BOOK REVIEW

Vladimir Gil
Yale University

Benjamin S. Orlove. Lines in the Water: Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca. Berkeley: University of California Press.

cluding experiments in non-academic narratives, such as his fathers biographical memoirs, In My fathers Study. In his most recent book, Lines in the Water, the memoir tone and the novelistic narrative make the volume unusually accessible and will interest readers beyond the Andean anthropological arena. This book emerged out of a revision of his old field notes, as he intended to synthesize his intellectual evolution over twenty years of work in the high Andean plateau. The volume weaves two texts in one. The first is reflected in the titles metaphor, the theme of lines as paths. Lines trace the pathways of the shore populations along Lake Titicaca and in history. These symbols also mark the directions Orlove walked as a researcher, professor, and writer. Along these interwoven lines Orlove analyzes the changes and continuities in the relationship between the settlers and their environment in the shape of environmental living history memories. Orlove wants to listen to the requests people made as they gave their farewells. Dont forget me, they repeated. While the author seeks to situate these recollections in the present, we are invited to accompany him through his retrospective of the interaction between the lake and its people.
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enjamin Orlove has a long list of publications in anthropology and Andean studies, dating back to the seventies. He also has shown great versatility, in-

Ben Orloves Lines in the Water: Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca

Since this book also synthesizes Orloves professional paths in the high Andean plateau, it illustrates how ethnographic writing has evolved in the last decades as well. Orloves evolution as an ethnographer and writer shows the impact of some crucial and recent disciplinary debates on environmental anthropology. Orlove recognizes that his initial works were more oriented towards a neoMarxist position focusing on class rather than ethnicity. More recently, he has tried to develop a synthesis of these two foci. This tendency is well exemplified in his preference for using the term villager instead of peasant or indian, when referring to the local fishermen. Orlove argues that the indian category implies cultural distinctions, sometimes exoticism, while peasant refers to national economic relations of inequality. The category indian has re-emerged in anthropology due to a renovated interest in ethnic identities. The author prefers the term villager because it points to space, the local dimension of interaction, closer to the way fishermen refer to themselves using place-based labels more than expressions related to class or ethnicity. Another feature that Orlove tries to incorporate is a more historical perspective, closer to what is nowadays known as historical ecology and environmental history. Over the last decades, ethnologists have explored ethnographic literary style with experimental writings that were still considered as falling within the boundaries of the discipline. The books tone of fieldwork memoirs, plenty of metaphors and even imaginary trips (like the visit to the museum in Chapter 5) have benefited from this new freedom for anthropologists to experiment as writers. In Orloves account, Lake Titicaca is a space of sustenance and memory, a story of changes and permanencies. The 21st century finds the lakeshore villagers in almost the same situation as they were in the previous one, marked by a marginal position with respect to the Peruvian state, fighting everyday for sustainable subsistence. This is a common script in the history of the Andes, where communities remote to the state apparatus services complain of being forgotten. Simultaneously, this border position has protected these villages from the economic swings of urban life, like inflation in the prices of manufactured products. Living at the edge of the state sometimes allowed freedom from governmental regulations in taxes and their resource management, balancing the excess of population with constant emigration to cities. The book does not follow a rigid chronological scheme. Instead, it suggests a winding path towards the high Andean plateau, a journey that reflects on old data and different personal experiences. This path guides the reader into an analysis of the human impact on the natural environment. Orloves travels to the lakeshores occurred over two decades, between 1972 to 1995. His main fieldwork
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entailed two trips in 1979 and 1981, of about a year each. Both times the author was accompanied by a natural resource economist. In the first chapter, Not Forgetting, Orlove reflects on his condition as a researcher, outsider, and American, and analyzes the politics of memory in his field research. The author strikingly recalls how the locals showed their vulnerability by asking not to be forgotten by him. These politics are reflected and reproduced at the social level. For instance, there is a recurrent theme in songs referring to a pueblo olvidado or forgotten town, which treats a fusion of regional, class, racial and ethnic identities at the margin, as inferior, and thus, forgettable. In the second section, Mountains, Orlove introduces the reader to the landscape and the evolution of the general geographic characteristics of the Titicaca lakeshores. The author is very conscious of the politics of namingpeople and objectsas well as its significance to framing ideas, concepts, and values. In the third chapter, Names, this approach is developed through the examination of different examples. Work may be the most interesting part of the book for many anthropologists. Orlove reflects on his main fieldwork and the surveys he conducted in order to understand the factors that influence the number of fish caught in Lake Titicaca. Particularly intriguing is the revision of the diarios campesinos or peasant diaries. These accounts were collected by a development project in the late 1970s and early 1980s from Bolivian villages on the shores of Lake Titicaca and in lower valleys. By revisiting this data the author scrutinizes the cultural patterns to explain livelihood practices. Orlove is surprised by the lack of personal reflections in the diaries, and he compares them with the famous diary of Anne Frank. The fishermen portray a simplistic descriptive picture of their routine. This cultural difference would suggest a sort of contentment or wisdomat least to the extent of the lack of complaintson their routines. The social assumptions present in the way villagers represent the concept of work are also fascinating. The researcher looked for the word work and found that villagers focused their attention on aspects of economic life quite different from the economists emphasis on profitability. For the lakeshore settlers, work involved effort, usually physical strength, and sometimes manual skill or mental concentration. Surprisingly, the diaries exclude some actions that would be considered as work in a Western framework. For instance, the routine care for domesticated animals was not counted as work. Also excluded were cooking and childcare, usually done by women, and the repairing of tools, a mens activity. Another unexpected research outcome was related to the fact that the villagers did not speak of fishing in terms of income. The usual questionfrom an
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Ben Orloves Lines in the Water: Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca

economic point of viewwould be why villagers do not sound like economic rational agents, why they do not mention monetary terms, profits or net returns. In this case, the fishermen preferred to conceptualize their work within their nonaccounting reciprocity systems. Additionally, the villagers concepts of work contrasted with bioeconomic models, especially with regard to time concepts. In bioeconomic models, time is a homogeneous resource, a number of hours allocated to produce the maximum profit. For the villagers, however, time comes in diverse forms that complement each other in order to compose a whole, such as a day or a season. Thus, the lakeshore villagers avoid idleness rather than inefficiency. This would also explain why fishermen continue to farm their fields, even though farming generates less income for them than fishing. The fifth and sixth chapters, Fish and Reeds respectively, present an environmental history of fisheries in Lake Titicaca, especially since the 1930s. These sections acknowledge how different actors and factors altered the composition and availability of resources in the lake. Orlove documents the ways in which the introduction of new species, such as trout, diminished native fish species and altered the lake ecosystem. He also describes the local use of reeds (totora) for building rafts or feeding their cattle. These activities are examined in the context of the conflicts with villagers that arose when the lakeshores were under consideration by the Peruvian state to be converted to a national natural reserve. The government argued in favor of regulating the access of fisheries in order to preserve sustainability. But state regulatory mechanisms were in conflict with customary laws, which reserved access to fishing areas to lakeshore villagers. Finally, Orlove debates whether the government discussion of potential private projects will put lake sustainability at risk. Two prospective cases are mentioned: a mining company looking for cheap water by diverting water from rivers, and a proposal for petroleum drilling. The last section, Paths, serves as an epilogue, in which Orlove tries to bring together the different episodes and aspects in the book: the paths of the lake and the fisheries, the individuals, and the political contexts that affected the area, including times of violence through Shining Path. The author attempts to unify these disparate elements by focusing on the dilemmas and conflicts of state development plans. This work masterfully exemplifies one of the tasks social anthropologists do best: combating ethnocentrism. By revealing the intricate internal coherence of alternate or marginal logics and behaviors that might appear as irrational from the outside, the ethnologist not only contributes to better frame inductive behavior models, but also makes an empirical argument to support the idea that
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different behaviors should be studied in their local context before sanctioning them as primitive or inferior. An especially effective example is the ethnographic critique of scientific models, such as the bioeconomic fishery case mentioned above. Furthermore, the significance of this book goes far beyond Andean anthropology. This publication is valuable for those interested in international policy. These professionals would benefit from Orloves demonstration of the importance of constant dialogue at the local level in development projects. As Orloves book illustrates, realizing the importance of different fundamental cultural assumptions, such as the local perception and management of time, could be crucial for the local long-term viability of a project or policy. Orlove certainly did not forget. With this book he has constructed an unforgettable memoir about the appreciation of the Titicaca livelihood for readers from anthropology and beyond.

REFERENCES Gil, Vladimir. 1995. La adaptacin al riesgo agro-climtico en tres comunidades altiplnicas. Thesis to obtain the Licenciatura degree in Social Sciences with emphasis in Anthropology. Lima: Catholic University of Peru. Orlove, Benjamin. 1977. Alpacas, sheep and men: the wool export economy and regional society in southern Peru. New York: Academic Press. ________. 1986. An examination of barter and cash sale in Lake Titicaca. Current Anthropology 27 (2): 85-106. ________. 1995. In my fathers study. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Orlove, Benjamin and Stephen Brush. 1996. Anthropology and the conservation of biodiversity. Annual Review of Anthropology 25:329-352

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