps not. Their life as artifacts mirrored framework. Weaving together taphonomic and theoretical
that of humans—creation, use, and termination into inter- approaches, Carr and Novotny interpret Scioto Hopewell
ment or repurposing. mortuary practices as ritual dramas intended to foster col-
The contributors to this volume stress that an academic lective identities. Lee and Johnston document phallic batons
reluctance to engage deeply with Native American belief shaped from human bone from Ohio Hopewell contexts.
systems has resulted in de facto interpretations of isolated The section concludes with Schermer and Lillie’s work on
modified remains as ritual items or war trophies. Western the life history of drilled and excised human bone from Iowa.
dualistic concepts of peace during the Middle Woodland and Uses of human bone artifacts recovered from Mis-
war throughout the Late Prehistoric period have guided these sissippian (ca. AD 1050–1700) contexts are included in
scholarly interpretations. Such overarching theories have led section 2. Hargrave and Cook explore the “object biogra-
researchers to ascribe human bone objects with politically phies” of modified human long bones recovered from Sub-
and ritually charged meanings that may not be concordant mound 51 at Cahokia, adding insights from experiments to
with emic understandings. Hargrave and colleagues chal- re-create the polished edges seen on one of the recovered
lenge readers to conceptualize these objects beyond such modified human femurs. Zejdlik’s contribution corrects an
etic anthropological understandings, pushing them toward interpretation of a modified human tibia from the Aztalan
more holistic approaches. site in Wisconsin as an elk-antler dagger. Through a rich
Book Reviews 279

discussion of Eastern Woodlands symbolism, Cook and While contributors apply insights from the bioarchae-
Munson explore cultural use of a rattle composed from ology, archaeology, and ethnography of the Americas, the
human cranial bone recovered from the Angel site. The volume would benefit from engaging with theoretical ideas
Mississippian section closes with Munson and colleagues’ emanating from Europe. For example, Verdery’s (1999)
examination of human bone modified into display objects work on the deceased human body as a political tool would
from Caborn-Welborn sites near the mouth of the Wabash provide a complementary perspective to several of the chap-
River. ters. Additionally, although the editors call for inclusion of
Section 3 is comparatively brief, presenting chapters on Native American voices in bioarchaeological interpretations,
incised and etched remains dating to the Late Prehistoric emic concepts were only derived from the ethnographic and
period (ca. AD 1100–1700) of Upper Mississippian cul- ethnohistoric literature. This shortcoming is not a fault of
tures. Hedman contrasts modified human skeletal remains the authors but rather a recognition that US Midcontinental
from mortuary and nonmortuary contexts from two sites bioarchaeology as a discipline is struggling to include present-
in northeastern Illinois. Blue highlights the importance of day Native American voices in its research.
modified and suspended human teeth as reflections of group Hargrave and colleagues’ volume presents a formidable
identity, and Lillie and Schermer explore the similarities first step for creating a repository of interpretations of artifi-
between incised human bone and those on pottery, pet- cially modified bone in the prehistoric Midwest. Subsequent
roglyphs, and other portable objects from Oneota sites in studies are required to continue building on the authors’ find-
Iowa. ings, adding new geographies, documentation of deposition
The final section, titled “Perspectives,” contains two contexts, ethnographic insights, and cultural frameworks.
standout chapters of interest to a nonspecialist reader. Through this work, improved reconstructions of prehistoric
Sundstrom problematizes axiomatic interpretations of scalp- Native American worldviews about death, society, and the
taking as war trophies, pushing for an understanding of body can be formed.
scalping as a practice rooted in cultural symbolism and cere-
mony. Smith concludes by artfully weaving together archae- REFERENCE CITED
ological theory and Native American worldviews to provide Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial
theoretical context to the volume’s contributions. and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press.

