to stop the installation of high-voltage

wires across a cluster of homes. In so

doing, they filed lawsuits against several

of the compounds companies. At the time

of publication, residents were still waiting

for the results of those legal decisions.

The quiescence that ensues from residents’

tentative faith in the legal system, the au-

thors argue, further contributes to their

domination.

The fact that residents organized

around the wire installation rather than

against Shell underscores another of the

book’s main points. The process by which

residents have come to ‘‘naturalize’’ their

situations is a gradual one, just as the

chemicals in their air, water, and soil ac-

cumulated over many years. In that time,

they established lives that are not so readily

forsaken. In the end, this process of habit-

uation combines with the mystification of

dominant discourses to enable residents to

mute their own, internal alarm bells and

accommodate their states of suffering.

Even Swistun herself did not get her lead

levels checked until two years into her

research.

For the most part, Aureyo and Swistun

stay focused on the particular experiences

of Flammable residents. In so doing, they

refrain from developing a wider political

economic analysis of environmental injus-

tice (including the ways that environmen-

tal science is imbricated with capital). But,

by honing in on an extreme example of

how one group of people accepts, denies,

and resists danger, the authors provide in-

sights into how all of us cope with envi-

ronmental risks on a daily basis. Perhaps

by understanding such habituation, we

can also understand that we are all

complicit in the fate of communities like

Flammable.

Creolization: History, Ethnography,

Theory. Charles Stewart, ed., Walnut

Creek: Left Coast Press, 2007. 286 pp.

Sarah E. Vaughn

Columbia University

This short volume makes a needed contri-

bution to the existing literatures on

creolization. Its contributors discuss

creolization in relation to the nation-state,

transnational, migrant, and diasporic spaces,

language, temporality, race, and the body.

Although these are familiar nodes to think

the process, this volume does distinguish it-

self from the existing literature. Charles

Stewart, the editor and a scholar known for

work on religion and syncretism, makes this

clear in his introduction. What is at stake in

using the term creolization, Stewart con-

cludes, has changed since Mintz and Price’s

writings about African retentions in the New

World and Hannerz’s insights about glob-

alized flows. Though the contributors do not

identify creolization with a single definition

nor methodology they do recognize that a

recent fixation on creolization as a ‘‘syn-

onym for mixture’’ has run its course (7).

The claim that ‘‘mixture’’ no longer

sums up creolization puts under scrutiny

two central problematics: why does ‘‘mix-

ture’’ no longer stand in to define creolizat-

ion? And if not ‘‘mixture’’ then what in its

place? Overall, the volume works best in

responding to the latter question. As Stew-

art proposes, creolization should be un-

derstood as a ‘‘restructuring’’ that disrupts

the continuity of socio-cultural forms over

time (18–20). While ‘‘restructuring’’ might

be read as a facile retreat into historicism, it

appears to do much more: This shift in

perspective brings attention to scholars’

rather indiscriminate appropriation of

2 3 2 J O U R N A L O F L A T I N A M E R I C A N A N D C A R I B B E A N A N T H R O P O L O G Y

both linguistic and cultural models of

creolization. As Stephan Palmie (this vol-

ume) recognizes, what seems to have been

passed on into debates about creolization,

particularly in Caribbean, African Ameri-

can, and Latin American studies, is an im-

plicit endorsement of linguistic categories

as analogous to a genuine historical meth-

odology. This suggests that ‘‘cultural his-

tory works like linguistic change’’ (187).

Peter Baker and Peter Muhlhausler’s article

explores similar territory in surveying the

development of creole linguistic theory in

the Anglo-Germanic tradition.

Creolization also pushes beyond re-

gional or area studies debates to examine

how issues that long have preoccupied

scholars of creolizationFmigration, dis-

placement, identity politics, and sover-

eigntyFoverlap with current concerns

about empire and national identity. This

is one reason why this volume is timely: it

inserts studies largely relegated to the pe-

riphery, such as Indian Oceanic and Ca-

ribbean studies, into a more global

framework. For example, Thomas Hylland

Eriksen offers an analysis of the asymmet-

ric distribution of power across multiple

borders of identity, noting how contem-

porary creole identity in Mauritius plays

out in ways that parallel developments in

religious nationalist movements around

the world. He describes how, in the wake

of the rise of Hindu and Muslim nation-

alist movements in Mauritius, creole

identity has transformed from a predomi-

nantly Franco-Creole one to one not

necessarily indebted to a colonial model.

