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ment’s decision to eject 20,000 cassiterite min- ers from Rond8nia in 1970. But the state has also intervened on behalf of gold miners in the Brazilian Amazon, such as at Serra Pelada in 1980 and Cumarti, a little farther south, in 1981.

Itinerant mining has also come under criti- cism from the Left in Brazil. Some politicians and activists have labeled garimpagem (infor- mal gold mining) as exploitation that allows “the few” to accumulate wealth. Cleary ar- gues, however, that itinerant gold mining is one of the most promising avenues for social and economic advancement in Brazil. Social relations in gold-mining areas are not com- parable to the semi-slavery conditions of some rubber tappers, for example, who are often bound to the aviamento system and never seem to escape from debt. Store owners in gold-min- ing areas do charge high prices, but their costs are also high, and there is often competition from several stores to keep a lid on prices. Only a few garimjeiros become fabulously wealthy, but many obtain valuable supple- mental income from gold mining and period- ically return to other professions, such as farming or niches in the urban sector.

Cleary also provides a balanced discussion of the impact of gold mining on Indians and the environment. Mercury contamination is one of the most serious environmental issues in Amazonia, and the health dangers of using mercury as an amalgam to extract gold from alluvial deposits are discussed. Garimpeiros can also introduce diseases to Indian reserves and this is discussed as well.

Few flaws can be found in this commend- able effort to analyze the gold rush in Ama- zonia. I was disappointed with the skimpy in- dex, a little over one page long. Also, no men- tion is made of the role 0fU.S. Steel at Carajis before the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce took over. Some estimates of the amount of time garimpeiros spend hunting would be helpful, as would discussion of whether they exert much pressure on game populations.

Cleary’s book is especially valuable because the gold rush has spread to other tropical countries, such as Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Guyana, parts of Central America, and equa- torial Africa. Southeast Asia may yet witness a massive gold rush. As a result, this well-writ- ten book belongs on the shelf of all those con- cerned with Third World Development. Readers will find the analysis far-reaching and the many insights worthwhile.

Logiques mCtisses: Anthropologie de l’identitk en Afrique et ailleurs. Jean-Loup Amselle. Bibliothique Scientifique Payot. Paris: Editions Payot, 1990. 257 pp. n.p. (pa- per).

V. Y. MUDIMBE Duke llniversily

The purpose of Amselle’s book is to ques- tion the theoretical presuppositions of “eth- nological reason” and to imagine the possibil- ity of a reversal of anthropology’s perspective. This means a critique ofthe “ethnological rea- son” that, by definition, extracts elements from their context, aestheticizes them, and uses their supposed differences for classifying types of political, economic, or religious en- sembles, such as state versus segmentary so- cieties, market versus subsistence economies, or Islam or Christianity versus paganism. To this “reason” Amselle opposes another one, the raison m’tisse that bears witness to the “in- distinction” or original syncretism of elements in a social totality and, thus, solves the di- lemma opposing “the universality of human rights” and “cultural relativism”; a dilemma which, in terms of political values, actualizes the tension and opposition between universal- ity as totalitarianism and cultural relativism as an expression of democracy.

Logiques mitisses is a coherent collection of nine chapters based on 15 years of fieldwork and research by the author in West Africa. The first two chapters dwell, respectively, on the very notion of “ethnological reason,” and on the reality of internal tensions in all cul- tures. The focus is successively on the history ofethnological reason, its ideological practices and, then, in a theoretical and critical rever- sal, the fact of cultural conflicts and negotia- tions that everywhere always bring about transformations in the identity of collectivi- ties. Chapter 3 illustrates a real system of transformations (Peul, Bambara, Malinke) and chapter 4 theorizes by questioning some basic concepts of political anthropology as they have been used and applied principally since the publication of the 1940 volume A f i - can Political Systems, edited by M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (Oxford University Press). The discussion continues in a more il- lustrative manner in chapters 5 and 6 in which, using two case studies-Gwanan and Jitumu-the author challenges both typolo- gies of political anthropology and ethno- graphic classifications. The last three chap- ters-on “White Paganism,” “Cultural Iden-

SOCIALI CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 101 1

tity and Cultural Models,” and “Understand- ing and Acting,”-bring the debate back to a wider historical framework of political and cultural confrontations: Who is in charge of defining ethnicitits, identities, and dzffercnces? Where could one find them as pure essences witnessing to their own originary being?

