Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sivert Nielsen. 2001. A history of anthropology. London and Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press. 207 pp. Hb.: £45.00/$69.95. ISBN: 0 7453 1390 6. Pb.: £14.99/$22.50. ISBN: 0 7453 1385 X.

Alan Barnard. 2000. History and theory in anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 243 pp. Hb.: £45.00. ISBN: 0 521 77333 4; Pb.: £16.95, ISBN: 0 521 77432 2.

R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms. 2000. Anthropological theory. An introductory history (second edition). Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing. 599 pp. $67.75, ISBN: 0 7674 1166 8.

Thomas C. Patterson. 2001. A social history of anthropology in the United States. Oxford and New York: Berg. 212 pp. Hb.: £45.00. ISBN: 1 85973 489 8. Pb.: £14.99 ISBN: 1 85973 494 4.

If it makes sense to speak of postmodernism in social and cultural anthropology, Writing culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986) is undoubtedly one of its key texts. To judge from recent introductory texts on the history of anthropology it has become part of the identity of anthropology that this is indeed the case, for better or for worse (Barnard 2000: 169; Eriksen and Nielsen 2001: 147; McGee and Warms 2000: 564; Patterson 2001: 153). This also means that authors of such historical accounts become caught in what might be called ‘the predicament of history’. From a postmodern point of view any continuity through time of a discipline like anthropology is contingent and depends on changing external conditions. Nineteenth-century evolutionary anthropology may have nothing more in common with twenty-first century reflexive anthropology (or any other variety) than its name, and even that may be debatable. Yet if this is so, we should be able to point out the differences between such anthropologies and account for them. The only way to do so is to consider the history of anthropology. Even if we believe history to be only a figment of our imagination, we cannot do without it, least of all if we want to understand phenomena like postmodernism.

Caldwell, Sarah. 1999 [Oxford India Paperbacks 2001]. Oh terrifying mother. Sexuality, violence and worship of the goddess Kali. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. xvii + 320 pp. Pb.: 495Rs. ISBN: 019 565 7696.

Flood, Gavin (ed.). 2003. The Blackwell companion to Hinduism. Oxford: Blackwell. xiv + 599 pp. Hb.: £85.00. ISBN 0 631 21535 2.

Michaels, Axel. 2004. Hinduism, past and present (translated by Barbara Harshav). Princeton: Princeton University Press. xviii + 430 pp. Hb.: £42.95. Pb.: £12.95. ISBN 0 691 08952 3/08953 1.

Smith, David. 2003. Hinduism and modernity. Oxford: Blackwell. xii + 250 pp. Hb.: £50.00. Pb.: £15.99. ISBN 0 631 20861 5/20862 3.

Anthropologists of Buddhism are familiar with descriptions of Buddhists in which the author wonders whether what they are observing is ‘really’ Buddhism. In the case of Hinduism, confronted close up, the dominant attitude is more likely to be fascination. If observers of Hindu rituals rub their eyes, it is not usually because they are stricken by epistemological doubt about the very status of what they are observing. Scepticism about Hinduism tends rather to be meta-doubt, doubt experienced by theorists trying to grapple with the task of providing an overall picture of Hinduism, doubt about whether there is such a thing as Hinduism in the larger sense at all. In short, with Buddhism the assumption seems to be: it does exist, but village Buddhism isn't really it. In the case of Hinduism the ontology is the other way around: Hinduism certainly exists in villages, but does it exist as an institution spanning millennia and the whole of South Asia? In the past some Panjabis returned their social identity as ‘Hindu Mussalman’ in the census. Many Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains used to be happy to be considered as a variety of Hindu, and some still so consider themselves today. Others describe themselves as ‘secular Hindus’. In other words, Hindu in this sense means approximately ‘Indian’ (though sorting out that historical and conceptual conflation is precisely the problem). Thus some influential scholarly voices have recently argued that really there is no such thing as Hinduism, and that, even if Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and the rest exist as separate religions, Hinduism does not. It contains several religions within it perhaps, but it is not itself a religion.

Chilver, E. M., et Ute Röschenthaler (dir.). 2001. Cameroon's tycoon. Max Esser's expedition and its consequences. Oxford: Berghahn. xx + 204 pp. Pb. (broché). $25.00/£17.00. ISBN: 1 57181 310 1.

Muller, Jean-Claude. 2002. Les rites initiatiques des Dìì de l'Adamaoua (Cameroun). Nanterre: Société d'ethnologie. 131 pp. Pb. (broché). €22.50. ISBN: 2 901161 52 9.

Regis, Helen A. 2003. Fulbe voices. Marriage, Islam and medicine in northern Cameroon. Boulder: Westview. xxiii + 175 pp. Pb. (broché). $18.00. ISBN: 0 8133 3816 6.

Parmi les pays d'Afrique, le Cameroun est l'un de ceux qui attirent le plus d'anthropologues. Après la première guerre mondiale en effet, cet ancien protectorat allemand fut divisé entre Britanniques et Français, ce qui explique sans doute pourquoi de nombreux chercheurs de cultures anthropologiques différentes s'y sont intéressés. Foyer présumé de diffusion des langues bantoues, son extraordinaire diversité culturelle (environ 150 ethnies pour 15 millions d'habitants), comprenant aussi bien les pygmées de la forêt équatoriale que les sociétés hiérarchisées des Grassfields ou encore les Peul et montagnards du Sahel, en fait un pays particulièrement riche pour des études anthropologiques. Plusieurs livres récents en apportent la confirmation.

Goodman, Felicitas D. 2001. Maya apocalypse. Seventeen years with the women of a Yucatán village. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. xx + 544 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 0 253 33908 1.

Hervik, Peter. 2003. Mayan people within and beyond boundaries. Social categories and lived identity in Yucatán. New York and London: Routledge. xxxi + 214 pp. Pb.: £18.99. ISBN: 0 415 9426 7.

Nash, June C. 2001. Mayan visions. The quest for autonomy in an age of globalisation. New York and London: Routledge. xix + 303 pp. Pb.: £15.99. ISBN: 0 415 92861 3.

More than half a century after Robert Redfield first used his rural–urban continuum to explain cultural change in Mexico, Mayan scholars now contend with subtly different and equally paradoxical scales: the individual and collective, agency and constraint, continuity and change, participant and observer, and, of course, the local and global. We live in a world where information, identities, beliefs, cognition, social relations, economies and politics are no longer isolated phenomena but rather linked to the global network that connects us all. Yet, on the other hand, we live and have collective beliefs, social concerns, ideas of self and intimacies that appear and feel more local than global. June C. Nash, Felicitas D. Goodman and Peter Hervik deal with the paradoxes of our contemporary world by utilising distinct styles, theories, methods, individuals and means of analysis in their representations of the lives and struggles of the Mayan people of Mexico.