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Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity.

by Marc Auge; John Howe Review by: Nigel Rapport The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. 359-360 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3034109 . Accessed: 04/06/2012 15:35
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South Asian studies and a new take-off point should its for socialactivists: issue in paperback it it guarantee the wide readership deserves.Focus on femaleentry into the labourforce,consistently overlookingthe strategicimportance of land, has failed to recognize both the parof ticularity the ruralSouthAsianwoman'spoof sition and also the unique value of the process

claiming land as a privilegedentry point into wider struggles.Equally damaginghave been and nonassumptions,made by governmental governmentalagencies alike, that the '[household] is a unit of congruentinterests,among whose members the benefits of availableresourcesare sharedequally'(p. 3). Agarwalextends AmartyaSen's 'bargaining' to approachbeyond the household/family the market, community and state, and presents 'welfare','efficiency','equality'and 'empowerment' argumentsto make the case for a united South Asian movement to improve women's 'fall-backposition' through independent land rights.In South Asia, 74 per cent. rural,'for a
... majority of rural households, arable land is likely to remain ... the single most important source of security ... and defines social status and political power ... it structures relationships ...' (pp. 1-2). A range of ethnographies

bilateral matriand coveringthose traditionally lineal communities which accepted female land-ownershipin practice(sanctionedor not by religious law) permit cross-regionalcomparisons.Colonial and post-colonialerosion of while land rights highlightstheir vulnerability, leadingto the conclusion that individualresistance (e.g. court action) is less effective than politicalpressureby groups.Historicalandethnographicdata concerningthe formulationof contemporarylegal positions, including land reform legislations, allows identification of commonlyenshrinedin law. typesof inequality Discussing dowry and inheritance,Agarwal factorsand identifiesa wide rangeof separable whetherandwhich faccheckscross-regionally CAROLINEOSELLA tors are in correlation,taking issue along the way with (amongothers)JackGoody.Women's Universityof Durham property rights are finally seen always to be linked with practices (e.g. uxorilocality,kin to introduction an anmarriage) which 'keep ... land within the pur- AUG., MARC. Non-places: (transl.) John thropology supermodernity; of view of ... kin' (p. 146). Meanwhile, inequaliHowe. vi, 122 pp. London, New York. ties entrenched in the gaps between law and Verso,1995. ?29.95 (cloth), ?9.95 (paper) practice and between ownership and control and If modernity implies a progressiveevolution, mean thatwomen 'otherthan as daughters widows ... virtually never get land' (p. 259), and postmodernitya patchworkof modalities and that they routinely 'voluntarily'give up of equal worth, then 'supermodernity' (postrightfulclaims,handingover sharesto brothers modernity's 'positive expression') is characor sons. Prominent among reasons identified terized,for Auge, by excess.The chief excesses are difficultiesfacedby women when tryingto are four: an overabundanceof eventsin the manageland, rangingfrom reluctanceof male world all crowdingin and all 'demanding' be to officialsto registerland or subsidiesin female given meaning; an overabundanceof time in names,to sanctionsagainsthandlingthe plough which to make meaning, both individualand or even going into the fields. genealogical; an overabundanceof space in Marshallinga vast range of ethnographies, which to be as the globe shrinksthroughterresby supplemented census data,publishedreports trialand cosmic travel,and as communication

Agarwalpresentsa seand first-handresearch, ries of mapsand tablesdetailingregionaldiversities in those factorsnow identifiedas havinga bearingupon women's likelihood of claiming and controlling land (e.g. post-maritalresidence; rural female labour force participation rate; land scarcity). She is frank about the shortcomingsof 1950sethnogmethodological raphiesand sometimes unreliablecensus data generalizations' to make occasionally'"heroic" and (p. 324), but, moved by pragmatic political lackof reliable concerns,refusesto be defeatist: macro-surveysis a challenge for future research,not a reasonfor failingto begin it. Patterns emerge which reveala South Asian continuum, divided into four zones, ranked in order of the 'degreeof difficulty,hostility,and opposition women are likely to encounter in affirmingtheir rights in land' (p. 369). An exampleof the merit of this is the highlightingof commonalities' 377) (p. the salienceof 'cultural over religious differences, northwest Indian Hindus being seen to be closer to their Pakistanineighboursthan to their South Indiancoreligionists,and South India appearingnot as an anomalous or residual part of India, but, alongsideSri Lanka,whose socio-culturalpatas ternsit often more closelyapproximates, part of a distinct'zone'. Finally,recapitulationof the book's central arguments and case-studies of land-struggle movements highlight differencesin styles and outcomes between 1940s peasantmovements, devoid of self-conscious organized action by groups of women, and 1980s struggles, in overt which women moved towards'organized action as a group' (p. 437). Agarwalconcludes that it is the recognitionand forging of links which contributesto and is necessaryfor any success:links between academics,activistsand local women, between hitherto separateissues and apparently diverse struggles,and between spread across women's groups geographically South Asia.