Polygamy and the Rise and Demise of the Aztec Empire


by Ross Hassig
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. 186 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13167 structure, leading to complicated customs of elite life, in-


cluding polygyny as the preferred marriage pattern of the
Susan Toby Evans upper class.
Penn State University To explain this meteoric growth, Ross Hassig looks at
polygyny’s effect on patterns of royal succession and mate
The years 2019 through 2021 will mark the 500th anniver- choice, and the important role played by cohorts of royal
sary of the takeover of the Aztec empire by Spain. This con- offspring. His models of how these features interacted reflect
quest’s abruptness echoes the relatively short duration of the the challenges shared by all scholars of the Aztecs: a shallow
Aztec empire itself. In the ninety years between Tenochti- historical record marked by inconsistencies of many types
tlan’s independence from its overlords (about CE 1430) and sizes. This both absolves scholars of uniformity as to
and Cortes’s arrival in 1519, the Aztecs created Mesoamer- specific dates, names, and circumstances, and condemns us
ica’s greatest political construct, encompassing much of the to lavish qualifiers on every assertion.
territory of modern Mexico and provinces diverse in lan- Our best knowledge suggests that Aztec rulers were
guages and cultural practices. The Aztec tributary empire chosen by a group of a dynastic family’s elders from a small
spread Nahua culture as it demanded regular payments from number of appropriate candidates. The succession pattern
an ever-increasing set of provinces. This channeled a tide seems to reflect situational responses to dramatic changes
of wealth toward the ruling dynasties. Tenochtitlan went over the short life of the empire, as the territorial catch-
from large village to city of legendary beauty, and its rulers ment zone funding the ruling families expanded along with
oversaw radical stratification of the Aztec socioeconomic the number of candidates. From the founder (1370s) to
280 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

Cuauhtemoc’s death in 1524, succession ran from father story buildings—its monumental structures, like palaces,
to son to son to uncle to nephew to grandson to brother had different levels—but no fully constructed upper stories.
to brother to nephew to brother to cousin. The set of three If modern Manhattan, the most densely settled community
brothers (rulers 6, 7, and 8) conforms best to Hassig’s model in the modern United States, has fewer than 67,000 per
that cohorts of dynastic siblings successively dominated the square mile, then values of 200,000 and up are completely
Aztec empire. This assumes that, over time, rulers sired chil- inappropriate for Tenochtitlan.
dren in numbers following a curve of a normal distribution. In seeking the causes and the sustaining value of polyg-
This pattern of sibships results from many factors regarding yny, Hassig does not address its economic value, the mate-
male and female fertility patterns in polygynous societies. rialist basis for all other considerations. The vigorous Aztec
Hassig reviews these but ignores an important one for the mercantile economy used lengths of woven cloth as an estab-
Aztecs: the years of marital abstinence that began early in a lished exchange medium: a polygynous family constituted
pregnancy and persisted for four years after the birth. This a profitable workshop. The sixteenth-century chronicler
would strongly affect completed family size, even with many Motolinı́a ([1541] 1951), trying to convert polygynous Aztec
wives. men to monogamous Christianity, described the difficulty
Aztec polygyny had sociopolitical and economic func- of persuading them. The men pointed out that the Spaniards
tions. In noble marriages, the principal wife’s lineage was were hypocrites, that they had many female servants, and
politically important and, ideally, more prestigious than that that Aztec wives served in this capacity and “also as a means
of her husband. As Tenochtitlan became more powerful, its of profit, because they set all the women weaving cloth,
noblewomen became the principal wives of ruling lords of making mantles” (202).
other domains, offering scope for Tenochca political inter- While some of Hassig’s insights are sound and thought-
ference as well as for solidarity—the heir was typically the provoking, ignoring this essential motivating feature of
son of the principal wife, and Aztec bilateral kinship norms polygyny is a serious lapse. He writes with authority about
favored strong family ties on both sides (note: daughters many issues, and his formulae attempt to impose order on
occasionally inherited rule). the not-infrequent chaos of the ethnohistorical record, but
To understand the impact of the noble class on the without solid grounding in economic costs and benefits, his
rest of society, one must estimate its size. Hassig assumes models cannot convincingly explain the rise and persistence
that nobles formed a small percentage of Tenochtitlan’s of Aztec polygyny.
total population—perhaps 10 percent but probably even
smaller. How many nobles lived in Tenochtitlan? Until very REFERENCE CITED
recently, Aztec scholars have proposed whopping population Motolinı́a (Fray Toribio de Benavente). (1541) 1951. History of the
sizes for Tenochtitlan, even over half a million (Hassig uses Indians of New Spain. Translated and edited by F. B. Steck. Wash-
200,000 to 300,000). This garden city of 5.4 square miles ington, DC: Publications of the Academy of American Franciscan
held ritual precincts, plazas, causeways, canals, and single- History.

