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Book Review: Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Values

1929 (pp. 242–3). The closing chapter is somewhat disjointed. It is here that the threads of theory strewn through the book needed to be carefully collected and woven together, yet the five pages allotted to this task is woefully inadequate. Certainly the lowland Philippines was uninteresting to American anthropologists of the colonial period; they preferred the highlands. Yet the nearby ‘wild’ Iban were also more attractive to the British than the ‘mild’ Kadazan, while African towns were neglected in favour of exotic hinterlands until the Rhodes-Livingstone and East Africa Institutes altered that focus. Indeed dichotomizing (or ‘lobotomizing’ given the crassness of the results) meant that until the 1960s if not until today a decently ‘boxed’ society cram-full with ‘neatened’ data was the aspiration of many British anthropologists. If Bicol sits ‘oddly in anthropological discussions’, it is the discussions past and present which need a thorough shaking up in order to take account of the fact that while some anthropologists still like boxes, real people slip and slide between, negotiating and manipulating conflicting discourses with alacrity and élan. Cannell realizes this, yet she neither sets out the case from her own theoretical corner with consistent confidence nor engages the not-quite-defined opposition with tightly honed and logical argument about key concepts such as power. Despite her failure to live up to the title of the book (or the series) by analysing and grounding power sufficiently, the book is well worth reading for those interested in the ethnography of negotiated power and local religion in a little known region. Elizabeth Köpping Eberbach Germany [email: elizak@t-online.de]