Jean-Paul Baldacchino and Jon P. Mitchell (eds.) (2022), Morality, Crisis and Capitalism: Anthropology for Troubled Times (New York: Berghahn Books), 204 pp., £99, ISBN: 978-1-80073-611-5

Morality, Crisis and Capitalism: Anthropology for Troubled Times is an inspiring volume written by anthropologists researching different cultural contexts and edited by Jean-Paul Baldacchino, a professor of anthropological sciences (University of Malta) and Jon Mitchell, a professor of anthropology (University of Sussex). In eight chapters and an introduction, the volume addresses anthropology for troubled times, rather than anthropology of troubled times. Readers are encouraged to think about how to do anthropology in times of upheaval, insecurity and ever-present ‘crisis’ (or ‘chronic crises’, as Daniel Knight says in chapter 3). ‘Troubled times’ produce challenging topics, requiring not only new methodological but also new activist expressions by anthropologists, as proposed by John Gledhill, who reflects on his fieldwork in Brazil and Mexico (chap. 1). However, anthropology was always connected with ‘crisis’, even when the ‘crisis’ was not as ‘chronic’ as it is today. The editors notice that, in a way, anthropology was constituted as a response to the crisis (i.e. ‘salvage anthropology’). Anthropology also went through different crises. Baldacchino provides a concise overview of various ‘crises’ in anthropology in chapter 5. He identifies competing frameworks of the ethical scope of anthropology, emphasising that ‘ethics’ could be understood as a relationship we are to have with ‘the other’.

The chapters generally show that capitalism generates not only periods of ‘prosperity’ and apparent stability but also periods of political, economic and moral crises. For many people around the world, a capitalist moral economy produces crisis. For example, in chapter 6, Matthew Doyle and James McMurray unpack the influence of neoliberal capitalism on the universities in the United Kingdom. Precarious staff has been particularly affected, as illustrated by the experiences of two researchers. Throughout the volume, readers realise that people experience crises in the most unexpected and sometimes counter-intuitive ways. For example, Daniel Knight writes about ‘Stockholm syndrome’ among Greeks who found a sense of security in the ongoing socio-economic deprivation. People situationally navigate through complex moralities, which can confuse or even mislead anthropologists, as shown by Mitchell in chapter 7, on reconciliation between Catholic and LGBTQ+ identities in Malta.

Paul Sant Cassia (ch. 2) and Jutta Lauth Bacas (ch. 4) analyse particular catastrophic and monumental events, both dealing with the question of the predictability of these profound events. Sant Cassia explores the October 2017 assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. He analyses the reception of the event in Maltese society, which provoked conspiracy theories on the connection between ‘the mafia’ and the state, rooted in the political unconscious. Bacas examines how the EU-Turkey refugee agreement led to the September 2020 fires in the Moria refugee camp (Lesvos), using both a macro (numbers and reports) and micro (field notes from Moria) approach. Other chapters in the volume identify the so-called refugee crisis as a meta-narrative, and Baldacchino (ch. 5) says the scholarship related to ‘crisis chasing’ could be an opportunity for anthropology. ‘Refugee crisis’ of 2015, ‘financial crisis’ of 2008 and crisis related to Covid-19 pandemic are some examples. However, as he further notes, we must be wary of our entanglements with the power structures that reproduce crises.

The volume is dedicated to the memory of anthropologist Paul Clough (1949–2019). Clough's influence is obvious throughout the entire volume (many authors relied on different aspects of his scientific work) but especially in the last chapter, written by David Napier. Elaborating on Clough's insights on immunology, Napier concludes that creativity requires risk.

The edited volume raises important questions on methodology, morality, ethics and timeliness of anthropology. Each chapter is written to unmask seemingly obvious cultural representations. Nothing is as it seems at first glance. Such a way of writing may not be specific only to anthropology, but it is certainly honed by anthropologists. This edited volume can be useful to anthropologists dealing with a wide variety of topics, precisely because there is a certain degree of universality regarding the ‘troubled’ times, socio-economic inequalities and the drastic consequences of crises. The chapters contain numerous references to published research studies, both by eminent anthropologists of the twentieth century and more recent studies. It could be also interesting to students who want to do academic research, but also to students who would like to work in ‘public anthropology’. Moreover, it will be useful to readers interested in the moral economy of capitalism.