Disease and Discrimination: Poverty and Pestilence in


Colonial Atlantic America by Dale L. Hutchinson
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. 249 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13172 litical, and social factors as it is on biological composition


or ecological conditions. Exploring an array of documented
Audrey Horning disease outbreaks, the author challenges popular perceptions
William and Mary about the spread of Crosby’s “virgin soil epidemics” through
examining the conditions that both facilitated and hampered
What role did European diseases play in American colonial transmission.
encounters? In this wide-ranging volume, bioarchaeologist The book is organized into nine chapters in four un-
Dale Hutchinson joins the conversation started by Alfred equal parts: “Of Apples and Edens” (chapters 1–3), “Natives
Crosby’s 1972 The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cul- and Newcomers” (chapters 4–6), “Planters and Pestilence”
tural Consequences of 1492. Hutchinson frames the study of (chapters 7–8), and “Measuring the Lands” (chapter 9 and
diseases as “processes, not things,” which “exist within an epilogue). Part 1 provides overviews of disease transmission,
ecological and social context” (p. xviii). The path that any the framework of historical epidemiology, and specific con-
given disease may take is as dependent upon economic, po- siderations of palaeopathology and the skeletal markers of
Book Reviews 281

diseases such as syphilis and tuberculosis. This latter section The old adage of never letting the truth get in the way
draws on Aleš Hrdlička’s tuberculosis research (pp. 35–40), of a good story occasionally applies, as when Hutchinson
surprisingly (for a work considering colonial legacies) with- (p. 135) recounts the discovery of three lead-coffin burials
out comment on Hrdlička’s controversial field practices and from the seventeenth-century brick chapel at St Mary’s City,
racist ideology (Blakey 1987). The remainder of the volume Maryland: “In the fall of 1990, two archaeologists . . . found
consists of a whirlwind tour of disease outbreaks. While something hard in the ground where they were excavating—
the subtitle suggests chronological and geographical bound- they thought it was a rock. It turned out to be the stone floor
aries, the text traverses far and wide, from sixteenth-century of a chapel. Beneath it were three lead coffins.” Entertaining,
Mesoamerica through the colonial settlements of Roanoke, but pure fiction (I worked there in 1990). The project direc-
Jamestown, and Plymouth to the tenements of New York tors, Henry Miller and Tim Riordan, knew the difference
City and the global flu pandemic of 1918. The Iroquois and between a rock and a hard place, having identified the burial
Cherokee make an appearance, as do enslaved peoples of vault through geophysical prospecting (Miller 1995). While
the Carolinas and the Chesapeake, Mongol raiders, French Hutchinson (p. 11) acknowledges that his vignettes are “nei-
fur traders, Dutch merchants, Famine-era Irish immigrants, ther exhaustive nor completely factual representations,” the
and even the contemporary Yanomamo of Brazil. The many Maryland example left me doubting the veracity of his other
examples clearly illustrate the point about disease as pro- tales.
cess as they highlight the multiple factors that facilitated Overall, Disease and Discrimination achieves its aim of
the spread of devastating diseases. But, inevitably, historical broadening examinations of disease and its impacts by
complexities get lost along the way. knitting together consideration of biological factors with
The intended audience is clearly nonspecialists and un- their cultural contexts. The volume is well illustrated,
dergraduate students interested in the generalities of histor- and there are a range of helpful tables. Those interested
ical disease if not the nitty-gritty details of historical expe- in debates over disease should certainly read this volume
rience. The author’s informal prose style, even including for its breadth and interpretive perspective, if not for its
an invocation of Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates details.
(p. 104), will appeal and repel in equal measures. Those
seeking an academic treatment of a critical topic in the REFERENCES CITED
study of colonial encounters will be frustrated by the lack Blakey, Michael. 1987. “Skull Doctors: Intrinsic Social and Political
of referencing. The complex processes of English, French, Bias in the History of American Physical Anthropology, with
and Dutch expansion in seventeenth-century New England Special Reference to the Work of Aleš Hrdlička.” Critique of
is summarized without citations (p. 50), while considera- Anthropology 7 (2): 7–35.
tions of complicated cultural entanglements, such as that Crosby, Alfred. 1972. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural
of the Huron with seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.
(pp. 51–52), or the Jamestown colonists and the Powhatan Miller, Henry. 1995. “Mystery of the Lead Coffins.” American History
paramount chiefdom (p. 111), rely on quotes from European 30 (4): 46–53.
narratives and one American history textbook (Taylor 2001) Schmidt, Peter, and Stephen Mrozowski, eds. 2013. The Death of
rather than drawing on current research, particularly work Prehistory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
that engages with Indigenous perspectives (e.g., contribu- Taylor, Alan. 2001. American Colonies: The Settling of North America.
tions in Schmidt and Mrozowski 2013). New York: Viking Books.

