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social order of the state; indeed, this idea is often set in opposi-tion to state societies. Again. Amselle reminds us of the mistakeof collapsing categories into asimplistically pure form. Finally,the opposition of paganism and Islam also falls under scrutiny,for here, too, is a similar mixing of forms in which the bounda-ries are not clearly delineated to the people involved.

What is particularly insightful is Amselle's identification ofmestizo moments within theoretical schools of thought. Hepoints to the inability of any school of thought to construct a purespace. Structuralists, commonly associated with universalism.have sometimes generated ideas about cultural specificity; andculturalists. frequently imagined as mired in details, have attimes been known to embrace uni versalist principles. Still, whatis most useful in this discussion is what these insights revealabout contemporary understandings of ethnic identity and thepolitics of civil society beyond the ruminations of the debaterswithin the discipline. Amselle shows how eighteenth-centuryconcerns continue to inform those culturalisms that frame po-litical moments around identity and cultural distinctiveness. aswell as universalisms that inform concerns surrounding humanrights. And even here he reminds us to step back to see beyond anabsolute dichotomy between universals and cultural specifici-ties. His historical perspective is relevant to popular move-ments, such as nationalism, as well as to social theories; indeed,these are some of the most influential philosophical frameworksof our time. Yet Amselle insists upon the moral limits of culturalrelativisms and identity politics, particularly when their claimsbegin to infringe on the rights of other groups.

Mestizo Logics will do much to answer those critics of post-colonial studies who dismiss, perhaps defensively. this arena ofdiscussion as superficial. Amselle does not just throw stones atwhat might appear to be an already dismantled colonial hegem-ony. He ties his critique to an analysis of how a place comes intobeing. In the process, he employs a methodology that urges us tobe attentive to the philosophical roots of anthropological theorywhile going about our empirical studies. In this effort he allowsus to see the complicated histories that inform the present. •»

Buddhist Fundamentalism and Minority Identities in SriLanka. Tessa J. Bartholomeusz and Chandra R. de Silva, eds.Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. 212 pp.

DHBORAH WINSLOW

University of New Hampshire

In contemporary Sri Lanka, ethnicity is a messy and some-times dangerous affair. The Sri Lankan Embassy's web site(http://www.slembassy.org), for example, provides this break-down of "Population by Ethnicity"': Sinhalese (749r). SriLankan Tamils (12.77r). Indian Tamils (5.57). Muslims (77).and Others (Burghers. Malays. Parsis, and Vaddhas). Immedi-ately we wonder about its inconsistencies. Why is language asufficient marker for Sinhala speakers, but not for Tamil ones(Sri Lankan. Indian, and Muslim)? Why are those Others. puta-tive descendants of European colonists, immigrants, or indi-genes, distinguished by ancestry rather than either language orreligion? A partial answer is that ethnicity in Sri Lanka is j shift-ing field of historical and cultural constructions, always more

fluid than fixed, reflecting millennia of engagement in local, re-gional, and interregional relationships. But a fuller account re-quires attention also to the fact that to be otherthan Sinhalese inSri Lanka today often is to be profoundly at risk.

This uneasy business of Sri Lankan ethnicity is the hiddensubtext of Buddhist Fundamentalism and Minority Identities inSri Lanka. The volume's editors. Buddhism scholar Tessa J.Bartholomeusz and historian Chandra R. de Sil va, have assem-bled a remarkably well-written collection of eight original arti-cles, each taking the perspective of a single religious/ethnicgroup. The result is a faseinating portrayal of the operation ofidentity construction in aplural society that has one overwhelm-ingly dominant majority, the Sinhalese Buddhists, and a rich va-riety of articulate and self-conscious minorities. However, thecollection begins with two essays that describe variation withinthe majority. This editorial choice has the presumably unin-tended consequence of eroding from the outset our confidencein the explanatory value of a unitary "fundamentalist"" label.