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offers instant access to any part;and an overand as reflexively of abundance egos, individuals free themselvesfrom conventional subjectively of constraints decorand itinerary. socio-cultural Supermodernity, in short, entails radical changes in scale. It also makes anthropology poised to undertakea study of 'new civilizations'; because time, space and the individual, and the piling up of culturalmaterialagainst 'the itself, have alwaysbeen our raw materials, twenty-first century will be anthropological' (pp. 35, 41). and This is a provocative hopeful essay from a Frenchscholarwho remainsunconvincedby and yet recognizes 'postmodernanthropology' the blind alley up which Maussiannotions of notionsof society the personand Durkheimian have led European anthropologyseeking to notions of come to terms with late-capitalist identity and otherness.The Durkheim-Mauss orthodoxy- of societiesidentifiedwith cultures conceivedas completewholes; of localizeduniverses of meaning, of which componential and and individuals groupsare transparent representativeexpressions- is an ideologicalconception (admittedly,of natives as much as ethnologists)which needs up-dating.And the should help us experienceof supermodernity rid ourselvesof it; the ideology rests on an orof ganization spaceet al. which supermodernity overwhelms and relativizes.For supermodernity entails population movements, globalism and non-places;individualsenteringand leaving spaces,alone but one of many. of No-one has ever been unaware the relativity of socio-cultural'places';the image of a closed and self-sufficientworld (of relations, identity and history) was never more than a a useful semi-fantasy, provisionalmyth, even for those who worked towards its collective produces materialization. But supermodernity of a proliferation non-places:transitpoints and temporaryabodes; wastelands,building sites, waiting-rooms,refugeecamps,stations,hotels, malls, where travellersbreak step and thousands of individualitineraries(of unmediated individualengagementswith the global econconverge. omy) momentarily Of course, this too is an ideology,Auge admits, and no more pure than traditional 'places'.Fixty and social relationsand cultural routine (groups,gods and economies)reconstitute themselves in practice,so that place and modalities,the non-placerepresentcontrastive first never completelyerased,the second never totally completed. But non-placesare the real measureof our time, for the possibilityand experienceof non-placeis neverabsentfrom any place;no placeis completelyitselfand separate, and no placeis completelyother.Peoplearealways and neverat home in supermodernity. Aug6'sessay stimulatesand emboldens.Furthermore,it is French.So thatwhile a number of of its conclusions- the legitimacy an anthro-

pology of the near,the current,the European; of the appreciation the individualas the indisconcrete' (becauseit pensable'anthropological come together'thatthe sois 'when individuals cial is engendered(p. 111);the characterization of as of the post-supermodern a transformation our consciousnessof distinctions- have been drawn before (Simmel spoke of how modem excess led to the blas6),it is refreshingto find them reached via a critique of Durkheimremains,it is that Mauss. If a Durkheimianism 'the world' is cuspidallyevolving from 'then' (the mechanical/thetraditional)to 'now' (the organic/the supermodern),and that between Whereas, these lies greatideologicaldisaffinity. since 'the social begins with the individual'(p. 20), one might expect a supermodernanthropology to acknowledgea certaincontinuity-inall as conceptual-diversity characterizing human societiesalike.
NIGEL RAPPoRT

University St Andrews of of a packof lies:towards sociology lying (Themes in the social Sci.). xiv, 200 pp., bibliogr. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1994. ?35.00 (cloth), ?12.95 (paper) ProfessorBarnes'sguided tour throughthe litindeed eratureof lying is an adroitperformance - perhapsthis has something to do with the fact that the author trainedas a ballet dancer with Ninette de Valois'scompany before emLybarkingon his careeras an anthropologist. ing is defined not as utteringerroneousstatements - which we do quite innocently,all the time, but uttering statements believed to be false (though possibly true, in fact), with the intention to deceive others about the state of the world. Lying, as a species of social intention, can thereforebe fenced off from epistemologicalproblemsto do with the concept of truthas such (but see below). With this definition in place, Barnesexaminesthe many areas in social life, wherein lying commonly occurs, and indeed is expectedto occur.These are,war
BARNES,J.A. A

('lies, damned lies, and military briefings ...'),

politics(Vietnam,etc., - includingthe interesting fact that Nixon's staff managedto lie when publicizingthe recipe for his daughter'swedding cake), the law-courts, advertising, buand reaucracy, so on. There follows a rathertoo brief discussionof lying in the naturalsciences, afterwhich the social sciences come under the microscope.Here, though, the emphasisseems to be more on lying by researchsubjectsin response to enquiries,ratherthan socialscientists which surelyalso occurs. deceivingone another, useful will find particularly Anthropologists diversity'in lying.Here the chapteron 'cultural Barnes introducesgrippingethnographyfrom Gilsenan on the Lebanon and du Boulay on Greece, which remind one of the enormous extent to which everydaysociallife dependson

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