He argues that it is becoming instead a

‘‘diasporic’’ model rooted in South Asian

origin myths. Aisha Khan explores how the

academic preoccupations of post-World

War II era modernization theorists like

Robert Park were about making ‘‘social

sciences more scientific in order to pro-

mote social and economic stability’’ (Khan

247). Khan argues that Park was preoccu-

pied with modeling ‘‘hybridization’’ as a

problem worthy of purposeful social engi-

neering. In his view, hybridization was en-

acted by colonial contact and thus could be

massaged to (re)invent new modes of so-

cial organization. Additionally, as Joshua

Hoyaka Roth illuminates in his analysis of

Japanese-Brazilian migrants returning to

their homelands, creolization does not

simply mean integrating new identities

into a social space. It can also entail falling

out of synch with one’s homeland. These

analyses point to the ways creole typologies

are institutionalized politically despite ac-

tors’ recognition of their overt plasticity.

Does this mean that creolization lends

itself to describing general processes of cul-

tural exclusion (and inclusion) in all sover-

eign spaces? Not even this leap seems

necessary, as Palmie contends in a second

article in this volume. In recognizing the

‘‘historical semantics’’ of such words in the

Latin American context as criollo, a ‘‘certain

measure of accountability’’ can be taken in

how ideas of mixture can be problematic

when exported to defend peripheral identity

politics in postcolonial Euro-American con-

texts (76). Mary Gallagher offers a similar

critique in her reading of the late-1980s

Martinican creolite movement, which she

views as failing to encompass a truly dem-

ocratic platform. And yet, there is no deny-

ing the importance of the creole concept

in forging unifying political identities in

(post)colonial contexts (see Franc-oise

Verges and Jorge Canizares-Esguerra this

volume). But, the creole concept as eman-

cipatory discourse does not fail only in

the metropolis: Miguel Vale de Almeida

Book Reviews 233

presents a historical tracing of Portuguese

empire and notes, with an emphasis on

colonialism in Africa, ‘‘in Cape Verde cre-

oleness has come to be y not part of a

positively valued project of hybridization.

This is the result of the work of the elites that

built a ‘‘regional’’ identity within the colo-

nial empire, using the resource of their spe-

cial status as nonindigenous colonials’’

(129). Likewise, Joyce E. Chaplin empha-

sizes how the term ‘‘creole’’ was never em-

braced by colonial whites in pre-

revolutionary British America. Their rejec-

tion of the term was a way to retain their

English sensibilities while distinguishing

themselves from the Spanish empire and

indigenous populations.

The conclusions suggested here are

numerous. One unifying issue involves

how a description of creolization has lim-

ited as well as become a central problem-

atic in New World area and (post)colonial

studies. Yet, readers may still wonder: why

reimagine creolization now? On this ques-

tion, the volume does not answer. And it is

perhaps on this note that the volume could

have responded by taking heed of its own

intervention. But for future studies on

creolization, this book will be one contri-

bution in an attempt at a response.

Coloniality at Large: Latin America and

the Postcolonial Debate. Mabel Morana,

Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jauregui,

eds., Durham: Duke University Press,

2008. 628 pp.

Teresa E. P. Delfın

Whittier College

This ambitious volume, which brings to-

gether 23 of Latin American studies’ most

important thinkers, takes as its point of

departure an apparently shared frustration

with postcolonial studies. Judging from

the collected essays, the organizing prin-

ciple is a critique of Latin America’s all but

total relegation to the margins of the field,

one dominated geographically by atten-

tion to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and

the Caribbean. While the editors insist

they are not attempting to ‘‘force an en-

trance for Latin America in central debates,’’

they do intend to ‘‘draw attention to some

of the philosophical and ideological blind-

spots of postcolonial theories’’ (3). The es-

says selectedFsome original and some

reprintedFare not without shortcomings,

but taken as a whole they succeed in show-

ing not just gaps in an old debate but, more

importantly, the contributions attention to

Latin America can yield.

While a brief review cannot do justice

to each of the collected essays, several

chapters stand out for what they tell us

about how Latin America differs from the

regions that have dominated the concerns

of postcolonial theorists. Many of the best

essays reveal the extent to which Latin

American writers, who have shown an

awareness of their own coloniality since

the 16th century, occupy a unique subject

position. The colonial authors cited in this

volume continuously blur the line between

the categories of colonizer and colonized,

providing vivid examples of what Jose

Rabasa calls ‘‘cross-cultural intersubjectiv-

ity’’ (44). Jose Antonio Mazzoti explains

that ‘‘[a]s early as the 1970s, [it was] ar-

gued that the literature produced in the

Spanish New World was nurtured by, and

in dialogue with, a dense sea of voices and

collective memories, and that ‘‘colonial’’

literature was often a direct result of, or

manipulation of, the indigenous or other

2 3 4 J O U R N A L O F L A T I N A M E R I C A N A N D C A R I B B E A N A N T H R O P O L O G Y