George Bond leads off with an account of former PresidentPremadasa's political "silencing" of A. T. Ariyaratne, founderof the internationally known Sarvodaya anti-poverty program.Bond contrasts Ariyaratne as a spokesman for Buddhist valueswith Premadasa as a political manipulator of Buddhist identity.It should be noted, however, that the ancient "communal vil-lage" of Ariyaratne's writings is as mythical as is the ancient un-divided Sinhala Buddhist state of Premadasa's speeches. In-deed, both men illustrate well the mythologizing that Sri Lankanhistory has undergone in the contemporary quest for power. DeSilva continues the theme of variation with an exploration ofmonastic ideas about the ideal relation between religion and thestate. His interviews with Colombo monks reveal a variety ofnuanced positions in which doctrinal tradition frequently is seenas in conflict with nationalistic Buddhism. His salutary conclu-sion is that even these professional Buddhists do not evidence aunitary fundamentalism.

The volume continues to develop a life of its own as the re-maining six articles describe minority responses to Sinhala po-litical domination. Bartholomeusz's own important essays out-line how Sinhala Anglicans and Dutch Burghers have sought toempower themselves by emphasizing their identities as SnLankans rather than as Protestants or quasi-Europeans. Simi-larly, in his account of changing Catholic identity. RoderickStirrat concludes that being part of a world religion has becomedecreasingly central to Catholic identity, even as the divide be-tween Sinhala and Tamil Catholics has become more so. In ap-parent contrast, Victor de Munck argues that these same na-tional identity politics have led Sri Lanka's Muslims to replacetheir local "community-based Sufi identity"" with assertions ofArabic roots and pan-Islamic fundamentalism. However, in his1998 article, "Arabs. Moors, and Muslims"" (Contributions toIndian Sociology 32:433-4K3). Dennis McCjilvray has sug-gested that Muslim fundamentalism is not uniformly influentialin Sri Lanka, a difference possibly attributable to the fact that deMunck" s ethnography dates from before the Rubicon oftlie anti-Tamil riots ol 1983.

Since 1983. the dangers of not belonging to the majority haveincreased considerably The civil war between Tamil separatistsand government forces has transformed the society with emer-gency controls and o\cr 50.000deaths The Sinhala majority issufficiently large that only its support is needed lor victory, so

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politicians of both major parties emphasize primordial ties be-tween nation and religion, reinforcing the public discourse inwhich to be other than Buddhist is to risk being labeled un-SriLankan. Non-Buddhist Sinhala speakers can ameliorate theirsituations by emphasizing Sinhala ancestry and downplayingreligious distinctivoness. a strategy perhaps informed by theBritish colonial equation of language with race. But Tamilspeakers are denied even this possibility. Pradcep Jeganathandescribes how urban Tamils therefore employ "tactics of antici-pation" of violence (giving theirchildren Sinhala names, reduc-ing the public face of Hindu festivals) to safely "produce theirTamilness." Plantation Tamils. Odvar Hollup contends, havethe added problem of finding a space in which their differentTamilnesscan be recognized at all.

The volume's authors emphasize agency and accommoda-tion as they describe how Sri Lanka's minorities use availableeultural resources to construct their own tactics of anticipationin a political climate that makes being Sinhalese the safestchoice. The collection truly illuminates this process, although itdoes leave largely unexamined ihe spaces from which resistanceis mounted and heterogeneity maintained. Also, the defaultmethodology of paired oppositions to Buddhism (Buddhist/An-glican. Buddhist/Catholic, etc.) produces only a limited under-standing of the workings of what Jonathan Walters has called amultireligious field ("Multireligion on the Bus," Unmaking theNation. P. Jeganathan and Q. Ismail, eds., Social Scientists' As-sociation, 1995). Clearly, in Sn Lanka today, adherents of dif-ferent religions come together simultaneously, responding notonly to Buddhism but also to each other.

