245

TAJA 19934 3

Book Reviews

Nancy M. Williams and Graham Baines, eds. Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Wisdomfor Sustainable Development. Canberra: Centre for Resource and Environmental
Studies, A.N.U., 19!B. x. 185pp.. maps, plates, appendices. $25 (Pb.). ISBN 0-86740414
0.
Athol Chase
Griffith University

This volume presents a collection of papers given at the Traditional Ecological

Knowledge (TEK) Working Group workshop held at CRES in Canberra, in April 1988.
The TEK Working Group was established by the IUCN’s Commission on Ecology in the
early 1980s. and consists of academics and scientists from a variety of disciplinary
backgrounds. As the Introduction informs us, an aim of the collection is ‘to foster a liaison
between social and biological scientists and to work towards elucidating the practical
measures which are necessary if TEK is to play a useful role in sustainabledevelopment’.
There are some problems of understanding inherent to the field of TEK. Leaving aside
argument over what may constitute the ‘traditional’ in ecological knowledge (there are
general, if somewhat cursory, considerations of this in the first section of the volume),
there is also the problem of oversimplifying cultural frameworks of knowledge as
inherently wise, stable, and reflexively part of friendly environmental practice. A danger
of taking an uncritical ‘wisdom of the elders’ approach is the acceptanceof this wisdom as
an inherent metaphysical property of all small kin-based societies. Such an approach,
whatever its pragmatic political advantage, can lead to teleological problems of
explanation: the ‘unseen hand of the “Big Ecologist in the Sky”’ directing routine daily
life, to quote from Keesing’s Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective
(1981: 163). The Introduction to the collection does acknowledge this problem, although
only in passing, and other articles, as noted below, touch upon the problem of seeing
indigenes as ‘natural conservationists’. But a solid article along the lines of Sackett’s 1991
paper ‘Promoting primitivism’ (The Amtralian Journal of Anthropology 2[2]) would have
been a useful addition. All in all, the collection seems to be directed at practical
dimensions of working with indigenous peoples in situations where traditional knowledge
246 THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY

can play a part in environmental maintenance and planning. Less apparent is any
discussion about how recognition of TFK may play a role in maintaining the diversity of
human social and cultural systems, in addition to that of environments.
Apart from the Introduction and two ethnobotanical appendices, there are 21 papers
organised into three sections: ‘What is traditional ecological knowledge?, ‘Approach and
method’, and ‘Case studies’. There are familiar names from a variety of disciplines among
the authors; these include Henry Lewis, Eugene HUM, Ralph Bulmer, Deborah Rose,
Chris Healey, and Neville White and Betty Meehan. Matthew Spriggs provides an
archaeological perspective, and David Wilkins takes a linguistic apprmch to TEK. Overall
it is a mixed offering, and the somewhat scattergun approach is not necessarily a bad
thing. The topic of ecological knowledge, environmental interaction and scientific
application can demand broad brush polymathic treatment, but for this to work well there
needs to be a carefully worked out intellectual framework which goes beyond the
argument of usefulness or need.I had difficulty in getting a sense of such direction across
the many papers, and in this regard the collection suffers from the usual problem of
unification inherent in many conference or workshop proceedings.
In the first section, Healey raises the issue of global political economy as a necessary
consideration of research into TEK. Henry Lewis and Eugene Hunn attempt some
definitions of the field, and White and Meehan illustrate their observations on the role of
TEK with reference to Arnhem Land. The White and Meehan paper is one of the few
(Healey’s is another) which attempts to deal with the ‘traditional equals environmentally
friendly’ approach. making the point that modern ‘traditional’ peoples are not necessarily
born conservationists. In Arnhem Land, use of power boats, off-road vehicles, guns, pet
animals and the like have all had a deleterious effect on environments; as the authors
cautiously put it, ‘while it may not be popular in some quarters, we disagree with the view
that indigenous peoples, including Aborigines, are necessarily conservationists at heart -
that is, that they are innately conservation-minded’.
In the section on approach and method, Bulmer and Healey give a practical outline of
field techniques for collection and identification of specimens, problems in getting local
identification, choosing consultants. documentation, and the like. Wilkins has a long and
interesting paper on the complexities of linguistic dimensions in classification and the
dangers of accepting simplistic semantic equivalents for species or environmental
concepts. Professional linguistic analysis is necessary to work out categories of
worldview, or, as he states, ‘it is necessary to understand in the broadest terms how a
group conceives of its cosmos and its place in the cosmos if one is to understand that
group’s relation to the environment and its knowledge of ecological practices’.
The case studies section consists mainly of quite short and very generalised pieces,
exceptions being Richard Baker’s paper on traditional Aboriginal land use in the
Borroloola region and Milton Freeman’s on Inuit in the Northwest Territories. This is by
far the most disappointing section, given the stated goal of elucidating practical measures
for achieving sustainable development.
TEK as wisdom for sustainable development (to use the book’s title) is one thing;
practical planning applications in the real world of poor countries. corrupt government
practice and overseas resource developers is quite another. At the time of writing this
review the ABC’s Four Corners programme has just exposed the practices of Malaysian
logging companies in Papua New Guinea. and the role of indigenous peoples,
governments and private development in that process. This is, of course, but one example
of development-inspired environmental destruction. Although contributors like Healey
have addressed the political dimension in general terms, my conclusion is that this reality
BOOK REVIEWS 247