David Zeitlyn (2022), An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts (New York: Berghahn Books), 142 pp., £72, ISBN: 978-1-80073-470-8

One must take the subtitle of David Zeitlyn's intriguing book literally; this text offers ‘useful concepts’ for thinking anthropology rather than seeking to augment the proliferating terminology of contemporary anthropology. In the course of sixty alphabetically arranged chapters linked to terms as varied as ‘stochaistic variation’ and ‘Hesse nets’ (each followed by impressively extensive bibliographical references), Zeitlyn seeks to guide his readers in delving more deeply into the processes through which we are able to perceive and interpret materials we encounter in the course of our ethnographic work.

The useful introduction to the book argues for a ‘mosaic’ (10) attitude towards anthropological analysis whereby ‘mixing up or combining different ideas and approaches can produce results . . . reflecting the endless complexities of real life’ (1). Zeitlyn convincingly claims that ‘the death of grand theory’ necessitates an ‘eclectic anthropology’ abandoning ‘the strictly predetermined routes of (now sometimes preregistered) hypothesis-driven data gathering’ (2). Disavowing post-modernism as itself theory driven, the author says we should perceive, and interpret, ethnographic materials through the medium of what, drawn from a rich range of social-scientific and aesthetic fields, offers insight. The book, with its heterogeneous topics, is a taster of those perspectives although it eschews any regimen or formalisation. Occasionally the extended exegeses of terms seem to ‘drift’ somewhat, but this, while at times bemusing, is a symptom of the associative agenda of the book rather than a flaw.

Terms which particularly engaged me, although others might choose others, were ‘affordances’ (16) (alternative interpretations or actions that are available but not chosen), ‘boundary objects’ (‘an entity shared by several different communities but viewed or used differently by each of them’) (32), ‘hapax’ (a single attested instance which is nonetheless usefully generalisable – ‘anthropology as an empirical fieldworking discipline is a celebration of the generalisability of hapatic phenomena’) (31) and ‘paraethnography’ (‘the way in which a society or social group understands itself’ (95) that local experts as well as researchers tease out to make explicit). These resonances, of course, reflect my experience carrying out fieldwork in contested regions such as Israel/Palestine and (now former) Yugoslavia; other readers will find different connections with their own work in the range of terms Zeitlyn unpacks.

Intriguingly the author concludes the book with an extended coda entitled ‘So What? A Worked Example of Making Sense of Ethnographic Fragments’. The reader, expecting to see here in use the diversity of terms analysed in the text, will be frustrated; the long section of ethnographic analysis of the Mambila royal ritual – the Ngwun rite – that Zeitlyn cites as an example of a ‘tessellated ethnography’, straightforwardly uses few – if any – of the terms set forth in the preceding pages. What we see instead is an insightful, and nuanced, presentation and analysis of a ritual he has observed annually since he began his fieldwork with the Mambila in 1985. The richness of his perspective is undoubtedly shaped by his mosaic perspectivism, but the ‘failure’ to cite explicitly any of the sixty concepts shows that they, and the book itself, are meant to hone ethnographic sensibility rather than to swell the discipline's discourse.

An Anthropological Toolkit is an engaging and readable rethink of how ethnographers might approach their materials. One proviso I would suggest, however, is that the book be titled, albeit less elegantly, A Social/Cultural Anthropological Toolkit; at a recent presentation of the book at London's Royal Anthropological Institute, a bemused ‘applied anthropologist’ queried how the text was relevant to her field. The same question might be posed by representatives of other sub-disciplines that now gather under the rubric of ‘anthropology’ yet are far less focussed on the analysis of ethnographic materials. The chapters will help any reader think more richly about their interpretations of the world, but they explicitly address those concerned with the interface of ethnography and its analysis.

Glenn Bowman

University of Kent

Lea Hagmann (2022), Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall: Cornu-Copia (London: Routledge), 238 pp., £130, ISBN: 978-0-367-69141-7

Musicians and academics have embraced, commodified and derided the concept of ‘Celtic music’ to varying degrees, creating a challenge for researchers and audiences. In this book, cultural anthropologist Lea Hagmann critically engages with the term and how it is used and interpreted in relation to music and dance in Cornwall. Drawing on historical sources and fieldwork experiences, she undertakes a journey of academic and personal development, finding a balance between deconstructing and communicating the stories of the Cornish musicians and dancers she encountered. Hagmann's text highlights the varying degrees to which people question the what, how and why of the musicking activities they engage in. Her questioning provides a model for critical engagement with other musical traditions, no matter how well established, that is sympathetic to the voices of those involved but retains an academic critique.