Steeped in Heritage: The Racial Politics of South African


Rooibos Tea by Sarah Ives
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 255 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13163 of our time and one that Sarah Ives poses with urgency and
insight in her book Steeped in Heritage: The Racial Politics of
Elizabeth Hull South African Rooibos Tea. Drawing on ethnographic research
SOAS, University of London among white Afrikaner and “colored” rooibos farmers in the
Cederberg region of South Africa, Ives studies the political
How are human–environment relations transforming in the ecology of one unusual plant: rooibos. This plant grows
wake of climate change? This is surely a central question in a small ecological zone called fynbos, found only in the
282 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

Western Cape. Set against South Africa’s volatile political render them uncivilized, even not-yet-human. Instead, like
history, the book shows how farmers avoid problematic the Afrikaners, colored farmers forge their sense of belong-
claims to ethnic indigeneity or national belonging and in- ing as protectors of rooibos. Yet this is based not on past
stead build a connection to the region’s enduring ecological doing but on intentionality, built around a future-oriented
qualities and to rooibos tea itself. Climate change, however, set of aspirations.
threatens to shift the fynbos landscape southward. Ives implies that there is little mileage in the appeal
Ives uses Stefan Helmreich’s (2009) idea of “symbiopoli- of Khoisan identity as a source of economic potential, given
tics” to conceptualize the relationships among people, place, the derogatory, racialized associations this entails. However,
and plant (p. 67). In Cederberg, these relationships are the story becomes more complicated in the conclusion. In
forged through the life-giving qualities of rooibos tea as a 2014, the Department of Environmental Affairs declared
source of livelihood and as an item of daily consumption. Yet, that the traditional knowledge for rooibos “rests with the
despite the seductively simple idea of a symbiosis between communities who originate in these areas,” the Khoi and
people and ecosystem, the book tells a distressing story of San. This study was commissioned following exhortation
how South Africa’s especially brutal history of racialized cap- by the South African San Council, an organization aimed
italism is playing out in the post-apartheid era. The region at defending the rights of the “first” indigenous peoples of
is characterized by long-standing patterns of unequal access Africa. Ives poses the questions that many residents were
to land, with class divisions falling glaringly along racial asking regarding the legal and financial implications of this
lines. Housing remains deeply racially segregated; unem- statement for those with and without Khoisan indigeneity
ployment, alcoholism, and violence are widespread. Most yet falls short of providing an answer.
farms are owned by Afrikaners, while the local colored The example of hoodia, another indigenous plant of the
population competes with black South African and Zimbab- area, which is valuable for its hunger-suppressing qualities,
wean migrants for poorly paid farm work. A minority of offers a revealing comparison. When the plant was patented
colored people have their own small farms or belong to a in 1996, John and Jean Comaroff (2009) explain, it soon
co-operative, often on church-owned land. These arrange- became the object of an intense struggle over intellectual
ments come with their own microstruggles over land and property rights. The San Council was established in 2001
revenue, but they allow people to work independently from as a means to assert collective ethnic and legal identity, and
the larger commercial farms. had considerable success in the hoodia case. The Comaroffs
Ives teases out interesting parallels between Afrikan- concluded that “the San people, as ethno-corporation, is
ers’ and colored farmers’ experiences of the social ecology taking increasingly articulate shape” (p. 92; emphasis in
they share. Afrikaners’ sense of indigeneity is located in original). Why did the council not pursue the rooibos case
a deep family history of rooibos farming. Viewing them- further? Why did the colored people in Ives’s account avoid
selves as the stewards of this unique indigenous plant, their identifying as San, while those in the Comaroffs’ case appear
“formerly ‘European’ bodies became ‘indigenized’ through to embrace it? More is needed to connect the dots between
exertion in the rooibos soil” (p. 203). Ideals of a resource- these divergent accounts.
ful and rugged masculine body are mirrored in the plant’s Overall, Steeped in Heritage is a fascinating and
own robustness, the master of its dry and dusty bush- well-written account that refreshingly avoids the dominant
covered landscape. The role and plight of the farmworkers paradigms associated with climate change—those of
they employ are conveniently blotted out of their narra- “adaptation,” “vulnerability,” and “resistance.” Instead, it
tives. The book provides only occasional insight into the gives us a much-needed analysis of ecological change as a
perspectives of farmworkers, a limitation Ives acknowl- thoroughly social process, inseparable from local politics,
edges, and she explains their reluctance to participate in the which are dominated by structures of race and class. It is
research. essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary
The colored population can no more claim indigene- politics of southern Africa or the future of food in a time of
ity on the grounds of ethnicity than can white farmers, Ives ecological crisis.
maintains. The “Khoisan” (sometimes known as San or, more
problematically, “bushmen”) are recognized as the original
autochthonous peoples, their descendants dispersed among REFERENCES CITED
the colored population. Yet long-standing racist narratives Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago:
depict them as relics of the past, surviving only in cave University of Chicago Press.
paintings, a kind of extinct fauna of the natural environ- Helmreich, Stefan. 2009. Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Mi-
ment. For colored people to claim Khoisan identity would crobial Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Book Reviews 283

Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives


by Pardis Mahdavi
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. 216 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13170 cial mobility that migration generated for them and their
families with the immobility (for them and their children)
Bina Fernandez that resulted from the choices they made in intimate rela-
University of Melbourne, Victoria tionships. As she notes, the “bonds of love were often both
mobilizing and immobilizing, for the migrants as well as their
In Crossing the Gulf, Pardis Mahdavi presents a poignant and transnational families, sometimes at the same time” (p. 69).
compelling analysis of the intimate lives of migrants in the Chapter 3 outlines how inflexible economic-citizenship
Persian Gulf countries of Kuwait and the United Arab Emi- regimes and family ties in source countries compel migrants’
rates. Drawing on richly layered, multisited global ethno- mobility. But it also shows how migrants with children be-
graphic research that spanned a decade, the heart of the come enmeshed in and constrained by the highly restrictive
book’s argument is that the emotional dimensions of mi- and rigid laws pertaining to family reunification and citizen-
grants’ lives are deeply intertwined with their mobility and ship transfer to migrants in the Gulf countries. We learn of
their immobility. The book introduces the key concept of the plight of bidoun, or stateless children born to unmarried
“im/mobility” to articulate “immobility as a factor sutured migrant mothers whose fathers are known. These children
with mobility in shaping both migration and the intimate are denied the citizenship of their mother with no possibil-
lives of migrants” (p. 23). ity of returning to her home country or of ever obtaining
Through her examination of how migrants’ ties of love, citizenship where they were born, even though it is the
family, kinship, and sexuality shape their decisions about only country they have ever known. Mahdavi shows how
mobility and immobility, Mahdavi offers a nuanced counter migrants’ and their children’s responses are nevertheless
to the hegemonic state discourses on human trafficking and flexible, finding room to creatively maneuver and survive
migrant labor regulation that tend to flatten migrant agency within these constraints.
and identity, and assume migration as structurally deter- Migrant flexibility is demonstrated again in chapter 4
mined. The analysis of the intimate lives of migrants also with a closer look at the motivations of young migrants
provides an important shift away from the emphasis in the as they leave, and return, “home.” The chapter illustrates
scholarship on gendered migration on the intimate labor of the complex subjectivities of women like Leela from India
migrants (Boris and Parrenas 2010). Thus, while some of and Sylvie from Madagascar, who sought to escape marriage
Mahdavi’s interlocutors are engaged in forms of paid inti- by migrating, and of Gabriella and Amina, who sought to
mate labor (domestic work, childcare, sex work, etc.), for escape motherhood. We also meet women for whom mi-
others, such labor may be unpaid and engaged in as part of the gration is an opportunity to explore their sexuality through
relationships and emotional bonds they have with children, dance, multiple partners, or lesbian relationships. Through
family, partners, and, sometimes, employers. these narratives, Mahdavi effectively unsettles our under-
Central to the structure of the book are the narratives standing about what constitutes “home” for these women
of migrant women who have children while they are work- and, in doing so, challenges the assumption within dominant
ing in the Gulf cities of Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. antitrafficking discourse of a “home” to which “victims” of
The intersection of the kefala (migrant-sponsor) system with trafficking should be returned.
Zina laws (which criminalize sex outside marriage) subjects In chapter 5, Mahdavi introduces the exceptional con-
women to a “deportation regime tethered to their sexuali- dition of children abandoned by their migrant mothers and
ties” (p. 45). Unmarried migrant women are prohibited from whose fathers are unknown. These children are “adopted”
marrying or giving birth to children, and if they do, they and by the emir and given a better life than their mothers would
their children are thrust into a precarious, liminal status. have been able to provide them. Yet this liminal status pro-
Chapter 2 introduces the reader to the stories of migrant duces an ambiguous sense of belonging and uncertain futures
women—from Nepal, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, and as adults in the country of their birth.
the Philippines—who have had children as a result of either The final two chapters turn the analysis to the ef-
voluntary or forced sexual relationships. After giving birth, fects of migrant lives on state policies and vice versa.
many of these women were forcibly separated and deported Mahdavi argues that attention to the narratives of the in-
to their home countries without their children. Reflecting timate lives of migrants has the potential to destabilize
on their stories, Mahdavi juxtaposes the economic and so- the dominant antitrafficking discourse. She suggests that
284 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

