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Book Review: Out of Eden: The Surprising Consequences of Polygamy

cultural studies, but features a densely packed and nuanced discussion. I would recommend this book for working professionals and graduate students in cultural studies or related fields, and any scholar interested in understanding culture more precisely. I cannot recommend this book for any but the most advanced undergraduates. It is difficult to evaluate a framework for understanding basic concepts, but I think that the framework presented in Meaning in Action provides considerable value. Raud, rightly, recommends that the chief criterion should be explanatory power, but the perceived explanatory power of a framework is very much influenced by the other frameworks to which we are already committed. In the face of this challenge, I have found that the degree to which a framework infiltrates thinking about the target phenomenon once it is learned is a useful heuristic to measure the explanatory power of a framework. By this metric, Meaning in Action is a moderate success. The basic framework of textualities and practices has, for me at least, slowly but surely, emerged in my own thinking. I have found the base/result text distinction to be particularly useful, as is the detailed eightdimensional analysis of practices. However, the framework does seem to have some explanatory gaps. It provides little theory about the interaction between text and practice, which is arguably where most cultural phenomena live. Particularly, interpretation is critically undertheorized, such that I had trouble fitting hermeneutic engagement with base texts into this framework. For many texts, particularly base texts (such as, religious texts, texts of national law), this interpretive engagement seems both an element of the text and an aspect of practice. The framework would benefit a great deal from detailed theorizing about the dynamic interactions between text and practice, so that we can see culture as a whole rather than one half at a time. This is not to say that the framework has failed, but that there is work to be done before it is complete. In a sense, I believe that Meaning in Action has succeeded in its own terms, as I suspect it may become a base text of an emerging and badly needed attempt to theorize culture itself. While it has not completely resolved the problems it targeted, it has laid a foundation upon which a more complete framework may ultimately stand. With this in mind, I highly recommend Meaning in Action to those interested in helping to build this framework, as they will find here a foundation from which to engage with it.