Utilising linguistics in parallel with the study of music communities, Hagmann readily recognises the invention of tradition, the manipulation of historical sources by early revivalists and the Celtification (in contrast with Celticisation) of local traditions, influenced by politics and commodification. She seeks to deconstruct the narrative of Cornish revivalists and, in doing so, provides a balanced and thorough examination of a very interesting musical world. This world is not isolated and must be understood in the context of the British folk revivals, the broader international folk revivals of the 1950s to 1970s and the impact of Riverdance in the 1990s, thus broadening the audience for this study.

Structured into concise, focussed chapters, Hagmann describes the search for and creation of a Cornish identity by a variety of different groups that draws significantly on music, song and dance traditions. From the introduction, it is clear that, despite the county's relatively small size, there is more than one narrative and perspective to be considered in relation to music and dance in Cornwall. In the early chapters, Hagmann brings scholarly scepticism to some older sources, teasing through interpretations without ignoring their existence, to demonstrate how some accepted assumptions were constructed. Her knowledge of linguistics invites readers to gain a greater appreciation of sound and dialect, not always present in written text, such as the discussion of Hal-an-Tow (69). She reflects on how changing musical tastes, politics and social factors shape not only the musical traditions as they are performed but also their reception and the meaning attached, accurate or otherwise, to particular aspects of these traditions.

Early in the book, Hagmann engages in a critique of the term Celtic, which extends the point of reference to include Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany and the Isle of Man. In chapter 1, she emphasises language and the development of Cornish identities, with little reference to music. Chapters 2 and 3 provide historical insights that continue to make connections with language. Here, Hagmann demonstrates that local distinctiveness does not mean disconnection from wider contexts. Chapter 4 brings the reader into the twentieth century, placing Cornish music in a wider Anglo-British continuum before chapter 5 develops a focus on the Cornish music and dance revival of the 1970s. Critically, some of the main actors in this phase of development become interlocutors that Hagmann converses with during her research. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 focus on the three decades from the 1990s during which Cornish material was broadened, commodified and modernised. In the conclusion, Hagmann reiterates the multi-faceted understanding of Cornish music and dance traditions that she has outlined, returning to the concept of revivals and the various factors that triggered these revivals, as well as pointing to interesting future research potential with an awareness of other current research in the area.

Hagmann ably engages with the numerous linguistic and folk revivals, drawing on academic literature and demonstrating how Cornwall aligns with theoretical conceptualisations of music revivals. Her ability to draw on an important German-language source, in addition to more familiar texts in Anglo-centric academia, is critical. She raises questions of cultural appropriation by different groups, without passing judgement, allowing the reader to gain a more holistic understanding of the twists and turns in musical activity. In chapter 4, she comfortably draws comparison with music and dance developments in Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, Wales and the Isle of Man, while also distinguishing between Cornish revivalists and English folkies. Her critique of collectors and collecting echoes other recent studies, such as that of Deirdre Ní Chonghaile (2021) on the Aran Islands in Ireland.

Hagmann interrogates the established and previously published narrative of Cornish music, exemplified in the example from chapter 5 of the establishment of the first Cornish dance group to participate in the Pan-Celtic festival in Killarney. She highlights the selective history employed and the influence of Welsh groups. The early discussion of Celtic music is further developed in chapter 7. It is interesting to note reflections on Irish and Scottish music influences, which were viewed as conservative or restrictive, while Breton cultural influences were more liberating. In chapter 8, divisions between the revival scene and the local community become evident, while there is also a move from a Cornish to Pan-Celtic or even broader imagination of these music and dance traditions.

The penultimate chapter is very current but perhaps weakened by the challenge to reflect as critically as earlier chapters, recognising that a post-revival phase has not yet happened. This, as well as the section on the internet, points to potential further study but also highlights the importance of the book in providing a robust counterbalance to the inaccurate narratives presenting online.

While telling a local story, Hagmann places Cornish music and dance in a broader context of revivals and the development of ‘Celtic music’. She demonstrates the necessary bravery to challenge prior scholarship and engage with competing narratives, listening to both sides as well as examining materials. There is evidence of thorough research as she returns to sources to check accuracy and develop her own understanding, rather than accepting the interpretations of others. She achieves balance between different stories and actions, addressing, acknowledging and contextualising divisions across different periods of revival to construct an engaging volume on music and dance in Cornwall.

Daithí Kearney

Dundalk Institute of Technology