A number of major themes are addressed in Logigus mlisses. One concerns the efficiency of the universality model. This model posits its rationality as an all-embracing paradigm ac- counted for by a framework such as that of di- alectical sequences in sciences where there seem to be observed facts: action and reaction, in mechanics; differential and integral, in mathematics; combination and dissociation of elements, in chemistry; positive and negative, in physics. From this rigid model, Marxists postulated the class struggle as the equivalent network in social science, thus expanding the order of efficiency (and necessity) of dialecti- cal connectinns to the domain of social sci- ences. Do we deal with a similar move of the- oretical expansion, when-apropos of the state in Africa-we observe after Amselle that the politics of African Political System first ac- tualize a transfer of conceptual networks and second, describe “African systems,” and the model produced such that the model explains why the colonial order could not be but the fulfillment of these “regional” systems. In- deed, the masterful distinction between “seg- mentary” societies and those having a cen- tralized political power or state-in fact, to use Amselle’s expression, a reduction and dis- articulation of African precolonial types- might be a key to the understanding of the log- ics of Indirect Rule and other colonial policies. It would have been pointless, at least for spe- cialists, to reanalyze the theoretical regimes inherent in both the foundation of anthropol- ogy and the power ofthis distinction. Yet, per- haps such a review could have shown to nonspecialist readers two things: that anthro- pology and colonialism reflect each other; and how African anthropological practices operate in a self-assured method-bringing to light the supposedly unknown (the segmentary) in its absolute difference, defining it with concepts such as evolution and, in the same movement, isolating the African political varieties in a grid framed on the basis of what is already known from elsewhere. So much for the first major theme. The sec-

ond posits an alternative. Against the essen- tialist implications (as well as the totalitarian projection) of the universalist temptation, Amselle suggests a different approach. He em- phasizes mitissage and the possibility of its regression ad infinitum.

He demonstrates, in the case of West Africa, the presence of the state in the segmentary, of Islam in paganism, and of the written in the oral. The point is well made and convincing. It goes beyond the context of mystifying in- ventions of “ethnic” and “cultural” identities and challenges directly the practice of anthro- pology itself. I would expect some analysts to wonder whether the discovery of “modern” elements in a “traditional” culture is not likely among postmodern intellectuals, particularly those inhabiting transitional societies. A sig- nificant question, which proves that Amselle’s argument is basically right, since the question conveys explicitly the violence of the memory of “ethnological” reason.

Yet, another question remains: Logiques mi- tisses opens up the possibility of an anthropol- ogy of powers. Is this really still anthropology (as the author wishes) or something else like, say, history? In any case, this is a remarkable book and a tour de force.

Alabi’s World. Richard Price. Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture. Bal- timore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.466 pp. $59.00 (cloth), $18.95 (paper).

ROBERT DIRKS Illinois State University

Alabi ruled as principal chief of the Sara- makas from late 1783 until his death in 1820. His remarkable biography provides the cen- tral thread for this depiction of Saramakan ethnohistory as it unfolded following nearly three-quarters of a century of war with the Dutch. Alabi’s World thus picks up where Price’s earlier books, First T i m (Johns Hop- kins University Press, 1983) and To Slay the Hydra (Karoma Publishers, 1983), left off.

Price tries a fresh approach in this book. First Time portrays war with the Dutch accord- ing to Saramakan oral history. To Slay the H y dra tells of the Saramakan campaigns using Dutch records. Alabi’s World weaves these sources together, adding two other perspec- tives: Price’s own ethnographically condi- tioned outlook and that of Moravian mission- aries as set down in their diaries. These var- ious narratives are distinguished throughout by different typefaces. Price invites his reader to imaginatively “hear” different voices with each typeface-for example, working-class 18th-century German with Trump Bold, and the cadences of Saramakan elders with Trump Italics. While the voices do not always engage in quick “conversation,” point-counterpoint, sharp differences in interpretation often emerge.