effective state responses would be less restrictive and puni- regarding the situation of those women and their children
tive, and better acknowledge the autonomy and intimate who are “immobilized” by the laws and regulations in the
lives of migrants. Gulf countries. Mahdavi has achieved a commendable bal-
Notably, this book is moving in its honest and deeply ance of providing an in-depth portrait of their lives with-
personal reflections on Mahdavi’s own journey as a woman, out the polarizing discourse that demonizes their employers
mother, activist, and scholar whose life journey has in- and host countries that so often characterizes discussions on
tertwined with those of her interlocutors. An important migrant workers in the Gulf.
shift in trajectory she documents is the modification of the
position she took in her previous book (Mahdavi 2011), REFERENCES CITED
which viewed the antitrafficking framework as possibly ben- Boris, Eileen, and Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, eds. 2010. Intimate Labors:
eficial, to her position in this book, which views it as pro- Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care. Stanford, CA: Stan-
ducing more harm than good. ford University Press.
Crossing the Gulf is a valuable contribution to the scholar- Mahdavi, Pardis. 2011. Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Traffick-
ship on migration, with vital policy implications, particularly ing in Dubai. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa:


Decolonizing Practice edited by Peter R. Schmidt
and Innocent Pikirayi
London: Routledge, 2016. 324 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13171 a cultural center aimed at promoting sociocultural and eco-


nomic development of a rural community through culture.
Claire Smith The authors argue that a critical view of these issues is needed
Flinders University for the management of heritage projects that integrate lo-
cal communities. Other challenges to heritage protection
Produced by African and Africanist scholars, this book is are addressed by Aleru and Adekola in their discussion of
important because it sheds light on archaeological practice “rich and reciprocal” archaeological engagements with the
and heritage conservation issues on a continent for which Esie and Igbaja communities in northern Yorubaland. These
little material is available. Its overarching concern is how positive developments are analyzed against a background
community archaeology can engender more inclusive her- of major obstacles to productive interactions between local
itage protection in Africa. This book is likely to precipitate communities and heritage-management stakeholders. These
a turning point in archaeology in Africa. hindrances include religious intolerance, looting, nonadher-
One important theme is the role of archaeology (and ar- ence to traditional social factors, unethical archaeological
chaeologists) in sustainable development and capacity build- practices, and the uncontrolled degradation of sacred forests
ing in Africa. This issue is directly addressed in chapters that hitherto successfully preserved and protected heritage
by Mehari and Ryano, Patrick Abungu, and Mayor and materials. Related issues are addressed by George Abungu.
Huysecom. Mehari and Ryano’s chapter provides fascinat- Focusing on Eastern Africa, he contends that the tendency
ing insights into past conflicts between local Maasai peo- toward a more pro-people, inclusive approach in the devel-
ple and researchers, including the work done by Louis and oped world has barely taken root in the developing world.
Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge. The authors argue that a He attributes this to the ravages of colonialism, land and her-
community-based transformation of archaeology in Africa is itage dispossession and appropriation, the denial of access to
needed to advance the discipline at a global level and, more heritage and heritage rights, and, at times, the outright abuse
importantly, to serve and benefit Africans at local, national, and desecration of heritage places.
and continental levels through incorporating their world- A second theme concerns the politics of heritage and
views, interests, and needs in archaeological praxis. Mayor archaeological practice in Africa. This is explicitly addressed
and Huysecom focus on the need for greater efforts in ca- in chapters by Schmidt, Ndlovu, David and Sterner, and
pacity building and development aid, and on decolonizing McDavid, Rizvi, and Smith. Schmidt and Ndovu undertake
the museum. An intriguing innovation of their work in Mali independent reviews of archaeological practice in Africa.
is the establishment of a cultural bank, a village or municipal Schmidt’s review of ethnoarchaeological work in Africa iden-
institution that includes a museum, a microcredit bank, and tifies significant variation in the degree of initiative taken by
Book Reviews 285