is generally glossed over or avoided in the volume, despite it being a critical dimension of
environmental planning and practice. A section on the realities of having TEX effectively
mgnised and applied in achieving sustainable development against the economic and
political odds is badly needed, and in that sense political scientists and policy experts
might well have had much to ConcribUte to the workshup.
Despite these comments, this volume does have a place in a scholar’s library. It attempts
a difficult field, and some of the papers have depth to them. The work is free of errors, and
is reasonably well bound in the soft-cover economy style.

John Connell and Richard Howitt, eds. Mining and Indigenous Peoples in Australaria.
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991. x, 205pp.. maps, index. $22.95 (Pb.). ISBN 0-
424-ooin-2.
Doug MEachern
University of Adelaide

This is both a useful and an important book. It is a collection of pieces by a variety of

people - mostly from geography departments, but also including anthropologists,
sociologists and public policy analysts - all of whom are working on the interactions
between mining companies and indigenous peoples in Australia, Papua New Guinea,
Indonesia, Fiji and New Zealand. Both the range of issues covered, and the range of
analytical and political perspectives brought to bear in the book, are quite broad. All the
pieces included are good in their own right, which is not always the case in edited
collections.
Very few people have a single intemt in mining projects and indigenous people per se:
most are interested in a particular geographic location. The quality of the pieces in this
collection, and the issues raised, are such that anyone with an interest in a particular
location, or in a particular aspect of the relations between mining and indigenous
populations, will benefit by reading all of the surrounding pieces. Indeed,after reading the
book, the overwhelming impression is of the quality of the work being done in this area
and of the urgent need for an extended comparative account of what has been going on
and why. The volume contains suggestive material on the relationship between the
specifics of the colonial experience, patterns of dispossession and the struggles by
indigenous p p l e s (or by local or regional forces, where the colonial inheritors are in
some sense the indigenous peoples themselves) to gain something from the intrusion of
mining projects into their lands and lives. There are some constants in these contrasting
stories: the urges of the mining companies do not seem to vary greatly between mine sites,
or in different periods. Similarly, national governments seem to have an urge to promote
mining development as a solution to a variety of national and local problems. Variations
come from the political contexts in which the negotiations and conflicts between
government, mining companies and indigenous people take place. Here, the studies in this
book give numerous details of the different and inventive ways in which indigenous
peoples have responded to the challenges of mining projects.
The geographic rauge of the book is impressive. Events in Papua New Guinea are well
treated in the chapters by Richard Jackson (Mt Kare). Rolf Gerritsen and Martha
Macintyre (Misima Gold), John Connell (Bougainville). and David Hyndman (OkTedi).
These chapters are particularly good on the strategies adopted by local populations to
maximise their gains from projects co-sponsored by the national government, with a
248 THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY

contrasting set of evaluations of the virtures of these strategies. The Australian material by
Richard Howitt (Tanami Gold), Michael Dillon (Argyle Diamonds) and Robert Levitas
(Ranger Uranium) provides a set of evidence and problems that is useful for considering
the consequences of different land rights regimes as well as the intersection between state
and ~ t i o n a governments.
l and local organisations of Aboriginal peoples. There are two
essays on mining projects in New Zealand: Dixon on Coromandel gold and Barclay-Kerr
on Waikato coal. These provide good, contrasting accounts of what happens in cases of
colonisation by treaty. The existence of a treaty in New Zealand seems neither to have
stood in the way of dispossession, nor to have greatly assisted the battle to have the rights
of indigenous peoples facilitated in debates over land use. The complex labour relations
involved in international mining projects are well treated in Plange’s piece on Emperor
Gold in Fiji - the scene of protracted struggles between mine workers and mine mauagers -
and in Robinson’s study of the Soroakonickel pmject in Sulawesi.
The largest discipline contribution to this collection comes from geography, an
impressive testament to the kind of work now being done under this rubric. However, I
would like to draw attention to the contributions by anthropologists and sociologists in the
collection - the work of Martha Macintyre, David Hyndman, Kathryn Robinson and
Robert Levitas - and to the potential contribution of anthropologists to studies of this kind.
The 1993 American Anthropology Association’s annual meetings had a specialist session
on mining and the environment in Melanesia. That session made clear the important
contribution that anthropologists can make to the study of the interaction between mining
projects and indigenous peoples with particular reference to environment, understood as
both the physical world and the cultural form in which the interactions between humans
and that world are understood and legitimised. Mining projects can have a significant
impact on the physical world (as the chapter by Hyndman in this volume testifies). but
such projects can also severely disrupt the ways in which indigenous people conceive of
their environment more generally. The clash between the cosmology of mining companies
and that of the indigenous or local inhabitants is one which could easily be explored by
fieldworkinganthropologists. One part of such a study would have to be an anthropology
of international mining companies. since what such companies do, what they want to do
and how they explain and justify their actions, are all important to what happens in every
case discussed in this collection; yet these are the only questions which are significantly
neglected or under-explored. Perhaps the culture of international mining companies is a
taken-for-granted matter which should be as subject to ethnographic work and critical
deconstruction as other forms of culture, both at home and abroad.

Henry Reynolds. The Law of the Land,second edition.Ringwood. Vic.: Penguin Books,
1992.Xiii, 249pp.. bibliog., index. $16.95(Pb.). ISBN 0-14-016703-X.
Kenneth Maddock
Macquarie University

This new edition of a book fist published in 1987 has been updated to include a section
on Batman’s ‘treaty’ and related matters, as well as a postscript on the High Court’s
Mabo judgment. The opportunity has been missed to correct typographical mistakes in the
original and some new errors have been committed. e.g. ‘the State’ for ‘act of State’
@. 189). ‘refused’ for ‘confused’ (p. 193) and ‘property’ for ‘proper’ (p. 197). New
Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal does not. ostensibly at least,judge ‘the past by the standards
BOOK REVIEWS 249

of today’ (p.197). but seeks to make a practical application of the principles of a treaty
which is mystically conceived as ‘always speaking’.
The main thesis of the book is that the recognition of prior native title was part of the
common law even before the colony of New South Wales was established.This argument,
supported by a variety of legal opinions and judgments as well as by historical evidence.
has found support (which must delight the author) in the Mabo decison of 1992. which
overturned the Gove decision of 1971. Granting the legal force of the High Court’s
judgment, one can still wonder whether Reynolds is entirely convincing in his account of
the history of it all.
He shows that as well as concern by philanthropists and reformers there was also some
official acknowledgment,in both Britain and Australia. of native proprietary rights. But it
is significaut that this strand of opinion was never strong enough to win the day. Perhaps
the imperial authorities never had the nerve to impose their ‘legally correct’ views on a
growing number of recalcitrant colonists. Thus the ‘law of the land’ denied prior rights,
whatever Thomas Buxton and Lord Glenelg might urge to the contrary. This denial by
dominant majorities in the Australian colonies was by no means without support in the
mother country and did not alter with federation.
Reynolds comes across more as a reformer making selectiveuse of historical material to
persuade an audience than as an historian trying to work out why events took the course
that they did. Readers who were mystified by the Australian record on native land tenure
before starting to read his book are unlikely to emerge from it feeling enlightened,
although they will have learned many interesting facts. Perhaps it is better frankly to
accept Australia as sui generis than to judge it by the standards of the common law
elsewhere, which tend to give us the kind of history that Procmstes might have written.
Beginning in the 1%Os, considerable land areas have now been acquired by Aborigines
through the legislative process. This development was not predicated on native title. yet it
has belatedly conferred advantages which compare favourably with those obtained via the
native title route in other English-speakmg countries.
The new edition of The Law of the Land probably came out too soon after the Mabo
judgment for Reynolds to consider it and its consequencea in any depth. but it is clear that
he runs counter to the line taken by the Commonwealth government. His is very much a
‘maxmahst’
. . view of its implications.

