full chapters devoted to various aspects of them, and the ways in which they interrelate to other aspects of longstanding

and contemporary Iraqw life. Traditional religion is emphasized in comparison to Christianity, which about half of Iraqw now identify with, though both are discussed extensively. One area where I feel that there is perhaps a missed opportunity is in regard to intergenerational relations and change. There is considerable discussion of generational issues, but I felt at times that the treatment was more formulaic than Snyders rich ethnography should allow, opposing the usual characters of modernist school-educated youth and traditionalist elders. Knowing more about what had become of modern youth of 1990have they, for instance, become traditional minded elders, as their generational interests have become realigned with age?might shed greater light on the social life of discourses like tradition and modernity in Iraqw and elsewhere. Overall, this book has strong potential for classroom use, and should be of considerable interest to scholars of East Africa in particular. It, and the series of which it is a part, aim to present case studies that are accessible to undergraduate audiences and of value to professional academics. In these goals, the book certainly succeeds. It is very readable, and discusses key issues concerning modernity and tradition in ways that are free of jargon, and Snyder includes many rich extended examples to illustrate her points. Teachers of courses on contemporary Africa in particular will find this book useful in the ways in which it situates Iraqw life today within national and global political economic forces while maintaining detailed ethnographic attention to the specificity of Iraqw experience. From a scholarly standpoint, the book does not necessarily break new ground in regard to the theoretical issues of modernity and tradition that are most central to it, but does present an effective and well-framed case study for scholars interested in these concerns. In an era that seems increasingly to reward ethnographic thinness, it is refreshing to read studies such as this, which afford deep attention to the issues that really matter in peoples lives, grounded in rich, long-term fieldwork. Jon Holtzman Western Michigan University

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Tcheuyap, Alexie, ed. 2005. CINEMA AND SOCIAL DISCOURSE IN CAMEROON. Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth African Studies. 342pp. Indigenous sub-Saharan African fi lmmaking began some fi fty years ago. Initially studied within historical, sociopolitical, cultural, linguistic, or thematic paradigms, it was analyzed later from semiotic, structuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial perspectives. A number of books and journals have treated fi lms by Cameroonian directors, but no volume on Cameroon appeared in the country series on African cinema edited by Victor Bachy in the 1980s and 1990s, and the only book on Cameroonian cinema was Guy Jrmie Ngansops Le cinma camerounais en crise (1987).

Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon, edited by Alexie Tcheuyap, professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada, brings a timely contribution, especially on post-1980 fi lms. The collection includes fourteen articles, most previously unpublished, by African and Western specialists in various fields. Tcheuyaps introduction describes the precariousness of Cameroonian film production and distribution under postcolonial autocratic governments intolerant of spoken, printed or cinematic challenges. Emphasizing the lack of coherent cultural policy and infrastructure such as film schools or postproduction facilities, Tcheuyap states that producing a fi lm in Cameroon, as in many African countries, is still something of a miracle (p. 2). Films selected for inclusion were directed by Cameroonians, consider Cameroon as a category of analysis, or were fi lmed there. The chapters attempt to address the aesthetic, ideological, and social problems related to images and their political significance in what is left of this rich country (p. 4). Opening the fi rst section, The State, Images and Cultural Discourses, Gilbert Doho establishes a clear delineation between two groups of Cameroonian directors: (1) A self-censoring fi rst generation, including Jean Pierre DikonguePipa, Daniel Kamwa, and Alphonse Beni, that produced propagandistic documentaries celebrating the father of the nation or the prowess of soccer players, politically benign feature fi lms on marriage and the dowry, and escapist action moviesall of which refused to engage with burning national issues. This cinema was the site of a vicious collaboration between the state and independent fi lmmakers (p. 22). (2) A second generationJean-Pierre Bekolo, Bassek Ba Kobhio, JeanMarie Teno, and others who deliberately use the camera not only to decolonize the gaze but also to deconstruct neocolonial political monsters (p. 29). In contrast to the older, apolitical or amnesic directors, they question the past and present, and contribute to national reconstruction. Bole Butake explores local and cable television shows and the impact that imported Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigerian video, and Latin American telenovela productions have had on viewers expectations. In the field of television, Butake foresees the success of private enterprise over government-sponsored initiatives. In contrast to these studies, other chapters consider individual fi lms that, for multiple reasons, are screened more often at African, European, and U.S. festivals than in Cameroon, where U.S., French, and Asian movies predominate, except for an occasional commercial success, like Kamwas Pousse Pousse (1975). Using semiotics and postmodern Western theories, Boulou E. de Bbri provides an interesting explanation of Duala cultural connotations in Dikongue-Pipas Muna Moto (1975). Edmond Mfaboum keenly investigates self-censorship, social cries, and political silences in the early fi lms of Kamwa and Dikongue-Pipa.