collaborators, control over research agendas, and benefits This is explicitly investigated in chapters by Patrick Abungu,
to communities. The work reviewed ranges from projects Apoh and Gavua, and Pikirayi. Patrick Abungu speaks to
where archaeological objectives were opaque for local par- the economic value of local communities for opening up
ticipants to those where community members were trained the Shimoni Slaves Caves in southeastern coastal Kenya as
and became coproducers of knowledge. He concludes that places of memory. Based on a case study of the construc-
“we are still struggling to develop healthy interchanges with tion of a proposed dam on the Black Volta River at Bui,
community members as equals” and that “the greatest part in Ghana, the chapter by Apoh and Gavua demonstrates
of archaeological practice in Africa has yet to address com- how archaeologists can intervene and successfully mediate in
munity needs and sensibilities.” Ndovu focuses on the ques- the negotiation and resolution of human rights and cultural
tion of equity and critically analyzes a dichotomy between heritage conflicts among affected communities associated
“African spiritual and European physical approaches to her- with large-scale development projects in Ghana and else-
itage management.” He emphasizes the historic protection where in Africa. Related issues are addressed in Pikirayi’s
of heritage sites by African communities using traditional analysis of four case studies from Zimbabwe and South Africa
approaches to safeguard them and calls for “the amendment in which he highlights the capacity of social memory to chal-
of colonially framed heritage legislation, which emphasizes lenge authoritative, dominant, and highly contested narra-
the significance of the physical approach over the spiritual tives about African communities.
significance of heritage.” The chapter by David and Sterner Finally, Schmidt and Pikirayi’s book is notable for the
focuses on the Mandara Archaeological Project in Cameroon interweaving of both eminent and early-career researchers,
and Nigeria, undertaken between 1984 and 2008, at a time and both African and Africanist scholars. This network of
when community archaeology was more archaeology with key players tells us much about the process by which African
communities rather than for communities. They address the archaeology is undergoing transformation. The powerhouse
questions: Were we taking part in a colonial enterprise? Or institutions stand out: the University of Pretoria, the Univer-
were we engaged with host communities in ways that bene- sity of Ibadan, the University of Calgary, the University of
fited them and larger publics and the discipline of archaeol- Geneva, the University of Ghana, Newcastle University, the
ogy? This paper highlights a generational transformation in University of Florida, and the National Museums of Kenya.
archaeological practice. Hard-hitting questions such as these The majority of authors have some kind of affiliation, either
are explored further in a conversation among McDavid, past or present, with one or more of these institutions. In ad-
Rizvi, and Smith, which issues provocations and highlights dition, many of the authors are current or former executive
heterogeneity in approaches to community archaeology and or council members of the World Archaeological Congress.
heritage in Africa. Written by leaders in their field, the chapters in this book
A third theme concerns the importance of memory capture a transformation in the archaeology in Africa. This
and oral histories to the preservation of heritage in Africa. book is integral to this transformation.

To Be a Man Is Not a One-Day Job: Masculinity, Money,


and Intimacy in Nigeria by Daniel Jordan Smith
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. 272 pp.

DOI: 10.1111/aman.13162 people.” Although the monograph is not concerned with


historicizing the forces of monetization in Nigeria, it docu-
Paolo Gaibazzi ments how the oil economy, among other macroeconomic
ZMO—Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient forces, has entrenched money as a medium of social value
and power. This is especially evident among men. Fleshing
The monetization of social relations has been a recurrent out the Nigerian adage “money makes the man,” Smith’s
theme, and paradox, in West African ethnography. Money ethnography explores how money and sociality intertwine
seems to have penetrated even the most private spheres of at each stage of men’s life-course, from boyhood to elder-
social exchange, thereby threatening to depersonalize them, ship. The staggering financial expectations surrounding re-
yet money also figures as the social and moral glue be- spectable manhood have generated discontent about greed
tween persons. Smith’s To Be a Man Is Not a One-Day Job is infecting society and eroding traditional values. Money is
a refreshing account of these paradoxes in Igboland, south- suspiciously asocial because so much of it is perceived to be
eastern Nigeria, where wealth in money both combines with obtained through illicit means at the detriment of collective
and rubs against the renowned African notion of “wealth in prosperity, chiefly through corruption and crime—which
286 American Anthropologist • Vol. 121, No. 1 • February 2019