Frederick H. Damon. From Muyuw to the Trobriands: Transformations Along the

Northern Side of the Kula Ring. Tucson: University of &ZOM Press, 1990. xvi, 285pp..
maps, illust.. plates, tables, appendices, bibliog., index. USS35 (Hb.). ISBN 0-8165-1191-
8.
Patrick Glass
University of Sydney

This book fills an important gap in the ethnography of the North Massim, a classic area
of anthropological theonsing. It is an extension of the work of others. from Seligman and
Maliwwski to Weiner and Munn.
The author sets himself two tasks. First, to find out whether Muyuw (Murua or
Woodlark Island) is part of one social system or is one of many (as many as there are
islands in the Kula Ring). Second, if Muyuw is part of one social system (one culture), to
raise the question of how the culture-bearing unit is defined (p.11). Damon’s principal
250 THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY

theoretical perspectives are structuralism - the book is dedicated to Uvi-Strauss and

Leach - and World Systems theory.
Damon set out to examine closely the calendrical system of Muyuw and its relation to
the Trobriand calendrical system, as this latter was reported by Malinowski and Austen
and later explored by Leach. Unfortunately, as the author candidly admits, he did not get
far with this research. Apparently, time is not significant for Muyuwans. and he concludes
bluntly that ‘time does not count for much in Muyuw’ (p.40).Having made little headway
with time. he is led to examine Muyuwan space and key symbols. The Muyuw New Year
rite. Zvisan Ven, takes place at different times of the year in different villages: ‘A spatial.
not a temporal, arrangement defines this pattern’ (p.40).This leads Damon to his central
finding.
The Muyuw gardenhillage analogy is identified as a key to the culture’s workings. In
major, and other, ritual contexts the village is transformed into a symbolic outrigger canoe
- unstable and feminine, like a canoe - and this is linked to the culture’s origin cosmology
(pp.176.178). Here, I would like to have seen Geliw, Muyuw’s Founder, examined in
relation to Gere’u, the elder brother of the Trobriand Founder and Hero, Tudava. And I
suspect that more could have been made of the early reports of cultural links between
Muyuw and the Trobriands. from the Annual Reports on British New Guinea. It is odd that
the author, who is searching for links between the islands of the North Massim, makes no
reference to Scoditti’s work on Kitava. however irrelevant he may think it is to his
purposes. Kitava is the biggest island between the Trobriands and Muyuw. and Scoditti is
the only anthropologist to have worked extensively there.
Taking his cue from World Systems theory (Wallerstein), Damon views societies as
products of a larger system: ‘Particular cultural forms are not autonomous entities
connected by economic means to other autonomous units.Rather, the cultural elaboration
of one place is a consequence of the cultural forms of the whole and of other particular
places’ (p. 13). Given that Damon sees Muyuw as part of a ‘World System’ @IS quotation
marks), just as powerfully linked to it as. say, a colony is to its mother country, then it is
unfortunate that he fails to explore the South Massim’s relations with Muyuw. Here, the
author imposes an unnecessary restriction on himself; it would have strengthened his
theorising if he had examined these links (pp.225-26). ,
This book is an interesting ethnography which delivers both more and less than it
promises. It is not conclusive in its findings. World Systems theory is alluded to, but the
prospects to be derived from it are little developed. The author makes some important
statements in his extensive footnotes (17 pages), and I wondered why more of this
material was not incorporated into the text. Nevertheless, the transformations that Damon
has identified for Muyuw should stimulate new debate in the ethnography of the entire
Massim.

Anne Baring and Jules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess. Evolution of an Image.
Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1993. xv, 782pp., maps, plates, appendices. bibliog.. index. $50
(Pb.). ISBN 0-14-019292-1.
Gillian Bottomley
Macquarie University

This is an encyclopaedic work, a treasure trove of information about goddesses from the
Palaeolithic era (c.20,OOO B.C.) to contemporary representations of the Virgin Mary. The
BOOK REVIEWS 251