More important, we are left wondering if what it is lhat mi-norities are reacting to is best termed "religious fundamental-ism."" Political discourse does merge Sri Lankan. Sinhala. andBuddhist, but the editors tell us that this is political, not relig-ious, positioning, part of an "ethnic chauvinism, which privi-leges the Sinhala people above all others" (p. 3). Minority re-sponses, too, seem more political than religious: there is nopressure to convert and there is ample historical evidence thatsuch maneuverings with religion (and caste, language, and eth-nicity) have been a feature of island politics for centuries (Stir-rat, this volume). Interestingly, in their introductory discussionof Bond's essay, the editors label the violent Premadasa, not themore benevolent Ariyaratne, a "•fundamentalist."" even thoughboth display their diagnostic criteria: using religion to establishidentity, set group boundaries, and mythologize enemies (p. 2).There is then always the risk lhat fundamentalist, as loaded aterm as one can imagine, demonizes rather than explains.

In the afterword, John C. Holt asks. "Who are the fundamen-talists?" No one claims the title so it remains, as Holt eloquentlyputs it, "faceless" (p. 187). a space convenient for pointing lo.but without real life subjects to engage in debate. This is unfortu-nate because this valuable book makes a signifieantcontributionto opening up this space to reveal the processes through whichreligion informs minority identity construction in contemporarySri Lanka. Reifying types and typologies runs the risk of need-lessly closing it up again. •*•

The Kiss of Death: Chagas" Disease in the Americas.Joseph William Bastien. Salt Lake City: University of UtahPress. 1998. 301 pp.

JOHN RINSHAW

Consultant Anthropologist

Chagas" disease is a disease of the poor and powerless. It isfound throughout large areas of Latin America but occurs in epi-demic proportions in the Andean valleys of Bolivia. It is associ-ated with substandard housing, lack of hygiene, and the pres-ence of domestic animals, but is now also beginning to spreadthrough blood transfusions and organ transplants. There is noef-fectivecure for Chagas" disease—at least once it has entered itschronic phase—and attempts to control the disease have to fo-cus on the social and cultural context of the disease, througheducation, communily organization, and housing improve-ment.

Bastien's book is an attempt to present a holistic approach tothe phenomena of Chagas' disease. Bastien is an anthropologisttrained in epidemiology and immunology who has worked inthe highlands of Bolivia over the last thirty years. At one time healso appears to have been involved with a USAID funded pro-gram to combat Chagas" disease. The idea of the book is one thatshould have offered an excellent meeting ground for the disci-plines of anthropology, medicine, and development studies.Unfortunaiely, though, in spite of the author's range of scholar-ship, the book is a bit of adisappointment. It bears the hallmarksof a naive and hastily written academic treatise, knocked out be-tween classes and administrative meetings. This is not simply aquestion of bad proofreading, 14 separate appendices, and aReader's Digest style of over-dramatization—"Trypatwsomacruzi is as potentially destructive to human beings as is a nuclearbomb" (p. xiii). Above all it is a lack of systematic anthropologi-cal insight into the dialogue between Western and traditionalAndean medicine, and a failure to think carefully—and realisti-cally—about the practical social issues that need to be addressedif Chagas" disease is to be eradicated in Latin America.

The Kiss of Death does assemble a lot of solid information onChagas" disease in a single volume. The disease itself is causedby a protozoan, Typanosoma cruzi. transmitted by various spe-cies of triatomine bugs. In the Andes and Brazil the most com-mon vector is the vinchuca or barbeiiro (Triatomu infestans). aslow-moving insect, about the size of acockroach, that feeds onthe blood of birds and mammals. The vinchuca becomes in-fested with T. cruzi when it feeds on the blood of people or ani-mals infected with Chagas" disease. The typanosomes prolifer-ate in the gut of the vinchuca, are ejected onto the host's skinwhen the vinchuca defecates, and usually enter the bloodstreamwhen the victim scratches the vinchuca biles.

Bastien offers a nice description of how in 1909. as a youngdoctor working for the Brazilian Central Railway at the l.as-sance railhead, Carlos Chagas discovered both the disease andits vector. The first cases that drew Cliagas's attention wereacute cases characterized by fever, malaise, and soreness ol thelymph glands. At first he took these for symptoms ol malaria orsyphilis, but his attention was drawn to the vinchuca.s thatabounded in the squalid conditions of the construction camp,("hagas examined the blood of mlected patients, finding