have earned Nigeria its infamous reputation. Thus, while of courtship unavailable to previous generations. Stronger
money makes the man, it also potentially unmakes him. conjugal cooperation and women’s increasing access to the
Money must be spent in ways that are at once prodigal labor market further encourage men to take an active role
and prosocial—what Smith calls “conspicuous redistribu- in childrearing. This call for greater intimacy does not nec-
tion.” Successful men invest in ancestral households and con- essarily limit the power of money; on the contrary, it often
tribute to hometown associations, sponsor pompous wed- incites it, for demonstrations of love and care are bound up
dings, and must of course satisfy their wife’s needs, pay for with the injunction on spending. This extends to the care
their children’s school fees, and help friends and clients in for ailing parents, whom the son will eventually have to
need. Rituals of conspicuous redistribution are “efforts to bury through a proper (read: expensive) funeral in order
resocialize money” and thus serve to mitigate the growing to be considered a complete man (chapter 6). Once again,
disparities in Nigerian society, yet “they have the ironic ef- monetization instigates in men a constant state of anxiety
fect of further valorizing money” and ultimately reproduce about the potentially crass motivations behind sex, love, and
inequality (p. 20). care, and about underperforming or being outperformed by
Consequently, men face poignant “money problems” at wealthier men.
all levels of the social hierarchy (chapter 3), which helps For Smith, however, intimacy is larger than love
explain why masculinity may go awry (chapter 5). Smith and affection; it essentially stands for face-to-face sociality
nuances popular discourses about the crisis of masculinity (pp. 4, 213). This may be too broad a definition, but it is one
invoked to explain the rise of deviancy, corruption, and that nonetheless enables Smith to highlight the continuing
violence in Nigeria. He argues that men generally seek to prominence of personalistic ties. Chapter 4, one of the best
become “good men,” but in a context marked by high un- of the book, takes us inside tennis clubs that Smith has been
employment and high financial demands, some men may frequenting for more than two decades. The chapter reveals
engage in “bad behaviors” in order to do so. After all, sus- the hierarchical comradery that develops among relatively
picious about how people obtain money, many Nigerians affluent men through sport, drinks, chat, gifting, and mutual
nevertheless seem to turn a blind eye to corrupted men and support. Club homosociality, as Smith elegantly shows, is
419ers (fraudsters) who redistribute conspicuously. not necessarily set apart from and against other cross-gender
By documenting men’s tribulations with the ambiva- intimacies. It sustains heterosexual infidelity by placing a
lent value of money in Nigeria, this book makes an original premium on members’ ability to support trophy girlfriends
contribution to the growing scholarship on masculinity in at the same time as it monitors men’s reputation as loving
Africa and beyond. Such tribulations are by no means unique husbands and family providers.
to Nigeria, but this country appears to be an ideal testing Written in a very accessible style, To Be a Man Is Not
ground for performative theories of gender (pp. 207–9). To a One-Day Job is a remarkable analytical piece in that it un-
“perform” as a man, from the bedroom to the boardroom, ravels how masculinity, intimacy, and money intersect at
is an emic concept in Nigeria. Men go out of their way to every twist and turn of southeastern Nigeria’s vast social
communicate, often excessively and theatrically, their abil- landscape. It is the result of Smith’s twenty-five-year en-
ity to speak, walk, dress, consume, and, ultimately, spend gagement with Nigeria and features stories from friends and
“befittingly” to their perceived status. interlocutors of all ages, social classes, vocations, reputa-
Disclosing the intimate worlds of money-made mas- tions, locations (rural and urban), and confessional orien-
culinity is another key objective of Smith’s book. The rise tations. Smith himself participates in the intimate worlds
of global discourses on romantic love and companionate he describes and does so without becoming overly autobio-
marriage has made intimacy a central object of inquiry in graphical. Implicitly, this is a manifesto of the value of longi-
anthropology. Engaging with this scholarship, chapter 1 tudinal ethnography and attains a degree of methodological
and 2 describe how the decline of arranged marriages and transparency and intellectual honesty that is uncommon in
greater acceptance of premarital romance open up spaces anthropology.

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