authors analyse myths and rituals, sculptures. carvings, painting, poetry and religious
texts, to present a highly intricate and absorbing account of the ‘evolution of an image’.
As their extensive research developed, B a h g and Cashford discovered a recurrent theme:
the myth of the goddess as the sacred focus of a vision of life as an interwoven and
organic unity. They argue that this myth has been lost in our own age. Exploring this loss,
they trace the rise of ‘the god’, a continuity from c.2000 B.C. that is seen as polarising
Nature and Humanity, with the former increasingly becoming a chaotic force to be
mastered. This paradigm. inherited from Babylonian mythology, was inscribed into
JudaeolChristian beliefs and the dichotomous thought systems that developed from them -
for example, in the separation of spiritual and physical worlds, mind and matter, soul and
body, thinking and feeling, reason and instinct. Within each of these pairs, the one term is
more highly valorised as spiritual. In JudaedChristian mythology and its successor
systems there is no feminine dimension of the divine, although the goddess myth, debased
and devalued, continues to exist ‘in disguise’. To quote:
. . . in Hebrew mythology the goddess. . . was hidden in the chaotic dragons of Leviathan
and Behemoth, whose destruction was never complete, or . . . more abstractly, in the
-
feminine personification of Yahweh’s ‘wisdom’ Sophia - and his ‘presence’ - the
Shekhinah. Eve, though human and cursed, was given by Adam the displaced name ofthe
mother goddesclcs of old - ‘the Mother of a11 Living’ - though with fatally new and limited
meaning. The Virgin Mary. as the ‘Second Eve’ - who has been gathering import.ncc over
the centuries in answer, it must be, to some unfulfillbd need of many people - was finally
declared ‘Assumed into Heaven, Body and Soul’as Queen only in the 1950s (p.Nu).
However, as the authors point out, physicists and other scientists have moved back to
an understanding of the inseparable web of life and have expressed themselves in many of
the images belonging to the old goddess myth (such as ‘the cosmic web’ and ‘oceansof
energy’), even making reference to the earth goddess Gaia
Baring and Cashford define the predominant mythic image of our age as ‘the god
without the goddess’, in direct contrast to developing scientific thought. In an attempt to
propose a more balanced mode of thinking, they present a formidable body of images,
stories and interpretations in a scholarly and lively style. These are accompanied by
appropriate and illuminating illustrations, ranging from the Goddess of Laussel (c.20,OOO
B.C.) to Henry Moore’s sculptures. There are also informative maps, detailed notes and
references, an excellent index, and appendices with further information about prehistoric
chronology and the Christian gospels. The text carefully links archaeological, historical,
mythical and anthropological evidence of rituals of life, death and regeneration in Old
Europe, Anatolia, Ancient Crete, Sumenan Civilisations, Egypt, Babylon, Greece and
Rome, then moves through the Old Testament to various representations of the Virgin
Mary and Mary Magdalene, the image of Sophia in Gnostic Christianity and the
celebration of the Black Virgin in Europe.These accounts are interrelated throughout the
book in detailed analyses that reiterate and strengthen the central themes that I have
briefly outlined above. There is an excellent select bibligraphy and a list of essential
readings for those who wish to pursue specific aspects of this remarkable piece of
scholarship.
252 THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Nancy Howell. Surviving Fieldwork. A Report of the Advisory Panel on Health and Safety
in Fieldwork, American Anthropological Association. Washington, D.C.: American
Anthropological Association (Special Publication No.26). 1990. Xii, 2 17pp.. appendix.
bibliog.. index, tables. US$12 Members, US$15 Nonmembers 0.). ISBN 0-913167-38-
X.
Christine Dureau
Australian National University

This report is based on a survey of North American anthropologists by the American

Anthropological Association’s Advisory Panel on Health and Safety in Fieldwork. The
content. covering all continents except Antarctica, is relevant to Australian anthropologists
and other professionals who work in remote locales.
Nancy Howell estimates that most anthropologistsaverage thirty to sixty days fieldwork
per year in the course of their careers. With such a substantial time investment, the dearth
of literature on researchers’ health and safety is unjustifiable. This is especially so because
the work is intrinsically hazardous. Some 70% of the Panel’s 204 respondents reported
some kind of accidental injury alone (Howell herself suffered the loss of a child during
fieldwork - an experience which she should be lauded for sharing).
Ultimately, as Howell acknowledges, it is impossible to prepare for every possible
hazard. Nevertheless, safety can be significantly improved. The first step here is
acknowledgement of potential and actual problems. As she points out, it is impossible to
ignore the frequent contributory negligence of fieldworkers, for example, in drinking
untreated water or in ignoring prophylaxis for local diseases. Safety - and thus time and
financial efficiency - can be enhanced by what she argues should be a few routine
procedures to ensure maximum fieldwork safety. She stresses that this is the responsibility
not only of the individual researcher, but also of academic departments and sponsoring
and funding institutions.
The goal of the report is simple. It is ‘to raise consciousness . . . of problems that can
potentially be solved or reduced’ @. 17). Howell achieves far more than this, assembling
convincing evidence of hazards as well as pragmatic suggestions for prevention, diagnosis
and treatment.
The degree and nature of risk, ranging from sunburn to assassination, loneliness and
social tension, varies appreciably according to the area of fieldwork. Nonetheless, across
geopolitical boundaries, three constant and serious dangers stand out. Malaria, hepatitis
and vehicle accidents, all controllable to some extent, cause disproportionatelevels of lost
work time, illness, long term sequelae and death. Hepatitis of one kind or another -
entailing significant risks of acute or chronic liver failure and liver cancer - was reported
by 13% of the sample.
The core chapters are replete with advice regarding prevention, diagnosis and treatment
of illness, injury and other hazardous events. These are filled out with anecdotal accounts
which effectively reinforce Howell’s message. Nor are ethical issues, such as
responsibilities to dependents or local people, evaded.
First Aid treatments are generally up-to-date, rational and manageable for non-medical
personnel working under difficult circumstances. The material on hepatitis and malaria is,
however, outdated, probably because of the rapidity with which medical approaches to
these conditions are being revised. Readers would be advised to heed Howell’s cautions,
but to seek more current information on both diseases.
BOOK REVIEWS 253