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In section two, Postcolonial (De)Constructions, Jonathan Haynes and P. Julie Papaioannou offer informative postcolonial explorations of stylistically innovative works by Bekolo: Quartier Mozart (1992) and Aristotles Plot (1996). Alain Patrice Nganang skillfully analyzes Tenos documentaries and feature fi lms as essays on power and authority in postcolonial Africa (p. 140), and Sheila Petty aptly explores Tenos use of space and camera angle as expressive vehicles in Clando (1996). Tcheuyap presents an innovative discussion of the occult in Bekolos Quartier Mozart and Kamwas Le cercle des pouvoirs (1997). He concludes that Kamwa reveals the dark side of modernity and the invisible dynamics at work in the (dis)function of the postcolonial state, a veritable witch state (p. 190). In the third section, Writing Back and Theoretical Challenges, Sarah B. Buchanan convincingly demonstrates Bekolos untraditional cinematic use of orality in Quartier Mozart, and Kenneth W. Harrow develops an intriguing comparison between eighteenth-century Europe and African postcoloniality as a canvas for his study of Ba Kobhios Sango Malo (1991) and Tenos Chef! (1999). Armelle Cressent explores the implications for social sciences of Ba Kobhios critique of the legendary Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Le Grand Blanc de Lambarn (1994). Scott Homler examines in Claire Deniss Chocolat (1998) the ambiguous status and role of Prote, the boy/manservant in the French fi lmmakers autobiographical but fictionalized colonial world. The book concludes with tienne-Marie Lassis helpful fi lmography, bibliography, and succinct list of distributors of Cameroonian fi lms in Cameroon, Belgium, France, and the United States. Tighter editing could have improved certain aspects of the collection. For example, some of the longer quotations from a Haynes article in Papaioannous chapter seem redundant, since a reprint of that article precedes it here. Also, an appendix with summaries of the main films would eliminate the tedious repetition of plots in several chapters. Unfortunate spelling mistakes occur, particularly in the list of cited works and endnotes of several chapters. An index would have been immensely beneficial to researchers. While the content of collections is often uneven, several absences are evident here. Filmmakers such as Alphonse Beni and Franois Woukoache, amply cited in the fi lmography appendix, are surprisingly missing from the critical analyses. Women fi lmmakers are cited only in passing, and Anglophone Cameroonian cinema is disregarded. The chapters make rich use of references to African/Diasporic as well as non-African theorists: Bakhtin, Bazin, Bhabha, Fanon, Foucault, Gates, Gikandi, Mbembe, Metz, Mudimbe, Said, and others. Several contributors facilitate the comprehension of their essays by adding explanatory notes on the theorists, and others should have, in order to enhance the readability of their dense and complex texts. This book has undeniable merit and will be of interest to researchers in communications, the social sciences, and the humanities. Unique in its

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focus on Cameroonian cinema, it contains a wealth of valuable information on an industry that should be better known, and it brings welcome scholarship to bear on the subject of African fi lmmaking.

REFERENCE

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Ngansop, Guy Jrmie. 1987. Le cinma camerounais en crise. Paris: ditions LHarmattan.

Franoise Pfaff Howard University

Widgren, Mats, and John E. G. Sutton, eds. 2004. ISLANDS OF INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE IN EASTERN AFRICA. Oxford and Athens, Ohio: James Currey and Ohio University Press. 160 pp., $44.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). This book pursues issues outlined in the journal Azania in 1989 (also edited by John Sutton). The Azania collection reframed studies of intensive agriculture in Africa by rejecting assumptions of a past ecological and social equilibrium disrupted by colonization (McCann 1991), and instead focused on the contingencies of specialization, rather than linear intensification. Scholars took up the challenge of building dynamic models of such specialized agricultural systems through empirical fieldwork in eastern Africa in the 1990s. The papers they presented at an Oxford environmental history conference in 1999 form the nucleus of this survey of the causes and contexts of African intensive agriculture. The master-metaphor of islands guides this volume, but most of its authors problematize the term. Densely settled and intensively cultivated areas exist alongside sparsely settled areas with more extensive farming systems. Why would farmers work harder than necessary, when arable land was readily available nearby? Mats Widgrens introduction reviews the literature on intensification and describes how neither market forces nor population pressure can explain the emergence of these specialized systems. He is particularly critical of the siege hypothesis, common in colonial-era scholarshipa hypothesis that suggested that farmers intensified production only after having been forced into particular areas and circumscribed by hostile neighbors. Widgren argues against the islands metaphor by substituting icebergs. Like the underwater mass of an iceberg, most of the regional economic and social relationships that formed the causes and contexts of agricultural specialization lie beneath the surface of current farming systems. Wilhelm stbergs chapter, treating northern Kenya, rejects many explanations for intensification (evolutionary phases, population growth, market incentives, political centralization, the siege hypothesis, and ethnically based farming systems) as inadequate for understanding Marakwet