The heavy emphasis on self-reporting also raises problems, despite Howell’s sensitive
analysis. In particular, it limits the rauge of hazards reported. AIDS, for example, receives
only passing mention because it was unreported. I sometimes wondered, too, about the
inclusion of some of the case histories. Howell seems to include accounts of all dead and
injured anthropologists, irrespective of whether their deaths were fieldwork-related.
There is no doubt, however, that she succeeds admirably in her arguments concerning
the importance of acknowledging and preparing for the hazards of field research, and in
linking this not only to individual wellbeing, but also to the enhancement of
anthropological tasks. For that reason alone, the book should be on the shelves of every
anthropology department, and should be required reading for every fieldworker.
experienced cx otherwise.

Rosalia Sciortina Care-Takers OfCure. Amsterdam: CIP-Data. Koninklijke Bibliotheek,

Den Haag, 1992. xvi. 318pp.. plates, tables. appendices. glossary, bibliog. US$30 (Pb.).
ISBN 90-9005532-0.
Cynthia Hunter
University of Newcastle

This book offers a comprehensiveanalysis of the Indonesian health bureaucracy and its
personnel, by way of a detailed descriptionof health centre (pusksm)nursing in Central
Java. It is an important ethnographiccontribution to the literature on medical anthropology
in developing countries. More specifically, the book fills a gap in the literature on nursing
and the state health care system in Indonesia. There are probable similarities in the
operation of pusksmas in other Indonesian islands. The differences are in the degrees of
quality and quantity of services available.
Sciortino, an anthropologist. sets out carefully her reasons for choosing the nursing
profession as an area of study, and her belief in the value of a ‘multi level’ or ‘linkages’
perspective (p.6).She aims to examine the conceptualisation of nursing and of policy
incorporated at the national government level, and to trace how such policy is
implemented and conceptualised through the provincial and district levels to the actual
nursing practice in sub-district, local health centres.
The first four chapters encompass the history of nursing: the Western conceptualisation
of the discipline and its diffusion into Indonesia; the links with international agencies such
as the WHO and the PHC programme, which incorporates the notion of community health
nursing; the development of nursing in the Indonesian archipelago; and the
conceptualisation of nursing at the national level. In Chapters 5 to 8 Sciortinorelies on the
vibrancy of ethnography to describe the modus operandi of the health centre, the day-to-
day activities of nurses, the connections between the private and public spheres of
medicine and the relationship of nurses’ private practices to their health centre roles, and
the complexities of role and power relations among physicians and nurses. With respect to
the last of these, conditions of ‘secrecy’ (p.171) exist in terms of translating the formal
into actual activities. These have further and deeper implicationsfor patients and nursing
personnel alike. In Chapter 8, in the context of an account of the pluralistic nature of
medicine in Indonesia, Sciortino discusses the relationships between nursing, national
health policy and indigenous traditional medicine. The Government positively reinforces
only biomedicine dispensed via doctors and nurses throughout the countryside, but at the
village level nurses,in particular. exhibit an ambivalence with respect to this. Chapter 9
254 THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY

examines the role of nurses from the point of view of the actors engaged, that is.
physicians, health officials. nurses and villagers.
Sciortino brilliantly draws out the complexity of discourses enmeshed in a multilayered
health system. Policy and principles. implementation and practice, belong to different
social spheres; the official, bureaucratic view is far removed from the actual practices
found in everyday activities. Nurse training in Indonesia is based on the American model
of hospital nursing; the nurse’s role of caring is at the heart of nursing in terms of
conceptualisation and policy making. Yet, this is what nurses don’t do at the practice
implementation (village) curing level. This is partly caused by the diagnostic role they are
forced to assume vis h vis doctors who follow managerial pursuits, and partly by the
expectations of their patients who request medical technical curing rather than care.
Sciortino explains why little attempt is made to address at any level of the health care
system the ambiguity between the formal and normative nurse roles. Indonesian health
care is understaffed and in local. rural situations people are still little interested in
prevention of illness or promotion of health. In conclusion, Sciortino reiterates the
historical origins of this care-cure ambivalence and thus of the multilevel conflict which
expresses it: a conflict which is not dealt with in the centralised health policy. The
relevance of ‘linkages’ research extends beyond data collection and organisation to an
analytical level where the examination of vertical and horizontal layers of the health care
system provides insightfulinterpretations of social reality.
The book is well-written. readable and interesting. The methodology and setting are
described in appendices, and there is an extensive bibliography. It is particularly suitable
for institutions with nursing practicum courses in Indonesia, health consultants and
planners in developing countries, and readers with medical and anthropological interests.
The glossary ensures the relevance of the book for non-Indonesian specialists and
Indonesian specialists alike.

Fredrik Barth. Balinese WorMs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. x, 370pp..
plates. bibliog., index. US$22.95 (F’b.). ISBN 0-226-a834-3.
Linda Connor
University of Newcastle

Fredrik Barth is an experienced anthropologist. having worked in several other

societies before coming to Bali. In this book he addresses a long-term concern of his -
developing theory for the understanding of ‘complex societies’ - through an engagement
with the ethnographic realities of the North Bali region. Barth argues that most of the
anthropological models of Bali are based on research canied out in the fertile South Bali
region (where most of the population resides), and that these studies have given a distorted
picture of a Hinduised society that is ‘village-based, steady-state, theatrically oriented,
graceful and calm, collectivist’ (p.9). Such an assertion may be accurate enough for the
English-language literature published prior to the last decade, but neglects not only
contemporary research by Western and Indonesian social scientists, but also the very large
number of studies by Dutch ethnologists. most about North Balinese communities, written
during a century of colonial rule.
Barth sets himself the task of providing an account of North Bali’s social diversity
which will become the basis for a model of Bali as a complex society in which variation is
an essential component, not an aberration. Part Two of the book is a description of the
BOOK REVIEWS 255

social orgauisation of the two villages where he spent most of his time Wndu Prabakda
and Muslim Pagatepan). supplemented by material on four others,chosen to demonstratea
wide spectrum of institutional variation. In Part Three, the focus shifts from this traditional
anthropological account (which varies little in its terms of reference from Dutch
antecedents), to a more lively action-centred analysis of social relations in Prabakula and
Pagatepan, organised around topics such as factionalism and leadership, family and
marriage. The transition to Part Four (‘Major traditions of knowledge’) is achieved via the
argument that we cannot understand the way participants construct the meanings of, and
connections between, those events in which they are embroiled, without reference to the
major cultural traditions of the North Bali region. The five core traditions identified by
Barth are Islam, Bali-Hinduism, ‘Kings, Courts, Castes, and the Bali Aga’, ‘the modem
sector’, and sorcery, each retxiving a chapter-longsummary sketch. Part Five of the book
is an attempt to show how people in North Bali activate these various paradigms of
cultural interpretation, in the situations of everyday life. The questions which concern
Barth revolve around the relationship between these major traditions in practice: do they
clash? complement? contradict? merge? and so on. The chapters of Part Five focus on
further social action vignettes (in the manner of Part Three). designed to explicate the way
in which major traditions both are implicated in practice and can be analytically grasped
from practice. This numerological approach to North Balinese culture culminates in Part
Six, where the Five Major Traditions are considered in relation to six ‘concerns’ of
everyday life (such as: ‘a pervasive fear of making an error or mistake and not acting
correctly’, and ‘a strong obligation to cooperate and submerge one’s own impulses in the
service of the common good’ b.3421). These concerns orient social action and may
produce convergent understandings of events, despite the salience of different cultural
traditions in any particular context. Barth’s Conclusion is a discussion of the way in which
these principles (the ‘traditions’and the ‘concerns’)have the potential to give order (albeit
transiently and conditionally) and shape to the processes through which social life in
North Bali is constituted.
While Barth’s Balinese informants complained to him of ‘so many concerns’ (the title
of Chapter 17), his readers could be excused for the lament of ‘so many words’. The
length of this book. and its attempt to construct a theoretical argument through detailed
ethnographic exegesis, will probably defeat all but the most diehard Baliologist. I found
Barth’s argument that we must develop our anthropological models from the lived
experience of the people we study and from knowledge in use (rather than from
knowledge as reified discourse) compelling. but not new. even when applied to the
relatively narrow area of Bali studies. Barth’s understanding of the way in which
theorising about Bali (and the development of theory through the use of Balinese
ethnography) has proceeded, is somewhat out of date (with the exception of the interesting
work both of his partner and collaborator, Unni Wikan, and of Mark Hobart, cited
extensively). Barth’s concerns have been comprehensively addressed in si@icaut works
published over the last decade, which do not enter his discussion (such as the volume State
and Society in Bali edited by Hildred Geertz. Leiden, 1991, and Jean-Francois
Guermonprez’ study, focused on North Bali, titled Les Pan& & Bali: La Formation
d’une ‘Caste’ et la Valeur d’un Titre, Paris, 1987). Recent anthropological writings on
Bali have typically proceeded from an analysis of particular ‘lived’ events and texts as
used, and have inductively elucidated the categories of understanding that Balinese
themselves deploy in particular contexts of everyday life. The interdisciplinary nature of
much of the recent work, particularly with regard to the conceptualisation of issues of
literacy and orality, and the writing and use of texts in a society with diverse ‘major
256 THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY

traditions of knowledge’, renders Barth’s discussion of this issue (pp.216-17 and passim)
rather superficial. Recent work has also included the writings of Indonesian social
scientists and other intellectuals. whereas these sources are almost entirely missing from
the highly Eurocentric bibliography of this book.
The theoretical discussion in the book is only partly satisfactory. Barth seems to be
operating with a narrow perspective of the scope of contemporary anthropologicaltheory.
I gained the impression that he views many contemporarypractitioners as being still in the
grip of a lingering form of structural-functionalismwhich inclines them to deduce cultural
categories of understandingfrom the formal institutions of social life (pp.92-4).After brief
consideration, practice theorists are dismissed because of their misplaced concern with
cultural contradiction (e.g. pp.6-7). and the postmodernists forsaken because of their
rejection of coherent theoretical systems (e.g. pp.7-8). There are only cursory mentions of
the work of contemporary social theorists throughout the book. Key concepts of the
analysis, such as ‘complex society’ (which postmodernist thought claims to have rendered
obsolete - aren’t all contemporary societies ‘complex’?), are never critically discussed.
Barth seems unaware that many of his colleagues have eclectically reworked, as he has
done, major theoretical insights to arrive at a creative synthesis of ideas, and that it is this
mode of theorising which has characterised much of the writing about Bali in the past
decade, as discussed above.
Barth is obviously a competent fieldworker, and he readily admits in the Introduction
that his competence was greatly enhanced by his two research assistants (who, among
other things, compensated for his lack of linguistic fluency). The strongest parts of the
book are Part Three and Part Five, where vignettes of social life display penetrating
insights into the subtleties of people’s constructions of the meaning of their actions. It is
thus surprising that, although Barth sometimes engages in reflexive interpretation of his
own place in social action, he does not extend this methodology to his research assistants,
particularly as one was a Muslim, a native of one of the two main villages he studies. and
the other was a Hindu-Balinese. His attempts to render his methodology transparent to the
reader are undermined by this silence.
Some editorial and linguistic deficiences mar the presentation of the book. There are
many misspellings and odd transcriptions of Balinese and Indonesian words. Italicisation
is erratic. Adequate translations of Balinese usages are sometimes missing (e.g. what
words did people use when they complained of ‘so many concerns’? - a key concept in the
latter part of the book) or are highly unusual, even outlandish (e.g. Befuru Dewu Ayu
Subandm as ‘God Goddess Pretty of the Harbor’, p. 89).
I finished the book with considerableregard for Barth’s temerity in taking on the task of
rethinking the anthropology of ‘complex societies’ through his study of North Bali, but
with some reservations about his success in achieving his aims. The book yields lively
ethnographicdata on the diversity of village life in North Bali. It is not so clear that it has
made a contribution to theorising about the situation of global connectedness in which all
social groups (however and by whomever defined) find themselves in the contemporary
world.